Category: Directing Proposals

On February 9, 2022

I hate to come back to my erstwhile blog seven months later with snark, but sometimes directors leave me no choice.

Hi, everybody! Been focused on a lot of podcast-related stuff, life-related stuff, and work-related stuff (this last is some really good news, but I’m not going to jinx it by spilling details; suffice to say that so far this good news has been overwhelmingly positive, and I hope it continues down that track), but I’m here — in short — because I attended a hot new production of Jesus Christ Superstar and remembered why I avoid most “exciting new takes.”

If You Think You’re Oh So Clever… (Part 2)

On February 25, 2020

(or, On Revivals and Missed Opportunities)

So I’m back, from outer space, with a second episode of my rant from a couple of weeks ago. This time, it’s prompted by something bigger than common mistaken choices that garden-variety regional productions make, sometimes perpetuating the choices of bigger productions that were revolutionary at the time but have become old hat. This is about someone making that kind of mistake on a much larger scale.

You have heard, no doubt, about the current Broadway revival of West Side Story. The one that (in)famously cut “I Feel Pretty,” the “Somewhere” ballet, the intermission, and all of Jerome Robbins’ classic choreography that is easily one-half the show’s libretto if we’re being honest; the one that cast the all-American Jets as a mixed-race gang, because it’s not like the show is about racial tension or anything; the one with a set consisting largely of dull, uninspired video projections and a cast of inexperienced performers (not necessarily inexperienced period, but inexperienced as far as musical theater goes); the one directed by the iconoclastic flavor of the moment, Ivo van Hove. That one.

I’ll be honest, I hate directors who are all “style” and have no substance, and to me, Ivo van Hove is the epitome of this. Like any such director, he has a bag of tricks that he deploys fairly regularly as a substitute for genuine ideas: the video projection was on painful ever-distracting display in his productions of Network in New York and All About Eve in London, and his “no sacred cows” approach to a show’s text led to the one professional production of Rent where Mimi died (one of his few dramaturgical choices I’ve ever personally agreed with, just so we’re clear that I don’t hate everything he does) and the single-evening revival of Angels in America which was practically surgical in its editing and dropped, among almost two hours of significant material, the closing Bethesda Fountain scene. His oeuvre seems to be in the recent European tradition of the director-dramaturge, whose work has a casual relationship to the text at best and should be considered an independent event that cannot be rationalized by the intentions of the original creator(s).

That would be fine if it didn’t seem like his real intention was to court controversy in the process. Someone who makes it their mission in life to do so doesn’t “do it” for me, and it especially didn’t work in the production bearing loose relation to West Side Story that I saw. You don’t have to be self-consciously experimental to do something new with this piece; it’s much simpler to look at the original, determine its intentions, and try to deliver on them with something newer that gets similar results or has a similar impact today. In his desire to “make it relevant” by moving as far from the original as possible, he threw out the baby with the bathwater, picking a modern dance choreographer who threw out all of Robbins’ steps (only to see a lot of her work discarded or polished by a couple of consultants during previews, which reportedly irked her to no end) when he could have made a different, much better choice of collaborator to begin with, and created something far more interesting and exciting.

Any production of West Side Story that wants to do something new has to contend with three especially picky demographics: those who’ve seen it done the same way since 1957 and don’t want to see something new, those who’ve seen it done the same way since 1957 and do want to see something new (for novelty’s sake, if nothing else), and the Latinx community, whose opinion, as recently expressed succinctly in the title of a New York Times op-ed column by Carina del Valle Schorske, can be summed up as “Let West Side Story and its stereotypes die.” Stereotypes refer, of course, to “the painful way it depicts Puerto Ricans,” as her byline puts it.

(There’s also a group that comes distantly in fourth place: the people who see West Side Story on the marquee, recognize the title, remember it fondly, and decide to purchase a ticket. But they’re not as important to this discussion, because, particularly, in this case, they’re either very confused thanks to their memories of the original, or entertained as hell because one’s first experience of something will always be their best. It’s really down to the three groups above.)

Today, while idly perusing YouTube, I stumbled by chance upon the person who would have been the answer to this revival’s troubles, had she been approached from the beginning. The person I stumbled upon is a legend, a choice for a choreographer that would’ve done something revolutionary, someone who’d satisfy — and score points with — all three demographics, or at least quell the opposition somewhat in the case of the last one, which I don’t think would ever be truly satisfied (and for good reason; I’m not knocking their reaction to it).

I speak of the incomparable Toni Basil.

She satisfies the purists because she was in a major L.A. production of the show with original cast members (sort of a super-company of the cream of the crop who’d done it up to that point) in the early Sixties, just after the movie. Jerome Robbins — and, more specifically, the dance of that era — is part of her vocabulary, and she would know instinctively where to use iconic moments that she couldn’t improve on.
She satisfies those who want something new, and especially Ivo’s unconventional casting practices, because this woman, with groups like The Lockers and others, pioneered forms of American street/underground dance before anybody knew what “locking” or “hip-hop” were, and was a seminal influence in bringing it to the public eye. She could easily bring a different, more modern aesthetic and flow to the piece for new audiences by drawing from that influence.
And last but not least, no one may ever completely satisfy the Latinx community when it comes to this show, but they could never upbraid her for not bringing authenticity to the table, because since the Nineties, she’s cultivated a whole award-winning second career in Latinx music and dance, as a performer, musician, and choreographer. There’s no way she wouldn’t bring the Sharks into line with that world’s true tastes, choices, and flavor for maybe the second ever time in the show’s history, if you count the late Arthur Laurents’ bilingual revival a decade ago.

I am confident that Toni would have offered something new and more authentic while still retaining more than a hint of familiarity. I’d go so far as to say, some obvious missteps such as casting a performer with a dubious reputation (and that’s putting it mildly) aside, that Ivo could’ve cut whatever he wanted and cast whomever he pleased, and damn near everybody would have walked out hating him less for daring to try because of what Toni would have contributed that made up for all that.

