Parade - Review

Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, New York

****

Music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown

Book by Alfred Uhry

Directed by Michael Arden

Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt

It is nearly 25 years since Parade premiered on Broadway, where it was to win two Tonys (out of nine nominations) but yet close after barely three months of performances. Fast forward to 2023 where this first Broadway revival of the show has already garnered 6 Tony nominations and plays to a much changed world than when it first opened in 1998.

Parade was always a bold and brave concept for a musical. It was legendary director Hal Prince who co-conceived the show, turning to Brown when Stephen Sondheim was unavailable. Drawn from the early 20th century history of Georgia USA, Alfred Uhry's book tells of the Jewish Atlantan Leo Frank, wrongly accused and subsequently found guilty, of the murder of Mary Phagan, a young Christian child. Originally from New York, so an outsider as well as a Jew, Frank found himself the focus of extreme antisemitism that was to have a tragic outcome. The genius of Brown’s writing lies not just in his music that draws from a raft of Southern styles and influences, but in his lyrics that not only chart the horrific evolution of the murderous right-wing extremism of the time, but also catches moments of underlying wry American humour, as well as the profound and loving pathos of the relationship between Frank and his wife Lucille.

Having reviewed numerous productions of Parade over recent years, this marks the first mainstream commercial take on the work that www.jonathanbaz.com has covered, and notwithstanding the musical excellence heard in those previous iterations, to hear Brown’s score, played here magnificently by Tom Murray’s 18-piece band, is an absolute treat.

Ben Platt is a magnificent Leo, who defines the man’s transition from an orthodox chauvinist into a loving and appreciative husband in a beautifully nuanced interpretation. Platt’s vocals are also tremendous, never better defined that in that wondrous vocal leap that sees him transformed from the fantastical and vile (albeit imagined) predator in Come Up To My Office to a pleading, vulnerable innocent facing a monstrous world in It’s Hard To Speak My Heart. Platt also nails the wit of How Can I Call This Home?, a number that defines his incredulity, as a “Yankee with a college education”, he tries to get to grips with the redneck South. 

Opposite Platt, Micaela Diamond takes on the equally challenging role of Lucille. There is excellence in much of Diamond’s work, particularly in her duets This Is Not Over Yet and All the Wasted Time, but her solo work, especially in the first act’s You Don’t Know This Man fails to hit the spot.

Other notable vocal contributions come from Alex Joseph Grayson as convicted criminal Jim Conley who smashes his every song out of the park and also from Kelli Barrett as Mrs Phagan, the mother of the murdered child. Barrett captures not only a poignant grief at her terrible loss, but also a palpable Jew-hatred in her remarkable delivery of My Child Will Forgive Me.

Seeing this show for the first time in the USA rather than in the UK, it is pleasing to see Brown’s New York wisecracks that lampoon Southern stereotypes, landing to audience laughter rather than falling flat to a house full of Brits, who struggle to grasp the writer's brilliant irony

The show’s design is simple, with most of the cast on-stage throughout and principle action playing out on a raised central dais in front of projected scenic images. There is however a curious projection that occurs in the pre-show mise-en-scene as the audience are taking their seats. An actual newspaper report of the Leo Frank story, from back in the day, is shown on the screen that graphically tells of Frank’s ultimate fate. This is a curious and patronising decision by the show’s creative team, for while the themes and history of Parade are undoubtedly educational and important, to undermine the musical’s narrative and not only that but in front of New York audiences that are mostly made up of Yankees with a college education, is not fair on the show. It is also, for those in the audience unaware of how the Leo Frank saga plays out and are hopefully looking for the musical to tell them a story, one heck of a spoiler.

If you love Brown’s score you are unlikely to hear it played finer than this.

Runs until 6th August

See below for my programme notes, written to accompany the production of Parade that opened the Hope Mill Theatre in 2016

My Thoughts on Jason Robert Brown's Parade 

Written by Jonathan Baz and published in 2016

Jason Robert Brown’s Tony-winner kicks off during the 1913 Confederate Memorial Day Parade in Atlanta, Georgia. The Civil War had been fought (and lost) some 50 years earlier and it is the aftermath of that defeat that powers the context of this show. 

The Southern States had fought the North in a desperate, bloody struggle to hold on to their right to enslave African Americans. Slavery was (and is) de-humanising and barbaric and yet, to a majority of folk in the Confederacy, it was not only acceptable, it was desirable. Southern racism was ingrained and the Confederate flag remains a chilling emblem of the white supremacists.

