George Bernard Shaw on HEARTBREAK HOUSE: An imaginary interview

by Dan Sullivan for Applause program magazine

DS: How have you adjusted to the Great Beyond? You and Shakespeare must have wonderful conversations up there. I imagine you’ve buried the hatchet.

George Bernard Shaw (GBS): “Up there?” As you should have learned from Don Juan in Hell, all the interesting people are Down Here. This may explain why I’ve never run into Shakespeare. As for burying the hatchet—what hatchet? I honored Shakespeare’s magic as a wordsmith and fought for his plays to be presented as he had written them. But it was the artist-philosophers that interested me, and Shakespeare was no philosopher. The world to him was “a great stage of fools,” on which he was utterly bewildered.

   But are we here to discuss Shakespeare or Shaw? What can I tell you about Heartbreak House? 

DS: Explain its subtitle: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner. That sets us up for something brooding, something Chekhovian.

GBS: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themesis the complete phrase, and it describes the play exactly.

DS: How so?

GBS: Read my preface. “When Chekhov’s plays came to London, we stared and said, ‘How Russian.’ They did not strike me that way…

   “Heartbreak House is cultured, leisured Europe before the war. Not a shot has been fired but the guns are loaded. As Chekhov and Tolstoy knew, our enervation in that cultivated drawing room atmosphere was delivering the world over to the control of ignorant and soulless cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken it.”  

DS: “Now” meaning 1919. So, you turn Chekhov’s overheated drawing room into a drafty English country house captained by a half-demented old sea dog with a beard like Bernard Shaw’s. And a horde of people come down from London for the weekend…  

GBS: The same futile people as in Chekhov, cut to fit. Intelligent, cultured, obsessed with their careers and love affairs, refusing the drudgery of practical politics and community duties.

DS: And it all ends with a bomb. So: a dark, prophetic play that you didn’t put on stage until the war it predicted had ended. Why the delay?

GBS: Because when men are dying for their country is not the time to show their loved ones how they are being sacrificed to the blunders of boobies, the cupidity of capitalists, the ambition of conquerors, the electioneering of demagogues.

DS: And also because your early anti-war pamphlets had started a whispering campaign that you favored the Germans. It was a touchy period for you. 

GBS: Fortunately it was a very short war. But there would have been nothing surprising in its lasting 30 years.

DS: And by 1940 the bombs were dropping again. England’s finest hour…as regularly celebrated on “Masterpiece Theater.”

GBS: What is there to say except that war puts a strain on human nature that breaks down the better half of it and makes the worst half a diabolical virtue? Better for us that it broke us down altogether. Then the warlike way out of our difficulties would be barred to us and we should take greater care not to get into them.

DS: “Navigate!” seems to be Captain Shotover’s advice to his countrymen at the end of the play. But your preface— which I have read—suggests that Britain’s political leaders at the time could hardly read a map, although they could mount a horse. May I quote you?

GBS: Accurately, please.   

DS: “The barbarians were not only literally in the saddle, but on the front bench of the House of Commons, with nobody to connect their incredible ignorance of modern thought and political science but upstarts from the counting house who had spent their lives furnishing their pockets instead of their minds.”

GBS: Very good. 

DS: No wonder the Chekhov people didn’t want to get involved with them. Meanwhile common folk thought that public issues weren’t for them to discuss.

GBS: Or that it was all “spin,” as your generation puts it. In the language of 1919—if you can quote me, so can I— “The orators of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will. Thus our democracy moves in a vicious circle.”

DS: Rather than history, this sounds like the evening news. Have things improved since your day? Have we learned anything?

GBS: “We have all had a great jolt,” I said after the war. Now I’d say a series of great jolts—a chain reaction, if you will. They have not produced a better world. And yet you are far more conscious of your condition than we were, and far less disposed to submit to it.

DS: Just one more. My wife wants to know how you knew so much about women.

GBS: I have always assumed that a woman is a person exactly like myself and that is how the trick is done. Goodbye.

Dan Sullivan is director of the O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute; and teaches arts writing at the University of Minnesota.

HEARTBREAK HOUSE plays The Space Theatre through April 29. Tickets: 303.893.4100 or www.denvercenter.org.

