| Dance Of The Vampires | |
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steven_stuart 03:56 am UTC 12/29/10 |
| I found the following article about the Broadway version of Dance Of The Vampires. I do not agree with everything that is said but it is very well written. I certainly can't remember a more detailed account of DOTV. Its quite interesting, if you have time to read it. I will add the link at the bottom of the page in case the whole thing doesn't come out. The article may have been written by Gibson (I will ask him) because the writer uses Ted Neeley as an avatar (he and Gibson are mates). Also, the author is called "Brother Marvin" (sounds familiar) and is able to write complex historical accounts (like Gibson). The article ends by mentioning that there is a new English language version of "Tanz" in the works (again Gibson). Oh and the writer is from Rhode Island (as is Gibson). Please read the article with an open mind. Even if you are one of those who have a problem with my friend Gibson. I don't even know if it was him for sure yet. He did not ask me to publish this. Elva sent it to me and told me that she found it very interesting apart from a few points that she disagreed with. "Let's start with the making of Tanz der Vampire, as it's a huge part of what enters the picture. In the early Nineties (I wanna say 1993), just as the trend of turning movies into musicals was beginning, Andrew Braunsberg, a former business partner of Roman Polanski who produced some of his films, was approached by Rudi Klausnitzer, head of Vereinigte Buhnen Wien (sort of an Austrian theater union). Klausnitzer suggested doing a musical adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire and felt Polanski would be the right match for the material as a director. (If you check out the earliest articles on Tanz at Playbill Online, some of them still seem to think the project was based on Rice's novel.) Braunsberg brought the idea to Polanski, who sort of figured, "Why should I waste my time? I already did a film on vampires!" I refer of course to Dance of the Vampires (referred to in America as The Fearless Vampire Killers), his cult hit in Europe and generally disregarded spoof of the vampire genre in America. It was at that particular moment that realization dawned - screw someone else's material, we have our own property! Klausnitzer had no trouble with this change of material. Polanski didn't know German theater talent from Adam, however, so with Klausnitzer's help, a team was gradually assembled from the top people in European theater. One of the first pieces in place was Michael Kunze as librettist. The team reached out to Boublil and Schonberg, among others, for the composing slot, as they wanted a traditional theater experience. However, Kunze (known for liking to marry a contemporary style with his works) decided in his mind it had to be a rock composer. He and the VBW team scoured the entertainment community and were approached by Jim Steinman, who quickly proved to be perfect for the job - he was a big Polanski film nut, he was a Grammy-winning rock composer with roots in theater, he'd always thought vampires would be the ideal subject for an opera or a musical, he loved the idea of working in Austria (home of personal hero Richard Wagner), and on a more ironic note, his personal lifestyle reflects that of a vampire (normally, he sleeps during the day; his nickname is "Prince of Darkness"). On top of all that, Jim was hungry for a new theater project; he'd always been tired of being known mainly for his work with Meat Loaf, and his first try at getting back into theater in several years, Whistle Down the Wind (with Andrew Lloyd Webber), had sputtered to a stop in its D.C. tryout. He was ready and willing to work on the new show, in part to satisfy his long-term desire to write a vampire musical; in the Eighties, he'd started and abandoned a musical treatment of Nosferatu, from which "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was spawned. Initially, Polanski on one side and Kunze/Steinman on the other didn't see eye to eye. Polanski wanted a spoof like his film (which satirized the vampire film genre with tongue planted firmly in cheek). Steinman recalls his first meeting with Polanski, at which Roman insisted: "No rock and roll--I don't want that. I want it to be like Disney. I want it to go 'Booooooo!' and then the kids laugh." Eventually, however, Steinman and Kunze tag-teamed him and convinced him a slightly more sardonic rock musical was the way to go. Kunze argued that a spoof of the film's type, with no discernible protagonist, wouldn't work on stage, that you had to have realistic characters the audience could identify with and not just vampire film stereotypes. Steinman did his part by adapting some of his catalogue (as he has frequently done over the years in the rock and pop world as a composer) to Kunze's initial outline, to show Polanski how it would work. The numbers developed at that time included "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as love duet, "Carpe Noctem" (which had its origin as an unused submission for the soundtrack of Batman Forever in 1995), "Ewigkeit" (the melody for which existed since the Seventies, where it was used in many less-known Steinman musicals and as the overture to Meat Loaf's early concerts), "Die Unstillbare Gier" (drawn from "Objects in the Rear View Mirror..." on Bat Out of Hell II), and the Act II finale (which of course was a retread of "Tonight is What it Means to Be Young," from the film soundtrack to Streets of Fire). Ultimately, Polanski conceded, "I don't know anything about theater. I make films. You [Steinman and Kunze] do what you want." From there, as Jim and Roman did not speak German, Kunze made the best of the rest of his work, writing his first fully English libretto to accommodate the two. Steinman, understanding the English language better as a native speaker, then went in and helped Kunze revise the English versions of the lyrics as necessary. From there, Kunze adapted the piece to his native German. As for the score itself, Steinman is a notorious procrastinator and recycler of melodies, not that either of the two are necessarily bad things. Finally, he had a month left to write the score and finished it in a mad rush, necessitating a lot of recycling (roughly 70% of the final score, even in Tanz, was not original material). The writing process was not exactly untroubled; Steinman seemed to be infatuated with the idea of writing a "serious" vampire musical, while by comparison Kunze's thrust was still rather spoofy, albeit in a comedic manner that was less broad and slapstick than standard comedy. Gradually, they managed to arrive at a middle ground: a serio-comic piece with touches of The Rocky Horror Show, Phantom and Fiddler on the Roof. Casting and rehearsals proceeded as normal, and when the show opened October 4, 1997 at the Raimund Theatre, it was very much the show the creators wanted to make. A year later, in March 1998, the official cast album was released, produced by Steinman and long-time mixing/producing associate Steven Rinkoff. At the same time, some of the demos featuring the late Steve Barton singing the English lyrics to the material were recorded and filed away for...reference. Aside from some cuts for the Stuttgart production and the addition of "Starker als wir sind" in 2000, the show essentially stayed the same as it always had at this time. In 2000, when the relatively finalized version of the show opened in Stuttgart, it met with unparalleled success. In fact, it was responsible for pretty much saving (momentarily anyway) Stella, the organization that put it on. Soon, other European producers were begging for it, which led to the 2000 opening of the Estonian version, Vampiiride Tants, in Tallinn. This loosely staged concert version starred a 15-year-old Nele-Liis Vaiksoo as Sarah, and the role basically launched her career in Estonian pop. Back in 1997, Broadway producers had been circling the Raimund Theatre with dollar signs in their eyes. However, they were unwilling to risk investment money on the show unless