As that 1913 parade passed by, Mary Phagan a white 13 year old girl from Marietta, just outside Atlanta, was brutally raped and murdered in the city’s pencil factory where she worked. Amid a hue and cry for justice, it didn't take Atlanta’s Police Department long to be conveniently pointed in the wrong direction, accusing Leo Frank, the factory superintendent. Frank may have been white, but he was a Yankee from the North and worse, a Jew. 

Parade explores how Frank was subsequently framed and how he and his wife Lucille, fought back. Child abuse and murder may not be regular subjects for a musical theatre treatment, yet from this dark core, composer Jason Robert Brown has fashioned one of the finest musicals to have emerged in the last 20 years.

Parade succeeds on so many levels. It has a finely crafted score and libretto, it's a history lesson and a towering love story. Brown won a Tony for the score; listen out for the traditional melodies of the South, carefully woven into his work. There’s Gospel, Spiritual, Blues and Swing in there, with the composer saving perhaps one of musical theatre’s finest coups for his Act One Finale. As Parade’s narrative reaches a horrendous turning point, Brown has his citizens of Atlanta launch into an exhilarating cakewalk. Where Kander and Ebb brought Cabaret’s first half to a troubling close with ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’, Brown’s cakewalk juxtaposes jubilation with injustice. Rarely has an array of swirling Southern petticoats and frocks been quite so stomach churning.

As a history lesson, Parade is up there with the best. The opening number ‘The Old Red Hills Of Home’ hits the audience with an unforgiving staccato percussion that soon includes a funereal chime alongside discordant strings, before evolving into a chilling yet (whisper it not) discomfortingly stirring anthem. The song is remarkable in that between its opening and closing bars, Brown tells the entire story of the South’s Civil War. A young and handsome Confederate soldier sings the opening lines, who by the song’s end is a gnarled and crippled veteran. Wounded and bitter, the old soldier dreams of the ‘lives that we led when the South land was free’. 

Brown also kicks off the second half with a punch. While Parade is famously about anti-Semitism, ‘A Rumblin’ And A Rollin’ is sung by two of the Governor of Georgia’s African American Domestic Staff, both well aware that while the Frank furore is gripping the nation, their lot hasn't significantly changed, even after the abolition of slavery. Riley, the Governor’s Chauffeur has a line ‘the local hotels wouldn't be so packed, if a little black girl had gotten attacked’ that should prick at America’s collective conscience even today, while his killer lyric a few bars on, ‘there’s a black man swingin’ in every tree, but they don't never pay attention!’ has a devastating simplicity.

Parade also beats to the drum of a passionate love story. Early on we find Leo and Lucille questioning their very different Jewish lifestyles. He’s from Brooklyn, a ‘Yankee with a college education’, while she is a privileged belle about whom Frank observes ‘for the life of me I cannot understand how God created you people Jewish AND Southern!’. There is a cultural gulf between the pair which, upon Leo’s arrest, only widens. How Alfred Uhry’s book and Brown’s lyrics portray the couple’s deepening love, is a literary master stroke. 

While the show was to receive numerous nominations in both Broadway’s 1999 awards season and later in 2008 on its London opening, the Opening at New York's Lincoln Centre disappointed, running for barely 100 performances. Variety magazine called it the ‘ultimate feel-bad musical’ and the crowds stayed away.

It was however, to be at London’s modest Donmar Warehouse, directed by Rob Ashford who had been the show's original Dance Captain on Broadway, that the show was to soar. So much so that Brown took the Donmar production back for a successful run in Los Angeles, with Lara Pulver, the Donmar’s Lucille, still in the lead. Thom Southerland’s fringe production a few years later at London’s Southwark Playhouse received similar plaudits. 

So why was Parade loved in London, yet shunned in New York? Wise theatre heads have suggested that perhaps Americans have little appetite for a musical that focuses upon such an ugly feature of their country’s history.

100 years on, what has been the legacy of the Frank case? For good, it served to spawn the Anti-Defamation League, America’s anti-fascist organisation. However the episode also re-ignited the burning crosses of the Klu Klux Klan. I recently visited Marietta to see for myself where Leo Frank’s story ended. Sadly, even if un-surprisingly, the site isn't marked amidst what is now a busy road intersection and if you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd never know you've been there.

And think back to last year, with the horrific massacre of 9 Black Americans, shot as they prayed in a South Carolina church, by a man who was pictured proudly waving the Confederate flag. Incredibly up until last year, a handful of States still flew that flag from government buildings, with Mississippi still including the Confederate emblem as a component of its state flag to this day. 

The Leo Frank trial and its aftermath ripped a nation apart, re-opening fault lines that to this day have barely healed.

