The Show Goes On for a True Believer

When director-choreographer Susan Stroman levels her blue eyes at you and says, “Musical theater is such a life force for me,” you believe her.

You believe her because she has managed to ride that personal credo to the pinnacle of theatrical success. She has won Tony Awards as choreographer for “Crazy for You” and the revival of “Show Boat,” and last year she garnered raves from the British critics for her dances in Trevor Nunn’s revival of “Oklahoma!” at the Royal National Theatre. This season, she is represented with the smash hit dance-play “Contact” (a triptych of stories told through dance that also marks her directorial debut) and the upcoming revival of “The Music Man.”

But you also believe her because you sense that Stroman is holding onto the redemptive power of theater as a life raft in what has clearly been the most turbulent period in her 40 years.

Last October, as she was besieged by well-wishers at the opening night party of “Contact,” her husband of four years, director Mike Ockrent, lay dying. Two months later, he succumbed to leukemia at age 53, robbing Broadway of a talent that had shepherded such hits as 1987’s “Me and My Girl” and “Crazy for You,” the 1992 Tony winner for best musical. Her loss, of course, was incalculable.

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Stroman’s emotional roller coaster of the last year is not immediately apparent when one meets her at the Neil Simon Theatre, where “The Music Man,” starring newcomer Craig Bierko and Rebecca Luker (“The Sound of Music”), is set to begin previews this week before an opening on April 27. Sitting behind a director’s station in the middle of the orchestra, she is reassuringly calm, her trim dancer’s body swathed in a silk pantsuit, her blond tresses tucked under the ubiquitous baseball cap.

The theater itself is abuzz with stagehands drilling and hammering into place facades of Meredith Willson’s fabled River City, Iowa, in 1912 America. Prominent is the train on which that scoundrel Professor Harold Hill rides in to try to hoodwink its starchy citizens with his visions of marching bands and a “spurious” think system. Crowded into the wings, aisles and even the lobby of the Neil Simon are thousands of props, including, of course, bushels of corn.

“Corny,” too, is the adjective that may readily come to mind in thinking of “The Music Man,” the mainstay of community theaters and high schools since it bowed on Broadway in 1957 and went on to beat “West Side Story” for the Tony Award as best musical.

“Sometimes these productions can make it seem cartoonish, too cute, too pink and green and yellow,” says Stroman, who herself played Zaneeta, the Mayor’s daughter, at the Candlelight Community Theatre in Wilmington, Del., near where she grew up. “On the first day of rehearsal, I told the actors, ‘Get rid of any images of “The Music Man” you’ve ever had. This is a real town with people with individual back stories and real relationships to each other. The comedy will come out of a real place, not out of parody.’ ”

With a sly smile, she adds that the slow-developing relationship between frosty Marian the Librarian and the professor is a more mature story than one usually sees in the theater. “Remember, Harold Hill is a con man,” she says, “and you’re rooting for a con man to win, which isn’t usual musical theater fare.”

Also unusual is the overriding rhythmic importance in “Music Man,” quite innovative for its day, from the salesmen’s opening “talk-song” of “Rock Island” to Hill’s percussive “Trouble” (as in “right here in River City”) to the ladies art club’s “Pickalittle” (as in cheep-cheep-cheep, talk-a-lot, pick-a-little-more).

“The whole show is based on pitch and the rhythm and sound of the traveling salesmen and the people of Iowa,” says Stroman. “And my signature--whether it’s choreographing for the Martha Graham Company or the New York City Ballet or doing a Broadway musical--is always rhythmic. This town of stubborn, narrow-minded Iowans comes to life with music and dance, and the show’s arc is choreographic. They start out stiff and proper, and by the second act, they’re dancing with great abandon after Harold Hill’s done with them.”

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As she did with “Oklahoma!” Stroman has received permission from the respective estates to develop dance arrangements, which she says should provide a new gloss on the old chestnut and give her a new emotional vocabulary to enhance the musical.

Another crucial rhythmic element was the casting of Harold Hill, who was memorably played by Robert Preston in both the original stage version as well as the successful 1962 film adaptation. The producers delayed the revival for months in hopes of snagging a big name, and throughout the process, such box-office draws as Steve Martin, Kevin Kline, Alec Baldwin and Patrick Swayze were bandied about as prime candidates.

In the end, however, the intimidating mantle of Preston’s classic performance fell on the shoulders of Craig Bierko, a tall, relatively unknown hunk with minor film credits (“The Long Kiss Goodnight”) and occasional television appearances (“Ally McBeal,” “Mad About You”).

“They really wanted to find a star, and we auditioned so many. But I told the producers, we need to go with a guy who has the chops to get through ‘Trouble in River City,’ ” Stroman says. “And Craig had a complete command of the language, perfect diction and pitch and power, that the others didn’t have. He almost speaks ‘Trouble’ in a Shakespearean way. And he’s not bad to look at, either. He came back three times and really earned the part.”

Hill, of course, is a prime purveyor of Stroman’s philosophy of unlocking the blocked emotions through music and dance. That is a common theme in all her work, including the last and flashiest part of “Contact” in which Boyd Gaines, playing a suicidal advertising executive, enjoys a reversal of fortune through his late-night encounter with a mysterious, sexy woman in a yellow dress in a pool-and-dance hall.

“Contact,” Stroman says, stemmed from her restless curiosity about the lives of people she sees on the streets and in bars and restaurants, imagining short stories in her head about them. Her inspiration for “Music Man” came from Willson’s script, namely the exchange between Hill and Winthrop, Marian’s younger speech-impaired brother in which he asks the professor whether there really is a band. And Hill responds, “I always think there’s a band.”

