Mainly on Directing

by Arthur Laurents

  The fresh approach to “Little Lamb” that misled me into thinking the music was not going to be a problem helped me be alert to possible problems the music could cause before they happened. At the outset of rehearsal, lyrics were spoken and explored around the table just as the dialogue was. The first book song, “Some People,” was a little difficult to bring off as sort of a soliloquy in a musical play; it seemed more the star's opening number. It's difficult for Rose to get into the song vocally: she has to slam in on all cylinders. Helping her get there emotionally would help her get there vocally, but Patti wanted to start easy. She had such a great voice, knew so well how to deliver, I didn't push her. A mistake. The audience screamed and yelled, but it was still a mistake. At least I was aware of it. I was also aware there was nothing I could do about it at that moment, so I moved on to Rose's duets with Herbie—eagerly, and why not? Both have lyrics that are layered and begging to be explored—and who better to explore them with than Patti LuPone and Boyd Gaines, the last of the great leading men because he is also a great character actor. Still, he had a button I needed to push.

  I knew what it was before we started rehearsals. Boyd Gaines is reticent by nature. He is afraid of overdoing, of being in the way, even of asserting himself. So is Herbie. When Herbie finally erupts, it should come as a welcome shock. But I wanted signs of it earlier in this Herbie; I didn't want it to come from nowhere. Boyd is such a good actor, he can do that with one word— the word “no,” as a matter of actual fact. When he tells Rose in the Chinese restaurant that he is afraid of walking out and she laughs it off with “Only around the block,” Boyd's “No!” said this man was much more than he seemed. Only one word, but it achieved a big purpose and launched her into “You'll Never Get Away from Me.”

  Boyd himself has an offbeat sexiness and a sense of humor he can use physically that I wanted him to exploit but which he feared might get in the way. Whose way? Patti's? Patti LuPone loves actors who give her something to play off. Pushing Boyd Gaines to let go was not easy; he is so used to being a gentleman. But what is there to lose by going too far with a good actor? I pushed and pushed so hard it stirred him to let go and let fly. He and Patti had a sexual chemistry; they meshed like the answer to a director's dreams. The result was musical scenes so clearly what they always should have been that I wondered why I hadn't directed them that way before. Certainly they were much richer than they ever had been. I wrote them: didn't I know what I was writing? Does any writer know all he is writing—know what's underneath what he has written? Not if he's any good, is my guess. But he does need actors and a director to give life to what's there, and I had a pair like those they don't make anymore—the Lunts, Gertrude Lawrence and Noël Coward—in this Gypsy: Patti LuPone and Boyd Gaines. Rehearsals of their scenes made the days too short.

  Their songs, however, were written for characters in a story; their potential was inherent. As scenes, they had an unexpected and unfortunately undesirable effect; they highlighted another unanticipated musical problem: some songs didn't belong in the show now, not the way the show was being played. They were simply musical-comedy numbers, meant only to entertain. They had never been intended to be anything but musical-comedy numbers meant only to entertain. The story didn't need them; there were no layered lyrics—clever lyrics, yes, lightly comic lyrics, yes, but lyrics that simply said what they said, period. No subtext, no text of much consequence at all. What rabbit could be pulled out of what hat to make them fit into a musical play?

  No composer and lyricist knew more about writing a theatre song than Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim; why, then, were those songs written like musical-comedy numbers? Because of when they were written—1959, the Golden Age of Musical Theatre. But musical comedy had not been banished. Every show, even the most aspiring and ambitious, paused routinely for songs that were meant to be just entertainments or showstoppers or simply “divertissements,” as Lenny Bernstein called West Side Story's “I Feel Pretty” and “Gee, Officer Krupke.” (His linguistic virtuosity prompted me to write a stage direction for West Side: “Braggadocio and Con Brio cross upstage hand in hand.”) The contrast of “If Momma Was Married,” for example, with the musical scene “You'll Never Get Away from Me” as Patti and Boyd were playing it, made “Momma” seem even more a number in another show. It was essential that it be pulled into the play, because it came at a turning point in the story. That made it the first real challenge to this Gypsy being a musical play.