Fiddler At The Proms - I speak to Fiddler On The Roof's lyricist Sheldon Harnick

Programme cover from the first London production

As the BBC Proms feature Fiddler On The Roof, here is my interview with lyricist Sheldon Harnick, discussing the show.

JB:         Sheldon, you're one of the few  people who has created a musical that has gone on to become a global sensation and which, until 1979, has held a record for being the longest running show on Broadway.

At what stage in Fiddler's development did you have any idea of the scale of what you were creating, as far as to how it was going to be received?

SH:         We started our pre-Broadway tryout in the city of Detroit and we were worried sick when we went there, because Hal Prince had gotten us the theatre, but the man who owned the theater said, "You have to be in Detroit for 5 weeks, but we only have a subscription for 3 and a half weeks." So, for the last week and a half, there was not a ticket sold!

When we got to Detroit, we also found out that there was a newspaper strike and of course, the show was just starting out and there was a lot wrong with it. We could have died in Detroit, but Jerome Robbins, the choreographer,  knew what he wanted to do with the show and every day, he fixed about 8 or 9 things, so the show got better and better. But, we had no reviews. We had no idea what the future of this show was going to be.

Our next stop was the city of Washington, DC. To our astonishment, when we got to Washington, DC, and went to the theater to rehearse, we saw a long line of people waiting to buy tickets. We thought: How on earth did this happen? We said the only way we could account for it was that the people in Detroit had called their friends in Washington and said, "This is a show you've got to see."

The same thing happened when we went from Washington to New York. We get to New York and there's a long line of ticket-buyers waiting. We thought, My goodness. We must have something special here. Those were the first times that we suspected we had something.

JB:         Where did the original idea for the show, to take the stories of Sholom Aleichem and convert them into a musical, come from?

SH: A friend of mine and I cannot remember who it was, sent me a novel by Sholom Aleichem called "Wandering Stars". It's a big, almost like a Dickensian novel. A big, fat novel about a Yiddish theatrical troupe in Eastern Europe. It was a wonderful book. I sent it to Jerry Bock, he read it and said, "Yes. Let's make this into a musical." We thought, Who would be the right person to do the book for this? And we thought, Joe Stein, who we'd worked with. 

So, we sent it to Joe. Joe read it and he called us and he said, "Well, it's a wonderful book, but", he said, it is simply too big for the stage. One of the things that makes it a wonderful story is the characters in this theater troupe, but," he said, "there are about 40 of them and that would just be too big for Broadway. Also, the whole show, the whole story is too big." "But," Joe said, "since we love the writing, let's see what else we can find by Sholom Aleichem."

So, we began to read other works by Sholom Aleichem and we found the Tevye's Daughter stories. As it happened, we couldn't get the rights to them as they were owned by a man named Arnold Perl, a playwright. He had bought the rights and had adapted the stories into a play that was in 3 acts. Each act was about a different daughter.

But, what the stories are about was the changing of tradition. How when Tevye got married, he had a matchmaker as did most of his compatriots, who arranged the marriages. But, his daughters were living in a new world, where the young people were getting more independent and drifting away from traditions and they chose their own suitors. By and large, that's the conflict in the show. That and the fact that, what was happening in Russia at that time was leading to the expulsion of the Jews from certain areas.

So, the original stories, when we read them, we just found them beautiful and funny and human and we couldn't wait to start adapting them. Joe Stein did a remarkable job, because what he discovered was that almost none of the dialogue in the stories would work on stage. It was literary dialogue. It was funny, it was charming, it was beautiful, but it was not stage dialogue. So, almost 90% of what's on the stage had to be invented by Joe. He always had to keep in mind that what he wrote had to sound as though Sholom Aleichem had written it.

JB:         Tell me about that interaction between you as the lyricist, and Joe, who wrote the book.

SH: That process is pretty much the same in every musical I've done. You get together with the book writer, the composer, the lyricist. You talk about the nature of the show you're doing. Then, I have to wait until whoever is doing the book begins to send me scenes, because I cannot write lyrics until I see what the dialogue sounds like. We cannot have lyrics that sound like they're being sung by a different person than the person who was speaking dialogue. They all have to come out of the same characters.

JB:         You made a reference earlier to a "new world" and there is a  line in the show when Tevye says to his wife, "It's a new world, Golda." That is one of so many lines that are so relevant even today.

SH: Yeah, my wife and I saw a production in Japan earlier this year. It's been a very popular show in Japan. When we inquired as to why it was so popular, they said that after World War II, the young people who had been brought up before that in very strictly traditional ways, after World War II they began to break away and it was extremely difficult for their parents to deal with this. Since that's what "Fiddler”’s about, the show was very meaningful in Japan.

JB:         That brings me to the next question. What do you think has created the incredible appeal of the show to people outside of the Jewish audience?

