Keeping Score

If any proof is needed of the something-for-everyone state of Broadway, one need look no further than the hit musicals Mary Poppins and Spring Awakening.

Mary Poppins, based on the classic Disney film, topped this week’s Outer Critics Circle Award nominations, with a total of 11, and received six Drama Desk Award Nominations. Meanwhile, Spring Awakening, based on the 19th-century German play about troubled adolescents, received 10 Drama Desk Award nominations and three Outer Critics Circle nods. Both shows are competing in the category of Best Musical.

TheaterMania recently spoke with Duncan Sheik, the composer of Spring Awakening, and Richard M. Sherman, the composer-lyricist of the film version of Mary Poppins (with his brother Robert B. Sherman) and George Stiles, who wrote the new songs for the show with his frequent collaborator, Anthony Drewe.

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THEATERMANIA: Duncan, congratulations on your many award nominations and on winning the Dramatists Guild’s Hull-Warner Award for Spring Awakening earlier this week.

DUNCAN SHEIK: It was a fun night. One of the great things about these award ceremonies is meeting all these incredible people. At the Dramatists Guild Gala, Stephen Sondheim was hanging out; we still haven’t formally met, but it was still really cool to see him. I loved meeting Michael Stuhlbarg at the Lucille Lortel nominations party.

TM: Was this kind of reception for Spring Awakening something you anticipated?

DS: Steven and I have gone through every single type of expectation, from hubris that everyone will love it to disgrace, shame, and fear it would never go anywhere. I’m most happy to have created a stir; that was the goal from the beginning, to do something different in musical theater and stay true to our own aesthetic. We worked hard to stick to our guns and made sure that the piece stayed true to the spirit of Frank Wedekind and our own ideas. There were definitely times when people told us we were crazy to think it could go Broadway — and some of them were in the show’s own camp.

TM: Is there a song in the show that you still aren’t happy with?

DS: From a musical standpoint, “My Junk Is You” goes a little too girl-group, which is not my cup of tea, but the action in the scene makes it okay; it’s still subversive enough for me. I admit I was uncomfortable with it at first, then I came to accept it, and now I enjoy it.

TM: You recently wrote the score to the film The Cake Eaters, which bows on Sunday at the TriBeCa Film Festival. How did that come about, and what interested you about the film?

DS: Mary Stuart Masterston, who directed the movie, had once heard a song from another movie I scored called Three to Tango, and she remembered it when it was time to hire a composer. I think The Cake Eaters has very humble goals and achieves them in subtle ways. Certain scenes in it remind me of my whole life. And, like Spring Awakening, the film deals with teenage sexuality and characters deemed oddballs by “normal” society. It just has a different scope than the show.

TM: Right now, you’re in the middle of a concert tour. What can your fans expect to hear?

DS: I am touring with a string quartet and percussionist, and this singer/keyboardist named Holly Brook. It’s sort of a strange collective. We’re doing some Spring Awakening songs and some stuff from two other shows I’ve written with Steven, Nero and The Nightingale. The other portion of the concert is from my newest albums, White Limousine and Daylight.

TM: Do you enjoy touring?

DS: I mostly like touring, but at the beginning, I always feel like I’m out of practice — like the kid who hasn’t done his homework. Just like in Spring Awakening.

TM: Do you have groupies?

DS: I don’t really have groupies. There are people who will come and see lots of shows on the tour or come back every time I’m in a city, and that’s great. But real groupies, I think that’s a little odd.

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THEATERMANIA: Richard and George, congratulations on your Outer Critics nomination for Best Score. Do you guys think about winning awards?

RICHARD SHERMAN: If you think about it, you’re going to drive yourself nuts, because how do you know who you’re up against and what the situation is? I just feel that you’ve got to say, “I did the very best I could on this project.” If the fates want to nod us and give us an award, fine. If not, it’s still what I did, and that’s my reward.

TM: Looking at the show as it is now, do you feel that it’s exactly the way you want it, or are there still things you want to go in and change?

GEORGE STILES: I’m incredibly proud of how the Broadway show is now. We got the chance to fix some of the things that we did want to fix after we’d done the show in London.

RS: I think each time a new incarnation was built, it got stronger, it got tighter, and it got more focused. It was wonderful, but now it has a kind of warmth it didn’t have before.

TM: George, did it help you and Anthony that, when you started to work on this project, you already knew what Mary Poppins would sound like, even if you didn’t have an actress cast?

GS: I think it did, because what Julie Andrews gave the character is this extraordinary precision. The way she sings with such fantastic enunciation, the way everything is placed so beautifully, made it very British. Plus it made it very clear and gentle, but also very firm at the same time. And we always said right from the beginning that we would not change the voice type and that whoever played Mary had to have this bell-like quality. Laura Michelle Kelly, who originated the role in London, absolutely had that voice, very much in the front of the face with lovely resonance. And Ashley Brown on Broadway has that same pitch-perfect quality. When you set that benchmark, you can’t dip below it.

TM: One of the biggest changes from the film to the stage was the character of Mrs. Banks (now played by Rebecca Luker). Was it particularly hard to write her songs?

GS: Yeah. There’s no particular reason why she doesn’t look after the children, so they came up with one reason in the movie, and we came up with a different one. We were aware that P.L. Travers, the author of the books, had never been wildly fond of the suffragette take and we also just felt that there would perhaps be a more interesting emotional journey for her. We very much wanted there to be a genuine crisis with this family. Of course, it took a while to come up with a solution, but with [book writer] Julian Fellowes’ help, we came up with the idea of “Being Mrs. Banks,” which was kind of a breakthrough. The lyrics “I have a name which tells the world I’m someone else’s wife” were kind of the key to discovering how that whole character was going to go. When songs are that hard-won, they become one of your favorite things in the show.