  • • •

  Less than midway through the first act, there is a scene between June and Louise, two sisters who barely know each other. With no warning or reason but lots of clever rhyme and a bouncy Viennese vamp, the girls launch into “If Momma Was Married.” The melody is very pretty, the lyric is cleverly comedic, and combined with terrific close harmony at the end, the song brings down the house. It probably would have worked as it was even in this Gypsy. But that scene, brief as it was, was dense, packed with emotion no June until Leigh Ann Larkin had ever shown. Where we were with both sisters in the scene and with what it had become, I didn't want to settle for what “worked.”

  No rehearsal day is productive if the director hasn't had to choose whether or not to settle for what “works.” With “Momma,” there was no choice. The sisters themselves and their relationship had become so complex and involving, and far too much subtext had surfaced, to allow them to bounce girlishly into a bright waltz. I knew Patrick could augment musically any new note I came up with, but what I had to come up with was how to get those girls into the bloody song; how to get the song into the scene. It had to be part of the scene, because it came at a point in the act where it would tell the audience either that this was a very different Gypsy or that this was a Gypsy that didn't know what it was.

  The key was to ask the same question about the song that is asked about any scene in any play: what is it about? What is “If Momma Was Married” about? Two sisters who barely know each other and suspect that their mother is the reason: a start. Not a start for bouncing into a jaunty waltz, though. Well, then ease into it—and Patrick did.

  June is the one who is tough on their mother; let her start off with a spoken wish that “if Momma was married … [I would be free and happy].” The music begins softly; it's still a three-quarter beat, but it's gentle, unemphatic. Louise repeats June's words over the melody for them, but with a different meaning, which comes clear as she slips into singing the lyric lightly, picking up speed and volume as she goes—and soon it's the same song with a different meaning and consequently sounds altogether different.

  But where does the song go? Nowhere, really, since it has no story to tell. Nothing happens, nor is there any emotional development in the lyric for the girls. But a lot has been unearthed in the scene: the sisters have acknowledged there is something missing in their relationship; they have hinted they wish it were otherwise; they have even suggested Rose is what has kept them apart. When you want to take off, suggestions can be wings. The story that made the song a scene didn't have to be imposed, it wasn't pasted on; it was waiting in the characters and their relationship, and it came to life during the song.

  At the first notes, the sisters are strangers, miles apart; as they sing, they discover each other through their shared attitude to the Act, draw closer by their feelings about Rose, even closer by the desire to have what each never did: a sister. What ultimately brings them together is laughter, shared laughter at Rose's vaudeville Act that has kept them apart. By the last triumphant note, the sisters are sisters who love each other. Every night, the grasp of each other's hand on that last note brought a thunderous roar that stopped the show. “If Momma Was Married” worked.

  The second act of Gypsy is deceptive and tricky, which may sound redundant but isn't. All but the first scene takes place in the world of burlesque, raising bawdy expectations that are not fulfilled. In this version, the burlesque houses and strippers are tawdry and tired, absent of sex except for Louise's adventure into striptease which
turns her into Gypsy Rose Lee, the one glamorous note in the sleazy world around her.

  What is tricky is keeping the humor in the scenes without making it jokes-on-demand that sugarcoat the desperate despair that has seeped into Rose's dream. Even trickier is how, once again, to convert entertainment numbers in a musical into scenes in a musical play.

  “Together,” the first book number in act two, is plainly a vaudeville act aimed at the audience. The three leading players sing jokey lyrics to a jingly tune and hoke it up as performers, not characters, usually with much success. Not this time around, though; this time the players seemed uncomfortable and the song an ill-judged mistake, because what had been brief plot points for Rose and her daughter were now dramatic turning points in the understated battle between them that becomes the clothesline of the second act. The song didn't belong, but it was an audience favorite, it was the centerpiece of the scene, it had to stay. There had to be a way of making it work for the story, and there was. What gentled it into belonging was the way Rose now began it.