SH:         Well, that was what we worried about originally. However, Joe Stein and Jerry Bock and I, we found universal values in the Sholom Aleichem stories. We tried to stress those values. We couldn't eliminate the fact that these are about Jewish people, but we thought the story values that we emphasized, were universal values. And, it paid off.

I remember, in New York, once the show opened on Broadway, that we had to give a performance for the people who are working in other shows, otherwise they wouldn't be able to get to see it. So, within the first few months there's what they call an Actors Fund benefit. The theater is filled with actors from other shows. They're wonderful audiences.

Anyway, I was at the Actors Fund and an Irish friend of mine, a performer named Florence Henderson, at the intermission, came running up the aisle, and she said, "Sheldon. This show is about my Irish grandmother." That's the kind of thing I love to hear, because that's what we were trying to accomplish. Trying to make it a show that could reach out to everybody, not just Jewish people.

JB:         Of course, "Fiddler on the Roof", with its pogrom and, ultimately, the dispersal of the Jews from Anatevka, signalled the darkening clouds over Europe and the show was written barely 20 years after the end of the Second World War.

SH:         I know. On that tour I mentioned, where my wife and I first saw it in London and then we went to Amsterdam. It was a rather spooky feeling. We were told that the seats we were sitting in had been occupied by Nazis not all that long ago.

JB:         To what extent was there any referencing of the 20th century's Holocaust when you were writing the show?

SH:         I must say, we did not try to foreshadow the Holocaust. In the original, one of the original Sholom Aleichem stories, there is a pogrom, so we thought, okay, The pogrom is there and we will have the pogrom on stage at the end of Act 1. But, we didn't make any more of it than that.

However, somebody recommended a 1952 book called "Life is With People", which all 3 of us read, that documented many chapters of life from Eastern European Jewry before the Second World War. We read that book and found that there was a lot that we could use. Many of the people that were interviewed said one of the things they remembered about pogroms was that pillows would be destroyed and that there would be feathers flying all over the room. So, we took that idea and used it in the show.

I remember seeing the show in New York once. My wife and I were sitting opposite from 2 people on the other side of the aisle. They were elderly, gaunt people. They looked like they had, at one time, been in a concentration camp. During the pogrom, I thought they were both going to have heart attacks. They were looking at the stage, you could see that they were riveted to the stage and we thought, Oh my God, they are reliving an experience. It was a really spooky feeling.

JB:         On that subject, have you ever found yourself at productions of "Fiddler on the Roof" that have made you cringe?

SH:         Oh, yes. My wife and I went on a "Fiddler" tour. It was being done simultaneously in London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. We just went from one to the other. The one in Copenhagen, was terrible. We were told there had been a kind of battle between the two directors with this theater company that both wanted to do it. One of them was given the assignment and then he went on vacation to prepare for his production. While he was away, the other director did the show. He didn't understand it and he did awful things to it. My wife and I couldn't believe what we saw. It was just awful. We cringed.

JB:         Where did the title of the show come from?

SH:         We had long list of titles. As a matter-of-fact, the title that originally we wanted to give it was "Where Papa Came From", because Joe Stein's father and Jerry Bock's father and my father all came from different places in Europe. That was one of the titles we had, but we made a long list of titles. One of us had seen the Marc Chagall paintings (The Green Violinist and Le Violiniste)  with the fiddle-player who looks, actually, he's not standing on a roof, he's actually suspended a little bit above it. But, it looks like he's standing on the roof. So, that was also one of our titles.

Then one day, Hal Prince who was producing the show, came to us and he said, "Guys, I need a title." So, we showed him the list. He ran his finger down the list and when he got to "Fiddler on the Roof", he said, "Aha! This suggests music and I want people to know the show is a musical." So, that's the title he chose.

And, by the way, Joe Stein and I, we have very different memories of that particular story. Joe insists that when Hal Prince saw the list, he said, "What's number 7? Whatever number 7 is, that's going to be the title of the show." I said, "Joe, Hal would never do that!"

Le Violiniste by Marc Chagall

JB:         You're one of the Broadway greats. What are your thoughts about why so many of the great musical theatre composers are or were Jewish?

SH:         My thought about that is that those of us who were brought up in a, more or less, orthodox synagogue are very much used to a very emotional kind of singing that takes place in those services. So, we grow up with that in our head.

The other thing is that, at the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century, there were many professions that were barred to Jewish people. There were things they wanted to do but they weren't allowed to. But, they were allowed to entertain. Once people like Irving Berlin established themselves, they were beacons for other people to follow. Other people who had talent that - okay, if I can't be this,if I can't be that, maybe I can go into the entertainment business. I think that that was one of the reasons that so many shows were written by Jewish people. 