Of course, this isn’t the only controversial take on West Side Story coming up around the bend. Steven Spielberg has been working on a film remake for the past six years, from the time he announced interest in 2014 to now, as it prepares for a December release. No less a personage than Tony Kushner was engaged to work on the screenplay, which is expected to hew more closely to the Broadway version than to the film; $100 million has been spent on this picture; continuity was even maintained with the original film in the form of executive producer Rita Moreno, who will reportedly play Valentina, a reworked version of the character Doc, in the movie as well. The cast is chock full of Broadway names (or, in Hollywood terms, talented unknowns), as is the creative team (you know you’ve got clout when Jeanine Tesori takes a break from composing to be your flick’s vocal coach).

I hate to be Debbie Downer, but Steven Spielberg should not be doing the remake. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I get that he’s Steven Spielberg, but he’s never done a musical, and everything he has ever done is no kind of prep for West Side Story. One’s first musical is a very bad time to be tackling a remake of an acknowledged classic.

At the same moment, as I figured out Toni Basil was the better choice for the stage revival, I had a sudden flash of inspiration that revealed who should be doing the film remake as well. The person who should be directing it is Quentin Tarantino.

Stop laughing, I’m serious. Yes, Quentin Tarantino should be directing the West Side Story remake. I mean it.

Lest you think I’ve departed off the deep end, follow me, because I do have supporting logic. Given current cinema’s taste for gritty reboots, he’s a logical choice for that reason alone. This guy’s oeuvre is the definition of grit, as only someone with a deep love for the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies grindhouse/pulp/cult cinema can cultivate. Combined with his decidedly modern sensibilities when it comes to cinematic editing, I honestly think you could tell him “West Side of New York, last days of summer, 1957” and he could snap his fingers and create something spectacular, something unique and involving. He would bring the blood and guts, the “reality,” that the original is “missing.” (Shit, you think Quentin Tarantino, of all people, would blink at allowing Sondheim to go back to “Every last fuckin’ gang on the whole fuckin’ street” and “Gee Officer Krupke, fuck you”?)

I’ll go one step further. Given that they’ve now collaborated on Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, slap in Toni’s putative choreography on top of that, and you may not have a new cinematic classic, but you would probably have a credible effort that stood on its own merits, something of which you could at least say, “Well, it’s not the original, but holy fuckin’ shit is it bold and considered, and it makes intelligent choices.”

Let me tell you, reader — it’s far too late for either production to reverse course and start from square one with them, but I think I just made the “so crazy it just might work” choice in the theater of my mind’s eye that could have saved them before they even got out of the gate. I honestly think you’d have a West Side Story for the ages from those two. I can’t tell you how much it hurts to have the answer to everybody’s problems, and not be in a position of power to apply the fix. Everyone else holds the reins.

In a sense, it’s a good thing, because if I had said it beforehand and anyone in either crew had brains, they would’ve robbed me blind, but on the other hand, I feel like we were cheated out of something beautiful now. It’ll never be too late for another reboot, sure, but at some point, it may be too late for a reboot with either of those perfect choices, and that’s what hurts most — that other experienced producers never gave it that level of thought.

This seems like a good spot to end things. Hopefully, in the future, I’ll be back with something more constructive, and not another rant.

If You Think You’re Oh So Clever…

On February 14, 2020

…you probably aren’t.

Hello, everyone! I’m returning to this blog, as I periodically do, with a purpose: to discuss with the entertainment types on my feed something that grinds my artistic gears. Ready to ride? Strap in!

Okay, so maybe I’m an old fogey at almost 30 (that’s practically gay middle age, after all), but I am tired of what I call “hit ’em over the head” theater, in the vein of the current trend for “gritty reboots” in cinema. I am so, so tired of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I get why it exists. The modern passive (read: numb) audience often responds to nothing but being beaten over the head, and directors respond, likely — at least in part — in frustration, with more and more blatant and un-subtle ways to portray the same truths propounded by an earlier “sanitized” version of a show. It can be great fun, and even useful and enlightening, to see a classic given this treatment. But some of them have grown rather insulting to an audience’s ability to grasp difficult concepts, and you can see it everywhere. I know theater’s a very broad art form as it is, and there’s something to be said about meeting the audience where they are, but dumbing things down to Idiocracy levels is not the way to do it.

To name some examples:

Cabaret

This is one of the most obvious offenders. As a theater professor acquaintance once put it, “Everybody used to play the Emcee exactly the way Joel Grey did, but now everyone does it the way Alan Cumming does.” Speaking more broadly of the same point, Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall created a fun production, sure, but it beat people over the head big time. And now, due to its permeating the cultural landscape so thoroughly, it’s pretty much the only version we ever see, even in productions that use one of the other two licensed scripts instead. (Revivals of Chicago suffer from a similar phenomenon, although that’s also partially due to the revival script now being the only version available for license.)

Do we need to push the choreography in a rough, unrefined, unsophisticated direction every time? Must we always be painfully aware of the fact that the show partially deals with how someone like Hitler could ever have happened? If the show itself doesn’t demonstrate that without unspeakable vulgarity, it might be possible that you haven’t done your job. Cabaret can be “no frills” and racy without being set in a dingy sexed-up nightclub, with third-rate hookers out of a Somerset Maugham story lurking around every corner and a drug-abusing, cross-dressing, sexually ambiguous Emcee who is not content to be merely master of ceremonies but also pops up mysteriously throughout the real story like a ghost.

Yes, the decadence of Berlin was a factor that aided Nazi ascension to power; yes, the clubs in real Thirties Berlin were seedy and, if anything, hyper-sexualized. But this isn’t a documentary about Berlin during the rise of the Third Reich. The show has more important points to make than being an ersatz-Fosse* “captain edgelord” contest to determine the most shocking “way to make people think.” There are other equally effective ways to integrate the diegetic and non-diegetic elements, and the fact that Hal Prince successfully presented such productions multiple times is proof in the pudding.

* This is no slight on the 1998 version, by the way; after researching both Cabaret and Bob Fosse’s style and work, I feel that if he was ever allowed to do the show live with the stipulation that he couldn’t just put the film up there, there’s a very real chance it would’ve looked — and played — rather like the Mendes / Marshall product. To the extent they wanted to achieve that, and it sure seems like at least Marshall did, kudos to them.