  Rose often has more than one motivation for what she does. She needs Louise for the act, she needs Herbie for the act, but she also needs them emotionally: she never wants to be alone. This Rose really does want a family. It may not be her first priority, but she wants one. So she starts “Together” sweetly, arm-in-arming Herbie to sit by her, coaxing Louise to sit on her other side. Soon she has them clowning and horsing around with her, enjoying letting loose for the first time. Instead of faithfully reproducing choreographed movement, they screw up some steps and ad-lib others. She has turned them into a family; they are a family— mother, father, and daughter having fun together, as the title says.

  When the actors give the characters dimension, they give them possibilities which music bolsters. “Together” became constantly improvised fun for the three actors. Each audience felt the fun was improvised just for them at just that moment and fell in love with the family.

  “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” almost slipped by. Its purpose in the show is to stop it. It does, and always will, no matter who performs it, how well or how badly. But even in rehearsal, in this production, a showstopper existing solely to be a showstopper was a wrong number. It also derailed the three actresses struggling in the unfamiliar territory of burlesque and strippers to locate characters they could make real, at least to themselves. The number is choreographed for five-six-seven-eight caricatures with no regard for what idiosyncratic character each actress was trying to breathe a little life into.

  It was apparent at the first run-through of act two that the damage done by “Gimmick” didn't stop with the number or the strippers. In a musical comedy, a showstopper couldn't have caused damage. In a musical comedy, it's a number that does its job, stops the show, and the show moves happily onward. In a musical play, a showstopper is a number that has nothing to do with the story or the characters and stops the play dead in its tracks no matter how hysterical the audience gets. The show moves on because the scenery moves on. With “Gimmick,” just what show was no longer clear: not the show it was meant to be, and certainly not the show we were all so excited about doing.

  “Gimmick” tainted everything that took place in the burlesque house. Rehearsing the second act, where the characters are heading for explosion, I was constantly looking for moments to heighten emotionally so that the explosions wouldn't come from nowhere. Emotion has long been out of fashion in the theatre, but for me emotion is synonymous with theatre. The burlesque-dressing-room scenes with only Rose, Herbie, and Louise are packed with emotional moments. They were being acted by Patti, Boyd, and Laura with as much emotional reality as their first-act scenes, but they came off as melodramatic and contrived. Every moment in a play affects every other moment in a ripple effect there is no way to prevent. The show-biz aura of “Gimmick” affected every moment in the burlesque house.

  It was my fault. Tempted by the showstopper “Gimmick” would assuredly be, I ignored the effect it was having on what I myself was trying to achieve. There was so much to get done with a whole company as well as the stars and only three weeks to do it in—a valid excuse if any excuse is valid. But none is for failure. The ridiculously short time of three weeks can only be pointed out for the success I hoped this would be.

  This wasn't the first instance of my being at fault and for a somewhat similar reason. I had overlooked the damage done by allowing the Farmboys and the Hollywood Blondes to give their customary mindless musical-comedy performances—the boys hoking it up in the hotel room, the Blondes equally hokey in the burlesque house. They had been cast with actors—young, inexperienced, but talented actors. What they deserved was the respect of being treated like actors. I did: I got to work directing them. I encouraged, even prodded them to find characters for themselves and then showed them how with only one or two lines, even with no lines, they could make a marked difference to the show. It really paid off in ways I wouldn't have thought of and was saved taking the time and trouble of inventing. One example: in the hotel room, what had been an anonymous pleasant Farmboy became a smartass, juvenile lecher who made passes at June. The chain of reactions from June, who slapped him, to Rose, who wanted to slap him, to Tulsa, who protected June for a reason we don't find out until the end of the act, made the hotel room alive with active characters instead of a background for the stars and stick figures. A smaller example (for sexual equality): in the Toreadorable number, the vivid enmity between two of the girls comically prevented any semblance of a chorus line—if there was one—and illustrated again how desperate Rose was in casting her net.

  “Gimmick,” once examined as it should have been, revealed a positive possibility. Rather than making it more difficult for each of the would-be strippers, it could even help them fit in the play if the number itself could fit into the play. But how? How could an unabashed, unapologetic comic turn be converted into a song in a musical play?