it had some kind of a drawing card built in, something that would guarantee audiences for the show. To the average viewer, this may seem kind of a folly, considering the show already had an Oscar-winning director and a Grammy-winning songwriter attached, each with several worldwide hits under their belt, but when one looks at recent seasons on Broadway, one is forced to admit that sometimes this may not be enough (case in point: for Elton John, of all people, to sell another musical after Lestat, he had to do an adaptation of Billy Elliot). It was at this time that Jim Steinman tentatively approached Michael Crawford with a view towards his appearance in the English production. And he'd picked the perfect role for him -- it had a comically foreign accent, a show-offy high note, some good bits of business, and was the comic centerpiece of the show. I speak, of course, and surprisingly enough, of Professor Abronsius. Of course, Steinman didn't say the name of the character - he assumed it would be obvious to Crawford when he saw the show. Crawford went to see the show, but he made an error that ultimately proved fatal. Not only had he listened to his agent's description of the part, it had gone in one ear and out the other, stored subconsciously in his memory banks. When he saw the show, he naturally assumed they were trying to cash in on his Phantom success by offering him the role of Krolock. Upon seeing how similar the role was to Erik, Crawford was reticent about appearing. With the Stuttgart opening's massive success, Jim's manager, David Sonenberg, and Andrew Braunsberg (Polanski's partner), began exploring the possibilities of bringing the show to Broadway. It is at this point that we must begin a character study of Jim Steinman. He likes to point in his playbill bios that although he is a successful composer and producer in the rock and pop market, he began as a frustrated theater denizen. In 1969, Jim wrote a three-hour rock musical called The Dream Engine to satisfy his Independent Study at Amherst College. From that day on, he tried desperately to make it in theater, but he was never able to do so with his own original pieces. Rhinegold, More Than You Deserve (the show in which he met Meat Loaf and launched a hit team), and Neverland (his update of The Dream Engine, now explicitly developing on themes barely explored in the original, a futuristic sci-fi rock and roll take on the Peter Pan story, which featured many of the songs that became the Meat Loaf album Bat Out of Hell), all either never made it out of the development stage, or flopped outright. Part of the problem was Jim's love of total creative control, and while he's a brilliant composer and an okay lyricist, he refuses to admit that his book work is absolutely incomprehensible, with some good dialogue and jokes sprinkled in. Reading the scripts to either Neverland or The Dream Engine, both posted on his website, will bear this out. Don't get me wrong, he can tell a good story, and one can see this when they read the articles where he expounds on the plot of his pieces, but when he tries to expand on it, it never fails to make no sense. This often leads to creative issues. Jim in fact ran More Than You Deserve, which hadn't even started as his own project, into the ground by expanding a play with music into a full-blown musical filled with a lot of sequences that, for better or worse, whether intentional or not, plumbed the depths of bad taste. In any case, seven years working for Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival had done nothing for him, and (seemingly) everything for Joe. He couldn't seem to get break, and this carried into his pop career, where the artists he's worked with have become more known for his hits than he himself is, with the exception of a niche audience who worship his work. Finally, Jim had a hit musical somewhere, anywhere, and it stood a chance of going to Broadway. He could win the Tony he craved. He could achieve the acclaim that he had so longed for in the theater world. And most importantly, he could bridge the gap between theater and rock and roll, a quasi-Messianic mission he'd always tried to achieve with his records and musicals alike. He should have been happy, but there was an innate need for total creative control knocking at the door, and there were niggling doubts at the back of his mind about how people would see his contribution. In Vienna and elsewhere, when the reviews came out, there was always praise for Jim's score, but the critics also didn't fail to point out that the second act, aside from two or three tunes, was nothing more than a reprise of themes and motifs established in the first act. One critic even suggested Steinman ran out of steam. Knowing what we do now about the circumstances under which he composed the score, this is not surprising. But it still rankled Steinman that it had been pointed out. And he felt this needed to change. One of the first problems to tackle in an English translation was coming up with a title other than Tanz der Vampire. Several were reported during the time Steinman worked on the English version - Dance With the Vampires, Dances with Vampires, The Dance of the Vampires, and variants thereof. When translated directly into English, Tanz der Vampire means Dance of the Vampire; more colloquially, this would be Vampire Dance, or more to the point, Vampire Ball. Apparently though, this slipped everyone's mind until the 2007 Hungarian production, and Dance of the Vampires was the title chosen. But this was the least problematic issue associated with the creative process. Steinman had hoped to see Vampires on Broadway during the 1998/99 season, but it didn't happen. After the revised version premiered in Stuttgart, an opening date was tentatively set for fall 2000. Regardless, things had a way of not working themselves out. In this case, directly or indirectly, it was Polanski's fault. An illicit rendezvous had caused him to flee the country thirty years ago; he couldn't return to take the reins on the show. No matter what or how often they tried to find a loophole to allow him in long enough to work on the show (one tactic included getting a bunch of Hollywood notables to pester the District Attorney's office), he was not coming back in. Sadly enough, as we shall see, this was the beginning of the end where the show was concerned. With Polanski, the show's prime mover in other incarnations, out of the picture, Steinman had free rein to begin the era of change. Now, in his quest for ultimate creative control, Jim went through the script and began pointing out things to Kunze that "wouldn't work" on an American stage, which were really things where he could substitute his own ideas. For example: "People are puritans in America. You can't get away with a song called 'God is Dead' on stage. If you want to sell the show over there, it's got to be more American." (The truth? Steinman, with his love of wordplay, had been playing with the phrase "God has left the building" since the early Nineties, and felt this was a good opportunity to include the phrase in a hit musical.) Gradually, he talked the German side of the table into thinking that he and his manager understood theater in New York better than they did, and that they knew what was best for the show. In New York, shows are four times as expensive as they are in Europe. Nobody wanted to make a risky gamble. If Jim understood it, let him have control, they thought. What's the worst that could happen? (God, I wish this didn't seem like such a cliche moment, but there it is.) At first, Jim was on the right track. He had the English translation of what was basically the same show in Germany, and he carefully blotted it, making very few changes. Maybe some songs were cut and replaced with dialogue here and there, and maybe some dialogue was made more comprehensible in English, but nothing major. Essentially, this was the same show he and Kunze had written, and it would be the bait to net the big fish, to say nothing of ensuring that the credit "Book, Music and Lyrics by Jim Steinman" would finally grace a Broadway marquee, and he