Jack in the Box, page 10
As I’m fond of observing over and over again, success just feels good, while failure is where we are forced to learn, and learn either to stop continually making the same mistakes or realize we’re just not cut out for a specific next step. Damn Yankees was a success, no question, and firmly established national awareness that the Globe and I might have potential for further commercial exploration. All we obviously had to do was refine the formula, repeat it, and reap the generous rewards, am I right? If I was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of this linking of nonprofit and for-profit institutions, why was it not possible that our commercial undertakings could healthily contribute to underwriting our Shakespeare, let’s say? So long as we didn’t devolve into a tryout factory for Broadway, our integrity felt sacrosanct, and our commitment to maintaining a standard of American classical work over thirty years secure.
I’ve always loved that phrase so often referred to by members of Alcoholics Anonymous, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans!” The recipe for the success of this enterprise of Carnival! had so many positive ramifications that the Globe Guilders, the volunteer collective of local women supporting our efforts, were virtually salivating as they went to work designing floral centerpieces for the inevitable end-of-season gala that was surely meant to accompany the production while effortlessly filling the fund-raising coffers.
Point of order: I’ve always believed that adaptations and revivals of works not originally intended for the stage constitute a law unto themselves, and one has to proceed most carefully not to disappoint an audience’s expectations conditioned from, perhaps, a much freer set of aesthetic toys. You cannot do justice onstage to a work that has been filmed ravishingly with all the bells and whistles cinematography offers these days, so to grab a popular movie title as fresh bait designed to lure in new subscribers can be a risky business, indeed. When the Hairspray team reassembled, some years ago, to repurpose Catch Me If You Can as a musical intended for Broadway, we sat with no less an authority than the original director, Steven Spielberg himself, who was eager for us to insert into the libretto everything they hadn’t been able to stuff into the original film. I humbly offered the observation that since the film was, intrinsically, “a chase,” that might perhaps constitute a vocabulary for one of Jerry Mitchell’s dance routines, but I’d never be able to get the stage to move like his camera, no matter how I tried. There would have to be an entirely different approach to the material that was to be the sole province of theatre magic. Or, if not, we should leave the damn thing alone.
As a candidate for revision, Carnival! looked like the alleged gift horse itself. It had a lovely score. It had the double treat of folding circus imagery into its story, but from my own point of view, the original production seemed nearly sexless as I recalled having seen the original. If Anna Maria Alberghetti and Jerry Orbach actually kissed during the course of the evening, you couldn’t prove it by me. My fallback preference of recasting classical themes in the light of contemporary emotional states, which would achieve fuller exploration when I was to finally confront the works of Tom Stoppard, should theoretically provide something of a field day in this case.
And there were other equally fresh avenues to explore. And here, Dear Reader, we find ourselves at the “tipping point,” the actual moment when objectivity begins to vanish, and the passion for creativity begins to crowd reason out from the premises. One can wonder, years after some blighted event, why one didn’t immediately recognize the danger, the fatal problem, the obvious reason a particular project wouldn’t fire. Now, totally freed from the blinding excitement of initial discovery, it seems as if a child would know a particular project was doomed from the outset. But to truly commit to an exciting vision is to walk eagerly and blindly into a vast new room without awareness that the door might be slamming shut behind you, and going forward will be your only option. And it’s thrilling, truly. You have the gut feeling that this property is ostensibly yours and yours alone; only you can bring this into vibrant life, into a new appreciation, imagining the scales falling away to reveal something far better than what was ever experienced before. It’s powerful stuff, and, yes, occasionally it even happens; and for a moment that vision you’ve experienced can well stand beside the original concept and command respect, be justified, and, best of all … make money!
Carnival! was just such a repository of unexplored possibilities. First of all, there was its lineage. Before there was Carnival!, there was Lili, a charming fifties film that became a vehicle for Leslie Caron to move on from her exciting debut in An American in Paris. Somewhat darker in tone than Carnival!, the work still had a melancholy French feeling that had been extracted from a novella by Paul Gallico, titled Love of Seven Dolls, itself reaching back into the fifties to one of his early unpublished short stories, called “The Man Who Hated People.” These were both much darker, more sophisticated works than one ever encountered in a Broadway musical, but more dramatic, too, sexier, more powerful. Something of the original storytelling had to have been sacrificed along the way, in order to make the source material more innocent and appropriate for a theatre audience.
Just before he wrote these literary pieces, Gallico had been instrumental in developing a television play to feature the Chicago ventriloquist Burr Tillstrom, whose artless television show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, had had the kind of impact on that generation of young observers that Sesame Street or Harry Potter’s adventures have had more recently on the current generation. Tillstrom had become an unlikely star, and his hand puppets, virtual sensations. For my own generation to encounter Oliver J. Dragon or the little clown, Kukla, during the early years of television was to be forever happily marked in childhood, as indelibly as if tattooed. Tillstrom had eventually retired to the artistic community of Saugatuck, in Michigan, where he befriended my late sister, Janet Stillwell, then the associate dean of the College of Fine Arts at Western Michigan University. Through her, I came to know him casually. Talk about synchronicity! Fate was unraveling a path so specifically special, so personally exciting, it could not be ignored. The very line of evolution from Burr Tillstrom to Broadway’s Carnival! proved to me that I had to be the essential interpreter, but wait!… That wasn’t even going to be the half of it. Approaching this musical demanded a partnership with viable circus professionals, and I just happened to be able to identify the perfect candidates. And in my own backyard, too!