“If you’re in the theater, there’s always a band,” Stroman says. “Music is not a relaxing entity for me because no matter what kind of tune I hear, standard, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, or classical, I always imagine hordes of people dancing. I’m a real example of sugar plum fairies dancing in my head. I’m always hearing a band. I’ve heard bands all my life.”

Indeed, Stroman’s background suggests that she was destined to direct and choreograph “The Music Man.” Not only was her father a salesman of instruments and appliances, but he was also a dedicated music lover and pianist who played at home for hours. She grew up playing beneath the grand piano in the Stroman home to strains of Kern, Gershwin and Rodgers & Hammerstein.

“All these shows are in my bones, very much a part of me,” she says. “Whenever anybody has come to me with something like ‘Show Boat’ or ‘Oklahoma!,’ I know most of those songs from my father.”

Stroman got the bug when a touring version of “Seesaw” came to the Wilmington Playhouse and “a tall drink of water” named Tommy Tune came out in clogs and led a chorus line of girls festooned with balloons. The combination of “a great love story” and lots of choreography conspired to induct her into show business. She came to New York and toured in the original productions of Bob Fosse’s “Chicago” and the revue “Sugar Babies.”

Her first big break came when director Scott Ellis hired her to choreograph a revival of “Flora, the Red Menace” and later the 1991 Kander & Ebb revue “And the World Goes Round.” Stroman has since been drawn, she says, to romantic stories, particularly those that succeed against the odds, such as in “The Music Man,” “Oklahoma!” and “Contact” with all their varying philosophical hues of light and darkness.

“To have ‘Music Man’ and ‘Contact’ running at the same time really does expose all the various sides of me: the darkness of ‘Contact’ and the . . . well, let’s just put it this way, if Professor Harold Hill had been in ‘American Beauty,’ Kevin Spacey’s character would never have been killed,” she says with a laugh, referring to the darkly satiric Oscar-winning movie.

Charlie, the anvil salesman who threatens to expose Harold Hill, may be about as rough as it gets in Willson’s sunny “Music Man.” But Stroman can still appreciate the darker textures in the dramatic literature. She grows pensive when a different salesman is brought into the conversation, Willy Loman, the tragic protagonist of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” “That’s a very emotional play for me because of my father,” says Stroman, adding that her father, 85, is now retired. Her mother died five years ago, shortly after the couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

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“Funny thing about ‘Music Man,’ ” she adds, “is that in 1912, it was the beginning of the end for the traveling salesman because Woolworth’s and other department store chains were just beginning to make their appearance in America. So Harold Hill’s decision to settle down is a good one because things would have gotten really sparse for him.”

And between the philosophical poles of say, “Death of a Salesman” and “The Music Man,” where does she personally locate herself? She repeats the question and looks away as her eyes begin to cloud with tears. “My nights are unbearable and my mornings are unbearable,” she says, pausing in a futile effort to maintain her composure. She looks around her. “Thank God, I have this place to come to.” Stroman breaks down and cries softly.

“I’m sorry,” she says after regaining her composure. “I loved Mike very much.” She adds with a touch of bitterness. “I just don’t know why he was picked.”

The couple met working together on the hit “Crazy for You” but Stroman said that throughout the experience Ockrent was the “oh-so-perfect English gentleman.” She had no inkling that he harbored romantic feelings for her until on a return trip to New York, he called to ask her out on a date. “I thought, ‘Why not? We’re already good friends,’ ” she recalls. They had a romantic dinner at a riverside cafe in Brooklyn with a dazzling view of the lower skyline of New York, a scene begging to be scored to a Gershwin tune.

“Mike taught me so much about the theater, about life,” Stroman says. “He was so highly romantic. He really knew how to embrace life, to seize and be present in the moment, that was what he was about. To have a hit show called ‘Contact’ about making contact is just so strangely peculiar because I couldn’t have thought of that had I not met Mike.”

The couple did have a favorite song, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” and indeed Stroman has all the work she can handle. She is very much in demand. She choreographed the Columbia film “Center Stage,” directed by Nicholas Hytner, which is about fledgling ballet dancers and is due to be released in May. On her agenda is the development of two new musicals that she says are making her apartment a hive of activity not unlike a Moss Hart play. (“My life really is like musical comedy,” she says.)

Next up is a musical adaptation of the comedy film classic “The Producers” with Mel Brooks writing the songs and lyrics. A reading of the musical, starring Nathan Lane in the role of the scheming Broadway producer created by Zero Mostel, is imminent. She is also developing a musical based on the Emile Zola novel “Therese Raquin,” with Harry Connick Jr. writing the songs for a story about an adulterous love affair that leads to murder and betrayal. “It’s kind of like ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice,’ ” she says. “It’s a very passionate story about what happens when love turns sour, about love that is irresponsible, love that is blind.”

The contrast to “Music Man,” of course, couldn’t be greater. But that’s the pleasure and the challenge for Stroman. Regardless of the subject matter, she has never broken faith with the premise that theater can change people’s lives. She saw it, standing at the back of theater at “Crazy for You,” watching couples put their arms around each other; “Contact,” she says, appears to have the same impact on the Vivian Beaumont’s audience. “I truly believe in the power of musical theater,” she says.

One hopes too that musical theater can change the lives of the people who work in it, that Stroman can someday transfigure the pain and hurt of the last year into a work of power and beauty. “I hope so too,” she says. “Theater’s never let me down yet.” *