Just started with Laura Marie Duncan. She is playing Sybil Burton. She is currently in South Pacific at Lincoln Center. She plays one of the nurses, and understudies for Nelly Forbush. She is completely confident of her ability to learn new material quickly. Her featured song is called “I Know Him.” It is a song that could steal the show. She is singing to Eddie Fisher (Fred Berman).
Today we will have our first read-thru at 1PM. It should be instructive. Although everyone here is a very quick study, they are still reading the notes. Something like this doesn’t really take shape until the actors are off-book ( ie. having memorized their part) . I am hoping that the songs will start to find their natural balances- between chorus and soloist; and that the songs themselves will start to seep into their psyches a little.
Yesterday Clarke learned “That’s a Laugh” That was the song where he had to make some determination of how British “laugh” was. Was it “lof”, “laaf” or about 20 other places I can’t even hear. I’ll be looking forward to how that solidified overnight.
At the end of the day yesterday, we decided that “Toast”, the opening number to Act II needed work. So last night I re-wrote the end of the song. We’ll see today how that came out. Luckily, I am allowed to use the piano at the hotel I am staying at. Otherwise, I would have been working only on this laptop, and that is a drag. In my heart of hearts I am a paper and pencil guy. But I am not crazy. My life changed for the better once I got the Sibelius notation software. And now I can’t imagine how I got by with just my paper and pencils.
I’m staying at the Leo House on 23rd st. It is an odd place to stay. It is sort of a Catholic boarding house/hotel. There is a dining hall ( could that be the Refectory?) on the second floor and they serve breakfast everyday – the buffet is $9. Today I played piano for the breakfast crowd to thank Sister Cathlene, who allowed me to use the piano. It was like a cocktail gig. I’ve played a million of them…. “thank you very much, we’ll be here all week, Try the veal.” It has always been a weird comfort to me to know that if you can play the Cole Porter songbook etc, you can always make a living.
I talked to Cristen Paige yesterday. She is playing Edie Sedgwick in a piece at Yale next month. And man, has she done her research! Edie was one of the stars of Andy Warhol’s Factory, and a casualty those times. She also has done her homework on Liz Taylor.
In these 29 hour readings, there is barely enough time for the cast to learn the songs. It seems that the actual play gets pretty short shrift. Today at least , Joe got a chance to work on a few scenes with the actors. I love watching him work with actors. His book is very cool and I can hardly wait for the time when he can really dig into the staging. the actual performance of the lines.
At 2 Pm Clarke Thorell and Gia Mora went over the scene that leads up to and includes ” Let It Rain”. They both sing the hell out of that song. What was more interesting to me was listening to Joe direct the scene. Beyond his calm ability to get the performance out of the actors- he has an encyclopedic knowledge of Liz, Dick, the filming of Cleopatra, and the entire culture of 1962. Watching Joe and Clarke adjust the degrees or Britishness ( really Welshness) in his accent is a study in the control that actors have over their delivery.
Here is our cast:
Gia Mora- Elizabeth Taylor
John Bolton – Vic
Clarke Thorell- Richard Burton
Laura Marie Duncan- Sybil
Paul Anthony Stewart – Montgomery Clift
Matt Bogart – Rock Hudson
Van Hughes – James Dean
Mark Lotito- Spyrous
Steven Skybell- Joe Mankiewicz
Nick Spangler- Timmy
Jill Abramovitz- Ensemble
Fred Berman- Ensemble
Ben Crawford- Ensemble
Marya Grandy- Ensemble
Cristen Paige- Ensemble
Craig Waletzko- Ensemble
The 6th Floor of Chelsea Studios, NYC
An addendum to my story yesterday about all the actresses lined up for Beauty and the Beast. They got to sing 8 bars. Let me repeat that …” They only got to sing eight bars” !!!! I have never heard of that. 16 maybe. What on earth can you tell about a person, or a voice in 8 bars? This is no business for the faint of heart.
Last night I got called to write a commercial back in DC. If they can wait for me to get back I will probably do it. This is only worth mentioning because it seemed like such a jolt, shaking me out of my Broadway cocoon. I realized that I haven’t read a paper since I’ve been here. Really it has only been two days. But I NEVER go without reading the paper!
