Mainly on Directing by Arthur Laurents (read more books .TXT) 📕

like to think Whistle would have been different if David had produced it. And it would have been—if only because we wouldn't have had to do the thirty-two auditions we needed to raise the money for the Kermit Bloomgarden production. Kermit had no power; I had no power; the show had no power. The result was inevitable, but we were blind to that. It's common to be blind to the obvious traps that lie ahead for musicals.

Ideally, a director should know what and what not to expect from the producer before the contract is signed. After all, they know each other's résumé, they discuss the script and the score, they talk. The director and the authors talk. The director and the actors talk. Everyone talks—but before the first week of rehearsal is over, all parties realize they haven't been speaking the same language.

Ideally, the producer functions as the eyes and ears that can point out to the director and the authors the difference between their intentions and what is on the stage. In practice, everyone needs glasses and no one quite understands exactly what anyone else's intention was or is.

Ideally, everyone should be striving for the same goal. With West Side Story, we were, a major reason why the show succeeded. Power was never an issue. After its success, the ego-power shit hit the fan, but that didn't matter in the long view. The goal had been achieved, the work was completed; the triumph resulting is in evidence to this day. The active producers, Hal Prince and Bobby Griffith, joined the first producer, the loyal Roger Stevens, in time to provide enough power to balance Jerry's.

For the first-time director of a musical, the power is hardly in contest. The producer has done the hiring, the producer is taking the risk; the power is in his hands. As a result, throughout rehearsals, the director is looking over his shoulder for his replacement lurking in the shadows. Not an inspiriting way to work, assuredly not if you're working for a producer like David Merrick, and my first time out as director of a musical was working for him on I Can Get It for You Wholesale, a curious choice for each of us. It was adapted by Jerome Weidman from his best-selling novel and upped with music and lyrics by Harold Rome. The material wasn't particularly fresh: its central character, Harry Bogen, was an antihero, unusual perhaps for a musical but familiar because he was a smaller, paler, less theatrical Sammy Glick. Weidman's setting was not glittering Hollywood but the garment industry—and not the colorful side, as in The Pajama Game, that birthed tune-bright songs and dances, but the drab side known as the rag trade, which in Wholesale inspired songs like “Ballad of the Garment Trade,” to be sung (according to the stage direction) by the company marching down Seventh Avenue (how did Harold Rome imagine that would be staged?); “Eat a Little Something,” a plea by Harry's not unexpectedly Jewish kvetch of a mother; and a climactic dirge for his bankrupt clothing company: “What Are They Doing to Us Now?” Merrick had made his theatre name (and a good deal of money) with Harold Rome's musical Fanny (the word “musical” may seem gratuitous, but read the sentence without it), which explains to some extent why he wanted to produce Wholesale. Why he wanted me to direct it, I had to assume, was because he couldn't get anyone better. Or perhaps, to be a little kinder to myself, because he knew Wholesale needed a director unafraid of gritty material, and what was grittier than West Side Story? Gypsy?

But why did I want to direct something so flawed, so unmarked for success? The question was asked by Tom Hatcher, the first theatre question he asked me. We had been together five years, but in the beginning he had been an actor. Deciding he wasn't good enough, he became a contractor—why and how is for another place—which led to real estate in Quogue: an easier progression to follow, but details are also for another place. Success there led to the security to ask that first question; in our fifty-two shared years, he asked a great many more. Each, like the first, was precisely the right one to ask and was asked when and how it was best for me. I trusted him, I respected him, and soon, I depended on him. Every director needs someone to ask those questions, but not someone whose job depends on him, who reveres him blindly or is afraid to challenge him or isn't as smart as he is. Fortunately, I had Tom. I still hear his voice.

My answer to his first question was the undecorated truth, because I was secure with him: I wanted to direct Wholesale because I wanted to direct a musical and David Merrick had asked me. Secondly, and I admitted it was second, because I believed I could make something out of the piece, however flawed. Tom raised an eyebrow but said nothing. I may have encouraged myself to believe what I could accomplish—it's often necessary to do that, and it helps—but I really did believe I could bring Wholesale home.

Uncharacteristically, Merrick didn't flaunt his power. The budget was small, but that didn't faze me. I knew the show needed imagination more than money. A limited amount of the latter forces an almost unlimited supply of the former. He let me have the cast and designers I wanted. He gave me complete freedom at rehearsal.

I Can Get It for You Wholesale's strength—if it had one, and if it didn't, what it did have that could be made into a strength—was a tough, cynical attitude toward society. Harold Rome was a political being; his score emphasized that side. To me, Wholesale had the advantage of not being an ordinary Broadway musical. I wasn't unaware that it was not a desirable Broadway musical, either, except that it had a sarcastic energy, a