Calling the right shots on Broadway
When The Wiz was previewing in Detroit five years ago, it looked as if the Yellow Brick Road might lead back to Kansas, not Broadway. Applause was limper than the Scarecrow's limbs. Then Geoffrey Holder, who had designed the costumes, was asked to doctor the production. Holder brought the part of the Wiz into sharp focus, wowed the audience with a black tornado stirred up with 100 yds. of silk streamers, and exhorted the frazzled cast members to believe in themselves. It all worked: The Wiz won the 1975 Tony Award for best musical.
Play doctors—those writers, directors, composers and choreographers who are called in for last-minute changes—have been at work as long as there have been lights on the Great White Way. So far this season, six shows have closed after opening night on Broadway, with five more flopping in their first or second week, a record number since World War II. The mortality rate on Broadway makes casino gambling look like a sound investment. The average million that goes into a major musical and the $500,000 or so that is put up for a dramatic production are lost if the show fails. Because of the huge sums of money involved in Broadway productions, there is often a doctor in the house—waiting in the wings to minister to a collapsing show.
Some productions require an entire M*A*S*H unit. I Remember Mama, now in previews at Broadway's Majestic Theater, would seem to have everything going for it.
The show stars Liv Ullmann, the music is Richard Rodgers' 40th Broadway score, and Producer Alexander Cohen raised $1.5 million to put it on. Based on the 1944 Broadway hit by John van Druten, Mama recounts the struggles of the Hansons, who are poor Norwegian immigrants in San Francisco. The play is intentionally sentimental, a celebration of family life. When the new production opened in Philadelphia in March, critics panned it. Too episodic, with a weak story line, they complained.
"People were walking out in droves," recalls Thomas Meehan, who wrote the script. The company began to follow. Director-Lyricist Martin Charnin, part of the team that made Annie a success, was replaced by Cy Feuer, producer of such hits as Guys and Dolls and Can-Can. "There was a confrontation between Liv and me as to how the musical would work," explains Charnin. Cohen and Feuer decided that more excitement was needed. Enter two dancers. They did not fit and were fired. A new choreographer arrived with six more dancers. Rodgers, well known for his speed in composing, was sent back to the piano for six new songs. A new lyricist, Raymond Jessel, was hired to write the words.
Although the show began previews in New York on April 26, opening night was postponed from May 3 to May 24 to, at last notice, May 31. Meehan has been changing the script daily, and the actors must constantly learn new lines, lyrics and blocking. "I'd write a scene in the morning, they'd rehearse it in the afternoon and do it at night," says Meehan, who has been working about 18 hours a day. The cast has yet to perform the same version twice. "Some nights we get it, other nights we don't," says Maureen Silliman, who plays Katrine.