MUSICALS PLAY NEW TUNE : More Shows Premiere at Not-for-Profit Theaters

When Gordon Davidson saw the new musical “Roza” a few weeks ago, he wanted it for this year’s Mark Taper Forum season. Harold Prince was directing it. Patricia Birch was choreographing. The theater was packed and the audience, as Davidson described it, “was having a wonderful time.”

Davidson, Prince and Birch were nowhere near Broadway. They were in Baltimore, and the show’s debut was not in a commercial theater but at the not-for-profit Center Stage. More and more, this is the way things are in the world of musical theater today.

While product-starved Broadway producers have long plucked such successful plays as the Taper’s “Children of a Lesser God” from regional stages, few nonprofit institutions have been willing or able to mount new musicals. Musicals cost more. They were considered more commercial than artistic. They were something commercial producers should do.

But these days, most commercial producers can’t--or won’t--plop untested musicals on Broadway. Not when they cost upwards of $4 million apiece, and, as happened last August with “Rags,” can close in less than a week. Better to find a willing partner in regional theater, use its scenery shops and subscription audiences, then promise it a financial cut of any future productions.

It happened in Baltimore with “Roza,” starring Georgia Brown (“Oliver!”) and based on the same book that inspired the French film “Madame Rosa” with Simone Signoret. Should “Roza” emerge this spring at the Taper--and negotiations were continuing at press time--it would be in a position to help develop the musical en route to a commercial situation.

San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre just took a turn at such a project as well. “Into the Woods,” the latest collaboration of Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, last month ended its premiere run at the nonprofit Old Globe. The show’s commercial producers plan a Broadway opening for “Into the Woods” later this year.

Given the financial risks involved, Broadway musicals are most often revivals or pre-tested British imports like “Me and My Girl” or Prince’s “The Phantom of the Opera,” now in London and expected on Broadway later this year. Enormous production costs have pushed ticket prices so high that audiences either want a “sure thing” or something flashy like “Cats.”

Even someone with a track record like Sondheim can seem risky in such a climate, and producers ponder the fate of lesser-known, newer talents. Says director-producer Prince: “At this point, there will be damn little experimentation on Broadway and less chances for new composers, new librettos, and shows without stars.

“I didn’t want to work anymore under the economic pressures of Broadway,” says Prince (“Evita,” “Company,” “Fiddler on the Roof”), whose 1985 musical “Grind” cost more than $4.5 million and struggled to last just two months on Broadway. “It simply isn’t the same experience that it was for so many years.”

Enter nonprofit theater. “The costs of the commercial theater have made it virtually impossible for innovation and development to take place in a commercial framework anymore,” says Marjorie Samoff, producing director of the Philadelphia-based American Musical Theater Festival. “So if there is going to be a future for musical theater in America, it will have to lie in the not-for-profit sector.”

There’s ample precedent for such activity. The New York Shakespeare Festival launched “A Chorus Line” in 1975 and has reportedly netted more than $50 million from the show’s continuing lives all over the world. Last year’s Tony award for best musical went to the Shakespeare Festival’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (now known in streamlined form as “Drood”), while the 1985 Tony winner was “Big River,” a project that began at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., and was developed at the La Jolla Playhouse before wending its way to Broadway.

What’s different these days, explains the Taper’s Davidson, is that more theaters are willing to get involved and that fewer other options exist for musical theater. Musicals are too complicated and too expensive to develop anymore in the legendary Boston-New Haven-Philadelphia pre-Broadway commercial tryout circuit. “Today’s (delivery) system No. 1 is London. System No. 2 is regional theater.”

A similar sentiment comes from David Emmes, producing artistic director at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory. That theater last weekend finished the premiere run of Craig Lucas and Craig Carnelia’s new musical, “Three Postcards,” a musical play which as yet has no commercial backers.

“New York is moribund,” Emmes says. “There’s no innovation. Commercial producers have to look to the regional theaters because they are the ones taking the artistic risks.”

Even in London, whose musicals are peppering Broadway with greater and greater frequency, West End producers are turning to that country’s regional and subsidized theaters (see article on next page). The Royal Shakespeare Company did so well by its ties to a commercial producer on “Les Miserables,” the smash musical based on Victor Hugo’s monumental novel, that it is currently co-producing a revival of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me Kate” in Stratford-upon-Avon with backing from both a commercial producer and a commercial theater.

