The Addams Family — Singing a different tune?
By Diane Snyder
What does being Addams-y mean? That’s a question the creative team behind the splashy Addams Family Broadway musical had to decide as they wrote—and rewrote—their show, based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles Addams and brought to life in the 1960s TV series, and 1990s feature films, and finally on Broadway in 2009.
To production supervisor Jerry Zaks, Morticia, Gomez, Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester and their relations aren’t so different from the rest of us; their weirdness is just more pronounced.
“What we did was to maintain the truthfulness of who the Addams family is in terms of their values, but create a story that would make it possible for the audience to relate to Morticia and Gomez,” says Zaks, who’s won four Tony® Awards over the course of his directorial career, for shows such as Six Degrees of Separation and a 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls.
Still, coming up with a plot and reasons for such established characters to sing for two-plus hours proved to be a long and exacting process. Not as bad as having your fingernails removed (which, for an Addams, might feel like deep tissue massage), but it took them a couple of, ahem, stabs at the material.
As a result, Gomez and Morticia are singing a different tune—or three—in the touring edition of The Addams Family, which is spending the latter half of June at The Denver Center for the Performing Arts. The Broadway version underwent a considerable face-lift after the creative team, including Zaks, composer-lyricist Andrew Lippa, book writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, and choreographer Sergio Trujillo, convened to revise the show for the national tour. It meant not only adding to and subtracting from the score, but also adjusting the thrust of the narrative.
“It was a real challenge to take these known characters and throw them into a new story,” says Lippa, whose score was nominated for a Tony. “We were dealing with iconic characters that had, for lack of a better term, a playbook about them. People came in knowing these characters to some degree, and of course everybody knows them in a slightly different way.”
So the task at hand became finding a unified version of the show that the collaborators could get excited about.
“Everyone has their own definition of what the right tone for the show should be,” adds Zaks. “‘It’s gotta be more Addams-y.’ But the people who say that don’t know what they’re talking about. It sounds smart, but Charles Addams drew these wonderful cartoons which peppered so many editions of The New Yorker magazine and which always put a smile on people’s faces. They were funny, but the reason we smiled is because we identified with the Addams family; we identified with their dark side.”
He points to an Addams drawing of the clan enjoying the holidays together: “The family is on the roof at Christmas time, just about to pour what appears to be hot boiling oil on carolers. That just speaks for itself.”
Zaks joined the creative team of The Addams Family in December 2009, during the show’s pre-Broadway run in Chicago, as a creative consultant to directors Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch. McDermott and Crouch are the British duo who also designed the Addams’ odd, macabre onstage world. The musical opened on Broadway a few months later, with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwrith heading the cast, but garnered only two Tony nominations although it ran for nearly two years. Speaking at the Drama League Awards that year, Lane quipped, “It’s no secret that The Addams Family was not well received in certain circles, like the Earth.”
The original plot revolved around Addams daughter Wednesday who, having fallen for a seemingly “normal” young man, invites him and his parents over for dinner to meet her family, then begs said family to try to act normal for one night (i.e., not be themselves). The story, the creators came to realize, gave Gomez and Morticia precious little to do besides look on, banter and, occasionally, sing and dance.
“There was no significant conflict between our two lead characters,” says Zaks. “Because of that, they were relegated to basically facilitating and observing the evening.”
This time around, Wednesday is engaged to her beloved, Lucas Beineke, and persuades her father not to tell her mother until she’s ready to announce it. Problems arise when Morticia suspects he’s hiding something from her.
“The cornerstone of the Morticia-Gomez relationship, we decided, should be that they always tell each other the truth,” explains Zaks. “They’ve always fully disclosed everything that was going on. And this is the night when Gomez keeps a secret from his wife, and he agrees to [do so] because he’s crazy about his daughter.”
For Lippa, whose musical theatre scores include The Wild Party and the upcoming Big Fish (adapted from the novel and film), the revised plot was a turning point. “That was the first big change we made for the tour,” he says. “It’s our reason for all of the changes that followed. There are three new songs in the show and all of them have to do with that conflict.”