Here is a picture of what it looks like before the actors arrive: 14 chairs with 14 music stands. There are pencils, hi-liters and Ricola cough drops. The stage managers, Mel and Tiffany arrive at 9 AM to set up computers and printers. Chris Littlefield arrives around 9:30. He is always early and prepared. The Actors will show up about 9:55AM for their 10 AM hit. They are never late. Like musicians, they learn that lesson early on.
When I first started working with Chris Littlefield on this show ( Around the beginning of the year. ) I tried to rhyme “dream” with “scene” . He looked at me , shook his head, and said ” That is a false rhyme.” To me, at the time, that seemed incredibly fussy. But during the next six months of working with him I learned that he is exactly right. There is a right way to write this music and these lyrics. He has been adamant in his refusal to accept weak work.. When I was first agonizing over these seemingly small things I said something like, ” These are just tiny details” . He stopped and looked at me and said, ” The details aren’t the details” . THIS is quotable. Or maybe the title of his first book. Suffice to say, he is bringing this same attention to detail to his work with the singers. And it shows in their performance.
Ben “Shrek” Crawford just showed up. Everyone is so happy for him. I think he starts as the lead in Shrek on Nov 9th.
Lobby Marquee
We are back in the studio. I am listening to John Bolton play “Vic”. He is spectacular. And Chris Littlefield is doing an wonderful job. I just sit here in amazement as little Mel Morgan moves actors around like chess pieces. Actors arrive, actors leave, they sit in different configurations for each song. It just flows right along— so far without many hiccups.
I am realizing that what I really like is only writing this stuff. I don’t need to have much to do with the rehearsing of it. Probably, that means that I am not so much of a theater person. Maybe just a theater music composer. My job here: I am really here as some sort of quality control agent. I try and stay on top of the times when we all feel it needs to be transposed, fix little note mistakes etc, But largely I just sit and enjoy it all. And now blog.
Note: there is no shortage of tenors in New York. The baritones are a more precious commodity. And basses? I’ve never heard one. The girls seem to be able to sing anything.
Oh. This was frightening: When we got in this morning they were auditioning for Beauty and the Beast. (They still are). The entire sixth floor was FILLED with actresses. Miles of beautiful, and probably talented, 21 year old girls. Oh my, what a daunting thing for each of them. How on earth do you keep your ego from crumbling to psychic dust in the face of a hundred other people who can do almost exactly what you do?
Note to self: The score and the script HAVE to have the same lyrics! When there is a discrepancy you can just watch the next 10 minutes of your rehearsal dribble away.
Our Liz, Gia Mora, just got here. She doesn’t play the diva at all. I’m so glad that she has this part. We had a chance to go over the music back in Washington. Her ability to learn a LOT of music quickly is just amazing to me. But this room is filled with people who make their livings by being able to do just that. Fred Berman is able to hear any part and remember it. Matt Bogart, same.
There are a few new faces that I have not met yet. Steven Skybell is playing Mank. I’ve not met him yet. Looking forward to that. In our last reading we had Brad Oscar play that role. He was pretty damn amazing. Looking forward to Steven’s take on that character.
Rehersal for “The Last Days of Cleopatra”
We started rehearsal today at Chelsea Studios for our 29 hour reading of The Last Days of Cleopatra. This rehearsal studio at 151 West 26th street has to have been here since the Gershwins were rehearsing “Lady Be Good”. The wooden floors have ruts a half inch deep from so many years of pushing upright pianos around. And I dont think that much has changed over the past 80 years of Broadway. Maybe on stage, but not in this part of the process. There are still a few lines of folding chairs in front of a piano. The actors have music and music director, Christopher Littlefield in our case, sits and painstakingly teaches the music to the actors. There is no quicker way to get this done. There are computers involved now and we print parts out instead of having them hand copied. And everyone- really everyone- is constantly checking their cell phone. After all , actors make their living by answering the phone. But at it’s essential core, this process is the same process that has gone on ever since musical theater existed on Broadway. I’m really happy about that. It makes me feel like I am in some sort of tradition or continuum. There is comfort in that. I feel that part of the anxiety of putting up a show like this can be softened by believing in “the process”.
The actors are great. Some are stars, some should be, some will be. Ben Crawford, who is just singing in the chorus on this show, just got the role of Shrek in … Shrek duh.. John Bolton as Vic is soooo good. Fred Berman is an amazing talent. I’ll try and remember everyone’s names over the course of the week.