JB:        Sheldon, thank you very much for your time.

Sheldon Harnick

Taken from an interview first published in February this year 

Don Black In Conversation - Pt 1: Cabaret

Don Black

The London Festival of Cabaret opens this week and runs for a fortnight across the city. Featuring a line-up from both sides of the Atlantic you can expect legendary names getting up close to a microphone, singing songs that they love (and may also have composed) and reaching out beyond the spotlight to share stories with an audience.

Unlike a staged musical the atmosphere couldn’t be more relaxed – and over a cocktail or glass of wine, maybe with a bite to eat too, listening to an inspirational performer either singing beautifully or sharing a sparkling anecdote makes for a charming evening.

As the final preparations were being drawn up for Tuesday’s opening night, I caught up with Festival Patron and Oscar-winning lyricist Don Black to talk about his love for the art-form.

JB:    Don, what drew you to supporting the Festival? 

DB:    I've always, for as long as I can remember, loved cabaret. When I was managing Matt Monroe, all those years ago, I used to go to those northern clubs and cabaret clubs which were rife in the '60's. Places like Talk of the Town, I used to love the atmosphere. 

When I started going to America a lot, I used go to all the cabaret places in New York. Lots of things drew me to these places.

You would get singers there who sang the different songs, special material, witty songs. Songs you hear very often. No one in cabaret sings My Way or those out and out popular songs. You get some very, very interesting and intriguing artists.

In New York I used to go and see a guy named Oscar Brown Jr., wherever he appeared. In fact I was discussing him only the other day with Van Morrison, who is a huge fan of his, so is Paul Jones, and many people.

I used to go and see Matt Dennis who wrote great songs like Angel Eyes and Let's Get Away From It All. 

I just like that closeness, the intimacy of the cabaret room. I'm delighted that so much is going on in London, in cabaret. I go to the Crazy Coqs quite often along with the St. James and I go to The Pheasantry too. The other night at The Pheasantry I saw Charles Strouse, the man who wrote Annie and Bye Bye Birdie. Now, you tell me where you can go see a guy, nearly 87 years old, talking for 2 hours and sharing anecdotes about Jule Styne and Hal Prince singing his songs?

Also, I really like the idea of them not being great singers! I like watching the song writers, like Strouse, who's not a great piano player, not a great singer. You get so much heart and so much emotion in those couple of hours. It's a different kind of evening. Cabaret really is a great love of mine. 

I recently saw Anne Reid at the Crazy Coqs. Now Anne is a great example of someone and she won't mind me saying this, who really is not a great singer. But she's a great actress, and therefore a great story-teller. 

JB:    What are your thoughts on the younger cabaret artistes, as compared to those who do cabaret on the back of longer established careers? 

DB:    What you get from young artists, that you may not get from the older people, is new material. You do get the younger people, they'll find a song from a failed musical. You think, "Oh isn't that beautiful." They can be full of surprises.

But of course the more seasoned a performer is, the more they've got more to draw on and of course you can feel for them too. You are close up. So when you see a person in their 60's and 70's singing a song about years gone by or missed opportunities, you cannot help but be moved. It is very touching when you see Anne Reid, who's I don't know nearly 80 now, singing a Barbara Cook song. You get the goosebumps. And as I said about Charles Strouse, when he went into The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow, I mean, god almighty it was phenomenal!

I saw Mitch Winehouse at the Hippodrome a few weeks ago, Amy’s dad. He really put through with about a 12 piece orchestra, and he was terrific. So interesting and of course lots of anecdotes about Amy. It was very personal and also very touching. 

JB:    So – is it about the songs or the story-telling?

DB:    Being a lyric writer I've always gone for the story teller. It's interesting because Tony Bennett's favourite singer and he’s often said this and it says a lot, is Louis Armstrong. Sinatra's favourite singer was Fred Astaire. These people aren't known for singing but they are known for storytelling. You hang on every word when these people sing. That's what I like about cabaret, you don't have to be the greatest singer, but you just have to get your story across. That's why with people like Lorna Luft, you hang on every comma. 

JB: Don, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, and enjoy the Festival!

Aside from cabaret, Don also spoke at length about his song-writing career and part 2 of this fascinating conversation will be published shortly.

