by Andrew Beck
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It’s odd for a musical written by a celebrated composer-lyricist from England to have flopped out of town before reaching London, only to be discovered by producer David Merrick and remounted to significant success on Broadway. Yet, that’s the trajectory of “The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd,” written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, just off the success of their first West End and Broadway hit, “Stop the World I Want to Get Off.”
The show spawned several popular hits back in 1965 including “Who Can I Turn To,” “On a Wonderful Day Like Today,” and “The Joker,” but has never been remounted on Broadway. Now director Don Stephenson and choreographer Liza Gennaro are taking a new look at the musical to see if can speak to a new generation who could be fascinated by its themes of the haves vs. the have nots, its dystopian vision of a post-apocalyptic world found in many books and films that appeal to young people, and even racial equality. Those indeed were hot topics back in 1965 at the height of the Cold War and the civil rights movement, but could they speak to an audience today? Stephenson is helming and Gennaro is creating the dances for a new workshop production of the musical that runs from tonight,May 20 through June 26 at Goodspeed Musicals’s Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, Conn.
“The songs are so great,” Stephenson said in an interview prior to tonight’s start of the engagement,” adding that “they just rip your heart out. And I think the story has even more emotional resonance for an audience today.”
It was Gennaro, with whom Stephenson has been friends for nearly 25 years, who initially suggested “Greasepaint.” He proceeded to listen to the cast album and didn’t really like it, he relates. But he found he couldn’t get the show out of his mind, and found himself thinking about different ways to bring the show to life. The musical included an army of street urchins and a variety of allegorical characters, including the Bully and the Girl, and he came up with the idea of combining all the characters into an essential four: Sir, representing the upper classes, Cocky, the admirer who follows Sir, the Kid, which combines the roles of the Kid, the Girl and the urchins, and the Stranger, an unfamiliar outsider who questions the equilibrium the three characters have attempted to establish.
“I didn’t want to do the show as a history lesson,” he continues, “nor as a museum piece. The more I thought about it I saw that it had a lot to say about our country and our situation today. So I shifted the emphasis and set in an alternate version of our country today.”
While the 1965 original was set in some nebulous post-apocalyptic time and place, Stephenson explains that “I wanted to put it in a specific place and time and circumstances and in doing so it became real. This I found gives it a real poignancy and essential weight. When you put it in a real place, it takes you there immediately. It is no longer abstract,”
He has been particularly fascinated by the idea of people going against their best interests, which he indicates describes much of the characters’ behavior. “People doing something opposite what they should be doing,” he states, has been a much talked-about subject over the past years. Each character initially reacts by doing things that only benefit himself or herself instead of the group, and, he continues, “I hope the audience will be able to see themselves in that behavior and take a step back and question why the character made that decision.”
Stephenson is also quick to point out that despite the talk about war and destruction, topics we hear on the news every night, overall the show is indeed a musical comedy and that it is a funny show. “It has lots and lots of humor,” he points out, “as much of it is satirizing the behavior of people everyone can relate to.”
In addition to combining a number of roles, eliminating the urchin chorus, and setting the show in the United States in a contemporary period, Stephenson also eliminated the game board concept of the original. “I would never have gone forward with these changes if they didn’t successfully play all the way through the musical. ” Even more interesting is that these changes have been accommodated without changing the original book or original score of the show. Stephenson contacted Bricusse, the only surviving composing team member—Newley died in 1999—and talked with him about what he would like to do, According to Stephenson, Bricusse understood instantly what Stephenson was trying to do by making the show contemporary and said “yes.”
As the son-in-law of the late Broadway legend Frank Loesser (“How to Succeed in Business,” “Guys and Dolls,” “The Most Happy Fella”), Stephenson understands the importance of adhering to the creators’ original work and intentions. “It was important to me,” he adds, “and exciting to put the songs in their original context and respect the original book, but allow the reinvention of the show to come out through the combination of the characters, who continue to speak the show’s original dialogue.” It turns out that Stephenson is not the only musical comedy vet interested in revisiting “The Roar of the Greasepaint.” Later this summer, the Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College will see a workshop production of a reimagined version of the show, under the auspices of New York Stage and Film, the summer’s resident company, under the direction of Broadway leading man and television star, Santino Fontana. Both productions have been created independently of each other, and there has been no details on what approach Fontana will be taking.
He also hails Gennaro’s contributions to the new show. “There’s a ton of dance,” he indicates, “and it will be hard for an audience to guess what she did for the show and what I did, since we work so closely.” The two collaborators decided early on, for instance, that the character of The Kid, which is played in this production by Michelle Aravena, would be a major dancing part and require a great dancer-singer.
The other three roles are played by a trio of musical comedy veterans, including Tony Sheldon, who won audience admiration for his role as Horace Vandergelder in Goodspeed’s production of “Hello, Dolly,” as Sir, Caesar Samayoa, who last appeared at the Goodspeed in “The Great American Mousical,” and Gregory Treco, making his Goodspeed debut.
Stephenson started out as an actor, appearing in such Broadway shows as “Titanic,” “Parade,” “Wonderful Town,” and as Leo Bloom in the long-running “The Producers.” In more recent years he has expanded his skills to include directing, having helmed Goodspeed’s popular production of “Guys and Dolls,” the Hartford Theaterworks production of “I’ll Eat You Last,” and the Paper Mill Playhouse production of “Lend Me A Tenor,” while still finding time to sink his acting teeth into the role of the entire D’Yasquith Family in the Tony-Award winning musical, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.”
As a result of his successful mixing of acting and directing, Stephenson says “When I direct, I see my role as helping, finding what buttons I need to push in the individual actor that will help him or her achieve the vision for the play. I like to stress that we will figure it out together, and not in any type of punitive way. I try to do with my players what I would like to be done with me if I were in the acting company”
Although this is a fully-staged and costumed production, there will be no reviews since it is being regarded as a workshop, albeit a public one. Audience members are encouraged to participate in the process by attending a performance and sharing their genuine reactions.
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