Of those songs—“Trapped,” “Secrets” and “Not Today”—Lippa reports that the first one, a song that Gomez sings near the beginning of the show, was the hardest to write. It comes as Gomez realizes he’s torn between a promise he’s made to his wife and another he’s made to his daughter.
“It was grounded in the reality of what has made Gomez so frustrated and worried, but at the same time it had to be funny,” explains Lippa. “But he doesn’t realize it’s funny, he’s just stating the truth of it, and that took me a little while to grab on to. I wanted it to be funny, so I needed to come up with examples of people that were trapped in real life. There’s a lyric that goes, ‘Like a fly in my tea/Or the New York DMV/I’m trapped.’ Somehow people out in the country understand ‘New York DMV’ as being funny. They’ve never had an experience with it, but evidently they can imagine how bad it is.”
Three songs from the Broadway version were cut, including a Gomez and Morticia duet, “Where Did We Go Wrong”; Gomez’s love ode, “Morticia”; and “In the Arms,” a ballad sung by Lucas’ father after a rather affectionate encounter with a large mollusk. But Lippa didn’t mourn their demise.
“All the songs that got cut were songs that were tangential to the story as we were now writing it,” he says. “I was happy to lose them, actually. I’ve never had a show where there was a major song that I couldn’t bear to lose, and that’s usually because when you write that song that you can’t bear to lose, you wouldn’t need to, because it’s so clearly related to the story or to the characters in some way.”
The version now on tour is the one that will be licensed to school and regional theatres in the future, and both Zaks and Lippa says the final product was worth the effort it took to revise it. “It was a remarkable opportunity to go back and rethink the show,” explains Lippa. “Now in 20 years, when I go to my great nephew’s production of it at his high school, I can see a show that I really love.”
The Addams Family plays Denver’s Buell Theatre June 19-July 1, 2012. Tickets: 303.893.4100 or www.denvercenter.org.
Republished from Applause magazine. Written by DianeSnyder, a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Time Out New York, The Wall Street Journal and American Theatre.
Chas Addams: The Man Behind the Family
The musical The Addams Family is inspired by the creations of the legendary American cartoonist Charles Addams, who lived from 1912 until 1988. In 1933, when he was just 21, his work was published in The New Yorker, and over the course of nearly six decades, he became one of the magazine’s most cherished contributors.
Bizarre, macabre and weird are all words that have been used to describe Charles Addams’ cartoons. Yet adjectives such as charming, enchanting and tender can just as accurately be employed to depict the same body of work, as well as the man himself. His unique style and wonderfully crafted cartoons enabled his work to transcend such dichotomies for his millions of fans worldwide.
Charles Addams is most widely known for his characters that came to be called The Addams Family, a group that evolved into multiple television shows, motion pictures and now this Broadway musical. Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Wednesday, Pugsley, Grandma and Lurch existed in various forms and aspects of Addams’ cartoons dating back to the 1930s but were not actually named by him until the early 1960s, when the television series was created. Surprisingly, The Addams Family characters appear in only a small number of the artist’s several thousand works. The majority of his cartoons are occupied by hundreds of other characters, but there is little doubt that those that come to life on this stage are his most beloved creations.
Over 15 books of his drawings have been published around the world, including the new collection, The Addams Family: An Evilution, the first complete history of The Addams Family, including more than 200 cartoons, many never previously published. The collection also includes Addams’ own incisive character descriptions (originally penned for the benefit of the television show producers) that remind us where these oddly lovable characters came from and, in doing so, offer a lasting tribute to one of America’s greatest humorists.
THE ADDAMS FAMILY plays Denver’s Buell Theatre June 19-July 1, 2012. Tickets: 303-893-4100
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
- 8th/ Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is the 8th 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.
A history of Disney’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST
A traditional fairytale first published in France in the mid-18th 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.