Diving into Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire

by Sylvie Drake for Applause program magazine

Unless you are a dedicated fan of country western, gospel, hillbilly or rockabilly music, Johnny Cash could conceivably lie on the periphery of your consciousness. Which would be a shame, because when you pay closer attention, you discover that Cash was a complex man and unique artist who fit no pigeon hole. With his unmistakable, booming bass-baritone voice, he didn’t just sing. He galvanized his listeners.

This singer/actor/film-maker/crusader/composer and lyricist led a complicated life marked by religious devotion expressed in music and song, and marred by battles with demons and addictions. The second half of that life was dominated by his great love for June Carter (of the Carter Family Singers), the woman who became his second wife and who helped him largely overcome his dependency on alcohol and barbiturates. June shared Johnny’s religious and musical fervor for the 35 years they spent together, and became as invested as he was in the spirituality that grew to rule both Johnny Cash’s existence and the music he chose to create.

Jason Edwards, the director of Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash, is a huge fan and has no trouble identifying with the Man In Black (as Cash became known after he decided to wear black as a way to show solidarity with the poor, the sick, the imprisoned and the voiceless among us—and write a celebrated song about it). The reasons for Edwards’ affinity are simple: Cash’s life totally speaks to him.

Edwards was in the cast of the original version of Ring of Fire as conceived by producer William Meade and created by Richard Maltby, Jr. (Fosse, Ain’t Misbehavin’). This concert-like tribute to Cash’s music lightly tracks his biography but mostly focuses on the songs. Just before Cash passed away in 2003, Meade, who had long sought it, received Cash’s permission to put such a show together. Maltby was enlisted to create it.

Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Musical Show (its original title) opened in Buffalo in late 2005 to such a positive response that the producing team decided to skip any further try-outs and take it directly to Broadway early in 2006. But New York wasn’t Buffalo. The reception was cooler, reviews were mixed and the producers closed the show by the end of April.

“I think if we’d built an audience on the road it would have mattered less what the critics had to say about it,” Edwards offered on the line from Thousand Oaks, California, where he was putting together the precursor to the current edition of Ring of Fire. “We were coming in before spring and you know the kind of money they put into Broadway shows…” He let the sentence trail off.

Ring of Fire, the stage show, takes its name from the title of the song June Carter had written with Merle Kilgore that was recorded by her sister Anita on her 1963 Mercury Records album, Folk Songs Old and New. (The “ring of fire” referenced reportedly was the love June had begun to feel for Johnny at the time, when both were still married to other people and she feared Cash’s overindulgence might indeed “burn, burn, burn” them both.)

When Mercury released Anita’s version of “Ring of Fire” as a single with disappointing results, Johnny, who had wanted all along to record that song “the way I feel it” took it over, adding the mariachi-style horns in the background—an idea he claimed had come to him in a dream. Dream or not, his version, with the horns and the Carter sisters and mother Maybelle singing harmony in the background, snapped, crackled and popped.

Edwards never lost faith in Ring of Fire the musical. Nor could he quite let go of it. He felt a strong personal connection with Cash, having been born in the mountains of North Carolina. They may not have been the Arkansas cotton fields that Cash was born into, labored in and sang in, but they were close enough culturally and spiritually.

“Billy Graham and his wife lived about 20 miles from where I grew up,” Edwards said, touching on the close friendship and collaboration that developed later in life between Graham and the Cashes. Johnny and June took part in many of Graham’s mega-crusades where Johnny finally gave unfettered rein to his lifelong passion for gospel singing.

“I grew up in the Baptist church, singing in the choir,” Edwards said. “My mom and dad sang in the choir—still sing in the choir. My sisters were both masters of voice, opera singers, they grew up around that kind of music. We all grew up singing in church.

“One reason I had the opportunity to get into this show in the first place is that Richard Maltby saw how much I related to what Johnny Cash was all about. Where I’m from is also where the Carter family foothold is.

“Mr. Maltby is a brilliant writer and creator who didn’t shy away from the patriotic side or the spiritual side of Johnny Cash, which was admirable risk-taking, especially for a New York audience, which is so political. He gave me a gift with this show when he gave me the approval for our version.”