Gypsy

Every production of Gypsy for the past forty years has gotten progressively (and, I would argue, aggressively) more cartoon-like, to its detriment.

For example, certain parts of the show are made unnecessarily seedier to drive home the minor plot point that burlesque has its backstage downsides. In the quest to be “oh so clever,” the strippers get uglier and “more busted,” and the risk of slipping into misogyny, as a result, grows with each successive revival. Heaven forbid someone tries something novel, like recognizing that, despite their age, these women are in the business of being beautiful for the men paying to see them every day, and maybe it’d be more interesting to see how many different ways you can make them attractive.

Or take the portrayal of Rose, which, especially with Imelda Staunton, has reached terrifying levels of “one-note psycho.” Every portrayal is too mannered, with exaggerated gestures, entering hysterics at the drop of a hat. You watch Rose with Herbie and Louise, and you’d be forgiven for mistaking their interactions for Godzilla vs. Mothra. If you encountered someone like that in real life, the only explanation for her family (real and adopted) putting up with her for that long would be Stockholm Syndrome. Folks, Rose… is a person. These are real people. She should have fantastic chemistry with Herbie. Her interactions with Louise should seem — dare I say it — human.

Tyne Daly is a fantastic example if you can find the widely circulated bootleg video of her performance. The image quality is poor due to age, and others may have sung the role better (you simply can’t beat Ethel Merman), but her Rose is human. Her performance was not just a broad scenery-chewing steamroller; it was specific. Every time she “had a dream,” for example, she’d look at a specific place in the mezzanine and point to it. She could see it… it was right there… it was real… it was just out of reach. And her relationship with Jonathan Hadary (Herbie) and Crista Moore (Louise) was genuine. If I had to guess, I’d say Tyne knew something that directors — and actors — have forgotten: if you play the human being, the monster within will have more impact on the audience when it emerges. If you only play the monster, the audience will see how well you can play monstrous behavior, and nothing more.

A Current Specific Example: ACT’s Godspell

(Caveat emptor: I have specific ideas for Godspell, it’s one of my favorite shows, but my production and a friend’s production have both failed to take the next step while stuff like the Ken Davenport revival and this thing thrive. To say I’m biased — and more than likely bitter — is an understatement. Do not take this to heart if you are involved with this production and come across this blog entry. Take a deep breath, and if you want to discuss it rationally, I’m truly more willing to do so than it may seem from the writing that follows.)

Productions of Godspell, in my experience, either work or don’t; some hit and some miss. (I’ve written about it at length.) And, believe it or not, there are still ways to be creative with this show without lapsing into slapstick and sugar-coating it. Some good examples include Richard Haase’s legendary original Harlem company (and, not to toot my own horn too loudly, I believe my Bernstein’s Mass/Gospel at Colonus-inspired riff on Richard’s take would go even further in that realm), or the recent presentation by brooklynONE Productions which updated the original “clown” idea very effectively by using the “punk” subculture to explore a group of outsiders coming together slowly over a common goal.

A Contemporary Theatre of Connecticut, led by its artistic director Daniel C. Levine, was recently permitted by Stephen Schwartz to revise Godspell to cast it in a new light for their production. According to one reviewer, the premise unfolds something like this: the play opens in an abandoned Manhattan church where some homeless have taken refuge. Enter developers and realtors, who reveal that this old magnificent structure will be demolished to build high-priced condos for the wealthy. They care not for the church nor its purpose as they discuss the price of these condos to be built and brag about how the building is 90% sold. Suddenly, from the ruins of the church, Jesus appears to transform the greedy and open their eyes to his lessons.

Okay, you may say (as I initially did), it’s a solid premise. I don’t care for cutting the “Prologue” to make it work, though maybe the characters are too specific for it to apply to them or the sequence itself is too specific to apply to these new characters, but it’s a solid premise, and the performers are very talented. We can live with that. Well, hold on to your hat: they’ve also added a cast of ten children who (periodically) mingle with the adults.

It seems people returning to the innocence of childlike faith on their own, albeit with guidance, is not enough. (Not believable enough? Not realistic enough? In any event, not enough.) They need children — who are described in Levine’s comments as “enlightened” and “whose hearts have not yet hardened,” who “represent the innocent and the future of us all” as one reviewer put it, in contrast to the group of people who’ve “lost their way” and “see money as their God, and high-rise condos as their church” (how Hallmark TV movie) — to set the example. (Small wonder that I’ve dubbed this production Godspell and the Try-Hard Sociopolitical Dreamcoat.)

People seem to forget the story of Godspell, which can be summarized (admittedly in a rather Jodorowsky-reminiscent, high-falutin’ fashion) like so: a group of philosophers with sharply dissenting points of view becomes a hilarious community of benevolent clowns, through child’s play, under the guidance of two holy fools, one of whom sacrifices the other in a symbolic death.

The selling point of the show is that you don’t need bells and whistles; the story is in the subtext, and the message is clear. If you can’t portray reconnecting with childlike faith without literally throwing some inner child(ren) up on the stage, I dunno what to tell ya about your abilities, but I know how I feel — like you think I’m stupid. Like you think that I couldn’t connect those dots on my own. Am I an outlier?

Conclusion

Now, I’m not knocking anyone who made these choices. Art is subjective, and largely a matter of taste. But I think that blatantly announcing a point instead of showing it should not be the way forward. Unfortunately, in many of these cases, it might be the only way to make the same point to an audience today. I hope I’m wrong.

Impressions of a Crucifixion

On October 31, 2019

Hi, everyone! In the same vein as my last post, which started as another installment of the evergreen “Ask Me Anything” series and wound up focusing on a specific topic instead, I was hit with two questions in a row that were too big on their own to mix into another AMA post. (Honestly, I feel like this has been coming for a while, as my answers to certain questions have gotten progressively longer over the life of the column.) So, until something better to write about comes along, I’m going to stick with this for a while.