When First We Practice to Deceive: Denver Center debuts GREAT WALL STORY
Reprinted from Prologue, the Denver Center Theatre Company’s subscriber newsletter
GREAT WALL STORY is a clever playwright’s riff on a daring—some might say foolhardy—event that transpired in Denver on the cusp of the 20th century. Four journalists looking for a story and finding none, conspired over drinks at The Oxford Hotel to concoct a tall tale sure to draw attention. China, they declared had decided to tear down part of its Great Wall with the help of American entrepeneurs. It drew attention all right—and a few unintended consequences.
That real incident lies at the heart of Lloyd Suh’s new play, GREAT WALL STORY, which was read at the 2011 Colorado New Play Summit. The rest of this world premiere is a playwright’s comic fantasy, with plenty of inventive twists and turns.
Below is one excerpt from the actual phony stories printed in The Chicago Daily Tribune, which appears to have been the verbatim text by the perpetrators of the Denver hoax.
PLAN TO RAZE CHINESE WALL
Frank C. Lewis Seeks Contract for Chicagoans — Mayor Harrison Said to Be Interested, but Laughs at It.
Denver, Colo., June 25 — [Special] — Frank C. Lewis of Chicago was at the Oxford Hotel last night. Mr. Lewis represents a syndicate of Chicago capitalists and is on his way to Peking, China, for the purpose of negotiating with the Chinese government with a view to tearing down a portion of the Chinese wall.
“I lived in China for four years,” said Mr. Lewis, “and during that time was interested in building a great many miles of railroad. While in that country the subject frequently was discussed by those in power as to the advisability of tearing down at least a portion of the historic wall and using the stone for the purpose of making a roadway to Nankin (sic). The idea was to pulverize the rock and use it in the roadways. While it is not an assured fact that we will secure the contract we are now figuring on, I am inclined to the belief that it is a possibility. The company I represent has a capital of $650,000 in cash, and I have been instructed to use every effort to secure an opportunity of doing the work.
“Some of the wealthiest and best known capitalists of Chicago are interested in this enterprise.”
While Mr. Lewis would not give the names of those interested in the company it is believed here that Mayor Harrison and numerous other prominent men are interested in the proposed plan. Mr. Lewis left for the West at 4 o’clock this morning.
At the residence of Frank C. Lewis, 2100 Orrington Avenue, Evanston, last night, it was stated that Mr. Lewis had left Chicago for Pittsburgh. Members of his family said they had heard of the Chinese wall project, but that Mr. Lewis was not going to China. They declined to give details.
Mayor Harrison laughed when asked if he were interested. He said he was too busy at home to bother about China’s ancient ramparts.
GREAT WALL STORY plays Denver’s Ricketson Theatre March 16-April 22. For information or tickets, call 303.893.4100.
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: Looking into the heart of an all-new ‘Beauty’
By Brendan Lemon
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, now embarked on a lavish and visually re-imagined new tour presented by NETworks, is one of best-loved of all musicals. It’s easy to understand why. Its classic story — of a beautiful village girl, Belle, who is first repelled by, then attracted to a gruff yet big-hearted Beast —is indeed, as one of the show’s numbers has it, “a tale as old as time.” The songs (music by Alan Menken; lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice) are almost criminally tuneful. And the musical’s appeal crosses age barriers: truly, “Beauty” is an experience that can be enjoyed by child and adult alike.
Many of the songs – the charming “Belle,” the infectious “Something There,” and the spectacular hospitality anthem “Be Our Guest” – were written for the 1991 animated movie, which was the first – and until 2010, the only – animated film ever to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The movie’s status not just in cinematic history but in critical lore was cemented when the New York Times’ then-theater critic Frank Rich, called Beauty and the Beast the best musical of the year – in any format.
Disney took the cue, and soon started things rolling for the live adaptation. Several new songs, as well as the book by Linda Woolverton, were written for the stage version, which opened on Broadway at the Palace Theater on April 18, 1994, and went on to become the seventh-longest running production in Broadway history.
Rob Roth, who directed the Broadway premiere and is back at the helm for the new tour, says that the “story of the show is about seeing past the exterior of a person and into his or her heart.” He says that conveying that feeling is key to any production of “Beauty.” What’s fresh about the tour, he adds, is not just the timeless moral but a new approach to the visuals.