would have credit for reinventing the sights and sounds of Broadway itself. As for the set-up of the show itself, there were no surprises here either. Steinman assigned himself the role of director (big surprise), never mind that he'd never directed a musical in his life and might just barely have a clue how to do it from having worked on music videos. Andrew Braunsberg would still retain a position as executive producer to ensure things were going well. It was Sonenberg's job to find other producers to help foot the bill. And so things began in earnest. Finding producers for this show with Jim at the head of creative control (and thereby able to blow the budget sky-high, as creative-wise, Jim starts at "over the top" and goes up from there) was not an easy task, especially for the business set-up Jim had in mind. But to explain that, first I need to explain roughly how financing a musical works in the modern age (or any age, for that matter). Investing in a musical is sort of like buying into a business on the stock market. When one does so, they buy a certain number of shares, and the amount of shares dictates how much of a say the investor has in how things are run at the office. If you own more shares than anyone else, you have what's called a controlling interest, meaning that you have the ability to potentially veto other decisions, over-ride certain things, crack the whip, whatever euphemism you want to use. Point being, you have a certain degree of control. In the musical set-up, the person with a controlling interest is usually the first person to have said, "I think that's a great idea for a show, I want in," and actually put down a significant amount of money. They're what is called "the lead producer." Usually, they will also represent the combined interests of the other producers and investors (sort of like the chairman of the board in a business setting). Being a man who likes to think that his shit doesn't stink (to use a blunt metaphor), Jim Steinman does not like the idea of a "lead producer," because they're someone who can out-vote him on his more outlandish ideas. So he uses a dated financial set-up for his current professional shows that he thinks will guarantee his creative control. It might have worked on paper in the Seventies or Eighties, a time that Jim sometimes seems to be stuck in both musically and mentally, but in today's economy and legal climate, to say nothing of ambitious people who would take advantage of the loopholes this plan afforded them, it wouldn't work, and it didn't, as we shall soon see. The set-up goes something like this: The show is divided up into shares, the conventional way. Unconventionally, however, they are each extremely small shares. Once sold to each producer, be it a single person or a production company in itself, it's too small for some of these guys to make it a major part of their working day, but small enough for them to want to hang on to it just in case the show goes big. In short, spread around between enough producers, nobody owns enough of the show to say, "This is what we're doing!" and make it stick, leaving Jim in the breach holding the bag and reigning from the throne while everyone else mills around afraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. Those of you reading this who know happened to DOTV will immediately understand why so much of what was going on managed to go on unchecked. In spite of their set-up which scared away many producers, people were still interested in a musical by Jim Steinman. Unaware of his theater past except perhaps for Whistle Down the Wind, they felt that anyone who composed those bombastic and overly dramatic hit songs for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Barry Manilow, Barbra Streisand, and others would only turn out liquid gold. The reading was set for the end of April, but before that was to come, David Sonenberg (Jim's manager of 25 years, and the closest thing to a lead producer the show had at the time) had to do his job, and bring the statistics to the table to be played with. One of the things Sonenberg brought to the table was market research. This is common with any new musical on Broadway; much of what appeals to an audience is decided as a result of research that tells the producers what the audience will want to see based on current trends in theater-going, what types of shows are selling and what aren't, what kind of sequences are getting great reviews and what aren't, etc. It's this sort of customer-driven thrust that has given many hit Broadway shows their most appealing moments. Unfortunately, it was not to do so for Vampires. After talking with test markets and critics, Sonenberg had come to the conclusion that while musicals adapting popular or cult-hit movies were in and would continue to be so for some time, sung-through musicals were dead on Broadway. The critics had fallen out of love with Euro-pop pieces, if they had ever been in love with them to begin with, thanks in no small part to the debacle that was the American production of Chess (a debacle that eerily presages Vampires' similar fate by two decades). So what was selling instead? The Producers. What David wanted was a musical comedy, closer to the spoofy tone of the original film than the serious, sensuous, Gothic piece that emerged in Europe. Says Steinman in retrospect, "We were told to put five jokes on every page." While this may not exactly be true, a more comic thrust was desired. To that end, Steinman attempted to engage the services of a dramatist who was more his style of comedy, someone who would be on his side. He thought he had found that someone in David Ives, the critics' darling at the time and the author of several popular Off-Broadway plays. While very funny, his plays bear a hint of issues buried beneath the surface, something that Steinman liked. Ives also had experience with musical libretti as resident adapter for Encores!, where he produced concert adaptations of about a dozen or more shows. His judicious editing style was legendary: "You have to make them two-thirds of their original length, but extract the essence." It helped that Steinman was already engaged to work with Ives on a project for Warner Bros.: Batman: The Musical. 70% of that project was completed when Steinman asked Ives to take a look at Vampires. Ives received free tickets for a performance in Stuttgart, which he and Jim attended. Upon seeing the show and being formally asked by Jim to join the project, Ives said "yes." The only thing left to add was a competent director, though no one dared tell Jim that, as he had illusions of directing the show himself. These illusions were fostered by some of his actions during the Vienna rehearsals, where Steinman and long-time associate Barry Keating strongly influenced the staging of the piece, making suggestions to Polanski who incorporated some and removed others, only for Steinman and Keating to re-insert as much as they possibly could behind his back. That the staging in question had been either cut or re-structured in many places to fit with Polanski's established style later on failed to reach Steinman. Finally, Sonenberg managed to find a team interested in producing the show. Elizabeth Williams and Anita Waxman, later to found WaxWill Entertainment, were a hit-making team at the time, responsible for the Tony-winning revival of The Music Man and The Real Thing. Their lawyers strongly advised them against it, but the lure of Steinman's name and musical style pulled them in. They only had two requests: that a director be found, and that the book be re-shaped into a somewhat consistent form. They had in mind John Caird to do both. Caird, late of Jane Eyre, was very interested in working on the show, but Steinman refused to relinquish his position as director. Finally a compromise was arranged: Caird would help with the book, and Steinman would remain in place as co-director with Caird. However, one snag (at least to Steinman and his team) was made manifest: Sonenberg was asked to leave the producing team, or at least remove his billing. Though this wasn't technically true, Williams and Waxman