These questions, funnily enough, given where the discussion that led to my last post originated, concern one of my favorite musicals of all time, Jesus Christ Superstar. As I indicated in my directing proposal for the show, I’ve been brainstorming how to stage this thing pretty much since the first grade, and everybody who knows me knows that. One of them found the ask box on my Tumblr, because this is what tumbled in (shut up, you loved that pun, you liar):

Has any production of JCS come close to your vision of the show?
Anonymous

Well, I’ve had so many visions of the show that it was kind of hard to gauge how to answer this question.

My current default notion is that JCS works better as a concert than staged, one major reason being that any full staging is instantly subject to (over-)analysis because nobody has ever locked down one “acceptable” way of doing it, no “Brown Album” equivalent in terms of staging and design standards. And I think we already know why. Some don’t consider this a flaw, but it objectively is: JCS doesn’t have a spoken book, which has frequently proven problematic to directors in its long history of theatrical staging. As the show was recorded in the studio before it was performed, it was originally written for the ears, not the eyes, and consequently, some of the score is difficult to stage adequately, especially for audiences used to the more skillful storytelling of modern pop operas like Les Mis, Rent (albeit to a limited extent, suffering as it did from literal “death of the author”), and others. The structure of JCS can feel disjointed, almost like a collection of music videos, rather than one coherent narrative.

Fans say that’s because the directors who’ve done JCS are unfamiliar with opera or unable to trust that the audience will be able to accept it as opera, but a cursory glance at Tom O’Horgan’s, Jim Sharman’s, or Gale Edwards’ résumés (to name three) shows opera experience is not the barrier. We even have O’Horgan’s word on this, from Elizabeth L. Wollman’s book The Theater Will Rock: “…it just was not very theatrically constructed. When I first attacked the piece with Andrew, he said he would write some other numbers that would help make it flow a little better. But he didn’t. So we just had to create visual things that would work with the music and make it understandable.” (Whether O’Horgan succeeded in making it understandable with his “visual things” is another story entirely, depending on who you talk to, but still, “getting” opera was not the issue.)

Because of this lack of a book, and a score that’s largely inner monologue rather than exposition or explication, directors and choreographers try to give it structure through blocking and dance and the creation of “scenes” to set up what comes next. But that can get in the way, to the point of becoming a big stumbling block in some productions. It could be argued that this inability to settle on the best way to stage JCS is part of the show’s beauty, what makes it so special, but it leads to too much second-guessing; in my opinion, it’s better to strive for something more concrete.

To me, that means one should zero in on what makes it so wonderful, so historic, and so beloved by us. The music, the lyrics, the text-setting, and the lyrical phrasings… all remain brilliant after 50 years. Forget, for example, the eternal tug of war between a modern and a biblical look — concentrate on the music. A staged concert does not overly concern itself with sets, costumes, props, or a thematic concept that requires a dozen steps of thinking and rethinking; in a concert version of a musical, there’s an understanding that you’re not getting the full kit. The audience sits up and pays attention because there’s little (in JCS‘ case, no) dialogue, and rather than reading as a series of unrelated songs (as it can in a conventional staging), the full score carries the plot’s weight. It shouldn’t throw anyone nearly as much in concert as it can when one tries to make it a “standard theater evening.”

If we limit our focus to that concept, I’ve seen it tackled successfully several times.

In-person, I’ve seen JCS performed in concert by groups such as A2Z Theatrical (twice, the cast of which included JCS vet Danny Zolli on both occasions and Carl Anderson — as Pilate! — once), David Tessier’s All-Star Stars (twice), and the Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra (once), all in the New England area.
Through recorded mediums, I’ve seen many great examples from all over the map, including: Anthony Von Eckstein’s long-running JCS which played around the Bay Area of California from 1988-1992 (clips can be found here); The Noise magazine (and, later, Boston Rock Opera) presenting a JCS that was raw and more concert than theater in its early days, though frequently costumed and occasionally equipped with sets and props (clips can be found here); the justly famous 1992 Australian revival cast (now on YouTube); JCS: A Resurrection, as performed by The Indigo Girls and friends at SXSW ’95 (briefly available for sale on video and now on YouTube); Astarte Syriaca’s prog metal revamp of the score (clips can be found here); frequent performances by the Tábor Superstar Band (clips can be found here); the many renditions presented by the Horningsea Reduced Theatre Company, sometimes with a cast as small as three people (clips can be found here); and The Petty Thefts and friends, who closed their club performance of JCS with a cover of “The Last Waltz” rather than the downer of an agonizing crucifixion and a string instrumental (clips can be found here).

Each production had things I loved, things I merely liked, and things that I’d do differently, but they reflected that particular vision pretty well. Namely, for the most part, they weren’t about robes and sandals. They embraced the era of thunderous, fist-in-the-air, classic ’60s and ’70s Brit rock (The Beatles, The Who, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Queen, etc.) that JCS came from. This was a rock opera that changed the world, and it looked — and sounded — like it, complete with epic lighting, in-your-face sound, band and singers onstage throughout the performance… in short, a full-on contemporary rock and roll spectacle. By no means did any of these performers skimp on the story, but they didn’t sacrifice the edge to tell it either.

However, that answer wasn’t enough for this person, who wanted to pin me down. They shot back with this:

What’s been your favorite staged version of JCS? (Non-concert)
Anonymous

Okay, I’ll bite, but remember: you asked for this essay, pal.

First, a list of the staged (non-concert) versions of JCS I’ve seen: two high school productions (about which you’ll hear nothing in this post; it’s unfair to judge them in competition with pros), the closing performance of the 2000 Broadway revival, two performances of the national tour that followed said revival (one of which featured Carl Anderson as Judas and Barry Dennen — Pilate on the original album, Broadway, and in the 1973 film — as Herod), and four performances of a national tour initially billed as Ted Neeley’s “farewell” engagement in the role of Jesus. In total, discounting the number of performances of each, five productions, only three of which we’ll consider here.