I spend most of my time sitting at a table with Joe Calarco, my artistic partner in this. He wrote the book and is the director. He is impressive. He keeps the entire arc of the show in his head at all times. And the book is such finely tuned , tight theatrical vehicle. He also happens to be a really good guy.
The other people on the periphery of this rooom are Laurie Issmembert, one of the producers. and two stage managers, Melanie and Tiffany. I have learned that you cannot do this without a competent stage manager. They can take this process from a messy chaos to a smoothly chugging rehearsal machine.
Chris Littlefield is our music director. I am astonished at much control of this project I am happy to cede to him. He is fussy and sometimes drives me crazy, but I have learned a huge amount from him about how to write for the theater. And he has a great rapport with the actors. It is nice to watch him run these numbers with the chorus. We are now in the process of figuring out the first song of the show “Lucky Liz” . There is actually very little music in it. It’s mostly dialog with little bits of music interspersed. 2 years ago I would not have been able to be comfortable with a “construction” like this. But I guess I totally trust Joe and his theatrical instincts.
I know this is music. But it is a world away from my normal world of concert music, or film music or Chaise Lounge. And I will be living in this world for the next week.
More later -C
There are times when real life stands on its tip-toes and screams out to the world, “Somebody please turn me into a musical!”. That probably wasn’t in the forefront of film director Joseph Mankiewicz’s mind when he cast Richard Burton to play Marc Anthony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the title role of his mammoth 1963 spectacle, Cleopatra, but heck, the situation was just loaded with song cues. While playing the sexually-charged political adversaries, Taylor and Burton, both married, began the torrid affair that led to the first of their two marriages. Meanwhile, the $35,000,000 film nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox after its critical drubbing.
Composer/lyricist/bookwriter Charlie Barnett’s The Last Days of Cleopatra is still in its formative stages, but shows a lot of promise in developing into an old-fashioned formula musical. (And I mean those words in the most complimentary way possible.) There’s trimming to be done, more character development needed and too many false rhymes in the lyrics, but there’s still enough fun and romance at work here to leave an optimistic impression.
Barnett sets the story during location shooting in Rome where Hollywood star Taylor and respected stage actor Burton so immediately clash egos and temperaments upon meeting that you know they’re going to fall into each other’s arms eventually. When they do it stirs up the wrong kind of publicity that could kill the public’s reaction to the film before it’s even released. Burton’s love for the bottle and Taylor’s desire to be taken seriously as an actress come into play, but the main flaw of the book and lyrics is that they never go deeper than fan magazine level in exploring the central characters. The author is apparently going for something on the same grand, romantic scale as the historical characters they play, but his words are just glossing over the surface. Anna Roberts and Michael Deleget contribute fine efforts in the leads, but the decision to have them impersonate the famous duo seems to limit their capabilities to do some honest acting.The supporting cast, however, is given plenty of juicy material, including an attractive variety of musical comedy melodies, and deliver some delightful performances. On the comic side, Tom Beckett is a wonderfully frantic Mankiewicz. When partnered with Christopher Lacroix, as an amused and amusing Rex Harrison, they make the most of Barnett’s snazzy vaudeville number. Michael Siller is a charismatic paparazzi photographer with a dynamic and athletic musical turn. Michael Baldwin gets laughs with some stereotypically bitchy jokes as choreographer Hermes Pan, and Bobby Matoney is appropriately vanilla, singing a cheesy ballad as Taylor’s soon-to-be-ex, Eddie Fisher.
A secondary love story between awkward production assistant Fred E. Smith (Brett Rigby) and an Italian dancer (Valerie Issembert) is charmingly written and played. Their bilingual duet about trying to get over the language barrier is one of the show’s highlights
.Director Christopher Gerken has mounted a lively production that gives you hints of what the show could be like on a grander scale. There’s impressive work from choreographer Evan Knapp and costume designer Georgette Feldman.
Festivals like the Fringe are generally known for off-beat projects that aim for audiences that may not go for traditional book musicals that aren’t campy spoofs, so a straightforward musical with a main romantic plot, a romantic subplot and comic relief seems almost experimental. The Last Days of Cleopatra is the type of show Broadway audiences loved in the 1960’s and perhaps by the time it’s ready that type of musical may seem hip and retro.
Photo by Heather Laszlo: Michael Deleget and Anna Roberts