by Rob Kendt
The story goes that when musical theatre composer Adam Guettel was
approached by the makers of The Full Monty to do the music, he turned
them on to a friend and colleague, the pop songwriter David Yazbek, who'd never
written for the stage. When Yazbek wondered to Guettel if he should go to a
musical theatre workshop to hone his skills, Guettel told him to avoid that
route at all costsÑthat the armchair showtune experts of the workshop world
would pound Yazbek's original voice out of him. Obviously this was the right
advice for Yazbek, whose score is nominated for a Tony. But, though I know all
too well what Guettel was talking about, it's not entirely fair to the
reputation of musical theatre workshops, which have launched many a career and
brought together many a winning tuner team (Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, Lynn
Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty).
When I started at this job back in '93, I was myself a member of
the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, the venerable West Coast offshoot of
the New York original, founded by the late conductor/teacher to nurture
composers, lyricists, and librettists in the art of creating musicals for the
stage. At the time I left the workshop (mainly because of the workload here),
Clyde Derrick was working on Angel's Flight, which just
opened recently; Jan Powell and Ken Stone were working on various accomplished
projects (their most recent is the reportedly brilliant Tom Dooley), and
longtime members Doug Haverty and Adryan Russ would soon head East to mount Inside
Out Off-Broadway. Years passed and the workshop moved from its
longtime digs in Hollywood's Pacific Theatre Building to a space on Brand Blvd.
in Glendale, and last year I was persuaded to sit on the board. I'm afraid I
haven't been a very good board memberÑand to be frank I've often been
ambivalent about the workshop and its aesthetic. Its current director, John
Sparks, a passionate, learned, acerbic man, once told my class, "I not
only hate Tommy but I hate anyone who likes Tommy," and
extolled such fare as The Will Rogers Follies. At the time
these seemed clear invitations for me to show myself the door.
But the workshop doesn't turn away talent, nor does it snub rock or
pop musicians, as I discovered recently to my delight: Berton Averre, lead
guitarist of The Knack, has been developing a Tarzan-type musical, Jungle
Man, reportedly headed for Off-Broadway. Even more exciting, to me
personally, local singer/songwriter Kevin Ray, who I've heard on the local open
mike circuit and who recently gave a stunning show at the Gardenia, is
developing a new musical about the Central Ave. jazz scene in the 1940s and
'50s in the Lehman Engel workshop. So it is with renewed enthusiasm that I here
plug the workshop's upcoming benefit at the Cinegrill, June 9 at 7:30 p.m.,
which will feature, among other performers, Lea Thompson, Amy Pietz, Kirby
Tepper, Valerie Perri, Eydie Alyson, Lee Lessack, and the slick
husband-and-wife duo Alan Chapman and Karen Benjamin. Call (818) 502-3309 for
information. Tax-deductible tickets are $30. The good cause worth supporting
here is the handing down of musical theatre know-how from one generation to
another; tastes are clearly another matter.
¥ Some weeks ago in this space I lamented the relatively
unexciting state of SoCal theatre thus far this year. But after seeing an
almost non-stop stream of the kind of stage work that makes me glad to have
this job, I must eat crow, and crow about the greatness of a theatre scene that
can include in it a knockout in-the-round staging of such Old Left Americana as
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (at Greenway Court Alliance through
June 2) as well as the quiet, urbane intelligence of Three Days of Rain (recently
closed at Evidence Room); that can encompass the beautifully ugly, sweetly
cheesy, earnest and beatific apocalyptic fable Bing (at Theatre
of NOTE through June 30), as well as the divine, perfectly chaotic period
lunacy of Hay Fever (at A Noise Within through June 2); that gave us
the witty, tormented cynicism of Anatol (recently closed at the
Powerhouse) as well as the Britten-esque chamber-opera weirdness of The
Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater (closed some time ago at [Inside] the
Ford). Each of these productions was distinguished for me by the self-contained
but deeply resonant world it created, and each had the kind of totally
committed, go-for-broke performances that separate polite theatre from great
art. From where I sit, theatre in the Greater Los Angeles area seems greater
than usual these days.