So how different is the Denver production from the one seen on Broadway? Different. It’s a smaller cast, down to six musicians, plus two men and two women—and everybody sings.

“It’s still Mr. Maltby’s concept,” Edwards said, ¨but it’s a different approach and a different version of that concept of not having any one person impersonate Johnny Cash or June Carter. No one can truly capture the real Johnny Cash and June Carter. The players and musicians all play them at various times, with nobody individually impersonating either one.

“Oh, there are impersonators out there doing Johnny Cash and everybody else, but we’re not doing that. We’re just trying to honor him, honor his music, honor what he was trying to say, do it in his words and convey that to the audience in some way.” 

Edwards expects the Denver version to be refined considerably beyond the show he mounted in California, not least because the Denver run is longer and The Stage Theatre is a thrust, which is more invasive and so more intimate than a proscenium. The technical facilities, skills and staff at The Denver Center also are stronger, so that the range of possibilities is broader.

“It gives us the opportunity to dig deeper and clean things up,” he said. “It’s a different set, still designed by John Iacovelli, but we have the chance to keep working on the music, keep it fresh, create new excitement. The material speaks for itself if we just stay out of its way.

“I would hope Johnny Cash would be happy with that. We’re really dedicated to this material, not just for me but for this great team we have. I can’t think of a more perfect group of people. The cream of the crop.”

What keeps him so drawn to this show?

“The subject matter. Mr. Cash’s music and what he was trying to say. I’m spoiled. I’ve got some other shows going on, I’ve done some others in the meantime, which I really love, but there is something that keeps bringing me back to this one.

“As an actor, a director and singer, I never thought, when I got into this business, that I’d actually be in a theatre—not in a club or concert stage—hearing ‘Folsom Prison Blues.’ This is terrific material. I couldn’t think of anything that I’d rather be doing. This show is way bigger than me.”

Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash plays Denver’s Stage Theatre through May 13. Tickets: 303.893.4100. 

Part 2 - Johnny Cash: Unmistakably Himself

Continued from Part 1 - “Johnny Cash: Unmistakably Himself”

   Johnny Cash grew up in a dirt-poor, hardscrabble family during the Great Depression. The family, Johnny in particular, was deeply scarred by the death of his older brother, 15-year-old James, following a table-saw accident. Cash’s mother taught him to play guitar and encouraged him to become something more than a sharecropper. He performed as a singer in high school, while picking cotton and helping out as a family farmhand. When World War II called, Cash served in the military, then studied radio-announcing on the G.I. Bill. His distinctive bass-baritone voice led him to Memphis and to Sun Records. He produced a string of great hits for Sun, but Sam Phillips’ tight-fisted way with royalties, and the favoritism he showed Jerry Lee Lewis, eventually drove Cash to sign with Columbia for a more lucrative deal.  

   Cash distinguished himself early on from other country artists by throwing his lot in with politically progressive pop and cultural names such Bob Dylan and the Smothers Brothers, and appearing on such TV music shows as “Hootenanny,” Glenn Campbell and “The Ed Sullivan Show.” His popularity and financial success practically doubled when young urban music lovers embraced him as a roots music master and social critic. 

   Cash was a fierce defender and supporter of the Native American community,  the poor, the oppressed and the voiceless of the world. His live recording of his song “Folsom Prison Blues” in concert at Folsom Prison, rocketed him to even greater popularity. After the albums Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison and Johnny Cash At San Quentin Cash was seen as a powerful voice for social justice and later as a strong advocate for an end to the Vietnam war. His song “Man in Black” encapsulates his terse philosophy:

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime
But is there because he’s a victim of the times

   In later life, Cash’s star dimmed somewhat until he threw in with the supergroup The Highwaymen, who recorded a three-album string of hits. He sang with punk rock and other pop groups and compiled albums from his own catalog. Before June died in May 1973, she urged Johnny to keep on recording and he taped an amazing 60 songs in the final four months of his life despite increasing health problems. His last thoughts were for June and her important role in his redemption.                 

   Johnny Cash’s unique stature as a man of deep faith, a musical iconoclast, rugged individualist and dynamic singer/songwriter/activist, will keep him alive in America’s memory for a long time. So, when you hear “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” coming from The Denver Center’s Stage Theatre, settle in to hear the rousing music of this big-hearted, one-of-a-kind American.  