felt it a conflict of interest for Steinman's own manager to be heading up the show. And how were they supposed to get their point of view in? (Little did they know, sadly enough, that they weren't supposed to have one.) On April 27, 2001, a reading was held, a cumulative presentation of the progress made thus far. The cast included Bertilla Baker (Rebecca), Steve Barton (Krolock), Sarah Uriarte Berry (Sarah), Max von Essen (Alfred), Ken Jennings (Koukol), Tom Alan Robbins (Chagal), Kate Shindle (Magda), Jason Wooten (Herbert), and William Youmans (Abronsius). Speaking as an outside observer who came to the show late, I must say that as of the reading, the casting was terrific, and almost perfectly in line both with roles the actors played later (especially von Essen, who actually stayed on as Alfred in the final show, as did Wooten, as a chorus member and Herbert understudy), and with the original vision of the characters preserved in the European version, as was much of the show at that time. Yes, you read that right...Barton did the reading, reprising the role he originated. He had a verbal agreement that he would do the show, and Aris Sas was supposed to hop over the ocean as Alfred as well. It has been rumored that Steve Barton committed suicide, but no one knows the cause except to speculate about his bipolar disorder. Take note: Michael Crawford's hiring was first announced July 20, 2001. July 21, Steve was found dead. If there were a reason for suicide, your former co-star stealing your role might be it. But I'm getting ahead of myself, and speculating about the dead at that. Let us move on, shall we? The reading was successful. They set a rough date for the opening in early 2002, and it was agreed that a workshop production (more than likely featuring the same cast as the reading) would be staged in mid-May for theater owners. So far, the ship appeared to be sailing. The director who had made the show a success on the European continent wasn't present (as Steinman put it: "Roman [Polanski] directed it in Vienna, but he can't work here because of his legal problems [...] [h]e may be the first director who can't work over here because of a statutory rape charge"), but that didn't stop the show from having a reading under the helm of a competent team. With an introduction by Steinman that explained Vampires was a musical for people "who think musicals suck," the show was off and running. However, market research had dictated a new style for the show, one involving more broad humor, that made synchronizing new material with preset elements somewhat uneven. Steinman best describes this version of the show: "A lot of it [was] pure Mel Brooks, and a lot of it [was] Anne Rice [...] big [...] erotic [...] Wagnerian [...] with lots of humor." Adding to the discomfort of investors, the rehearsal studio in which they chose to hold the reading lacked air conditioning, a lacking that proved too distracting for some to get a fix on the show. Ultimately, however, the less than bright spots didn't hold a candle to the show's better moments -- one investor called the score's melodies "luscious" and "operatic." They set a rough date for the opening in early 2002, and it was agreed that a workshop production (more than likely featuring the same cast as the reading) would be staged in mid-May for theater owners to take a look and see if they wanted it. A show that had cost the equivalent of $7 million U.S. to stage in Europe came out to about a $10 million Broadway pricetag, due in no small part to union fees and the like, but so far, the ship appeared to be sailing. A creative team under Caird and Steinman was rapidly being assembled; the choreographer would be Daniel Ezralow, a talented young man with experience in both the pop and operatic worlds, most known for working with Julie Taymor on The Green Bird (and later to re-join her on the upcoming Spider-Man). Sue Blane was being signed to replicate her costumes from the Vienna and Stuttgart runs. William Dudley was on tap to create the sets once more. Aris Sas, the earnest young German lad who had originated the role of Alfred, was being sought to reprise it on American shores; Steinman had designs on making him a pop star. But just as quickly, the bottom dropped out, and like a game of dominoes, more began to fall. First, Waxman and Williams listened to their lawyers for the first time in a while. The lawyers had taken a close look at the financial set-up for DOTV, and saw big red warning signs flashing. For one, where the hell was the $10 million for this shindig going to come from? Surely Braunsberg, Sonenberg, or some of the European producers had fronted part of the flow, right? Well, as it turned out, there was a list of names, to which more had been added following the reading. But the list only seemed to be about names; indeed, the financial set-up was murky enough that many of these otherwise nameless people didn't seem to have actually put any money in, or very little if they had. It seemed the only people who'd paid for anything substantial this month in a manner that could be verified were Waxman and Williams themselves!Not wanting to be taken for a ride, they decided to wait it out and see if anyone else would actually put money down. During this time, a new draft of the script (dated May 10, 2001 in my copy) was completed; more book, but the music was still substantial. The biggest change, aside from lots and lots of dialogue, some shifted scenes and musical moments, and a more joke-y tone to the book, was a complete restructuring of the start of the first act. The show now opened on Sarah and her girlfriends picking mushrooms in a shadowy forest, singing a lullaby to soothe their frightened nerves. Then out came the vampires from the farthest reaches of the night in a dance sequence that screamed for Ezralow's creativity, in which rocks and tombstones levitated, and a giant coffin (in a move similar to the cover of Steinman's first record with Meat Loaf) broke out of the ground and rose into the sky like a bat out of hell. Out came Krolock, who sang "Gott ist tot" (now retitled "Original Sin" and drawing on Jim's initial pop lyrics to the melody) as a song of seduction. The show proper followed as fairly normal from then on, but with a still-uneven mix of bawdy (sometimes bizarre) humor and eroticism. The draft's humor ran the gamut from genitalia jokes to Beatles references. The right balance had not yet been found. (Little did they know at the time that it never would be.) Alfred, also, became a parody of the "lovesick student" trope of operetta; in his first scene, during what had become "Hey Ho Hey," he attempted to kill himself (comically, of course ) after being rejected by the woman he loved, only to be distracted from his manuever by Professor Abronsius, who drags the unwilling Alfred on a trip to the Carpathian mountains in search of vampires. Thus began the shift in Alfred's character from timid wannabe to cliche "vampire movie hero." Meanwhile, Steinman was growing agitated with the waiting game his producers were playing. He wanted the money to do it now. It was perfect! It couldn't possibly get better than it was! Waxman and Williams hesitated; they wanted changes. This wasn't easy with Steinman as the muscle on the show. Complained one insider at the time, "He has the final say on everything!" And Jim threw his weight around like a sumo wrestler; he vetoed Waxman and Williams on everything he possibly could. They wanted the show to go one way; Jim wanted his way or the highway. Publicly, he called them "terrific ladies"; privately, he complained till the cows came home. Finally, his manager Sonenberg discovered a loophole: with the slipshod producing structure, contracts had never actually been signed. They had, officially speaking, never come to an agreement on Waxman and Williams as producers. And before you can say "You're fired," Anita and Elizabeth found themselves out on their collective hindquarters. Waxman and Williams had received no calls, no word of warning. To be fair, they hadn't known what they were getting themselves into either. But they still thought