The London Festival Of Cabaret – Celebrating Song opens on 28th April and continues at venues across the capital until 11th May. Confirmed artists appearing include Kerry Ellis, Barb Jungr, Janie Dee and Scott Alan (amongst many others) and you can also watch some of today’s younger stars such as Jamie Parker and Caroline Sheen branching out onto the capital’s cabaret circuit. 

www.londonfestivalofcabaret.com

www.londonfestivalofcabaret.com/diary/

Sheldon Harnick - In Conversation

Sheldon Harnick

As She Loves Me opens at south London's Landor Theatre, I spoke with lyricist Sheldon Harnick about the show, and about his career.


JB:         Sheldon, you and Jerry Bock had a partnership that, along with She Loves Me (and other shows) was to create in Fiddler On The Roof, one of the world’s most celebrated musicals of the last fifty years. Please tell me, what was the start of your association with Jerry?

SH:         Jerry had worked with a writer named Larry Holofcener. I think we both came to New York about the same time, around 1950. I was aware of Jerry and Larry's work. They had songs and revues and so did I, so, I knew their work.

Then, we all heard there was to be a production of a show called "Mr. Wonderful", starring a splendid entertainer named Sammy Davis, Jr. All of us wanted to be the ones to get the job to write the score for that show, but Jerry and Larry got the job. It was an odd job, because the first act was a musical and the second act was Sammy Davis, Jr.'s nightclub act, so all they had to do was write one act. But … the story that I was told was this ...

As you know, there's an enormous amount of pressure on a Broadway show, because there’s millions of dollars riding on it. Under that pressure, the story I was told, was that the creative team were not able to come up with the rewrites that they needed on the road and so they had to call in another lyricist to help out. One thing led to another, and I was introduced to Jerry.

We hit it off immediately and Jerry's publisher, a man named Tommy Valando, worked an actual miracle. He got Jerry and me assigned to do the score for a new, Broadway musical even though we had yet to write a single song.  An impossible thing!

So, we wrote the show. It was called "The Body Beautiful" and although thar show was not successful, that was what started our collaboration. Then, we got the job to do another show called "Fiorello!", about Fiorello La Guardia, who had been a very popular mayor of New York. That show was fairly successful and Hal Prince produced it. Then, all of three of us worked together again on the next show, "Tenderloin”

JB:         So, what drew you to She Loves Me?

SH:         Well we had started working on "Fiddler" and then we had to stop working on that and we started working on "She Loves Me" and then came back to "Fiddler" later...

The show's producer involved, Lawrence Kasha  got in touch with Jerry and me and asked if we knew the movie "The Shop Around the Corner". Well, We both knew and loved the film.

Kasha said that he had the rights to it and would we be interested in adapting it as a musical? We were delighted, because we loved the film so. Then he said, "I want the book to be done by a writer named Joe Masteroff." As it happens, both Jerry and I had just seen a play by Joe Masteroff. We both were very taken with the play, so we said that Joe Masteroff would be fine. Then, the next problem was to get a director. Jerry and I suggested Hal Prince, because he had worked with us on "Fiorello!" and "Tenderloin" and we knew that he wanted to direct more.

So, our next show was "She Loves Me". 

The New York production ran about 9 months and did not earn back its investment and we had many post-mortems trying to figure out why the show hadn't worked. But, it didn't.

What was lovely though was the London revival in the 1990's starring Ruthie Henshall. That was just lovely.

Anyway, back then, what was odd was that all of us that had worked on She Loves Me just loved the show, we loved working on it.

A year went by without any productions after it closed and we were heartsick. As a matter-of-fact, when the show was nominated for a Grammy, the recording industry award, I didn't go to the awards ceremony because I didn't want to be disappointed again. Actually, the show won the 1963 Grammy (for Best Score From An Original Cast Show Album) , so I wished I'd been there!

And then after a year or so, we would get letters from little theatre companies across the USA, saying "We don't understand why the show didn't work on Broadway. Our audiences love it." Then, there were more and more productions around the country and we kept getting these letters. So, the show became known as a cult show,developing quite a following.

Then, finally, there was a revival of it on Broadway, a beautiful revival in 1993, and the following year after that, suddenly it exploded. There were about 60 productions around the country and "She Loves Me" became a show that was regularly done.

JB:        Then it came to London. What are your feelings toward seeing your work in London?

SH:         It's like seeing it anywhere. If it's a good production, I love it. I think it was only recently that there was a production in France of "She Loves Me". I went to see it and I invited Michel Legrand to be our guest, and it was an awful production. Within the first 15 minutes, Michel just turned to me and said, " Sheldon, this is terrible." And I couldn't argue with him and it didn't run very long.

If a production is good and makes me proud of my work, then I'm thrilled to see it. If it's bad, then I wish I was somewhere else.

JB:         On that subject, have you ever found yourself at productions of "Fiddler on the Roof" that have made you cringe?

