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

Ideally, a song in a musical-theatre piece should be a one-act play with a beginning, middle, and end. Such a song moves the play forward and almost stages itself for the director. Unfortunately, most songs in musical theatre are still songs of musical comedy: the lyric states one thought, repeats it over and over, and ends with a slight verbal twist. Essentially, nothing happens emotionally and the song goes nowhere, forcing the director into staging that is static or the choreographer into whipping up compensatory frenetic dances from nowhere. Most of the songs in I Can Get It for You Wholesale were of that nature, but I had a cast that included two beginners who became stars, Barbra Streisand and Elliott Gould (who played Harry), and two former stars, Lillian Roth and Harold Lang. Most of the others were exceptional dancers, a few were exceptional singers, and all could act. With that company, the prosaic flatness of Wholesale and its songs could be given theatrical life. The director could use his imagination, trusting his players to make his inventions work. They made mine even seem inspired.

Example: “Ballad of the Garment Trade,” scripted to be sung marching down Seventh Avenue. Because the settings were so ordinary and untheatrical, I had the whole show designed in stark black, white, and gray with an arbitrary slash of color for each scene: morning blue for the kitchen, lipstick red for the nightclub, tarnished gold for the office, etc. There was a modestly stunning backdrop of the city that suggested Seventh Avenue. The company could have marched east and west, north and south in front of it to the martial rhythm of the song, singing its litany of the risks of being in the dress business—a presumably comedic litany: “If you're not [a success], you haven't got a pot to sew with.” Even if I had thought the lyric could be depended on, it didn't get anywhere, and the marching wouldn't, either. So I had the song sung by various workers in the dress house Harry had taken over (by cutting corners and throats) as they built his new showroom-with-a-stage for a rag-trade fashion show that climaxed the number and the act.

This set up the climactic number in the second act, “What Are They Doing to Us Now?,” sung by the employees (led by a magnetically intense Barbra Streisand despite incongruous Anna May Wong fingernails) as the pieces of the showroom and the furniture were literally taken out from under them. What made it especially effective was that by the time the plaintive number came around, the audience knew each of the people involved as a character and what the loss of the business meant to each of them. That was because each actor had gone beyond the printed page and created a person.

“Eat a Little Something” had another lyric that repeated one thought, went nowhere, and thus presented a staging problem. In the script, Harry's mother (Lillian Roth) sang the song; then Harry confessed to her that he had betrayed his partner, stolen his money, and destroyed the business. Intercutting the song and the monologue made a moving one-act play.

I Can Get It for You Wholesale began its out-of-town tryouts in Philadelphia. I Can Get It for You Wholesale bombed in Philadelphia. It bombed badly: the reviews even said it was anti-Semitic.

With the authority of experience, I can say that in that situation, it's worse to be the director than the author. Much worse in a musical, because there are more people—more authors, more producers, more actors, more crew, more world—who look desperately to the director to have the answer, to make it all nice and jovial and a hit. Before directing my first musical, I had decided that unlike other directors, I would put the authors first and respect their work. Rome, Weidman, and I had worked like a pot-head ménage à trois during rehearsals. They brought me presents (cashmere!); they wanted me, rather than Herb Ross, the choreographer, to stage the songs. Then Philadelphia and bombs away. Now whose side was I on?

It's right and it's necessary to respect the authors' work. But for a director to position himself “on their side” is asking for trouble and ignoring that there can be only one side for a director: the show's side. Not even his own side—meaning how he has directed the piece or executed his conception (assuming he has one, and these days he would be drummed out of the corps if he didn't). Nor can he be on the star's side, should there be a star; for while it's true that if the star doesn't work, the show doesn't work, the star has to work for the show. I remember a meal at Sardi's with Barbara Harris—one of the most sublime musical actors I have ever seen—after a preview of The Apple Tree. She brushed aside my praise (she couldn't accept compliments anyway) to ask a question that answered itself: “But the show doesn't work, does it?” She knew; she had asked it before and had known the answer about On a Clear Day. The show is what matters, the show the audience sees on the stage, not the show so many involved think they see. The director has to see and hear what the audience is seeing and hearing, particularly when what is being seen and heard is not working; and alas, alack, and lackaday, what was on that stage in Philadelphia was not working. When that happens, everyone involved, top to bottom, turns to the director.

Whether they turn with hope and confidence or with fear and desperation depends not only on the director's record and reputation but on the face he wears when he comes to the first meeting after those reviews that have struck terror. Terror can engender panic, insanity—at the least, clinical depression. Usually, the tension is relieved by firing the costume designer, but Wholesale's designer wasn't important enough to