they could save face with the public. In Michael Riedel's New York Post column, they announced in a story about the "alleged firing" that they were still on board. "There have been some disagreements, but every show has its bumpy road. This one may be having more bumps than others, but we are fully committed to it. We are prolific producers and we fully intend to continue our involvement in the show." Steinman, true to form, didn't return their calls. Before anyone knew what was happening, Sonenberg was back in as a producer. The theater community shook their heads in dismay, as they had every idea of what Jim was doing. Allowing a writer to act as his own producer can be as risky as letting an inmate run the asylum. Writer/producers often are unable to make the tough financial and creative decisions that are sometimes called for. When asked if he was doing this to achieve more creative control, Steinman said, "I will fight to the death for something I believe in, but I am in no way the behind-the-scenes producer. [...] I am part of a team. My most extreme fights are with David. He isn't a 'yes' man. He doesn't even approach being a 'considerate' man. Our relationship is a lot less like Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in The Producers than it is Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" Soon that relationship would prove to be the least beneficial to Steinman in his time of need. In writing this episode, I tried to invent or co-opt a proverb that could adequately explain what happens next. "What goes up, must come down" fit, but it didn't quite explain the situation. Finally, I arrived at this: "One train without brakes on a one-way track is bad enough. Two, headed straight for each other, is a massacre." In this case, one train was DOTV; the other was Michael Crawford's career. For a moment, let's take a brief look at Michael Crawford, shall we? Born Michael Patrick Dumble-Smith in Wiltshire, Crawford changed his name in honour of his favourite brand of cookies (I kid you not). As a teenager he took part in Benjamin Britten's educational musical Let's Make an Opera, and in the 1960s he starred in films such as The Knack and How I Won the War (now more famous for Beatle John Lennon's cameo appearance), as well as playing opposite Barbra Streisand in Hello Dolly! He was voted funniest man on television for his role as the hapless Frank Spencer in the sitcom Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. He spent three months at the New York Circus School in preparation for his role as American showman P.T. Barnum in the musical Barnum, which was seen by 2.5 million people in New York and London. And of course, in 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber cast him as the tragic anti-hero of The Phantom of the Opera, and this show arguably gave Lloyd Webber and producer Cameron Mackintosh one of their greatest hits. But where did Crawford go? Certainly not to another musical. While his recording and concert career was certainly lucrative, he didn't immediately try to follow up his Phantom success with another role in a legitimate musical. His next role was in 1994's EFX, a themed show at the MGM Grand. His contract was for two years, and worth $20 million a year. 700 performances later in 1996, Crawford had a hip injury, and his contract was over earlier than previously intended. After that, it almost seemed like no one wanted to risk a musical on him. He talked to Cam Mac (as Macintosh is affectionately referred to in many circles) about playing Darryl in The Witches of Eastwick, but his star salary forced Cam to look elsewhere. When The Producers geared up for its West End transfer, Crawford lobbied for the role of Max Bialystock, but Mel Brooks "didn't find him funny enough." Crawford didn't particularly care; he hadn't been looking forward to working with Lee Evans anyway. But not being able to land a job outside of scaring up work for himself on the touring circuit was getting to be troublesome. For the first time in a long time, Crawford counted himself lucky to get whatever gig he could; in this case, Disney wanted an album of their standards, and he was needed to sing Lloyd Webber ballads at a gala night in tribute to Steven Spielberg in L.A. If he wanted a new musical, he would have to prove he was capable of doing the job. And then, in July 2001, he remembered a musical he had been offered back in the late Nineties...wasn't it about vampires or something? He told his manager Mort Viner to find out if they still needed a lead. He was willing to talk. Meanwhile, over at "44th and Carpathia," as Ives had dubbed the Vampires camp, trouble was brewing. Without Waxman and Williams as producers, and with Steinman's manager installed firmly in place in what was technically the lead producer position, nothing was getting done. Investors were afraid to shell out money with Steinman effectively in the driver's seat. Being very assured their murky financial structure would work, Sonenberg had not come up with his share of the dough either. Steinman wouldn't have particularly cared about this, were it not for the fact that the musical was now pretty much stalled out-of-town without its 10 million. He could see his vaunted effort to "change Broadway forever" rapidly disappearing before his very eyes. When they got a call from Mort Viner saying Michael Crawford, a towering talent and perhaps the biggest box-office star in theatre, was now interested, they, too, were willing to talk. A big star meant investors would be willing to throw money at it. And so it was that DOTV as we now know it truly began. Steinman played it cool, hoping this would get Crawford interested. One of his big plans was to do a celebrity concept album of songs from the show, as he had done with Whistle Down the Wind prior to its West End run. Bette Midler, Bono, Mary J. Blige and Celine Dion were among the acts on the short-list for this album; if Steinman couldn't construct a musical, he at least still had his status as a Grammy-winning pop composer/producer to fall back on and pull celebrities together. One of the better moments from the Whistle Down the Wind album was West End theatre star Michael Ball performing The Man's haunting confessional number, "Unsettled Scores." Steinman asked Crawford an obvious question: would he care to do the vampire version of that number for the celebrity album? A demo was (apparently) recorded, and so the transition to Krolock from Abronsius began. The creative team began playing footsy with Crawford. Would he like to do the show? Maybe. Let's talk more about it. Meetings were held in London at the Dorchester Hotel. Crawford talked character development with John Caird, learned some of the songs with Steinman, and took a stab at the book with Ives. He also made it clear he wasn't coming cheaply; he wanted a "retirement package." In a deal that would make him one of the highest paid stars on Broadway, he would play Krolock for three years on Broadway, plus Los Angeles and London transfers, at the not-too-shabby pricetag of $30,000 a week. In the fine print, he also snuck in little tags about "creative control of his character." With no lead producer scrutinizing the contracts too closely, this slid right by, and Crawford's ridiculous figure was lauded by Steinman, who has a love of everything over-the-top and felt Crawford would be "worth every cent we can pay him." Announcements were made in Variety, the Bible of the entertainment industry. Auditions were announced, and a tentative opening was set for April 2002. The deal was signed. Crawford was in, and the musical was therefore on thin ice forever after, though no one knew it at the time. The reign of terror was about to begin... ...but suddenly, a very different rain of terror fell quite literally from the skies. At 8:45 AM, September 11, 2001, two hijacked airplanes hit the World Trade Center towers, and they came crumbling to the ground. Air travel was verboten for a while after. With Caird and Crawford based in London, and the rest of the contingent in NY, this made work on Vampires near impossible. Steinman's plan to sweep the Tonys