SH:         Oh, yes. My wife and I went on a "Fiddler" tour. It was being done simultaneously in London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. We just went from one to the other. The one in Copenhagen, was terrible. We were told there had been a kind of battle between the two directors with this theater company that both wanted to do it. One of them was given the assignment and then he went on vacation to prepare for his production. While he was away, the other director did the show. He didn't understand it and he did awful things to it. My wife and I couldn't believe what we saw. It was just awful. We cringed.

Programme design  from the first London production

JB:         Moving on to talk about "Fiddler" now.

You're one of the few  people who has created a musical that has gone on to become a global sensation and which, until 1979, held the record for being the longest running show on Broadway.

At what stage in "Fiddler"'s development did you have any idea of the scale of what you were creating, as far as to how it was going to be received?

SH:         We started our pre-Broadway tryout in the city of Detroit and we were worried sick when we went there, because Hal Prince had gotten us the theatre, but the man who owned the theater said, "You have to be in Detroit for 5 weeks, but we only have a subscription for 3 and a half weeks." So, for the last week and a half, there was not a ticket sold!

When we got to Detroit, we also found out that there was a newspaper strike and of course, the show was just starting out and there was a lot wrong with it. We could have died in Detroit, but Jerome Robbins, the choreographer,  knew what he wanted to do with the show and every day, he fixed about 8 or 9 things, so the show got better and better. But, we had no reviews. We had no idea what the future of this show was going to be.

Our next stop was the city of Washington, DC. To our astonishment, when we got to Washington, DC, and went to the theater to rehearse, we saw a long line of people waiting to buy tickets. We thought: How on earth did this happen? We said the only way we could account for it was that the people in Detroit had called their friends in Washington and said, "This is a show you've got to see."

The same thing happened when we went from Washington to New York. We get to New York and there's a long line of ticket-buyers waiting. We thought, My goodness. We must have something special here. Those were the first times that we suspected we had something.

JB:         Where did the original idea for the show, to take the stories of Sholom Aleichem and convert them into a musical, come from?

SH: A friend of mine and I cannot remember who it was, sent me a novel by Sholom Aleichem called "Wandering Stars". It's a big, almost like a Dickensian novel. A big, fat novel about a Yiddish theatrical troupe in Eastern Europe. It was a wonderful book. I sent it to Jerry Bock, he read it and said, "Yes. Let's make this into a musical." We thought, Who would be the right person to do the book for this? And we thought, Joe Stein, who we'd worked with. 

So, we sent it to Joe. Joe read it and he called us and he said, "Well, it's a wonderful book, but", he said, it is simply too big for the stage. One of the things that makes it a wonderful story is the characters in this theater troupe, but," he said, "there are about 40 of them and that would just be too big for Broadway. Also, the whole show, the whole story is too big." "But," Joe said, "since we love the writing, let's see what else we can find by Sholom Aleichem."

So, we began to read other works by Sholom Aleichem and we found the Tevye's Daughter stories. As it happened, we couldn't get the rights to them as they were owned by a man named Arnold Perl, a playwright. He had bought the rights and had adapted the stories into a play that was in 3 acts. Each act was about a different daughter.

But, what the stories are about was the changing of tradition. How when Tevye got married, he had a matchmaker as did most of his compatriots, who arranged the marriages. But, his daughters were living in a new world, where the young people were getting more independent and drifting away from traditions and they chose their own suitors. By and large, that's the conflict in the show. That and the fact that, what was happening in Russia at that time was leading to the expulsion of the Jews from certain areas.

So, the original stories, when we read them, we just found them beautiful and funny and human and we couldn't wait to start adapting them. Joe Stein did a remarkable job, because what he discovered was that almost none of the dialogue in the stories would work on stage. It was literary dialogue. It was funny, it was charming, it was beautiful, but it was not stage dialogue. So, almost 90% of what's on the stage had to be invented by Joe. He always had to keep in mind that what he wrote had to sound as though Sholom Aleichem had written it.

JB:         Tell me about that interaction between you as the lyricist, and Joe, who's writing the book.

SH: That process is pretty much the same in every musical I've done. You get together with the book writer, the composer, the lyricist. You talk about the nature of the show you're doing. Then, I have to wait until whoever is doing the book begins to send me scenes, because I cannot write lyrics until I see what the dialogue sounds like. We cannot have lyrics that sound like they're being sung by a different person than the person who was speaking dialogue. They all have to come out of the same characters.

JB:         You made a reference earlier to a "new world" and there is a  line in the show when Tevye says to his wife, "It's a new world, Golda." That is one of so many lines that are so relevant even today.