  Again, ask the basic question: if the strippers weren't singing “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” to stop the show, why were they singing it? The answer had always been there if anyone looked beyond the lyric to where the song comes in the play. Tessie has just introduced Louise to Mazeppa and Electra; they are explaining what it takes to be a stripper—well, there it is, without distortion or finagling, a smooth transition to the three battered friends teaching Louise their business of stripping. The difference made simply by having the number sung not out front to the audience but directly to Louise was gratifyingly out of proportion to how much it did for the story, for the three strippers, and eventually for the second act.

  For the story, it restored the focus to Louise simply by her listening and reacting to advice illustrated by a bugle blown out between the legs, strategically placed lights, and balletically ferocious bumps. “Simply” is a huge word unless the listener is Laura Benanti, who can listen and react with seeming spontaneity every night as only the finest actresses can.

  For the strippers, it gave each of them a relationship with Louise and another with the other two that became the foundation of a character. In the original production of Gypsy, the three strippers were youngish, attractive, and sexy; their function was to entertain and be funny. Fifty years later, being funny was still a function, but they were blowsy and over the hill, as they would have been in that end-of-the-line burlesque house. Electra was the easiest to give dimension to, not because her role is the smallest but because the Electra I envisioned was a ladylike alcoholic: completely ossified, dead drunk out of her head, able to put one foot in front of the other only with great difficulty. It's not easy, however, to perform a number that calls for belting and heavy bumping and grinding by barely moving and hardly projecting because you ostensibly are too drunk. Marilyn Caskey's problem was to do less and then less than that, but she brought it off hilariously.

  Tessie Tura has presumably surefire laughs and overtly pretentious remarks that had been difficult for Alison Fraser to use to create a character she believed in. Now it all came together: Te
ssie became a remnant in a sagging world. Tough and fragile, she was moving and funny because she wasn't working to be either. She was just Tessie Tura, the unfortunate Texas Twirler.

  Mazeppa really worked only in the first production because her bugle routine as a gladiator was originally done in a nightclub act by Faith Dane, which she more or less reproduced in the first Gypsy. Since the routine was essentially hers, Faith was comfortable as the helmeted Rambo Woman she played. Her successors were uncomfortable, unintentionally coming out as cartoon lesbians; but they brought the house down with the bugle bit, so what the hell?

  Nancy Opel, who was a terrific Miss Cratchitt in act one, learned to play a good bugle but was uncomfortable and not very good as Mazeppa until we reworked “Gimmick.” When Lenora Nemetz replaced her in the Broadway company, because Nancy unfortunately was committed elsewhere, I made life easier for her by replacing Mazeppa and her Gladiator Ballet with Mazeppa and her Revolution Ballet. This season it was the American Revolution: Mazeppa wore a Paul Revere tricorn and red, white, and blue in strategic places. Lenora was also a terrific Cratchitt, from the moment she walked her Cratchitt walk across the stage.

  Nancy didn't have the advantage of playing a patriotic stripper; but no longer hampered by gladiator choreography, her Mazeppa became sarcastic, not strident; friendly, not fierce; and inventively funny with her technical explanation of the limitations of having “no talent.” The Rambo-like military stomping was excised from her solo.

  This and other changes I made in the choreography did not make life easy for Bonnie Walker. No one can reproduce the Jerome Robbins choreography for Gypsy as meticulously as Bonnie. She has always done it, and she and I have always worked like Burns and Allen. But choreography is more than steps, and I had been making other, small changes. Kids fell down or fought with each other in the vaudeville acts to show that Rose snapped up whatever bodies she could get; in the barnyard number, June— Leigh Ann Larkin, as tough a customer as Rose yet coruscatingly funny—was sarcastically and humorously aware of the cliché “Moo Cow” song to show she knew how bad the act was; Louise had a larger would-be dancing role in “All I Need Is the Girl” to keep the focus more on her. Bonnie, rehearsing these numbers, was unsure whether the actors were fighting her or obeying me. She wants so much to please, even the dead Jerry Robbins; her nerves were jangling. Belatedly, I explained what I had been learning in big dollops as I went along: when you have a different vision, everything has to conform or nothing seems right.