“So few directors have the opportunity to work on a show several years later in a new form,” Roth says. “I’m lucky that way, and I’m also lucky because I never get bored with ‘Beauty.’”
Stan Meyer, the scenic designer both for the 1994 Broadway version and for the new production, says that the former staging was, essentially, the 1991 movie made live. The latter is “a departure from that.” He explains: “We did a lot of research that involved eastern-European wood carving and gilded manuscripts. The new version is an illuminated manuscript come to life.”
Audiences will delight in the eye-popping storybook shapes and colors that Meyer and the other original-version designers (Ann Hould-Ward: costumes; Natasha Katz: lighting) have re-imagined. The production’s look, adds Meyer, “is more evocative of whimsy and very, very romantic.”
DIsney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST plays Denver, CO (Buell Theatre) March 14-18, 2012. Tickets: 303.893.4100, 800.641.1222, Groups 10+ 303.446.4892, TTY 303.893.9582
Shrew-ing it up in the 1950s
The Taming of the Shrew has been a paradox of late.
Despite harsh feminist critiques over the past 40 years (in fact there are many who feel the play is so deeply misogynistic that Kate and Petruchio should be banished from the stage for good), Shrew remains one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies. How can this be? Artistic Director Kent Thompson, who is directing the play this season, views the play not as merciless gender warfare but as a battle of equals, “the kind of fight between two people who are outside the norms of conventional society…Two people with larger than life personalities who fight their way through their romance and end up being in love.”
To stage his reading of the play, Thompson sought out a period when roles were well defined and rather inflexible. He landed on the 1950s, a time of conventional role models for men and women—women could keep house while men brought home the bacon. Katherina is too strong-willed and intelligent to comfortably fit into a housewife’s apron, and Petruchio is too wild to settle for a gray-flannelled businessman’s life. So in this version, Petruchio is a cowboy from Texas, while Katherina (or Kate) is a fiery Italian-American who works in her father’s restaurant in Chicago.
The play takes place in an imagined America with U.S. place names changed to the Italian cities of Shakespeare’s text. Scenic designer David Barber has dreamed up a large map of the country that will hover over the set, lighting up to show the travels of the various characters. The main playing area rests on a 22-foot-diameter revolve to keep the story’s many scenes flowing smoothly. To the left and right of the set, billboards set the period by displaying iconographic 50s’ advertising art. Watch for this: as “a little extra added kick” and to lighten the mood, Barber is sneaking clever Shakespearean references into each of the signs.
Speaking of scene changes, composer Gregg Coffin will be composing brief songs based on Shakespearean text set to 50s-style music. This is the great period for Italian-American singers: Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Tony Bennett to name only a few, so he’s got plenty to work with. And expect some country western sounds to accompany Petruchio’s visits to his ranch deep in the heart of Texas. Coffin is also going to have a bit of fun “Elvis-ing up” the scene in which Lucentio, disguised as a music teacher, gives Bianca a lesson.
Costume designer Susan Branch describes the costumes as having a heightened reality: “There are certain icons, like Elvis, that are being referenced. We’ve created the iconic gangster from New Jersey and the iconic cowboy from Texas.” She admits it’s difficult when clothing is described in the play, such as Petruchio’s wedding outfit, and you are setting it in a different period. “How do you take the clothing of the period you’re dealing with and still make the descriptions work?” she asks. “It’s fun to figure that out.”
While Bianca will be dressed as a bobby-soxer (“more frivolous, lightweight, a girly-girl”), headstrong Kate will be much more no-nonsense. She will be introduced working in her father’s restaurant, dressed in functional slacks and flat shoes. Her clothing tells a story of its own—her wedding dress getting soiled on the trip home with Petruchio, the improvised outfit his ranch hands rustle up for her, and finally the beautiful dress that the tailor made for her (the one Petruchio destroyed in front of her eyes).
