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hesIs Drowsy Chaperone's creator a mere one-hit wonder? His new show Minsky's might tell him
February 08, 2009
Richard Ouzounian
Theatre Critic
LOS ANGELES–Bob Martin keeps looking up at the dark clouds that fill the skies on the opening day of his latest show, Minsky's, at the Ahmanson Theatre at the Los Angeles Music Center.
It's not that he's worried about the rain. Far from it. He's more concerned if lightning is going to strike twice.
It was just over three years ago, in November of 2005, that The Drowsy Chaperone opened here and started its journey which led to Broadway, Tony Awards and overnight success.
The question everybody is asking, from L.A. to Broadway is "Can it happen again?"
"Am I worried about the sophomore jinx?" asks Martin, trying to look calm in the theatre's lobby a few hours before opening. "Believe me, that has definitely crossed my mind."
The battlefield of Broadway is littered with the bodies of one-hit wonders, but there's a lot to indicate that Martin won't join their ranks.
In the first place, he's teamed up with Casey Nicholaw, the inspired stager who took The Drowsy Chaperone from Fringe favourite to Broadway beloved, by mounting it with awesome doses of flash and class.
Second, he's got some other major Gotham royalty on his side – namely composer Charles Strouse, who has been a major going concern since he created Bye, Bye Birdie in 1960, and Tony Award-winning lyricist Susan Birkenhead.
Unlike Drowsy, where Martin was onstage playing the droll Man in Chair, he's sitting out acting this time, toughing it out with the other creative types while the cast (including familiar TV faces Rachel Dratch and George Wendt) go through their paces.
"The hardest part," he admits, "is letting go. It's so different from Drowsy. This time, I literally can't control it."
Martin doesn't seem unduly nervous, because the audience response to the previews has been positive and, as he says with the benefit of years of working with Second City Toronto, "If people are laughing, then it works. It's not hard math."
The perpetually edgy Martin concedes that Minsky's was " a totally different experience" from Drowsy Chaperone, which grew from a bachelor party sketch composed in honour of Martin and his wife, Janet Van De Graff, to a runaway Fringe hit to a Broadway smash.
"This was a very pure musical-theatre experience," declares Martin. The property had been kicking around for over 40 years. Originally based on a 1960 novel about the night when a raid finally closed down the famous Manhattan burlesque house, it was later turned into a 1968 movie starring Jason Robards that Martin describes as having "a bitter misogynist taste to it."
Evan Hunter had originally written a book for the show, but the producers decided it was wrong and wanted a new energy and the source would be Martin. "I felt that is this show centered around the end of burlesque was to connect with the audience it had to have a believable love story," he says.
And, according to all sources, the man responsible for the spoofiness of The Drowsy Chaperone has provided that romance.
"I didn't want the romantic leads to fall in love in two lines like they normally do in musicals," says Martin. "I wanted the relationship to be believable."
He quotes Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who once wrote "love is a virus," when explaining how profound his characters' involvements were. "They had a giant desire for romance and romance is nothing like reality."
Minsky's takes place during the Great Depression, a time of unfortunately growing relevance to us now. While the show is intended to go to New York, Martin admits that "all during the creation of the show it was screaming at us: We couldn't ignore the economic climate Broadway was going through."
"But if you lose so much in the crash," he ventures, then "you try to find the answer in entertainment."
With Minsky's, however, Martin is going it alone. That is to say, without any of the people who were with him on the award winning journey of The Drowsy Chaperone.
He tries to lightly gloss over the absence of his other collaborators, by evoking the numerous film projects of Don McKellar and the other works that Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison are involved with.
"I hope to be consulting with them on future projects," says Martin. But for the time being, he's the only one in the fast lane. After Minsky's, he plunges into a musical stage adaptation of the Will Ferrell film Elf, working with the songwriters from Broadway's The Wedding Singer, Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin.
Then after that, hotel mogul Steve Wynn has commissioned him to put together a new jukebox musical based on the life and songs of the Bee Gees.
"Okay, I know nothing about the Bee Gees," laughs Martin, "but then, I knew nothing about burlesque, either."
So Martin's emerging, it seems, as the go-to guy for creating a variety of new pieces of musical theatre, even as the forces of criticism line up, waiting to pronounce judgment. Is he the real thing, the new and exciting author of musicals that Broadway has been waiting for? Or is he a spoofy one-trick pony, who knows how to mock musicals, but can't really write one?
Martin is surprisingly calm about the whole procedure. "I write as well as I can, and that's all I can do. I want people to like it, but I can't make that happen.
"And if I fail, I can always go back and do what I did before. I want to make people laugh and I don't care if it's on Broadway or at Second City.
Martin looks up at the grey sky. It's still not clear lightning will indeed strike. But he doesn't care.