RING OF FIRE: THE MUSIC OF JOHNNY CASH plays The Stage Theatre March 23-May 13. For information or to purchase tickets, contact us at 303.893.4100.

Part two of two; reprinted from Prologue, the Denver Center Theatre Company’s subscriber newsletter.

Beauty & The Beast: Facts & Figures

Facts & Figures

THE SHOW

• 35 million / Disney’s Beauty and the Beast has become an international sensation, playing to more than 35 million people
• 21 countries / The production has been mounted worldwide in 21 countries
• 13 years / The musical ran for more than 13 years on Broadway
• 8^th/ Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is the 8^th longest running musical in Broadway history
• 59 people / The traveling company comprises 30 cast, 2 parents, 12 crew, 11 musicians, 2 merchandise and 2 management personnel.
• 3,300 and 30 / More than 3,300 people were auditioned to select the cast of 30
• 6 / 1 / 6 / The musical score of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast contains 6 beloved songs from the Academy Award-nominated feature film, one song cut from the film that has been restored for the musical, and 6 original songs written for the musical.

THE PRODUCTION

• 160 squares / There are 160 needle point squares that make up the bottom of the town drop.
• The tavern building needle point scrim panel is a very traditional Latvian pattern that is called a “star.” This pattern is also repeated in Gaston’s pub and the town pieces.
• There is a hidden “Mickey” in the tavern set drop … see if you can spot it!
• 81 wigs / The production uses 81 wigs
• 580 costume pieces / The Production uses 580 costume pieces, including some pieces from the original Broadway costumes.
• 67 LED lights on the magic mirror
• 36 mugs in Gaston’s tavern
• 350 feet of streamers dispatched over the audience during “Be Our Guest”
• 450 lbs / The “Star drop” – curtain with lights to create starry sky, weighs 450 lbs
• 1,700 lbs / The West Wing set piece weighs about 1,700 lbs
• 1 ton / The plate rail in Be Our Guest weighs almost 1 ton

ON THE ROAD

• 5 trucks / The physical production (sets, costumes, props) travels from city to city in 5, 18-wheel 53-foot tractor trailer trucks.
• 2 buses / The cast and crew travel on 2 buses.
• 37,664.9 miles / By the end of December 2010, the cast and crew will have logged 37,664.9 miles which is equivalent to crossing the US more than 11 times (from coast to coast)! And enough to have circled the globe one and a half times!
• 238 square inches / Amountof grilling space on the grill for the crew bus; thousands of hot dogs, burgers and steaks will be prepared on the tour.
• 14 bicycles / We travel with 14 mountain and road bikes

Disney’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST plays Denver’s Buell Theatre through March 18. For tickets or information, contact us at 303.893.4100.

Part 1 - Johnny Cash: Unmistakable Himself

The Man in Black at the heart of RING OF FIRE was a complicated and driven artist filled with compassion, contrition, creativity and a furious talent

   “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”

   These words, delivered in Cash’s commanding baritone, opened every Johnny Cash concert and became a signature of his plainspoken but passionate mission.

   Cash—singer, songwriter, actor, novelist and consummate showman—remains one of the great Country and Western icons in American music. A man of almost frenetic creativity over his 50-year career, with a voice everyone would come to recognize, Cash was a complex artist who loved the spotlight, but cultivated a humble and spiritual mien—played off against his music’s rowdy energy. 

   Known as the Man In Black for his dark concert outfits and somber persona, Cash created a distinctive identity for himself as a rough-edged performer, and public figure. A contemporary of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and others, Cash forged a long and unique career with such sui generis standards as “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire,” “Folsom Prison Blues.” “Jackson,” “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” “Daddy Sang Bass,” “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” and “Man in Black.” His records crossed over into multiple markets, including country, western, rock and roll, gospel, folk, blues and mainstream radio and TV. He is the only American artist to have been voted not only into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but also the Rock and Roll and Gospel Halls of Fame. 

   This hard-living, hard-loving musical philosopher had an eye for the ladies (which helped break up his first marriage) and used alcohol, amphetamines and barbiturates to keep himself going on the road. The road was brutal, a demanding way of life in the days when musical acts traveled in cars or vans, buses if they were lucky, playing saloons and road houses in a different town every night, sometimes for months, and Cash developed some serious addictions.