The 2000 Broadway revival had all the same problems as the video which reflected that production: I’m sure Gale Edwards is a fine director, but she missed the boat with this particular iteration of JCS. (Not having seen her original 1996 production at the Lyceum Theatre, which unfortunately never left that venue and was reportedly far better than what went wide, I can only comment on this version.) Her direction — and the production design that accompanied it — were full of the kinds of blatant, offensively obvious attempts at symbolism and subtlety that appeal only to pseudo-intellectual theater kids. In real life, there’s no such thing as obvious good vs. obvious evil (things just ain’t black and white, people), and any attempt to portray this concept on stage or in a film usually results in a hokey “comic book” product, which is kind of what the 2000 production was.

The first thing Edwards did was draw her line in the sand. “These are the good guys, and these are the bad guys.” The overall production design played into this ‘line in the sand’ feel as well, being so plain in its intentions as to almost beat you over the head with them. There may have been some good concepts mixed in, but for a show that runs on moral ambiguity, they were very poorly executed and did damage to the piece. Some examples:

Annas and Caiaphas were devoutly “evil,” seemingly designed to inspire fear. It’s easy to see good as so very good, and bad as so very bad; to want to have the evil in a nice little box. But it’s not that simple. As Captain Jean-Luc Picard (and now you know where my Star Trek loyalties lie, curse you!) once said, “…villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those that clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.” Evil isn’t always a clear and recognizable stereotype. It could be lurking inside anyone, even you, and you’d never know. People aren’t inherently evil. Like good, it’s a role they grow and live into. And since history is a story of the developments and actions of humans over the ages, maybe it’s a mistake to view the characters who’ve played their parts in it so one-dimensionally. It doesn’t dismiss the evil they did, but it does allow one to understand that this potential to be good or to be evil is in everyone and that it’s not always as simple as just doing the right thing.
Judas was an almost thoroughly unlikable prick (though Tony Vincent played him a bit more sympathetically than Jérôme Pradon in the video); any sense of a fully three-dimensional person was lost, leaving us with a total dickhead constantly beating Jesus over the head with his cynicism and curt remarks. If the audience is to truly feel for Judas and appreciate his fall, they must see his positive relationship with Jesus. More importantly, it has to be readily apparent; it shouldn’t be the audience’s job to assume as much. I never saw any love, or even a hint of friendship, between Jesus and Judas in the 2000 production. Judas’ interactions with Jesus were a constant barrage of aggression, overt or covert. No hint of a conflict in him, or at least none the audience could see, and what use is a conflict or emotion if the audience isn’t privy to it?
And when not telegraphing an ultra-specific view of the story’s events, everything else about the design would’ve left a first-time viewer befogged. Young me liked the industrial, post-apocalyptic, pseudo-Gotham City atmosphere of the set. The older me still likes it (though I’m firm in my opinion it works best on stage), but realizes what a mess the costumes were. Jesus and the apostles are straight out of Rent, the Roman guards look like an army of Darth Vader clones with nightsticks substituting for light sabers, the priests have practically stepped off the screen from The Matrix, Pilate is a Gestapo in generic neo-Nazi regalia, Herod seems to have dragged along some showgirls and chorus boys on his visit from a flash-and-trash third-rate Vegas spectacular, the Temple is full of ethnic stereotypes and a mish-mosh of dime-store criminals, and a creepy mob with a striking resemblance to The Addams Family keeps popping up, but only in the show’s darker moments. Lots of interesting ideas which might work (operative word being “might”) decently in productions of their own, all tossed in to spice up a rather bland soup. The solution to having a bunch of conflicting ideas is not to throw all of them at the wall at once; you look for a pattern to present itself and follow it. If no pattern emerges from the ideas you have, it’s a sign you should start over.

You can see what my basic issue was: where other productions explored motivation, examining possibilities and presenting conflicting viewpoints for consideration, the 2000 production (when not utterly confused in its storytelling thanks to conflicting design) blatantly stated what it thought the motivation was without any room for interpretation — this is who they are, what they did, why they did it, so switch off your brain and accept what we put in front of you. Which, to me, is the total opposite of what JCS is about; it didn’t get famous for espousing that view, but for going totally against the grain of that.

The national tour at least had Carl and Barry to recommend for it the first time around, but for all the mistakes it corrected about the 2000 revival (swapping out the shady market in the Temple for a scene where stockbrokers worshiped the almighty dollar, with an electronic ticker broadcasting then-topical references to Enron, ImClone, and Viagra, among others, was a fun twist, and, for me, Barry Dennen gave the definitive performance of Herod), it introduced some confusing new ones as well:

For one, Carl — and, later, his replacement, Lawrence Clayton — looked twice the age of the other actors onstage. Granted, Christ was only 33 when this happened, but next to both Carl and Clayton, Eric Kunze (I thankfully never caught his predecessor) looked almost like a teenager. When Ted and Carl did the show in the Nineties and both were in their fifties, they were past the correct ages for their characters, but it worked — in addition to their being terrific performers and friends in real life whose chemistry was reflected onstage — because they were around the same age, so it wasn’t so glaring. Without that dynamic, the way Jesus and Judas looked together just seemed weird, and it didn’t help anyone accept their relationship.
Speaking of looking weird together, the performer playing Caiaphas — who was bald, and so, unfortunately, resembled a member of the Blue Man Group thanks to the color of lighting frequently focused on the priests — was enormously big and tall, while the actor in the role of Annas was extremely short. Big Guy, Little Guy in action. Every time I saw them onstage, I had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud. I’ve written a great deal about how Caiaphas and Annas are not (supposed to be) the show’s villains, but that’s still not the reaction I should have to them.
The relentlessness of pace was ridiculous. It was so fast that the show, which started at 1:40 PM, was down by 3:30 PM — and that included a 20-minute intermission. What time does that leave for any moments to be taken at all? A scene barely even ended before the next began. At the end of the Temple scene, Jesus threw all the lepers out, rolled over, and Mary was singing the “Everything’s Alright” reprise already. How about a second to breathe for Mary to get there? Nope. How about giving Judas and Jesus two seconds’ break in the betrayal scene at Gethsemane? The guards were already grabbing Christ the minute he was kissed. I was so exhausted by the show’s end that I was tempted to holler at the stage to please slow down for a minute. The pace didn’t allow for any moment in the show to be completed if it was ever begun; it was just too fast to take advantage of subtle touches the actors could’ve had, and as a result, I think they were unable to build even a general emotional connection because one certainly didn’t come across.
The cast was uniformly talented singing-wise, with excellent ranges and very accomplished voices. (In fact, the second time around, the woman understudying Mary, Darlesia Cearcy, walked away with the whole show in my opinion, and I’m incredibly glad to have seen her career take off since then.) But, in addition to some being more concerned with singing the notes on the page because they were there than imbuing them with emotion and motivation, the cast was undercut by the choices that production made with the music. For one, there’s a huge difference between singing “words and notes” and singing “lyrics and phrases.” When you have a phrase like “Ah, gentlemen, you know why we are here / We’ve not much time, and quite a problem here…” you sing the sentence, and if sometimes a word needs to be spoken, you do that. You don’t make sure you hit every single note like a “money note” (which you hit and hold as long as you can to make sure everyone hears it), dragging out the tempo to hang on to each note as long as you can. Generally, the actors were so busy making sure every note was sung — and worse, sung like a money note — that they missed the point of singing a phrase, and how to use one to their advantage. Caiaphas and Pilate were particularly egregious offenders. (I’ve never understood some of these conductors who are so concerned that every note written has to be sung. The result suffers from it.)

