Category — Producing

Stephen Schwartz in front of his current Broadway shows

A Q&A with the superstar composer on Godspell, Wicked, and more

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Stephen Schwartz is one of the most influential forces in contemporary musical theatre. As a composer and lyricist, he’s created classics shows like “Pippin” and expanded the American songbook with tunes like “Meadowlark” and “Day By Day.”

At the moment, two of Schwartz’s defining works—”Godspell” and “Wicked”—are running next door to each other on Broadway, and he’s collaborating with Aaron Sorkin to create a musical about Houdini. Since Hugh Jackman is attached to play the legendary magician, there’s a good chance Schwartz will be celebrating yet another hit in just a few months.
Last week, Schwartz joined me for lunch in midtown Manhattan. We discussed his lengthy career, his thoughts on his current Broadway shows, and how being a team player doesn’t always mean what you think.

I’m delighted to present the highlights from our conversation.

– Mark Blankenship

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TDF Stages: Godspell, which stages the teachings of Jesus with a rock-pop score, has been produced thousands of times since it premiered Off Broadway in 1971, but until the current revival opened last fall, it hadn’t been on Broadway in over thirty years.

What’s it like to have your first hit back in the spotlight?

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Tug Coker as Larry Bird

How playwright Eric Simonson made theatre out of basketball stars

In the space of eight years, Larry Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. won a combined six NBA championships. Bird and Magic, as they’re still known worldwide, represent a combined 13.5 feet of grit, skill, and nearly unprecedented basketball smarts, resulting in perhaps the most storied rivalry in modern sports.

According to playwright Eric Simonson, they also represent “the better angels of the collective unconscious of the country.” That’s how he describes the joint protagonists—bitter rivals turned battle-scarred friends—of his play Magic/Bird, which is now in previews at the Longacre Theatre.

Simonson, who is reteaming with the director (Thomas Kail) and producers of the football-themed play Lombardi, would appear to be an unlikely candidate for go-to sports scribe. His resume includes adaptations of Moby Dick and Slaughterhouse-Five, collaborations with poet/playwright Ntozake Shange and African choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and a documentary short about the radio dramatist Norman Corwin that won an Academy Award in 2006.

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We ask the director of “Rated P For Parenthood”

What does it take to direct a revue? A typical show follows one group of characters through a single story, but a revue, with its collection of songs and sketches, introduces new people and new situations every few minutes. How does a director make it all feel coherent?

That’s a question for Jeremy Dobrish, director of the musical-comedy pastiche Rated P for Parenthood. Running through April 8 at the Westside Theatre, the show gently pokes fun at parenting foibles, with four actors playing various parents and children. As Dobrish says, his challenge became, “How do you keep the audience following not just each protagonist for three minutes, but an overall sense of the journey of the show?”

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A new play takes its time at MTC

How long does it take to build a fire? Make a can of soup? Repair a table that an angry drunk smashed to pieces?

To find out, you can time the scenes in Regrets, Manhattan Theatre Club’s carefully paced new drama, now at City Center.

Set in Nevada in 1954, the play follows life in a “divorce camp.” Sixty years ago, Nevada had the most liberal divorce laws in the country, so men would move there just long enough to establish residency and split from their wives. Sometimes, they lived in special campgrounds, forming temporary communities of the listless and the lonely.

In Regrets , the community mixes card games and beer runs with unpleasant secrets, and the consequences get heavy. If we feel those consequences, it’s arguably because the play takes its time defining them. Scenes are long and conversations are rich, and if someone sweeps the floor, he sweeps the entire thing. This creates a methodical calm, even as emotions flare.

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A playwright crafts Broadway’s “End of the Rainbow”

Peter Quilter started writing End of the Rainbow in 2001, and now that it’s in previews at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre, he’s on draft number 33.

The play is about Judy Garland (Tracie Bennett), but it isn’t traditionally biographical, chock full of facts and figures. Instead, Quilter focuses on a single night in 1968.

As he’s honed the script, he’s relied on feedback from audiences around the globe, including Australia, Scotland, Poland, and Finland. “People in those countries particularly had to be able to go and see the show with no knowledge of Judy Garland and no particular interest in Judy Garland, but they had to be satisfied by two hours of storytelling,” he says. He adds that keeping them engaged often meant cutting historical information.

In November 2010, End of the Rainbow opened on London’s West End, where it played for six months and earned several Olivier nominations. It all happened so fast, Quilter says, that he didn’t make many changes to the script. Those would come when the show landed at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis—Garland’s hometown.

Guthrie audiences were surprised to see the star portrayed as pill-popping, vulgar, and at times, violent. “I think we had to earn them in Minneapolis,” Quilter says. “I think when we started each performance, particularly early on in the run, there was a sense of: ‘What are you doing to our Judy Garland? We don’t want to see her at her worst. We only want to see her at her best.’”

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