Although many of us remember the 50s in black and white, Thompson wants this to be a Technicolor production, which really works for Tom Sturge, the lighting designer: “The play is definitely set in the summer, so that lends itself to the hot stickiness of Chicago and the lush, bright sunlight in Texas. Sturge also feels the use of bright color lends itself to comedy: “The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy, and if it takes itself too seriously it will die a quick and sudden death.”
That may have been the problem with the last production of the play he worked on which featured cross-gender casting. “That,” Sturge admits, “was a pretty big mistake.”
For Thompson, Shakespeare’s characters are inherently bold and colorful: “All the characters come right out of Commedia dell’Arte. Gremio, the old Pantalone pursuing the young woman; Lucentio, the handsome young man whose father won’t let him marry; Bianca as the female version of that; and Kate as the shrew.”
At the end of the day, where does Thompson come down on the question of Petruchio’s (mis)treatment of Kate?
“I don’t think that what Petruchio does to Kate is cruel, but he gets close to being not very nice. I think audiences will see the progression of their love, because I think that, even in a play based on Commedia, Shakespeare has planted clues to show that she starts to understand his game.”
In the final, most controversial speech of the play, Kate’s vow of love and possible submission, Thompson believes she’s promising “…what she’s willing to do for him more than making a statement that she’s capitulated completely as a human being, because I don’t think she has.”
This article originally appeared in PROLOGUE, the Denver Center Theatre Company’s subscriber newsletter.
Some Funny Things about an often Serious Play
Playwright Lisa Loomer describes her Two Things You don’t Talk About At Dinner as “an often funny play about some serious things.” It is an improbably even-handed look at the extremely complex issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian situation—on the ground and in our dining rooms. Funny? Serious? You bet. Loomer’s assessment is on the money. Yes, people do tend to fly off the handle when discussing the ongoing conflict in that part of the world, but the play? It is often funny and it is about serious things. To honor the spirit of that fearless enterprise, we assembled some funny and some serious notes—and one cartoon—in support of Loomer’s efforts.
THE SERIOUS
Civil Discourse — A Lost Cause?
Civil discourse is not about niceness. It is about respecting the other individual and having the ability to passionately disagree without being disagreeable. One of the hallmarks of a civilized society is that civility must be guaranteed and observed among those who will inevitably disagree. Civil discourse is fundamental to the fostering and protection of a civilized society.
It is about ensuring a safe environment in which people can express ideas without fear of attack. It is about tolerance for those who think differently. Yet it seems many in our society have come to regard the old saw “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me” not as a proverb but as a truism—a license to say anything, regardless of what harm it might cause. Sadly, name-calling and bullying increasingly have become the accepted norm in daily human interactions.
As a result, not-so-civil discourse has become the one, true equal-opportunity issue. It crosses political lines, sparks acerbic debates about family, sexual orientation, roots itself in religious intolerance and ignores the right to exist of “the other”—other socio-economic classes, cultural and racial groups. Its common language is inappropriate, corrosive, insulting, hostile and aggressive.
It is mean-spirited behavior.
How do we re-establish the value of civil discourse? First, we must teach our children the tremendous power of words. Words have the capacity to build or destroy, empower or diminish, enable or disable. Words can support, inspire, motivate, stimulate, encourage. Or not. What words do we teach our children? Who should teach them?
The answer is all of us. Everyone. Regardless of differences.
Lisa Loomer’s Two Things You Don’t Talk About at Dinner touches on this subject by frontally addressing political and religious differences that are at the forefront of our lives and happen to explode at the Passover Seder that is the fulcrum of her play. For all the pernicious—and often very funny—exchanges, the outcome of the piece skillfully shows us a path to sanity. It may not be a total solution, but it does indicate that, given a choice, human beings prefer kindness to vilification, understanding to bullheadedness, peace to war, even at the dinner table.
We can refuse to be debased by uncivil discourse. We can restore faith in words that heal rather than wound, sometimes mortally.
—Portions of this text were excerpted from www.thefreelibrary.com
THE FUNNY
Braille for Jews?
