Courage Behind ‘Babes’ : Creators Battle AIDS as Homage to Musicals Reopens

Theater is rife with backstage stories often more dramatic than anything the audience sees. But there may be few more heart-rending openings than “Babes,” the tangy homage to 1940s Mickey and Judy MGM musicals, which swings back to life tonight at the Matrix Theater.

The production, which originated at the Cast Theater where it ran for 15 weeks last fall and winter, has been revived, refurbished and recast. Tonight, with its seemingly endless promise, is a bountiful moment for the show’s creators, composer/lyricist Brian Shucker and book writer Bill Sawyer.

But Shucker, whose “Babes” score was honored Sunday with a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award, is dying of AIDS and hasn’t long to live.

Sawyer, Shucker’s life partner for the last 11 years, also has AIDS. Sawyer promises that “I have several more years left, and I will be at the opening.

“God willing, my doctor says it’s OK for me to go,” he said from his hospital room in Long Beach. “The irony is that this should be a great time for Brian. He should be able to enjoy his success, but what has pulled him along through much of this was the knowledge that ‘Babes’ was being reborn.”

In fact, Shucker, albeit pale and frail, showed up at the Matrix recently for a casting audition.

Throughout their mutual ordeal, Shucker and Sawyer, whose home was a Long Beach bungalow, rallied support for each other.

Shucker, 33, has been fighting AIDS for 2 1/2 years. Sawyer, 38, first became aware of his AIDS last July. He was just released from a hospital stay two days ago.

“Now I want to spend all my time with Brian,” Sawyer said. “He’s had a biopsy. They found a big cell tumor. He’s conscious and a little scared and knows what’s going on.

“ ‘Babes’ is such a source of pride for him, his first full-length composition. He doesn’t have much formal training, but he’s brilliant. None of this would have happened without him. And (director) Michael (Michetti) was instrumental too.”

“I’m a first-time writer with a passion for Hollywood history. The conception for the show was really a three-way tie. I’m the old Hollywood movie nut in the group. But sometimes when Brian and Michael were discussing the show I would feel so stupid,” Sawyer said.

The feeling in the show that Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland are putting it on is not without design. “Babes” came together with that innocence. And the end of innocence is the production’s poignant fade-out on a movie set on a sound stage that’s being struck as the kids grow up and life intrudes.

Shucker and Sawyer, two musical-theater vagabonds, met each other while performing at the Curtain Call Dinner Theater in Tustin in 1980. Sawyer, from Camas, Wash., had been singing at places like Knott’s Berry Farm and was a waiter when he wasn’t performing. Shucker, who grew up in Huntington Beach, was a pianist who knocked about the dinner circuit, cutting his teeth on musical direction for cabaret acts.

Shucker’s talent for composition was unschooled but “he had a great ear for style,” said Michetti, who used to hire Shucker for occasional musicals and industrial shows. Later Shucker taught at Orange County’s High School for the Arts.

The Shucker/Sawyer chance encounter at the Curtain Call grew into a personal and creative bond. They had a dream to write a musical about adolescent contract stars at a studio like MGM in the early ‘40s. Five years ago their goal started to find nourishment, first in readings in Michetti’s living room (“the first script was a mess,” said Michetti), then three years ago in advanced readings at the Cast Theater’s Foundry Series.

But the specter of AIDS hovered over the Cast Theater. First Ted Schmitt, the Cast founder and its guiding light, was struck down by AIDS and died last June just as his creative partner, Diana Gibson, who took over the theater, had given the go-ahead on a full-length production of “Babes.” Gibson went on to co-produce last October’s opening (which Shucker also had to miss), with the addition of an outside party: Jeff Biddinger, whom Michetti brought in to help finance the show.

It’s an expensive venture for a small house. The weekly rent for the show at the Matrix is $2,500. Sawyer said the run at the Cast wound up costing $16,000, of which $8,000 was recouped. Sawyer laughed and said that so far he, Michetti and Shucker, who are equal partners in a profit-sharing formula, have each made $300 on the show to date.

“But this is a natural movie, you wait and see,” said Sawyer, whose enthusiasm is infectious. “We have had nibbles from an Off Broadway theater, and the Westwood Playhouse wanted us if we could come have up with $50,000. That’s the way theaters work. You get the house if you come with money.”

He credited his musical book about adolescent stars at a World War II-era studio as being inspired by a real Hollywood casting school of the day called the Meglin School for Child Stars.

“I also love that era. Years ago I saw a Feiffer cartoon that ended ‘I don’t want my life/I want my MGM life.’ I never forgot that.”