And then there’s Ted’s production. Of the three, it’s the one I liked the most, but that’s not saying much when it was better by default.

The production design was stripped-down, the set limited to a bridge, some steps, a stage deck with some levels, and a couple of drops (and a noose) that were “flown in.” The costumes were simple, the sound was very well-balanced, and the lighting was the icing on the cake. Combined, the story they told was clear.
The music sounded very full, considering the pit consisted of a five-piece band relying in part on orchestral samples.
Ted, for being of advanced age, was in terrific form vocally, if his acting fell back a little much on huge, obvious, emotive gestures and choices (the film, through editing and close-ups, gave these choices more subtlety than they were allowed onstage, where it came perilously close to resembling a “Mr. Jesus” pageant in which contestants were graded on their ability to strike all the appropriate poses from Renaissance paintings).
And there were some beautiful stage pictures; for example, there was a drop with an image of a coin with Caesar’s head on it in the Temple scene, and it fell on the crowd when Jesus cleared out the riff-raff. In the leper sequence that followed, the chorus’ heads popped out of holes in the cloth, under which they undulated, pulsing to the beat, and rather than being treated as a literal mob scene, the sequence had a very dream-like effect, a mass of lost souls reaching out to Christ. It was rather like a Blake painting, with a creepy vibe in a different manner from the typical “physically overwhelm him” approach; they frankly looked like a monster rising to eat him. He didn’t interact with them, didn’t even turn to look at them, until finally, he whipped around with a banishing thrust of his arm, hollering “Heal yourselves!” Sometimes it was over-acted with annoying character voices (remember, I saw this four times), but when it wasn’t, the effect was chilling.

My main beef with the show was, oddly enough, on a similar line to my beef with Gale Edwards’ production: it drew lines in the sand. But in this case, it drew them concerning Jesus’ divinity.

As written, JCS deals with Jesus as if he were only a man and not the Son of God. The show never suggests that Jesus isn’t divine, but neither does it reinforce the view that he is. Portrayed in detail in JCS is the mostly-unexplored human side: ecstasy and depression, trial and error, success and regret. He agonizes over his fate, is often unsure of his divinity, and rails at God. Not so in this production. Aside from “The Temple” and “Gethsemane,” there was never any room for doubt that Jesus was the mystical, magic man portrayed in the Gospels.

At the top of the show, after a fight between his followers and the Romans during the overture (a popular staging choice I’m not a real fan of, but you’ve got to do something during that moment in a fully staged version, and I understand why it’s an easy choice to make for exposition purposes), Jesus made his majestic entrance, spotlit in robes that looked whiter than Clorox bleach could produce, and raised a man from the dead. Well, where’s the room for Judas to doubt? Clearly “this talk of God is true,” we just saw it! If this guy is capable of performing miracles, try explaining to anyone that that person is “just a man”! (More than that, good luck explaining to someone who specializes in necromancy that fame has gone to his head and escaping unscathed… which sounds like an interesting idea for a story in and of itself…)

If that weren’t enough, Jesus went on to have a constant connection with God throughout the show, speaking to a spotlight that focused only on him and often served to distract him from anything else happening onstage, and at the end, during “John 19:41,” his body separated from the cross, which fell back into the stage, and he ascended to heaven.

Now, though the former was admittedly played to excess (some reviewers unkindly compared Neeley to a homeless man with Bluetooth), there are arguments to be made in favor of both choices: a Jesus who constantly seeks a connection with God that isn’t reciprocated, searching for guidance or at least a clue, is great foreshadowing for his eruption — and acceptance — in “Gethsemane.” As for the ascension, depending on how it’s staged, there’s room for argument that it could be interpreted more metaphorically than literally, as the moment when Jesus’ spirit is born, as Carl Anderson once put it (meaning, to me, that his message is given life and strength when his body fails him). But this production didn’t have that level of shading and layers to it and coupled with the resurrection at the start, it defeated the rest of the story.

None of ‘em’s perfect, and I don’t think I could create the perfect one. Thus, concert. I hope that clears it up!

“If I Did It,” Vol. 4: Edging Into Darkness (or, Musicals in Chiaroscuro)

On May 14, 2019

My principal anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh… and my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.
Nikos Kazantzakis, from the book The Last Temptation of Christ

Conflict is part of human nature. It’s not pretty, but it’s true. Humans are finite beings, with free will and independent thought processes; out of primal survival instinct, we seek our own best interests first. We have different needs, feelings, and goals compared to the people that surround us, and when ours clash with those of others, conflict arises, sometimes to the point of violence. In 1673, Samuel von Pufendorf, a German jurist, political philosopher, economist, and historian whose concepts formed part of the cultural background of the American Revolution, said, “More inhumanity (to man) has been done by man himself than by any other of nature’s causes.” The same — or similar — thoughts have been echoed by countless great thinkers, whether they refer to men or women, the ancient world or the present, religion or the state, specific ethnic groups or parts of the world, the roots of dystopian literature, or any number of crises ranging from health care to trusts and labor unions.