"I want to make people laugh," he insists. "That's all I've ever wanted."
February 08, 2009
Richard Ouzounian
Theatre Critic
LOS ANGELES–Bob Martin keeps looking up at the dark clouds that fill the skies on the opening day of his latest show, Minsky's, at the Ahmanson Theatre at the Los Angeles Music Center.
It's not that he's worried about the rain. Far from it. He's more concerned if lightning is going to strike twice.
It was just over three years ago, in November of 2005, that The Drowsy Chaperone opened here and started its journey which led to Broadway, Tony Awards and overnight success.
The question everybody is asking, from L.A. to Broadway is "Can it happen again?"
"Am I worried about the sophomore jinx?" asks Martin, trying to look calm in the theatre's lobby a few hours before opening. "Believe me, that has definitely crossed my mind."
The battlefield of Broadway is littered with the bodies of one-hit wonders, but there's a lot to indicate that Martin won't join their ranks.
In the first place, he's teamed up with Casey Nicholaw, the inspired stager who took The Drowsy Chaperone from Fringe favourite to Broadway beloved, by mounting it with awesome doses of flash and class.
Second, he's got some other major Gotham royalty on his side – namely composer Charles Strouse, who has been a major going concern since he created Bye, Bye Birdie in 1960, and Tony Award-winning lyricist Susan Birkenhead.
Unlike Drowsy, where Martin was onstage playing the droll Man in Chair, he's sitting out acting this time, toughing it out with the other creative types while the cast (including familiar TV faces Rachel Dratch and George Wendt) go through their paces.
"The hardest part," he admits, "is letting go. It's so different from Drowsy. This time, I literally can't control it."
Martin doesn't seem unduly nervous, because the audience response to the previews has been positive and, as he says with the benefit of years of working with Second City Toronto, "If people are laughing, then it works. It's not hard math."
The perpetually edgy Martin concedes that Minsky's was " a totally different experience" from Drowsy Chaperone, which grew from a bachelor party sketch composed in honour of Martin and his wife, Janet Van De Graff, to a runaway Fringe hit to a Broadway smash.
"This was a very pure musical-theatre experience," declares Martin. The property had been kicking around for over 40 years. Originally based on a 1960 novel about the night when a raid finally closed down the famous Manhattan burlesque house, it was later turned into a 1968 movie starring Jason Robards that Martin describes as having "a bitter misogynist taste to it."
Evan Hunter had originally written a book for the show, but the producers decided it was wrong and wanted a new energy and the source would be Martin. "I felt that is this show centered around the end of burlesque was to connect with the audience it had to have a believable love story," he says.
And, according to all sources, the man responsible for the spoofiness of The Drowsy Chaperone has provided that romance.
"I didn't want the romantic leads to fall in love in two lines like they normally do in musicals," says Martin. "I wanted the relationship to be believable."
He quotes Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who once wrote "love is a virus," when explaining how profound his characters' involvements were. "They had a giant desire for romance and romance is nothing like reality."
Minsky's takes place during the Great Depression, a time of unfortunately growing relevance to us now. While the show is intended to go to New York, Martin admits that "all during the creation of the show it was screaming at us: We couldn't ignore the economic climate Broadway was going through."
"But if you lose so much in the crash," he ventures, then "you try to find the answer in entertainment."
With Minsky's, however, Martin is going it alone. That is to say, without any of the people who were with him on the award winning journey of The Drowsy Chaperone.
He tries to lightly gloss over the absence of his other collaborators, by evoking the numerous film projects of Don McKellar and the other works that Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison are involved with.
"I hope to be consulting with them on future projects," says Martin. But for the time being, he's the only one in the fast lane. After Minsky's, he plunges into a musical stage adaptation of the Will Ferrell film Elf, working with the songwriters from Broadway's The Wedding Singer, Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin.
Then after that, hotel mogul Steve Wynn has commissioned him to put together a new jukebox musical based on the life and songs of the Bee Gees.
"Okay, I know nothing about the Bee Gees," laughs Martin, "but then, I knew nothing about burlesque, either."
So Martin's emerging, it seems, as the go-to guy for creating a variety of new pieces of musical theatre, even as the forces of criticism line up, waiting to pronounce judgment. Is he the real thing, the new and exciting author of musicals that Broadway has been waiting for? Or is he a spoofy one-trick pony, who knows how to mock musicals, but can't really write one?
Martin is surprisingly calm about the whole procedure. "I write as well as I can, and that's all I can do. I want people to like it, but I can't make that happen.
"And if I fail, I can always go back and do what I did before. I want to make people laugh and I don't care if it's on Broadway or at Second City.
Martin looks up at the grey sky. It's still not clear lightning will indeed strike. But he doesn't care.
"I want to make people laugh," he insists. "That's all I've ever wanted."