   Through it all he kept up a nonstop recording and touring schedule, landing regularly on the Top 40, both on country radio and increasingly on mainstream radio as well. His gritty, honest, often funny style (“A Boy Named Sue,” “Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart”) was in direct contrast to the usual slick, pseudo-sincere, conservative mode of much country music of that era.

   As his fame grew, his deep rumbly voice became unmistakable. Contrasting with his wild country music life, Cash’s devout spirituality sustained him through some very hard times. The Cashes were a singing family, harmonizing together on gospel songs as they worked in the Arkansas cotton fields, and originally Johnny had told Sam Philips, head of Sun records, that he wanted to record gospel songs. Phillips allegedly told Cash that gospel didn’t sell, go home, sin, and come back with a song that would sell records. Cash did, offering up his early hit “Cry, Cry, Cry.”

   Though Cash made a strong start on the Country Hit Parade as a solo act, he began touring as a member of the legendary Carter Family, a popular Depression-era Appalachian trio, in the early 1960s. By the time Cash joined them, The Carters consisted of “Mother” Maybelle Carter (the only member of the original trio) and her three daughters, Anita, Helen and June, destined to become Cash’s future wife. Cash replaced A.P. Carter, founder of the Carter Family, adding his resonance to their repertoire of country, Appalachian and gospel songs. The original Carters had carved an important place in folk music history, recording and publishing an earthy mix of hill music and composed ballads and getting wide exposure on Texas radio stations.

   A generation later, the Carter daughters brought a higher, brighter sound to the repertoire, and Cash’s booming harmonies on such Carter standards as “Were You There” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” lent a solid sonic ground to the group that A.P.’s wobbly treble never had.

   Johnny Cash fell for June Carter in a major way while touring with the Carters, and June became the second Mrs. Johnny Cash after Johnny surprised her with a very public marriage proposal on the concert stage. Theirs was an idyll audiences loved to see. June helped him fight his addictions. Cash fell off the pharmaceuticals wagon a few times in his life but, after experiencing spiritual epiphanies and undergoing a double by-pass operation for heart problems, he even refused painkillers, fearing he would become dependent on them again.

   Johnny and June worked together for the next 35 years, touring together and with the Carters, recording their hit duet “Jackson,” and creating one of Cash’s major hits, “Ring of Fire” (at the core of the show in The Stage). It was a song co-written by June with Merle Kilgore, that became a hit only after Johnny Cash orchestrated and sang it, adding Mariachi horns—an inspired touch that he said had come to him in a dream. 

Part one of two; reprinted from Prologue, the Denver Center Theatre Company’s subscriber newsletter

A history of Disney’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST

A traditional fairytale first published in France in the mid-18^th century, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is an enduring story of love and friendship that has been translated into hundreds of versions worldwide. When Walt Disney Pictures released the animated feature film Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in 1991 with a score by composer Alan Menken and the late lyricist Howard Ashman, it was hailed as an instant classic with critics praising its “songs worthy of a Broadway musical.” The film went on to win Academy® Awards for Best Song and Best Original Score and made history as the only animated feature ever nominated for Best Picture. Given the power of the film’s story and music, the decision was made to bring Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to the Broadway stage.

Disney Theatrical Productions assembled the creative team and worked hard to combine the strengths of the beloved film with the possibilities that only live theatre can offer. Linda Woolverton adapted her Disney’s Beauty and the Beast screenplay to the stage, adding new scenes to fill out the story for the stage. The Oscar®-winning score was expanded to include several new songs by Menken and veteran lyricist Tim Rice. Beauty and the Beast opened at the Palace Theatre on April 18, 1994, played on Broadway for over 13 years (5,461 performances, finishing its run at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre), ultimately becoming the eighth longest-running musical in Broadway history.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast has logged more than 15,000 performances in more than 120 cities and 21 countries such as Canada, Japan, Mexico, Ireland, South Korea, United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil and Argentina. The play has been translated into 8 languages: Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Italian.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast plays Denver’s Buell Theatre March 14-18. For information or tickets, contact us at 303-893-4100.