SH: Yeah, my wife and I saw a production in Japan earlier this year. It's been a very popular show in Japan. When we inquired as to why it was so popular, they said that after World War II, the young people who had been brought up before that in very strictly traditional ways, after World War II they began to break away and it was extremely difficult for their parents to deal with this. Since that's what "Fiddler”’s about, the show was very meaningful in Japan.

JB:         That brings me to the next question. What do you think has created the incredible appeal of the show to people outside of the Jewish audience?

SH:         Well, that was what we worried about originally. However, Joe Stein and Jerry Bock and I, we found universal values in the Sholom Aleichem stories. We tried to stress those values. We couldn't eliminate the fact that these are about Jewish people, but we thought the story values that we emphasized, were universal values. And, it paid off.

I remember, in New York, once the show opened on Broadway, that we had to give a performance for the people who are working in other shows, otherwise they wouldn't be able to get to see it. So, within the first few months there's what they call an Actors Fund benefit. The theater is filled with actors from other shows. They're wonderful audiences.

Anyway, I was at the Actors Fund and an Irish friend of mine, a performer named Florence Henderson, at the intermission, came running up the aisle, and she said, "Sheldon. This show is about my Irish grandmother." That's the kind of thing I love to hear, because that's what we were trying to accomplish. Trying to make it a show that could reach out to everybody, not just Jewish people.

JB:         Of course, "Fiddler on the Roof", with its pogrom and, ultimately, the dispersal of the Jews from Anatevka, signalled the darkening clouds over Europe and the show was written barely 20 years after the end of the Second World War.

SH:         I know. On that tour I mentioned, where my wife and I first saw it in London and then we went to Amsterdam. It was a rather spooky feeling. We were told that the seats we were sitting in had been occupied by Nazis not all that long ago.

JB:         To what extent was there any referencing of the 20th century's Holocaust when you were writing the show?

SH:         I must say, we did not try to foreshadow the Holocaust. In the original, one of the original Sholom Aleichem stories, there is a pogrom, so we thought, okay, The pogrom is there and we will have the pogrom on stage at the end of Act 1. But, we didn't make any more of it than that.

However, somebody recommended a 1952 book called "Life is With People", which all 3 of us read, that documented many chapters of life from Eastern European Jewry before the Second World War. We read that book and found that there was a lot that we could use. Many of the people that were interviewed said one of the things they remembered about pogroms was that pillows would be destroyed and that there would be feathers flying all over the room. So, we took that idea and used it in the show.

I remember seeing the show in New York once. My wife and I were sitting opposite from 2 people on the other side of the aisle. They were elderly, gaunt people. They looked like they had, at one time, been in a concentration camp. During the pogrom, I thought they were both going to have heart attacks. They were looking at the stage, you could see that they were riveted to the stage and we thought, Oh my God, they are reliving an experience. It was a really spooky feeling.

JB:         Where did the title of the show come from?

SH:         We had long list of titles. As a matter-of-fact, the title that originally we wanted to give it was "Where Papa Came From", because Joe Stein's father and Jerry Bock's father and my father all came from different places in Europe. That was one of the titles we had, but we made a long list of titles. One of us had seen the Marc Chagall paintings (The Green Violinist and Le Violiniste)  with the fiddle-player who looks, actually, he's not standing on a roof, he's actually suspended a little bit above it. But, it looks like he's standing on the roof. So, that was also one of our titles.

Then one day, Hal Prince who was producing the show, came to us and he said, "Guys, I need a title." So, we showed him the list. He ran his finger down the list and when he got to "Fiddler on the Roof", he said, "Aha! This suggests music and I want people to know the show is a musical." So, that's the title he chose.

And, by the way, Joe Stein and I, we have very different memories of that particular story. Joe insists that when Hal Prince saw the list, he said, "What's number 7? Whatever number 7 is, that's going to be the title of the show." I said, "Joe, Hal would never do that!"

Le Violiniste by Marc Chagall

JB:         You're one of the Broadway greats. What are your thoughts about why so many of the great musical theatre composers are or were Jewish?

SH:         My thought about that is that those of us who were brought up in a, more or less, orthodox synagogue are very much used to a very emotional kind of singing that takes place in those services. So, we grow up with that in our head.

The other thing is that, at the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century, there were many professions that were barred to Jewish people. There were things they wanted to do but they weren't allowed to. But, they were allowed to entertain. Once people like Irving Berlin established themselves, they were beacons for other people to follow. Other people who had talent that - okay, if I can't be this,if I can't be that, maybe I can go into the entertainment business. I think that that was one of the reasons that so many shows were written by Jewish people. 

JB:        Sheldon, thank you very much for your time.



She Loves Me plays at the Landor Theatre until 7th March 2015