Around 1995, the Globe was undergoing some expansion of the original, fairly cramped administration building, adjacent to the theatre itself. We were temporarily moved off campus to a nearby administration building belonging to the naval hospital across Balboa Park, where we were able to resume care of our administrative duties over the same summer our offices were being improved upon. It was a leisurely ten- or twelve-minute walk from the hospital grounds to our plant, and we noticed, one morning, a lovely blue, elegantly stretched tent was being raised in the parking lot nearest to our temporary offices. Apparently, a new circus troupe was about to play their tryout engagement in this tent before shoving off on their tour, and some element of kinship appealed to us as local residents, so we decided en masse, eight or ten of us, to attend their debut. Cirque du Soleil was being born, the remarkable Canadian entertainment destined for greatness, just this simply, and so one balmy evening we gathered together in that parking lot, bought our tickets, and climbed onto the wooden risers with only the mildest of expectations.
What transpired that evening was something so original, so fresh, so beautiful, sexy, and revolutionary that we sat poleaxed. The early productions of Cirque were sheer perfection. They were yet to climb to the fairly massive production heights that we’ve come to know internationally over the subsequent years. This was part of their initial impetus, and we found ourselves, as theatre fans, deeply moved, as if we’d discovered a separated-at-birth element for which we were unprepared.
And so, thoroughly believing them to be kindred spirits, we enthusiastically “went round” to congratulate them, which is an expected courtesy all theatre personnel feel compelled to do, but in the circus? Who knows? Since Cirque originated in Montreal, while we were waiting to congratulate them, it became clear that most of the artists were French-speaking. I have retained some French from my education, as well as from endless meals with John Houseman and Paris-born Joan Houseman, who preferred to communicate in French at table, and the circus crowd could manage only rudimentary English. It’s difficult to imagine how it could have happened, but we somehow invited them to share a celebratory drink, and they eagerly responded. A hour later, we were all down in Old Town at a large table, drinking margaritas and doing our best to convince them of how truly stunning an event they had in hand. I recall that evening as one of the happiest and most delicious of my entire residency in San Diego, but my retention of proper names over these decades is precarious at best, and when the struggle is limited to two fragmented languages, I’d say virtually nonexistent. I knew only that our new best friends were the management of Cirque, but after a few margaritas, the need for details like phone numbers and contacts simply vanished.
And yet, when it came to Carnival! and a possible way to create its circus language, who better than these fun-loving, mint-fresh, wildly creative, and theatrically savvy Canucks? I don’t recall if I actually brought up the subject that night, or just “laid a few tracks,” as it were, but we parted amid a plethora of warm embracing and goodwill. Even now, decades later, if any of them are still connected to the parent organization, I cannot believe the evening doesn’t remain in their memories as indelibly vivid as it does in ours. Whatever else—gorgeous fun!
But so far, so good, right? No evil portents looming up to thwart us, and seemingly just cause for enthusiasm: a rich store of unused and undervalued subtextual material, and a possible partnership with a soon-to-be-legendary circus collaborator. I was batting a thousand, and couldn’t wait to inform the rest of our team of our immense good fortune. Having been here before with Damn Yankees, I thought the ground rules looked familiar, and the product viable. But as with the towering shadow of George Abbott in that first instance, this was all going to be so much theory until I actually confronted the major holder of the rights: Bob Merrill.
What, in fact, did I know of Mr. Merrill? Not much. And yet, most intriguing, he had been something of a recognized hitmaker in the past, with a list of earworms to his credit, like “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?,” “Mambo Italiano,” and, for good measure, “I’d’ve Baked a Cake.” But more to the point, he had done scores, theatre scores, involving creating the music as well as the lyrics for Take Me Along, and, even more impressive, the witty, celebrated lyrics to Funny Girl with the great Jule Styne as composer. He was also rumored to have been called in to do some serious doctoring on the score of Hello, Dolly! Whatever else he might be, he was clearly a bona fide professional.
I stood puzzling, one gray day in a similarly gray neighborhood of Los Angeles. Before me stood a two-story house with a long, narrow staircase climbing up the right side to a small porch and doorway above. I glanced at the piece of paper in my hand containing the address and the instructions: Climb up the staircase and knock. This, apparently, was the residence of the highly esteemed Broadway composer Bob Merrill. It was not the Palisades. It was not Beverly Hills. There were no hills of any description, as a matter of fact. Hardly the stuff of legend.