The classic poem, “Man was made to mourn: A Dirge,” perhaps puts it best of all:

Many and sharp the num’rous ills
Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves
Regret, remorse, and shame!
And man, whose heav’n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn, –
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!
Robert Burns, 1784

But conflict doesn’t just occur with what’s around us and outside of us. As the Kazantzakis quote above attests, especially if one subscribes to moral dualism, there’s also conflict within us. Everything in nature has its opposite — birth and death, love and hate, sowing and reaping, killing and healing, laughter and tears, creation and destruction, pulling away and drawing closer, winning and losing. This is true for human beings as well; much as we hate to admit it, we each have a dark side that balances our light. Joseph Conrad defined it in his novella, Heart of Darkness, as an “inner evil” that can manifest itself when a human struggles with their morals, doing battle with their hidden darkness.

So how do we respond to, as Burns put it, “man’s inhumanity to man”? How do we deal with our inner conflict? I do what many do when confronted with something they don’t comprehend: attempt to analyze and understand it. Everybody has a different toolkit for that; mine just so happens to be theater. Luckily, I’m not the only person who uses this approach, so I’ve got plenty of perspectives to draw from. Indeed, countless writers have tackled the subject of conflict from as many angles as possible. In so doing, they’ve discovered that clichés are clichés for a reason.

Many great experts, often writing for the edification of other great experts (as Anna Russell would put it), have broken down conflict as exemplified in literature into seven distinct types. Each type is not mutually exclusive; stories often have overlapping struggles, containing multiple characters and storylines. However, each occurs often enough to form a common “type.” Most are pretty self-explanatory, but just in case, the types themselves follow, in order from (my definition of) most specific to most abstract. (Also, in the following list, assume that when I say “a person,” it can happen to a group of people as well. It often does.)

Person vs. person — One person struggles for victory over another, about as classic as the conflict in a story can get. (Its instances throughout the literature are so numerous that mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book outlining the archetype of a hero going on a journey and overcoming an enemy.)
Person vs. technology/machinery — Especially popular over the past century, thanks in no small part to increasing mechanization and improving artificial intelligence, a person fights to overcome unemotional and unsympathetic machinery that believes it no longer requires humanity.
Person vs. nature — A person battles for survival against the inexorable, apathetic force of nature.
Person vs. self — A person finds themselves battling between two competing desires or selves, typically one good and one evil.
Person vs. society — A person fights (sometimes successfully, sometimes less so) against injustices within their society. Without this, the dystopian genre wouldn’t exist.
Person vs. fate/god(s) — A person is trapped by an inevitable destiny.
Person vs. the unknown/extraterrestrial — A common thread in sci-fi and supernatural horror, where a person battles against an entity that isn’t entirely known or comprehensible, whether extraterrestrial (in the alien sense) or metaphysical.

If it’s present in literature, it’s also present in drama, and needless to say, the three shows about which I share what’d happen “if I did it” have conflict, both inner and outer, in spades, and they all explore the darker side of humanity, darkness breaching light (or vice versa, take your pick), and — thankfully for the audience’s delicate sensibilities — navigating the twilight of the soul without being so definite as to say there’s no hope of salvation (of whatever kind).

Candide takes in optimism vs. reality, religious hypocrisy, the corrupting power of money, and the uselessness of philosophical speculation; Sweeney Todd covers almost every conflict there is (person vs. person, person vs. society, person vs. self… and that’s just the title character’s arc); and my erstwhile favorite, Tanz der Vampire, is a witty, edgy show that pokes fun at the vampire mythos but also uses it to make important points about, among other things, the excesses of appetite. Though each has a different moral, on a philosophical level all of them explore gloaming, questionable diversions from the light into the shadows, the start of the journey downwards. (Indeed, if one was feeling pretentious, they might say these shows are chiaroscuro, an exploration of light and dark, or — more cheekily — fifty shades of…)

Walking the terminator, so to speak, is no easier behind the footlights than in front of them, but it is a way to safely explore one’s inmost parts. After all, as I’ve stated previously, theater is the act of people gathering together in the dark for a couple of hours to suspend disbelief and assume another guise, to teach us something about ourselves. If we’re not ready to learn, as the Sherman Brothers once put it, a spoonful of sugar (or show biz, in this case) helps the medicine go down most delightfully.

Click here to check out my Candide proposal. (Note: This was previously posted at gdelgidirector on May 25, 2018. It has been modified for its present audience, incorporating material from a post at gdelgiproducer on July 23, 2014.)
Click here if you’re interested in my ideas for my Sweeney Todd proposal. Before you do, though, bear this in mind: one must do bad work before one can do good work. Not just one piece of bad work, but tons of it – sometimes hundreds of hours of rough material can be found behind every successful play, movie, TV show, album, book, whatever. Everyone, no matter how good they are now, had to start somewhere then. This is where I started. As I’ve said elsewhere, the idea of Sweeney staged as a flashback playing on a never-ending loop in Toby’s traumatized mind, whilst confined to an asylum following the show’s events, is brilliant. It’s become less so with time, as everyone and their brother has since beat that dead horse six feet underground; unfortunately, like the Shake and Bake commercial, I helped. So, though the idea’s no longer particularly original, attempt to restrain eye-rolls and guffaws, and to suffer gladly the thoughts of a young man who had more aspirations than credentials. In retrospect, the other big idea is interesting enough on its own without the asylum conceit; today, I’d concentrate on that instead, to the exclusion of the madhouse. (Note: This was previously posted at gdelgidirector on August 27, 2016. It has been modified for its present audience.)
And click here to access my proposal for Tanz der Vampire. It’s my sincere hope that this (and its introduction in particular) makes up, in a small way, for my teasing about how working on the show was a low point in my career. (Note: This was previously posted at gdelgidirector on July 26, 2016. It has been modified for its present audience.)