by opening just before the cutoff date would not come to fruition. There was no way they would be able to pull it back together in time. The opening was postponed. It seemed the worst was over...or was it? After September 11, 2001, it looked like Dance of the Vampires, an otherwise promising show at the time, had been derailed. With half of the creative team based in London and the other half in NY, gripped by horror of air flight, the show didn't look like it was going to happen on time for April, so the opening had been postponed to October 2002, a time perhaps more in keeping with vampire material. It also seemed like enough time to raise $10 million. With Waxman and Williams gone, and investors pulling out like mad, Sonenberg (Jim's manager) and Braunsberg (representing the European interests) were the only two people holding it together. Braunsberg also had another Broadway property of his own, a revival of Larry Gelbart's Sly Fox starring Richard Dreyfuss, that he was trying to shop more avidly than Vampires, so really Jim's manager was the only cheerleader and fundraiser the show had, and needless to say, he could not do it alone. In fact, another postponement was forced on the show at this point simply because of that fact - to do it on his own, he needed another month. The opening was moved to November 2002. By November of 2001, midway through the revision process, the creative team had arrived at what I personally consider to be the best script the American version would ever have, a script that was largely gone by the time the final Broadway show opened. While it dispensed with much of the English recitative that was closer to the European material, it had a better balance of humor and seriousness. Familiar elements from the final Broadway show (such as Krolock's extended family, including the now-infamous Mme. von Krolock, etc.) are there, but much more toned down than their final counterparts. Among the more interesting unused ideas in the script, Act One ended with "Carpe Noctem" (with the final a capella verse replaced with Krolock's verse that closes "Vor dem Schloss" in the German version), and "Death is Such an Odd Thing" was moved to Act Two, replacing the former crypt scene for the most part. This script addresses many of the problems that even the show's fans have acknowledged; it improves the pacing, it increases the character development, little time is wasted on subplots that go nowhere, etc. The script's one shortcoming, in my opinion, is that it incorporates extraneous material, mainly in the form of speeches and monologues, from Jim Steinman's unproduced dream show Neverland. Such Steinman classic exchanges as "On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?" (first heard on Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell album) appear in this script. Lines once assigned to the mad scientist Max appear as the words of Abronsius, while lines once assigned to Baal, Steinman's modernistic Peter Pan, find their way into Krolock's mouth. As before, we see in this Steinman trying to leave his personal stamp on the show by way of recycling. The way he saw it, this was his show. Kunze had written the German adaptation, sure, but he'd never written the show his way himself. This was his opportunity to do so. But Crawford had other plans. It had an established Grammy-winning composer, Jim Steinman, for the score. It had a high-wattage star, Michael Crawford. Its opening had already been postponed to September, then October, then November 2002. But could anyone or anything agree on what Dance of the Vampires was supposed to be? We'll soon find out... When Crawford received the script dated November 2001, he flipped his lid. Sure, there was a lot of sardonic arch humor in it, but the show was still too serious to sell to a post-9/11 audience. And he had one big complaint about his character: Krolock, as originally written, was too much like the Phantom. Couldn't he be more comic? And what about the dialogue? Didn't he deserve some good laugh lines? "The people of New York are depressed, and we can't show them an ending where the bad guys win; let's make the vampires more fun so they sympathize with them, and let's make it a musical comedy," was the prevailing opinion. Crawford reportedly sat the creative team down for a viewing of Mel Brooks' Dracula: Dead and Loving It and said this was more along the lines of what he wanted. Initially, Jim agreed - if only halfheartedly - with the approach. His chief concern was really with making sure none of his music was cut (he is paranoid about anyone "butchering his babies" where his songs are concerned). If they could make it funny and keep the delicate balance of humor and seriousness, more power to them. Things were already becoming the opposite of what he wanted in many ways, but he didn't think rocking the boat was going to be necessary at that juncture. The problem really began for Jim when Crawford found some producers who agreed with him, and begged them to hitch their horses to the wagon, trading on his reputation as a theater star to get them involved. Bob Boyett, USA Ostar Theatricals and Lawrence Horowitz joined the team here. Boyett was a veteran television producer responsible for such shows as Laverne & Shirley and Bosom Buddies, and had just jumped into the Broadway pool the autumn before as a producer/investor for Hedda Gabler, The Crucible, Sweet Smell of Success, and Topdog/Underdog (all four of which were basically commercial flops). Horowitz had been exec producer of the A Moment of Truth TV movies, and USA Ostar Theatricals, run by newcomers to the Broadway scene, had produced seven shows, of which three were flops. Jim was flabbergasted. These guys were smart, and on Crawford's side. And their lawyers were quicker than Waxman and Williams' had ever been. The financial structure was murky, and before they would invest, Sonenberg, who had not come up with his share, would have to resign. Forced to make a quick decision, Steinman thought only of the show's good and fired his long-time manager from the slot. (This would come back to haunt him during previews.) The producers wanted other assurances as well; being on the same page as Crawford, they wanted to ensure a hit comedy. Jim couldn't direct, he didn't have experience, and if he wanted the show to work, it was for Mr. Acid Rock Star's own good that he step down. John Caird? When did he ever do a comedy?! And what did he contribute to the book? They bought John Caird out of his contract and gave Jim a list of new potential directors and choreographers that included some big names in musical comedy. Jim zeroed in on the Urinetown team, John Rando and John Carrafa; they had just enough of an Off-Broadway ethos to make him believe that maybe they wouldn't screw it up. Besides, he could always rely on Barry Keating to be there in rehearsal to represent him and offer suggestions. Suddenly, Jim saw a lot of decisions being made that should have included him. David Gallo was suddenly on board as the new set designer; to be frank, a lot of new designers were suddenly crowding the table in the boardroom that he had never met in his life. Where was Sue Blane? Where was William Dudley? Where was anyone? He'd try to offer input, but very few of his suggestions were implemented. Aris Sas couldn't come over; he was no longer right for the role of Alfred as rewritten. Jim could settle for Max von Essen (his second choice), and he could keep Jason Wooten in the ensemble as well, but the rest of the roles would have to be re-cast. Rene Auberjonois was poised to sign on as Professor Abronsius, and he was a C-lister, but a star nonetheless; Jim sincerely hoped he, too, wouldn't have a list of demands. Hey, whatever happened, at least he would be making it on Broadway, like he'd always dreamed. David Ives was meeting with similar trouble. Crawford was having hourlong meetings in which he'd go over the book and come up with more to change. Daily, he put in his own jokes, one of the most notorious being his idea to give Krolock what he called a "Continental accent," a bizarre mix of Italian and Cockney that he