“Roza” was initially planned for London, says New York producer Sam Crothers at Producer Circle Co. But plans fell through. Producer Circle’s partners, who had produced several of Prince’s other musicals, read a script, heard some of the songs on a tape and “fell madly in love with the show,” says producer Martin Richards. “We wanted to protect it, do it in front of an audience and get a true reaction.”

Based on Romain Gary’s book “La Vie Devant Soi”--with music by Gilbert Becaud and book and lyrics by Julian More--”Roza” was in development for years before it even got to Baltimore. “This (production) came out of our desire and Hal’s desire to accomplish the trip to Broadway in a more realistic sense than the enormous capitalizations that have taken place before,” says Crothers. “Regional theater is hungry for good works and good directors, and we went to many to see which would be best for ‘Roza.’ ”

Prince had seen Center Stage’s production of “Hedda Gabler” while “Grind” was at another Baltimore theater en route to Broadway, and reportedly even sent a fan letter. “I knew the theater, and knew the plant,” says Prince. “I thought it was perfect.”

Who could refuse Prince and the story of a retired Jewish prostitute raising an Arab street kid in Paris? Not Center Stage, which had revived “She Loves Me” one season earlier and mounted an original musical just the prior spring. “This was a logical step for us in developing musical theater,” says Center Stage Artistic Director Stan Wojewodski. “There was a lot to be learned from their development of new material, as distinct from reviving a piece.”

Center Stage will receive a “small percentage,” it is understood, of the box-office grosses of any future productions. Should “Roza” play Los Angeles, the show would hopefully go directly to Broadway, Crothers says, noting that London producers were also in the Baltimore audience “and anxious for it to be presented in the West End.”

“Into the Woods” has been maturing in similar fashion. New York’s Playwrights Horizons theater, which launched Sondheim-Lapine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Sunday in the Park With George,” nurtured “Into the Woods” in the same fashion with a series of readings in New York before a small, invited audience. When the script and score seemed ready for production about a year later, says Playwrights’ executive Ira Weitzman, “the authors wanted to be out of New York, where everybody is staring at you.

“It’s different when a theater does plays year-round and there’s not a million dollars riding on every move you make,” says Weitzman, founder and director of Playwrights Horizons’ Musical Theatre Program. “ ‘Into the Woods’ changed every single day for weeks and weeks. It wasn’t this constant pressure that we have to make or break on Broadway. I think it is much healthier that way.”

There were plans to do “Woods” at Seattle Repertory Theatre, and Old Globe Artistic Director Jack O’Brien had given his counterpart there a call with hopes of collaborating. When it later proved impractical for Seattle, the Old Globe stepped in. “I don’t think there is another creative artist in the country working in theater more important than Sondheim, with James Lapine,” says O’Brien. “These people on the cutting edge deserve all the support that we in the theater community can give them, and they need to know that. “

“Woods’ ” New York producers can readily draw on their earlier experiences with the Tony-winning “Big River.” In that case, says Michael David at New York-based Dodger Productions, Dodger producers Heidi and Rocco Landesman spoke directly with composer Roger Miller, commissioned a book and showed it to Robert Brustein at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. Brustein expressed interest and Dodger licensed the project first to ART and later to La Jolla. David says the show has recouped about 90% of its $2.5-million cost after nearly two years on Broadway; ART, and to a lesser extent the La Jolla Playhouse, share in the current box-office returns and any later profits.

The Landesmans became involved with “Into the Woods” early on as well, says David, the show’s executive producer at Dodger, although final contracts were not signed until after the Old Globe run. While there was “some (financial) enhancement of the production” in San Diego, David adds, the $600,000 production at the Old Globe would have been closer to $3 million on Broadway.

“There was no way at this time that a musical this size could be done by either party. There are different masters being served here but, in the end, the common master was the development of this show. That was the glue that held the collaboration together. They needed an exciting American musical for their season, and we were interested in becoming as smart as we could before we took the big leap to a commercial production.”

Every case is different in the production of new musicals, but regional theaters generally stress the exciting theater their audiences will have the opportunity to see and commercial producers stress the matured works that generally emerge from regional stages. “There’s nothing wrong with it if people are smart about it, up-front and nobody takes advantage of anyone,” says Davidson. ‘One (sector) is helping the other.”