Helen Keller was handed a matzoh, the first she ever touched.
As she felt it using her fingers to decipher what it was, she asked, “Who wrote this nonsense?”
British Jews
A British Jew is waiting in line to be knighted by the Queen.
He is to kneel in front of her and recite a sentence in Latin when she taps him on the shoulder with her sword. However, when his turn comes, he panics in the excitement of the moment and forgets the Latin. Then, thinking fast, he recites the only other sentence he knows in a foreign language, which he remembers from the Passover Seder. “Ma nishtana ha layla ha zeh mi kol ha laylot.”
Puzzled, the Queen leans over to an advisor and asks: “Why is this knight different from all the other knights?”
Divorce Jewish Style
An elderly man in Phoenix calls his son in New York and says “I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing. Forty-five years of misery is enough.”
“Pop, what are you talking about?” the son screams.
“We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer,” the old man says. “We’re sick of each other, and I’m sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Chicago and tell her,” and he hangs up.
Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone, “Like heck they’re getting divorced,” she shouts. “I’ll take care of this!”
She calls her father immediately and screams at the old man, “You are not getting divorced! Don’t do a single thing until I get there. I’m calling my brother back, and we’ll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don’t do a thing, do you hear me?” and
hangs up.
The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. “Okay,” he says, “They’re coming for Passover and paying their own airfares.”
Jewish Telegram
Letter follows. Start worrying.
Arabic Sayings
Enfiha el kheir ma yermiha el ter: If it was beneficial the bird wouldn’t drop it (don’t expect something from him).
Ye khaf we ma yekh te shish: he knows fear but never recognizes shame (an unscrupulous person).
E’d sawaba’ak b’ad mat salem a’leh: Count your fingers after you shake his hand (he’s a thief).
A ed a la hassira we me dandel regleh: He is sitting on a carpet and pretends to dangle his feet (an obvious deceiver).
Ed-deeny el bakht oo er-meeny fel bahr: Give me luck and throw me in the ocean (with luck on my side, nothing can hurt me).
Ed ghadabou abl ma yetacha bek: Eat him for lunch before he eats you for dinner (do unto others before they do unto you).
Yeslam bo’okom, we khalou el kalam yehla: Bless your mouth and let the words get sweeter.
Yom assal, yom bassal: One day is like honey, one day is like an onion.
El khonfessa fe-e ou e she-e omm ghazal: To the cockroach, its child is like a gazelle.
This article originally appeared in PROLOGUE, the Denver Center Theatre Company subscriber newsletter.
Profile I: Hal Brooks, director of THE WHALE
Hal Brooks has a highly diverse list of directing credits. Most recently, he staged Will Eno’s Off-Broadway Pulitzer finalist THOM PAIN (based on nothing) at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, at the Soho Theatre in London, and at the DR2 in NYC. The Whale, a new play written by Idaho native Samuel Hunter and developed at the Colorado New Play Summit in February 2011, presented some major production challenges for the director, many of which Prologue won’t reveal—to avoid spoilers. Brooks and Hunter were introduced to each other by their respective agents and have spent hours on the phone, by e-mail, and in person at New York casting sessions for The Whale, preparing for the play’s Denver Center Theatre Company (DCTC) premiere. We recently chatted with Brooks to get some insight into his working process, his collaboration with Hunter, and his thoughts on his first DCTC project.
DCPA: You’ve been associated with particular playwrights, such as Nilaja Sun, Don DeLillo and others, but you’ve also free-lanced a good deal. You seem to specialize in staging new and challenging work. How do you pick your projects?
HB: When I did Delillo’s Valparaiso a few years back, we had a nice [New York] Times review and I got a lot of meetings out of it. Tim Sanford [Artistic Director of Playwrights Horizons] advised me to “find my writer.” And then I met Will Eno and I felt I had found my writer. But truly, as much as I would work with Will anywhere, anytime, realistically I need to keep working when I cannot direct his work—so I’ve modified Tim’s advice to read “find your writers,” plural. I’m always on the lookout for new voices. I’m constantly reading new plays, meeting writers. My agent, Val Day, does a great job of introducing me to new writers too. She was instrumental in putting me together with Sam Hunter for DCTC’s premiere of The Whale. I’m really excited about this project. I think Sam Hunter has become one of my writers.