claimed made singing the score easier. By the time the period before rehearsals was over, he'd practically rewritten his own dialogue, save for huge chunks that Ives was able to argue were necessary. Crawford would also argue about whether or not any of the other cast members deserved punchlines; at one point, he cut all of the jokes Abronsius was supposed to have, arguing the Professor should be the straight man in what was now a madcap comedy. Ives was heard to complain to other staff members, "I'm not a writer - I'm a stenographer." Whatever the end result would be, Ives sincerely hoped there would even be a salvageable show by November. Crawford even meddled in the department of costume design. As he aged, he'd begun putting on weight, and he was determined to hide it. Suddenly the costumes all had bizarre ruffled collars, presumably to hide his noticeable jowls. Staff members began calling him "Rum Tum Tugger after too many mice" behind his back. Crawford reached out to friend and entertainment mogul Howard Stringer for additional financing for the show at the request of the other producers; while Stringer didn't invest any money, he did tell Crawford upon seeing the costumes that the collars were as ridiculous as everyone else thought they were. Overnight, the collars disappeared. John Rando was overwhelmed and awash on a stormy sea. He'd never directed a musical this size before, and certainly never handled a temperamental star. Left and right, different people were giving him different impressions of how the show should be. Steinman wanted it one way, Crawford another, and Barry Keating (of all people) was offering suggestions for no particular reason at all, and he had no idea what the middle ground was supposed to be. When it came time for him to give Crawford notes on his performance and suggest changes, he had to put up with curt responses and repeated iterations of "I don't wanna talk about it anymore." He put on a brave face in interviews, but privately knew he was screwed. John Carrafa...was just no help whatsoever. When he wasn't busy studying Dennis Callahan's dance moves for a few sequences in particular, as he'd come in totally unprepared (having decided on the foolhardy move of doing research, and then throwing it out and running around his studio in the dark to tapes of the music to come up with the steps), his idea of staging a big dance number was to tell the chorus to "just rock out!" Blissfully unaware, Carrafa blazed on ahead. To quote my favorite Nineties cartoon, Courage the Cowardly Dog: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" "This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. Anymore." That's how the Talking Heads put it in "Once in a Lifetime," and this is roughly how Jim Steinman felt about Dance of the Vampires at this stage of the game. As previews approached, Jim had stopped attending rehearsals. His heart wasn't in it anymore. He saw the "train wreck" ahead. Trying to stay optimistic, he had forbade his unit to bad-mouth the show to other prospective collaborators. That's unfair to the show, and word of mouth has a way of spreading. But his notes were being ignored, and he felt un-needed. The show had spiraled completely out of his control. "We ended up with two shows at war with each other. One was sensual and Gothic, the other was camp Rocky Horror. I knew the critics would kill us for that. We were the perfect target, a fat lady with a sign on her back that said, 'Kick me!'" Jim had the right ideas about how to fix it, but had been effectively emasculated of the ability to do so. He took it out on the cast and crew, perhaps a little unfairly, becoming biting and sarcastic to the point of verbal abuse in rehearsal. The biggest kick in the ass had been the producers calling his manager and former co-producer David Sonenberg back in to handle him because they couldn't, and Sonenberg, thinking it was for Jim's own good, settling into the dreaded (by Jim) role of a lead producer and firing his own client from the show. Forced to cooperate (a la Stephen Schwartz when barred from the rehearsals for Pippin), Jim had provided them with the scoring material they needed: "Angels Arise" (the new opening number for Sarah and her girlfriends) came from Batman, as did Krolock's new "ball invitation" sequence ("A Good Nightmare Comes So Rarely" / "The Devil May Care (But I Don't)" / "Sometimes We Need the Boogeyman"). For the re-write of the show's final number as a solo for Sarah leading into the group number, he basically took the original lyrics to "Tonight is What It Means to Be Young," crossed out the word "angel," and wrote in "vampire." Who could be bothered to make an effort? The show was shit. There was great talent. There was a lot of potential. Sheer will could force this show into a hit, but Jim doubted it. Who was there to complain to? Everyone was on the side of the producers. Crawford was being a temperamental diva, and yet the producers "didn't find him difficult at all," calling him a "great star" and a "total professional." Gee, thought Jim to himself, I wonder what the other guy's up to. All of you have been reading this may recall one key component of the show who should have had a ton of objections at this point, but has been strangely silent throughout the show's development. I speak, of course, of Michael Kunze. This man was largely responsible for the show becoming what it was in Europe in the first place. Surely such wholesale changes would have aroused his ire, no? Well, remember when Jim and his manager were able to convince the German consortium that they knew nothing about New York audiences? Kunze wasn't surprised. Each culture has its peculiarities. When he brought his own Elisabeth to Tokyo, he had to remove a scene involving an insane person because it's not considered prudent to publicly display madness onstage there. What were a few changes for regional sensibilities, more or less? His mistake was in assuming this was all that was at stake. He never asked questions, he never wrote anybody. The periodic updates on the show's progress, without details as to the exact changes, were what assured him everything was okay. He obviously didn't know his collaborator, his star, or the creative team very well. When things are not going Jim Steinman's way on a production, he will complain to other members of the production team, no matter how far removed they are. So it was no surprise that after practically buying Kunze's show away from him, he would inadvertently reveal how much had been changed by email, a whiny complaining email that apparently had the latest draft of the script (dated August 16, 2002, but featuring various dated pages assembled into one running draft) attached to it. Big mistake, Jim, to say the least. In point of fact, the script sent to Kunze was basically very close to the final Broadway version. Much was still to be changed as time went on, and a lot of material that wasn't used can be seen in that script; however, for all intents and purposes, this was the Broadway show that went into previews and underwent more overhauls on the way to the final piece. In reading the draft, one can see how Jim and Ives' enthusiasm for the project had disappeared; for example, the previously very detailed stage directions of earlier drafts, stage directions that gave viewers very interesting mental pictures, had for the most part flown the coop. Naturally, Dr. Kunze was rather irritated by this. He could see changing lines for regional sensibilities or even Americanizing the humor a little, but this was practically a new show: a new beginning, a new ending, songs cut and replaced with dialogue, characters cut, and worse than that, characters changed from tragic to comic. He would have no part of this. If they were going to claim that the whole show was offensive to regional sensibilities, then they were barking up the wrong tree. This was not now, nor was it ever, the show he had intended to write. He wrote back telling Jim to take his name off the show; he was suing him, Crawford, the producers, and whoever else he had to, for every penny they had. At this stage