Well… this wraps up my series of artistic directing proposals. I hope you’ve gained something from these examples. If nothing else, I hope this helped you understand how to flesh out your ideas on paper, the better to explain them in person. (Coming up next: a master class in practical advice for actors.) As always, thanks in advance for reading, and I welcome comments on the proposals!

“If I Did It,” Vol. 3: The Turning Point (or, Musicals à la Spielberg)

On April 21, 2019

Over my years of being a faitheist (click the word for a definition) who enjoys recreational Christianity, I’ve frequently heard a song in church that says, “Life is filled with swift transitions.” Who can’t attest to that? One of the swiftest and heaviest transitions of all is coming of age, a young person’s progression from childhood to adulthood.

It’s an important milestone, one which comes with many difficulties; not surprising since the mental leap from childhood to adulthood happens gradually over several years. Despite this, in the modern world — or at least the U.S. — we don’t systematically recognize this transition. Sure, there are privileges to which we all look forward, but there’s no formal acknowledgment that things change in terms of relationships with family, friends, and social institutions. Luckily, we have one tradition that might be able to help: the act of people gathering together in the dark for a couple of hours to suspend disbelief and assume another guise, to teach us something about ourselves. Or, put simply, theater.

Film does a good job of this, too, and I would say no one does a better job of it than Steven Spielberg. (Funny, considering he almost directed one of the pieces I talk about today for the screen before it became a theater project.) The recurring themes of his movies, though they’re generally optimistic and sentimental, deal with experiences common to one’s coming of age: loss of innocence (said innocence is usually exemplified as a childlike sense of wonder and faith), the tension in parent-child relationships, ordinary characters searching for — or coming in contact with — extraordinary beings or finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances (or what one might consider extraordinary as they begin this part of their life’s journey).

Since the three shows I picked for this episode of “if I did it” — two by Andrew Lloyd Webber, one by Stephen Schwartz (we’re back in familiar composer territory) — all deal, in one form or another, with coming of age, and, coincidentally enough, they also more or less tick the boxes of Spielberg movies, I call this collection “Musicals à la Spielberg.” Granted, not every single item I just listed above is reflected in all of these shows, but enough is there to make the comparison. Like life, they can be funny, and they can also be bitter and serious and deadly, but if we’re lucky, everything turns out alright.

Click here if you’re interested in my ideas for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. (Note: This was previously posted at gdelgidirector on April 16, 2017. It has been modified for its present audience.)
Click here to access my proposal for Whistle Down the Wind. (Note: This was previously posted at gdelgidirector on August 30, 2016. It has been modified for its present audience.)
And click here to check out my Pippin proposal. (Note: This was previously posted at gdelgidirector on February 12, 2017. It has been modified for its present audience, including the incorporation of material from a post at gdelgiproducer on February 19, 2014.)

Thanks in advance for reading, and I welcome comments on the proposals!

“If I Did It,” Vol. 2: Three Shows, One Century

On April 12, 2019

Hi, folks! For this installment of how shows would look “if I did it,” which incidentally grants prospective directors a glimpse at how I formulate the artistic proposals that I mentioned here, I decided I’d look at some very well-liked musical snapshots of specific eras in American history.

Scholars have successfully argued over the years that musical theater is one of the few indigenous American art forms (along, incidentally, with comic books, the murder mystery, and jazz), so it’s hardly surprising that many of the most successful Broadway musicals chronicle — sometimes unconsciously — America’s times, people, and events, its dreams, legends, the national mood, politics, and its extraordinary muscle and resilience. More than that, some of the 20th century’s most groundbreaking musicals have been about important issues, either on the surface or in the subtext, an exciting forum in which to talk about our world’s issues and to make sense of the chaos of our lives.

Bearing this in mind, I decided to explore three popular musicals that are, in whole or in part, about what are widely regarded as some of the most influential times and issues in modern America: West Side Story, Hair, and Rent. I’ve grouped them not just because the latter are two of the all-time, best-known reflections of counterculture in musical theater history, frequently compared to each other, but because the protagonists of all three shows are more or less parallel types: young people — in most cases, no older than teen or college age — struggling for acceptance, who demand that the establishment (be it parents, society, etc.) account for the way it has treated/raised them, acknowledge its responsibility for the problems they face, and do something to either alleviate or repair the situation it created. Be it through gang culture, political demonstrations, or art, they band together, find a unique natural aesthetic, and try to change their respective environment, with varying degrees of success.

An intriguing thing I noticed in particular: with West Side Story set (nominally) in the 1950s, Hair in the 1960s, and Rent in a weird pop culture void that combines elements of the 1980s and early-to-mid-1990s, when examined back to back, one can see, in alarming detail, how the mistakes of previous generations may have affected the children — and grandchildren — that followed. It’s eerie, yet unsurprising, to note that the more things changed about the world, the more they stayed the same.

Click here to access my proposal for West Side Story. (Note: This was previously posted at gdelgidirector on July 26, 2016. It has been modified for its present audience.)
Click here to check out my Hair proposal. (Note: Some of the basic ideas were previously posted at gdelgidirector on January 11, 2018. They’ve been fleshed out with material from a defunct blog of mine devoted to an abortive attempt at a fan screenplay, and modified for their present audience.)
And click here if you’re interested in my ideas for Rent. (Note: This was previously posted at gdelgidirector on January 11, 2018. It has been modified for its present audience.)

One thing to note before I go: you’ll see, especially in the last proposal, that sometimes I don’t cover every single subcategory I’ve included in other proposals when I write a new one. For lack of a better way to put it, some shows need more help than others; sometimes I’ll have enough ideas to fill 20 pages, and sometimes I think I can fix a show in 8. You’ll experience the same thing for yourself. Length doesn’t matter, as long as you’ve expressed yourself clearly and articulately. (Although it may help to realize this document is merely a way of getting your thoughts to paper and making it easier to describe them, perhaps out loud, in a much more condensed format than the document allows. Let’s face it, attention spans — and reading levels — aren’t what they used to be.)

Thanks in advance for reading, and I welcome comments on the proposals!

“If I Did It,” Vol. 1: A Tale of Two Christs

On April 1, 2019