IT CUTS BOTH WAYS

NEIL SIMON has succinct advice for anybody who might be thinking about writing the book for a Broadway musical: “Don’t do it.”

“A musical is always in trouble,” says the playwright who not only wrote the books for a slew of hit musicals (“Little Me,” “Sweet Charity,” “Promises, Promises”) but also came to the aid of many others. “What is it that Larry Gelbart once said? ‘If Hitler is alive, I hope he’s out of town with a musical.’ ”

But where Hitler might fear to tread, a platoon of new writers is rushing in, many of whom first scored in a seemingly disparate area: series television. Included among the new recruits are Jeffrey Lane (“Mad About You”), who wrote the now-touring hit “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”; Ken Levine (“Frasier”), co-writer of “The 60’s Project,” which just had a tryout run at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut; David Lee (“Frasier,” “Everybody Loves Raymond”), who is adapting the novel “Like Water for Chocolate” for the musical stage; and Cheri and Bill Steinkellner (“Cheers”), who have two musicals in the pipeline: “Princesses,” which premiered last year in Seattle, and “Sister Act,” which bows at the Pasadena Playhouse beginning next month. Even “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are getting in on the act, collaborating on a musical with Jeffrey Marx and Robert Lopez of “Avenue Q” Tony-winning fame.

By all accounts these are relatively sane folks who, it seems, hardly need to take on one of the most thankless tasks in theater. In its most rudimentary form, the book of a musical is the dialogue between songs. But it often includes the all-important tone and concept of the show and can be the inspiration for songs.

Unlike in most writing, a book writer does not get to pen the climax of a scene -- that action comes in the songs, which a book writer must serve above all. With that responsibility, “book trouble” is often the first complaint to be aired as a show is being developed. And when the critics weigh in, it is often the first element to be blamed and the last to be praised -- if it is mentioned at all. Consequently, the short list of veteran book writers is, well, short -- Terrence McNally, Tom Meehan, Arthur Laurents, Joe Masteroff, Gelbart and ... ?

Not surprisingly, desperate Broadway producers are raiding other disciplines, particularly with musical comedies now riding high again. But why, if you’re a rich, Emmy-winning writer, would you invite this kind of trouble into your life and career? And what could this new infusion mean for the future of the art form itself?

“I don’t think it’s ‘thankless.’ ‘Unsung’ is better,” says Winnie Holzman (“thirtysomething,” “My So-Called Life”), whose phenomenal success -- and sizable royalties -- as the book writer for “Wicked” may have, at least in part, inspired her peers. “There is a humility to it because you’re not in charge. You don’t write the arias, you make them possible. I found the experience ... well, enjoyed would not be appropriate. I found it immensely challenging and fulfilling.”

Then, perhaps recalling the rough road for the Oz-inspired musical, she adds with a laugh, “I just feel really glad that I got through it alive.”

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Not entirely new ground

FOR several members of this freshman class, the challenge is even keener when compared with that of their proven field -- although pressures there, they say, have risen thanks to the megahit status of shows such as “Friends” substantially upping the ante. “This is not a golden age of television comedy. It’s not as much fun anymore,” says Levine, who enthusiastically responded when a friend, Janet Brenner, invited him to collaborate with her on “The 60’s Project,” which uses the pop hits and seminal events of the decade to tell a coming-of-age tale. “I’ve dabbled in the field a little bit and always wanted to write a musical, so I thought, ‘What a fab opportunity.’ ”

Though the conventions of the musical were unfamiliar in many respects, Levine was not entirely out of his element. In television he learned to write on demand, readying scripts to be performed before a live audience on, say, a Friday night, then rewriting furiously for a Monday taping. “It was invaluable just in terms of learning craft,” he says. “You have to fix things right away and you need to really think of brevity.”

That’s even more true of such a highly concentrated form as a musical. “You write a normal dialogue scene and it’s two pages,” he says. “You write a book scene, and it has to be four well-chosen lines.”

Nor can you rely on a camera for the emotional shorthand of a close-up as you can in television. Moreover, what is written must play to the back of the balcony, at which distance the facial expressions of the actors are practically nil. Generally speaking, a song in the musical can take the place of the close-up. “In TV, you can say a lot without words, and that was the biggest difference for me, finding other ways to express what was going on between the characters,” Holzman says.