It turned out that Bob Merrill was profoundly depressed and resolved to the inevitable process of dying. He didn’t say as much, and I, with basically zero knowledge of the state of his depression, couldn’t recognize it. But the shrunken, slow-moving shadow of the man who answered the door and admitted me was the antithesis of the raging, condensed handful of burning life that had been my experience of George Abbott. Greeting me with a sigh at the door, he wearily climbed back into his bed and, with a wave of his hand, granted me a brief half hour or so to state my case.
His enthusiasm was as limp as his bed linens. He lay back on his pillows, and I stood at the foot of his bed and just took off. I explained both my affection and my admiration for his score as well as my confusion over the lack of passion that seemed to run through the existing book. I reminded him of the opening section of Gallico’s novella … a young orphan girl is standing on a small bridge over a river, contemplating suicide, when from the distance comes a loopy, garish, optimistic little circus troupe, marching resolutely past her over the same bridge, and luring her back to life and back to the healing magic of performance.
Okay, I admit it. When pressed, and even when not pressed, I have a tendency to get carried away. I’m a sucker for a good story and, I suppose, being Irish, rather enjoy any occasion to lay it on a bit. Whatever else, being slightly taken aback by the lack of energy facing me from the bed, I decided to ramp up the appeal, and by the time I had finished with what I thought might constitute my concept for a revised opening of Carnival!, Merrill was sitting up, his face literally streaming tears.
It was probably in truth more his state of depression, for all I know, but I believed I’d struck gold. He confessed not only his eternal disappointment with the dramatic arc of the book, but equally that of his librettist, the late Michael Stewart. He recalled that the very night Carnival! was playing its opening performance at the Imperial Theatre, he and Stewart were at a nearby bar, going over what they felt the possible revisions might be in retooling and saving the existing book itself.
At all events, back to the foot of that bed: that’s the way deals get made. Whether moved by me or overwhelmed with his own malaise, Merrill found my darker notes for this enterprise to his liking and felt, for a while, that he might even like another shot at rewriting the book himself. The original Gallico novella is rife with violence, repeated rape, deeply disturbed psychological motivations, elements no Broadway audience ever imagined in such a sweetly benign tale, and, to be honest, if we had managed to deliver such a scenario, it would have made Carousel, the darkest and most challenging of the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon, look like Little Mary Sunshine by comparison.
And although we continued our collaboration for a few months, and the Globe pushed forward with its plans for a stellar conclusion to the year’s social events, secure it wasn’t. Everything was lining up, but for a practical commitment with Cirque du Soleil, but anticipation was high enough that no one quite saw the true assassin sneaking up on our left flank. It arrived in the unlikely guise of the elegant, beautiful sister of Michael Stewart. Her name was Francine Pascal, and although she was not a Broadway librettist herself but rather a published children’s book author, she managed to appear at the last possible moment as the undisputed holder of her late brother’s rights, and to put to rest our hopes and plans for this brave revival. She couldn’t resolve the feeling that we were basically about to erase most of her brother’s contribution, and, she said, that would mark the end of his involvement in a musical of which he was justifiably proud.
It happens. More often than you might suppose: a slightly forgotten distant member of the artist’s family with little or no experience in or understanding of theatrical endeavors, but to whom have descended the legal rights, tiptoes in somewhere near the back and quietly says no. And that’s that.
Well, not exactly “that,” as it turns out. Yes, the light went out on the revised Carnival! at that point, and equally sadly, though not as a direct result, sometime later Bob Merrill took his own life. And Stewart’s sister managed to stiffen her back further with enough courage to write her own extensively revised version of her brother’s libretto, and a slew of small subsequent productions staggered to their feet, off-Broadway and elsewhere, to no avail. There was to be no serious rebirth for Carnival!, but, Dear Reader, my intention in writing about all this is not merely to explore how we missed a lovely opportunity to create another Damn Yankees but rather to focus on the difference between creating a viable production and running a theatre responsibly. Because regarding the role of an artistic director, this was the moment when the proverbial rubber ran out of anything remotely like pavement. The board of directors, the staff, and, for all I know, most of San Diego and a fairly large portion of Greater Tijuana believed what we’d printed on our brochure. And what we’d printed had, at the glittering conclusion of its season, another pre-Broadway musical being trussed up and meant to secure the major funding for the coming season. There was no “Sorry, we’re canceling” stamp anywhere near at hand. And some other mild offering wouldn’t make it. The artistic director needed to pull a rabbit if not out of his or her hat, perhaps out of a much less accommodating locale. I cannot list the number of years my esteemed business partner, Tom Hall, leveled his gaze at me as we approached the end of a season and simply announced it was time to reach for another rabbit. And you know what else? The son of a gun got his way, more often than not.
But when you last caught a glimpse of me, I was sitting at my desk at the Old Globe, Ms. Pascal’s brief coup de grâce in hand, ashen with the realization that we were facing our last slot of the season and, meanwhile, a gigantic party was already being constructed around a dazzling musical that had just vanished into thin air. What could I do? What would possibly fill such a void and not disappoint not only the subscribers but the fiscally responsible board of directors as well?