of the game, Jim could hardly blame him, but even as badly as he felt about the show, this was still his big shot at Broadway. He could argue that his other shows were better, whether true or not, but this was the one that would actually tread the boards, and he'd be damned if anyone was going to stop it, least of all the original author. He begged Kunze not to act rashly in exploring his options. Come to New York, see the show in rehearsal, meet the producers, give us a chance to try to explain. But - at least initially - Kunze was not in the mood for explanations. Michael Kunze was one mad puppy. He had seen what was going on with Dance of the Vampires, and he was not going to be bullied into submission. He was pursuing a lawsuit against the American team, and he wanted his name taken off the show. Jim Steinman was pleading with him to at least have a look at the show before he dismissed it out of hand, but Kunze would have none of it. He was consulting a lawyer. The show's opening was postponed to December 9 by the American producers in hopes that they could resolve the case during previews before then and maybe only lose a little money from canceled shows; the official excuse was "technical difficulties." Sure, this would mean the show would have a longer run of previews than the run of most regional productions that had officially opened, but anything to ensure the show's success! Unfortunately, the lawyer was unwilling to pursue the lawsuit. First of all, he told Kunze that the whole case all told would cost him upwards of $10 million (American), outcome yet unknown. Would he really want to sink that much money into a campaign that could kill the show and lose him any unpaid royalties from the show that he could earn from the suit? The better tactic was to wait and see if the show was successful. The German consortium agreed; seeking to protect their investment, they said they were adopting a wait-and-see approach, and if the U.S. version was successful, that would be the version reproduced in other countries from then on. This was certainly disheartening news to the show's author. However, Michael could still pursue the other tack: having his name taken off the show. After being informed once again of his intentions, Steinman once more begged him to attend a rehearsal, meet the cast and creative team, see if the show was really all bad or just didn't look good on paper. He was sorry he hadn't asked for Kunze's input before, but now this was his opportunity to have some. Steinman's rationale: if they won't listen to me anymore, maybe they'll listen to him. He did write it, after all. Dr. Kunze is a man who never shirks a challenge. Maybe they'd surprise him and prove him completely wrong. At worst, all he'd have to do is sit down with the director and producers and say, "These people changed my script, they made senseless modifications without my permission, change it back or I will sink the show with legal trouble." So he figured, "Ah, what the hell, sure, I'll go." And so it was that he found himself on the next plane to New York. When Michael Kunze arrived in rehearsal, he was treated like a royal visitor. Everybody was pleased to have him around. He could not believe the reception he was met with. "Say hello to the creator of the first German musical ever to come to Broadway!" was the announcement of his arrival, greeted with rapturous applause. They showed him the marquee bearing the musical's new logo, featuring a couple locked in embrace, with a full moon behind them. It looked dark, scary, romantic. He met the new producers, a little stunned to learn that Steinman's manager, the man he had been assured knew New York audiences very well, was now basically a producer in name only. And he was a little perturbed by the fact that they were more idealists than experienced Broadway producers. But they seemed to be decent people. "You wanna make changes? Okay, sure, Lord knows the show needs changes. Go to a preview, take some notes, we'll sit you down with the director and you can even watch rehearsals to make sure your ideas come across." Sure, this wasn't exactly his show anymore, but everything was going better than he expected. Maybe he wouldn't take his name off the show after all. In rehearsals, he found John Rando, whom he initially saw as encroaching on Polanski's territory, to be a talented young man. But the show was too big for him to handle. He couldn't imagine how he would react if he were forced to give well-meant suggestions for changes to a superstar who would then lecture him for even trying like he was the Wolf in the Three Little Pigs blowing a house down. When Rando's mother (in poor health when the show started) died, he was forced to leave rehearsals, and Kunze learned fully what he was dealing with here when Michael Crawford stepped up to plate and supervised the show while John was gone, giving the cast notes, helping make changes, rallying the team. It was a difficult situation, and Kunze had tremendous respect for MC trying to keep the process going, but MC's head was hardly the most level. In previews, however, Kunze was struck by the talent of the cast. In particular, he found Mandy Gonzalez, who had been cast as Sarah, fantastic, and noted some other members of the ensemble who did a really great job. However, he still had some notes. Aside from the talent, in the overall show, some things were good (he really liked the new beginning for the show), and most of them weren't great (there was less music, the vampires looked like freaks, Krolock suddenly had a dramatic death scene, the childish dialogue peppered with stupid laugh lines sounded like something out of a fourth-rate version of The Producers, etc.). There was definitely room for improvement, and the producers seemed willing to improve, so he had a meeting with John Rando and the team. Ultimately, there were some victories. "Sure, we could stand to have a little more music, as long as there's an equal balance." 30% of the dialogue from the preview version was cut to allow for more music. Kunze had an idea for a new staging of the ending that would be cynical: he wanted the show's finale to be set in modern times, with the vampires having survived, populating banks, offices, town halls everywhere. A decent metaphor for the modern world. Sure, it came out looking more like a vampiric Times Square, but he managed to win that one. Unfortunately, he lost more battles than he won. The dialogue couldn't be completely cut; through-sung musicals were out and people were paying $100 for a ticket to be entertained. If dialogue served that purpose, it could stay. You couldn't do a song called "God is Dead" on an American stage; the people are like Puritans here when it comes to that stuff. In general, you have to go easier and more comical with this material; it's a very dark story, and this isn't Germany where you're used to the three-hour operas. It's got to be more American. Sometimes you've got to make compromises for a new audience, like you did with Elisabeth in Tokyo. And last but not least, Michael Crawford could die on stage whenever he wanted to. He's the star, the people love him, and he has creative control to boot; if he wants to die, he'll die. It was the last one that Kunze had trouble with; he really didn't want Krolock to die. It didn't fit the story. And then the producers had to have a sit-down with him. They explained that at the moment, Michael Crawford was the reason the show was selling tickets. Had he been told that it was running astoundingly well? That most of the previews were sold out? That the show was #4 in overall sales, one of the hottest tickets in the city even though it hadn't officially opened? No, Kunze wasn't aware of any of this; he was very surprised to find the show so successful. Maybe there was something he didn't know about American audiences. "Look, we know that for Sarah to fall in love with Krolock, he can't be a comedian, but Michael just doesn't want to play another romantic freak. You don't want to piss him off. He's what's selling. This show is selling. | |
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