DCPA: I’m sure each project has its own unique requirements—do you have an overall approach to directing?
HB: I always think the job of a director is twofold: honor the intent of the playwright, and tell a good story—or tell the story well. So in that sense the job remains the same. I’ve directed a play with a cast of thousands and budget of hundreds—but no matter the play or the budget, the need is to tell the story in the best way we can, with the resources we have. And The Whale presents huge challenges: how to tell this difficult story, full of anguish and pain and humor and humanity, to a new audience every night? How can the actors, with my help, find a way to make their characters real for themselves? Accessible to the audience? How to make the story matter?
DCPA: Can you tell me something about your working process with Sam Hunter?
HB: Sam and I get along very well—I’m experienced with developing and directing new work, and Sam is an exciting young writer who loves to keep working on his plays—modifying the script to accommodate actors and production needs. Sam is enjoying considerable success of late—his play A Bright New Boise has gotten fantastic reviews in both New York and Washington D.C., but his focus remains on the work. So—we do well together, since we both like to keep developing and refining the script.
DCPA: You two auditioned actors for The Whale in New York recently—did you see eye-to-eye on the actors who came in to read?
HB: We did! We saw some great people out there, and were pleased that we were able to get the cast we wanted. The central role of Charlie is especially challenging, and we were very lucky to find the right actor. We both knew who we wanted the minute he came in the door.
DCPA: In addition to last season’s Summit workshop of The Whale, the play had a reading last summer at Icicle Creek in Washington state—outside of the Denver Center process. Did Sam do any major rewrites as a result?
HB: Sam is always rewriting, based on what he sees in a reading or rehearsal—he’s always looking to focus the work, the characters. One thing that came out of the Icicle Creek reading was that he decided that he needed to put the kitchen of the lead character Charlie’s apartment onstage, for dramatic reasons. Originally the set was confined to Charlie’s living-room. This makes for some challenges for the set designer, but it helps move the play forward in an important way.
DCPA: Sam has set The Whale, like some of his other plays, in his native Boise, Idaho. His characters are mostly everyday people, in a generally conservative, small town environment. How does he find drama in what might seem overly familiar and in conventional settings?
HB: Part of Sam’s genius is to take these people and put them into extreme situations. He finds deep, universal themes that run through their lives—he avoids melodrama, though the play might be considered to be “kitchen-sink realism.” He also looks to tell the truth in ways that some audiences may find tough. And like any good playwright, he has a knack for finding interesting character relationships even in familiar settings. Sam never condescends to his characters—he clearly loves and embraces the people and their milieu. He knows them so well.
DCPA: The actors have to portray people who might not be terribly sophisticated and yet need to resonate as larger than life in some ways. There also are some big literary themes—the Book of Job, Melville’s Moby Dick—as well as discussions of organized religion. Will you look for ways to bring out these ideas?
HB: No. My job as I see it is to tell the story, let the characters and the audience find their own way to the heart of the play, which has plenty to say. Think of [Arthur] Miller’s Death Of A Salesman—those characters are garden-variety middle-class working folks—and yet their story has been told and retold, and has moved audiences, for decades. The Whale involves an outsider, a working man in extremis, trying desperately to reconnect to his angry, estranged teenage daughter, hoping he can help her, against her will, to a better life.
He’s surrounded by controlling people with their own motives. His journey is to get past the others and through to the girl while there’s time. The story might sound familiar, but the play has such richness and depth. My job in part is to help the actors find the connections with each other and with the story. Sam is a really strong writer, and I think The Whale is his most mature work. I’m really enjoying working on this project and being able to be part of Sam’s next step in his professional life as a playwright. I think Denver Center audiences will really embrace this play.
This article originally appeared in PROLOGUE, the Denver Center Theatre Company subscriber newsletter.