Lane, observing that his work on “Mad About You” was not unlike writing one-act plays, says that he prepped for “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” by rereading the books for such classic musicals as “Carousel” and “Guys and Dolls” as well as poring over the liner notes and plot synopses on original cast albums. “That gave me the structure of these musicals. You look at the bench scene in ‘Carousel,’ ” he says, referring to characters Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan and the song “If I Loved You.” “They accomplish in eight minutes what some writers can’t do in two hours. It taught me how important it was for exposition to be revealed through the specifics of the characters and their desires. But in doing that, how you better be economical and you better serve the song.”

There was less on-the-job training for husband-and-wife team Cheri and Bill Steinkellner, who before they found fame writing “Cheers” were founding members of the Groundlings and had dabbled in Los Angeles theater, scoring a hit in 1981 with “Our Place,” a takeoff on Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” Most helpful for their eventual return to theater was their improvisational shows at the Cast Theatre during which the audience would suggest a title for a musical and the company would invent the show on the spot. This was the genesis for “Jailbirds on Broadway,” their only musical credit when in 2001 Disney put them together with lyricist David Zippel for an animated musical feature film, “Teacher’s Pet.” Zippel in turn invited the Emmy-winning couple to write the book for “Princesses,” a musical about hip, spoiled boarding school girls putting on a show. The Broadway-bound “Princesses,” however, hit a roadblock in Seattle when critics sent up a warning flag that has been raised over other musicals penned by TV writers -- that it was, according to the Seattle Times review, “glib.”

Part of the problem, according to Bill Steinkellner, was the glacial pace at which changes can be instituted in a musical because every aspect is so closely interrelated. “If a joke wasn’t landing in ‘Cheers,’ you immediately changed the joke,” he says. “But here the actors wanted to work with lines for two weeks because they’ll be saying the same thing night after night.”

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That guiding hand

IF the Steinkellners felt at all lost during “Princesses,” that might be par for the course -- at least according to Holzman. “You’re in the dark much of the time,” she says. “By definition that’s true of all writing. But because a musical has so many different moving parts, it seems like it can be all the more confusing and so easily destroyed. It feels very vulnerable.”

During the rough periods, many novice writers turn to the most experienced member on the team for support. In “Wicked,” that was veteran composer Stephen Schwartz (“Pippin,” “Godspell”), who had brought Holzman in on the project on the strength of an early musical she had written, “Birds of Paradise.” Levine’s support came from the show’s director, Richard Maltby Jr. (“Ain’t Misbehavin’ ”), while Lane relied on “Scoundrels” composer David Yazbek (“The Full Monty”).

Cheri Steinkellner says “Sister Act” composer Alan Menken acted as genie and reality check for them. “We’d hear a new song and go through the roof; he’d just smile and shrug,” Cheri says of the composer of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Little Shop of Horrors.”

“When it works, it’s just the most fun that you can have,” Bill Steinkellner says, with a laugh. “And then if it doesn’t work, we could be more disappointed than the audience because we will have had real dreams dashed. I’ll just say, ‘Well, you should’ve been at the reading.’ ”

The inexperience of these writers may account for the fact that most of the books heretofore have been conventional, even old-fashioned. There have been few postmodern winks at the audience, despite the breaking of the fourth wall in “Scoundrels.” “We thought we were being Pirandellian,” Lane says, “but some critics just thought we were being crappy.”

For the touring production, Lane has taken out some self-referential bits. “I just got bored with it,” he says. That, he adds, is another advantage over TV: A musical is a living organism with which you can continue to tinker. Holzman also tweaked “Wicked” for its London bow. “Rewriting is what the process is all about,” she says. “The hard part, the elegant part, the arduous part is how to be revelatory and brief at the same time -- that separates the men from the boys -- not to be sexist about it. It’s much more effective if it’s eloquent, and it takes a lot of writing to get to eloquent.”

Does that mean she’s writing another musical? “The answer,” she says, after a pause, “would be a no. For all the reasons listed above. ‘Wicked’ has been a huge learning experience, but I’m hardly an expert. There are other things.... I’m writing a film. And what this whole experience has taught me is just how mysterious the whole process is. You need a lot of luck.”