Let’s Put on Another Musical
Well, it’s official. Mark Glubke, the impresario at Watson-Guptill/Back Stage Books, had asked me to update my 1993 book Let’s Put on a Musical: How to Choose the Right Show for Your Theater. He and my agent worked out some easy terms that led to a sale and to my doing what I always do after I sell a book: I joyously dance around my apartment for 20 minutes and then abruptly stop when it occurs to me that now I’m actually going to have to write the thing. It’s due on January 1, which means that nobody need invite me to any holiday parties during the month of December. And, oh, what a torturous week it will be between Christmas and New Year’s!
All kidding aside, though, I’m delighted to have the chance to redo this — if only to get out the comma between On a Clear Day and You Can See Forever that the original copy editor insisted on inserting — and so I can add the “e” at the end of John Latouche’s name that he persisted in omitting. And yes, of course there are other mistakes that are solely mine that I’ll rectify as well.
What Glubke wants me to do is take out about 30% of the entries and replace them with shows that weren’t available — or even conceived — when I began work on the book lo those dozen years ago. Given that I summarized and commented on 230 shows, that means that I’ll have to replace about 70 of them with new entries. So what am I throwing out? Well, the last show listed alphabetically will be the first to go: The Zulu and the Zayda, for I’ve yet to hear of anyone doing a production of this 1965 play with music. It tells of an elderly Jewish man who comes to live with his son in South Africa, and is soon disoriented, so his son hires a Zulu to watch over him. While you may expect that the old-timer is going to be prejudiced against the black man, that isn’t what happens at all. He brings him to places where Zulus aren’t allowed in the age of apartheid. Isn’t it wonderful that this show is now hopelessly dated?
I guess I’ll say good-bye, too, to Birds of Paradise, The Cradle Will Rock, Donnybrook — oh, this is too painful! I’d love to see people do those shows, but I’ve got to be realistic. Youthful shows — both in terms of age and appeal — must be served. So hello to Jekyll & Hyde, Side Show, The Who’s Tommy, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and a slew of others.
But a big part of the book involved my telling the assets and liabilities of doing these shows. I asked my readers at the time to offer their suggestions. Plenty of them wrote in, and many of their remarks made the book. That’s how I met the supremely talented Tom Stretton, who directed musicals at a high school in Cheltenham, PA. I included one he did (Ben Franklin in Paris) and now will add one he’s since directed (My Favorite Year). So now I make the offer to you, readers: When you did a production of a certain musical, what did you experience that was particularly wonderful? Particularly harrowing? Did you have a new interpretation that worked? For example, Steve Schwartz is still raving about the production of Pippin he saw where at the end of the show, young Theo starts singing “Corner of the Sky” — for isn’t it true that sons grow to have the same feelings their fathers once had but grew out of? Anyway, if you have a suggestion or two that you’d like to share, just e-mail me at pfilichia@aol.com. I hope I’ll want to put in the book your name, the theater where you work(ed), and your suggestion.
Funny thing: I just got in the mail a copy of the most recent issue of Happy Talk (the very well-named periodical that Rodgers & Hammerstein Theatre periodically publishes), and in the centerfold found a nice alphabetical list of the shows they have available. That made it easy to compare with my alphabetical index. So I’ve already decided to include Aspects of Love (which I’ll bet can reduce well in community theater), Floyd Collins, Footloose, I Love You! You’re Perfect! Now
Change!, State Fair, and The Wild Party. But I won’t include A Grand Night for Singing — or any other revue that celebrates the life and work of a songwriter.
I didn’t in the last edition, either, and one of my readers from West Virginia wrote to ask why I didn’t include Jerry’s Girls, By Strouse, or Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill. My answer: Because I don’t think people really want to see them. I know I don’t. Characters and emotion are what makes me interested in musicals, and they don’t happen in song cavalcades. I bet that several people who attend community theaters have never heard of Jerry Herman, Charles Strouse, or Kurt Weill. When in 42nd Street Billy Lawlor sings of musicals, “Who writes the words and music?” he comes to the conclusion, “No one cares — and no one knows.” I agree. Let’s face it — the only reason their composer-songbook revues have emerged is because they’re cheap to do. But that still doesn’t mean that anyone wants to see them.
By the way, that West Virginia resident provided me with one of my favorite community theater stories. It happened during a production of Fiddler on the Roof, in the scene where Tevye and Hodel arrive at the train station before she goes to Siberia to be with her husband Perchik. It’s such a tender moment, because father and daughter know deep in their hearts that they’re seeing each other for the last time. And as the actress in this production sang “Far from the Home I Love,” our West Virginia theatergoer couldn’t help noticing that on Hodel’s suitcase, one could still see the remnants of the letters that spelled out: “Professor Harold Hill.”
So I needn’t wait to finish the new edition of Let’s Put on a Musical to give this piece of advice: If you’re doing Fiddler, scrape Hodel’s suitcase clean.
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]