That’s apparently what happened in London in fall, 1985, when the Royal Shakespeare Company and commercial producer Cameron Mackintosh together produced the musical “Les Miserables.” In that case, Mackintosh put in two-thirds of the capitalization, the RSC one-third, and the show played first at the RSC’s Barbican stage in London. It then moved to the Palace, a commercial West End theater, where it is still running. Another company just closed in Washington, and opens in New York next month with a record $9-million advance.

What does RSC Associate Director John Caird think of “Les Miserables’ ” incredible success? Interviewed at his office in London’s Barbican Center, Caird reached behind a visitor to pull out a framed gold record of the show’s original cast album. “(Our) partnership helped to originate a remarkable bit of modern musical theater by breeding it in a place of artistic excellence,” says Caird, who also co-directed “Les Miserables” (with Trevor Nunn). “And it allowed the RSC to do a show it couldn’t otherwise have afforded to do financially by using money from private enterprise.

“We can hedge our costs and they can be assured of artistic excellence,” continues Caird, speaking of RSC’s current “Kiss Me Kate” project with Triumph Theatre Productions and the Old Vic theater. “In the present climate of niggardly, penny-pinching meanness we’re living in this country, at the mercy of a government of a completely philistine nature, we will inevitably be embarking on such financial partnerships more and more.

“I think it is very challenging for us to earn more money in the commercial world because it means producing popular theater, and the RSC’s work should be popular. But it is risky, because a company based on the artistic principles of the RSC mustn’t allow its policy to become defined by commercial success.”

At San Diego’s Old Globe, Managing Director Thomas Hall concedes: “It’s a philosophical tightrope that one walks in doing this. We don’t intend to become commercial producers or producers of work for commercial purposes. But if it brings revenues to us, it enhances the nonprofit theater, and that is something we all have to look for when funding sources are drying up.”

The first priorities are the play, playwright and folks at home, says South Coast’s Emmes, whose theater already had a relationship with playwright Lucas before Lucas’ “Three Postcards” came along. “I felt (“Three Postcards”) did have commercial value, but that isn’t why we did it. We did it for its artistic value. We never choose a play because it could have a commercial value. If you do that, you have lost sense of what your mission is.”

There are also no guarantees. “Three Postcards” will be produced in early May at Playwrights Horizons in New York, where commercial producers are certain to dot the audience, but Emmes isn’t putting champagne on ice yet. “Everyone is hopeful that it will be able to transfer to a commercial run,” says Emmes. “It certainly deserves to be well received, but one doesn’t always get what one deserves.”

At the National Endowment for the Arts’ Opera-Musical Theater Program, Director Patrick Smith considers all the new activity a “healthy” trend and estimates as much as a 20% increase over the past five years in the number of grant applications for new American musical theater works. The 3-year-old, nonprofit American Musical Theater Festival has already sent eight projects on to other stages.

Dodger Productions, meanwhile, is working toward a Broadway production of “Into the Woods” later this year. David confirms that negotiations are under way to take the production out of town first, and says he expects a decision in March as to where. (Both Robert Fryer, artistic director at the Ahmanson Theatre, and Thomas Kendrick, executive director of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, acknowledged discussions, but each said a production this summer was unlikely.)

While declining to be more specific about other negotiations for the show, producer David said that the additional tryout provides “as much opportunity to work out the kinks and get the show into the best shape possible before you hit New York. You never can get too smart. The Old Globe was a chance for everyone to see whether to go forward or not. What was this thing on paper? The Old Globe production was a real encouragement that this deserves to have a continued life.”

Also possible for Broadway next year is Dodger’s commercial version of “Shout Up a Morning,” a 1986 La Jolla Playhouse premiere that later played Kennedy Center in Washington.

‘But we’re not going to sell the store, any of us,” says Jack O’Brien in San Diego. “ The Old Globe is not going to become a booking agency or road tryout for New York. The difference between now and 20 years ago is that none of us in the regional market have stars in our eyes about New York. We’re all not anxious to move there. Most of us came from there. So we want to help and are eager to be part of this movement.”

So does Harold Prince. “I still have a hell of a lot of respect for the quality of what Broadway can do at its best,” says the producer/director. “I think there is a tendency on the part of the press to underestimate what accomplishments have been made within the commercial theater. I just want people to worry about it, why (musical theater) costs so much, and if they are willing to save it before it’s too late.”