Doing the Job Time and Again

Jack Viertel is the unsung king of theater hyphenates. As a former Los Angeles theater critic and dramaturge turned Broadway producer, he’s certainly played more roles in the theater than most.

And now he’s adding another persona to the list: Meet Jack Viertel, librettist.

Viertel’s official debut comes Thursday when the musical “Time and Again”--based on the Jack Finney novel, with book by Viertel and music and lyrics by Walter Edgar Kennon--opens at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre. The show, directed by Old Globe artistic director Jack O’Brien, is slated to open on Broadway in October.

The 47-year-old Viertel, who lives in New York with his wife and two teenage children, has been creative director at Jujamcyn Theatres since 1987. He spends most of his time finding and helping create new plays to fill the five Broadway houses that his company controls.

He was, in fact, the producer of “Time and Again” before he became one of the show’s creators. “On this show, I’m a librettist and a producer,” Viertel says. “That’s put me in a psychologically uncomfortable but relatively powerful position.”

Not only is Viertel wearing multiple hats, he’s in the odd circumstance of having to heed his own (or at least his fellow producers’) comments and criticism.

“I’m in the position for the first time in my life of receiving notes rather than giving them,” he says. “I’m very sympathetic to the note-giving side of this. I have to listen to them now because I spent all those years giving them.”

Fortunately, Viertel knows which of his guises is Jekyll and which is Hyde. “I don’t really see myself as a writer first and foremost,” he says. “Fundamentally I’m a producer.”

Raised in Connecticut, Viertel studied English at Harvard, from where he graduated in 1971. He then went to London for a year “for the fun of it,” where his roommates included Frank Rich, a future New York Times theater critic.

“Ostensibly,” Viertel says of his London days, “I was writing a novel.”

After six months, Viertel returned--along with the soon-to-be Linda Viertel to Cambridge. But you can’t go home again, nor back to your old college town.

“I didn’t want to be one of those people who didn’t leave Harvard Square after they graduated,” Viertel says. “So we went to L.A., putatively for nine months.”

The lure of Los Angeles was in large part that neither Viertel nor his wife had immediate family there. “I got interested in writing for the movies and she got a job teaching high school,” Viertel says. “We stayed 15 years by mistake.”

While writing screenplays, Viertel also began to work as a theater critic, initially for the Los Angeles Reader in 1978. He went on to become chief critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1980, serving also as president of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle in 1983-84.

After four years at the Herald, Viertel was promoted to arts editor, but the job didn’t suit him. “I realized with great horror that I was in the wrong business,” he says.

So, when Viertel got wind that the Mark Taper Forum’s dramaturge was leaving, he put in a call to Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson. “I had really slammed that theater around fairly regularly, and I thought [Davidson] would be wary,” Viertel says. “But quite the contrary . . . he offered me a job.”

“I liked his writing and hated his reviews because he used to beat us up,” Davidson says. “He did it with too much intelligence [though]. I thought, one less critic and one good dramaturge.”

Writing about the theater, however, hadn’t really prepared Viertel for this next phase of his career. “I came in with little knowledge of practical production work,” he says. “It was a scary situation.”

The next two years proved to be an education. Says Viertel: “I learned an awful lot about what I know about the theater from Gordon.”

During that time, Viertel was approached with yet another offer, this time by New York producer Rocco Landesman. “He called me basically because I had written this bad review of ‘Big River’ [when it was at the La Jolla Playhouse] that he thought had some useful things in it,” Viertel says.

Shortly thereafter, when Landesman took over as head of Jujamcyn, he hired Viertel. Since joining Jujamcyn in 1987, Viertel has been involved with such shows as “The Who’s Tommy,” “Angels in America,” “Guys and Dolls,” “Jelly’s Last Jam,” “Two Trains Running,” “The Secret Garden,” “I Hate Hamlet,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Gypsy” and “M. Butterfly.”

His most recent project is August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars,” which was seen in L.A. at the Ahmanson Theatre before its current Broadway run. And his position with Jujamcyn continues to develop as the company grows.

“Jujamcyn has evolved from being the third company on the block with the five least prestigious houses into being a fairly successful company,” Viertel says modestly. “I have to do less in terms of getting on the phone and more in terms of fielding inquiries.” Jujamcyn is co-producing “Time and Again” with the Old Globe and will bring it to a still-to-be-named Broadway house.

It was not, therefore, for lack of work that Viertel took on double duty for “Time and Again.”

The novel--which he first learned of as a possible musical from his brother Tom, who is also a Broadway producer-investor and the lead producer of “Time and Again”--tells the story of one Si Morley (played at the Globe by Howard McGillin) who, when drafted into a top-secret government experiment, is sent back in time to 1882 New York, where he finds love and intrigue.

Viertel knew right away which composer-lyricist he wanted for the project. “I had been looking, as a producer, for a project for Walter Edgar Kennon for years, ever since I was a dramaturge at the Taper,” he says. “I thought it would be perfect for him.”

Kennon has written musicals (“Herringbone,” “Feathertop”), scored film and television and his “Cantata: Dulce et Decorum Est” was performed at the prestigious Ojai Festival.

Clearly, Kennon’s versatility recommended him for the job. “I knew this would have to be both a modern and a period score,” Viertel says. “Kennon has a tremendous romantic heart.”

When Viertel brought “Time and Again” to Kennon, he learned that the composer had onceattempted to secure rights to the novel himself. So he had no trouble convincing Kennon to sign on.

Says Viertel: “Then came the issue of who was going to write the book.”

The initial plan for securing backing was for Kennon to write four or five songs on spec. But in order to present those songs at a showcase reading, there had to be some kind of narration to string the numbers together.

“We decided the best way to present the material would be for me to write little themes around the songs and a narrative synopsis,” Viertel says.

But when it came time for the backer’s audition, Viertel was in for a surprise. “At the end, the producers said, ‘You should write the book,’ ” he says. “I didn’t know if I could do it.”

Doubts notwithstanding, Viertel took on the challenge. “I didn’t really look at it as, ‘I’m totally out of my league,’ ” says Viertel, who had, during his L.A. years, adapted the Israeli play “Ghetto” as well as written “nine terrible screenplays, none of which ever got filmed, thank God.”

Even now though, with Broadway looming on the show’s horizon, he downplays his contribution. “I see this libretto to some degree as a piece of cabinet making,” Viertel says. “I’m trying to write the scenes to get to the songs.”

He’s also quick to acknowledge the tips he’s picked up from producing. “Having worked on all those musicals, I had some sense of how musical scenes got written,” Viertel says. “I had a lot of good models.”

Yet as much as his track record has proved his mettle, Viertel remains openly grateful for those models--and for the many opportunities he’s had during the last nine years to work with top-drawer theater talents.

“Every time I’ve been associated with something really extraordinary, I think that it’ll never get this good again,” he says. “[“Time and Again”] came along, and I found that [excitement] all over again.”

He wouldn’t mind writing another show, either. “This is the kind of fun a person should be allowed to have,” he says. “I’m sure there’s a great big punishment waiting for me.”

But ask Viertel about his plans, or any kind of master plan, and he defers to fate. “My life has been like a man who falls out of a window through a series of awnings: bang, bang, bang,” he says.

“I never planned to do any of this. I’m sure there are other things ahead. I’m willing to take it as it comes.”

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“TIME & AGAIN,” Old Globe Theatre, Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts, Balboa Park, San Diego. Dates: Tuesdays to Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Through June 9. Prices: $22-$38. Phone: (619) 239-2255.