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

drive, a reality almost exotic for musicals that gave it a touch of importance—or could have were it better written, and if the authors had the musical in their bones. Harold Rome, for all his experience, didn't any more than Weidman did. My task was to bring the show to theatrical life and make it seem as good as they thought it was.

There were three ways to accomplish that: by the look of the show, by the attack on the musical numbers, and—odd though it seemed then—by the acting. The acting most of all. The development of musical theatre and the diminishment of star power and musical prowess were giving acting an importance equal to singing and dancing. Not that it often lives up to that ranking now, nor that it's easy to do. The contrary, really. Few musically trained performers are comparably or even fairly well-trained actors. Moreover, acting in a musical is different from acting in a play. It has to be heightened; the actors have to be larger than life in order to make the transition fluid from speaking to singing or from walking to dancing. Consciously or unconsciously, experienced musical performers know this; ironically, it may make them too larger than life even for a musical. At the first note of the rehearsal piano, out comes the equivalent of that invisible cloak tossed around by their counterparts playing Shakespeare and out the window goes believability. What must come first, what is basic to acting in a musical, is grounding the performance in emotional reality. That, of course, is basic to acting in a play, to acting in anything; but in a musical, that reality is harder to find and even harder to hold on to, because it is so covered with the language of the musical. The director's first task—and it's worth all the time it may take—is to make sure every one of his actors locates his emotional reality.

Good directors argue whether casting is 50 percent of direction or 60 percent, but for all directors, good and not so, the first line to cast is for a star. The part of Harry Bogen in Wholesale was a starring role, but no one—not David Merrick, not his staff, not an agent in town, not I, not even the authors—believed we would get a star to play it. Harry was an antihero; antiheroes tend to be unpleasant rather than loveable, and a musical star wants to be loved. He might settle for being liked if he can still be accepted as a leading man. After fifty, he conceivably might consider playing an antihero because it could make him seem younger—forty, hopefully. Harry, however, was young as well as unpleasant. Thus, no one looked for a star in our firmament.

Then one turned up: the young, very popular singer Steve Lawrence. He didn't care if Harry was unpleasant; it was a juicy part, and he was so eager to get on stage, he volunteered to audition. His wife, Eydie Gormé, as good a singer and as popular a performer, came along to read with him to give him confidence. Neither had ever acted, but both had charisma which gave them a strong stage presence. Both were clearly very nice—making him wrong for Harry but making her right for Ruthie, the girl who wanted Harry. I offered her the part, but she was too much like the role: it was her fella she wanted—she wouldn't work without him.

The theatre-party vendors assured Merrick Steve Lawrence would sell, even better with Eydie Gormé. Merrick left the decision to me, proving he knew the cons as well as the pros. Steve Lawrence was so very nice and so eager, it was hard for me to say no, but I knew the show didn't stand a chance with him as Harry, pace theatre parties. The only chance it did have to succeed commercially was for it to succeed artistically. To achieve that, it had to be even tougher and funnier (which would make it tougher) than it was—and to be more a musical than it was in fact. Technically, the presence of songs made Wholesale a musical, but it wasn't in its bones. This wasn't being semantic; I Can Get It for You Wholesale was only nominally a musical. Basically, it was a dramatization of a novel with interpolated songs.

• • •

Is there a theatre form more difficult to create than the original musical? Apparently not, judging by the rarity of good originals; and most of those aren't all that original. Urinetown, Spamalot, and The Drowsy Chaperone are all examples of the trend to pastiche and, to some degree, all are in debt to Forbidden Broadway for teaching how to profit from the use of old musicals. Equally rare are good new musicals derived from a source, any source: plays, films, novels, short stories, biographies, pieces of journalism. “Desperate people do desperate things,” Rose says in Gypsy; there isn't a conceivable source that hasn't been tapped. But to what end? In the beginning, even before the word, there was the question: why is it a musical?

Examine the components and begin with the beginnings of the story, because the book is where it all begins if the ambition is musical theatre. There are musicals, and successful ones, that began with a collection of songs aimed at being musical theatre. The Boy from Oz and Jersey Boys are two; both hit their primary target: the box office. The former told an interesting story badly, but it had Hugh Jackman, an exceptionally talented new musical star; the latter told a familiar story with verve and energy. The result: more entertainment for Broadway. It's music, however—songs that come from characters who come from the story—that is the making of good musicals, assuming the authors have found the right story to tell. That assumption brings up another question: what makes a story the right story for a musical? Subject matter? Setting? Characters? What?

Begin with a dry news report: