From spotlight to ghost light and back again

Strolling through the lobby of the Shubert Theater is like taking a guided tour of the history of the American musical. Not only is each wall adorned with numerous posters for such shows as Guys and Dolls and The Sound of Music, but prominently engraved into the wall next to the entrance to the auditorium is the name of each show that has ever played the Shubert. "Did you ever see that wall?" asked Frank Wildhorn, with admiration and awe. Wildhorn, the composer of Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and most recently, The Civil War, is quite aware of the theater's past. "It's not just the history of theater," he says. "It's the history of American music in the theater. This place stands for that history more than any other theater in the country."

The theater, referred to as "The Birthplace of Broadway's Greatest Hits," earned that nickname by housing the world premiere performances of such shows as Oklahoma!, Carousel, A Streetcar Named Desire, The King and I, Damn Yankees, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, as well as another 3,000 various productions of all kinds. "Historically, it is of major importance," English and theater studies Professor Joseph Roach said of the Shubert. Everyone from Marlon Brando and John Travolta to Rex Harrison and Liza Minnelli has graced the Shubert stage, facts that aren't lost on its current tenants. "To be where Rex Harrison did My Fair Lady and Brando did Streetcar, it is such an incredible honor to be at the Shubert," said Douglas Sills, star of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which officially opened its national tour at the Shubert on Tues., Feb. 22.

But while the Shubert may still consider itself the birthplace of the American musical, the child itself has warped and changed considerably since the times of Rogers and Hammerstein and Irving Berlin. And the role of the Shubert has changed with it. In 1977, the Shubert ceased to exist as a commercial theater. According to Robert Resnikoiff, the theater's director of marketing and public relations, "In the 1970s, the economics of the road made [the Shubert] no longer viable. Shows didn't go out on the road. They came straight from the regional theaters or from London." Since its 1983 reopening, the Shubert has officially been called a center for the performing arts; it is now a non-profit organization that seeks to reach out to the community, and has de-prioritized making money. As Resnikoff said, "Back when Rogers and Hammerstein were opening their musicals here, the theater didn't have a mission. Now it's a completely different situation." And while the opening of Pimpernel's national tour may seem to indicate just how much both the theater world and the Shubert have changed, it suggests that both, in some ways, remain the same.

Rex Harrison was a whiner

One of the primary purposes of the Shubert was to provide potential Broadway shows with a place to fix some of their flaws out of the sight of the harsh New York press. In New Haven, a production's creative team was safe to toy with the show, to strengthen the show by the time it moved to New York. "The Shubert was a Broadway manufacturing plant," Resnikoff said. "It's where Rogers and Hammerstein came, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and others as well." Its position in New Haven allowed both the actors and the creative team to commute easily from New York, but yet "The press didn't snoop around a show that wasn't ready for them."

"At the time, the Shubert was part of the major booking group in the country and in New York," Roach said. "The city was famous for hosting the creators of the country's biggest shows as they went through the immense pressure of developing a production. "It was in a hotel here that Rex Harrison threw a fit," he said. "He wanted to know why they couldn't just do the show as a play." The show, of course, was My Fair Lady. And as Wildhorn noted, "In one of the local hotels, Rogers and Hammerstein were known for rewriting the second act while the first act was taking place on stage."

More important, New Haven audiences became accustomed to their role as an aid to the creative team. As Resnikoff said, "The Shubert audience takes pride in its place in American theatrical history for being the first audience to look at a show and to help the writers." Playwrights such as Neil Simon would often gauge a New Haven audience's reaction to a piece and then alter it to improve it in any way possible. "When we premiered his most recent piece, Proposals, he was pacing up and down behind the audience gauging their reaction to the show, changing lines to make the laughs work better," said Resnikoff. "That's something our audiences have been doing for generations."

From rags to scarlet

The Scarlet Pimpernel has a history of its own. In truth, the unlikely story that brought Pimpernel to the Shubert exemplifies the importance the theater should continue to have for Broadway musicals. When Pimpernel opened on Broadway on Sun., Nov. 9, 1997, it was nearly universally panned by New York critics. A great part of the difficulty the show faced came from the fact that it had essentially been created from scratch in the city. "When you're in New York, you're in a fishbowl," Wildhorn said. "Everyone has something to say. It's a very unhealthy place to create." As a result, the show was not at its best. "We did make some changes during previews," Sills said, recalling the creation of the original show. "But we didn't make as many as I would have liked." As a result, the creative team continued to implement changes well into the run, and after the critics had seen the show.

Indeed, it was only through a nearly-miraculous turn of events that Pimpernel made it this far at all. Facing terrible reviews in November, 1997, "Any reasonable producer would shut the show down," Sills said. "With those reviews, he'd be a fool not to." Nan Knighton, the show's lyricist and book-writer, pushed hard to enlist new producers who could finance a more formal revision of the show. As a result, in an almost unprecedented move, the show shut down for several weeks, while a new director, Robert Longbottom, recreated the show with an almost entirely new cast. When it reopened in the fall of 1998, it received mixed and positive reviews; the New York Times, which had previously lambasted the show reversed itself, calling the new production "light-hearted, prettily-appointed entertainment."

The changes might have been drastic, but the process essentially made up for the lack of an out-of-town tryout. "Not going out of town was the biggest mistake, I think, the show could make," Sills said. He added, "Musicals are made out-of-town. That's just how they ought to be done, and I think it is a very precarious thing not to do that. Out of town is where you need to make those changes, because no show is going to be perfect from the start."

Wildhorn agreed. Pimpernel represented a break in tradition for him. With the exception of this, all of Wildhorn's shows have had extensive out-of-town engagements prior to their New York City openings. "When you are going to make a record, you make a demo tape first," he said. "For me, using New Haven is like making a demo. It gives me a chance to play with the material, to learn from an audience, to see how they respond. An audience will tell you what works, you will see it in their reaction, and not having the chance to do that sucks."

Will there be a curtain call?

In what has been affectionately referred to as Pimpernel 4.0, the show will now head across the country as a very different production from the one that opened nearly two- and-a-half years ago. And Pimpernel, along with shows like Capeman, which was killed by backstage leaks during New York previews, testify to the importance of the out of town tryout. Many of today's producers now seem to agree—in the last few years, the well-received Ragtime and The Lion King spent significant amounts of time out of New York before arriving on the Great White Way.

So the days of "manufacturing musicals" may not yet be over. Knighton, though pleased with the show in its current form, is nevertheless willing to edit her script over the course of the Shubert run. "I think that you can always keep going," she said. "You stop when someone says you have to, when your time is up." Because of this kind of sentiment among producers, the Shubert, less than two decades after reopening, is beginning to reemerge as an important stop on the way to the big time. "[Shubert Theater President and CEO] Caroline [Werth] gets many offers and suggestions from people who'd like to bring their show in," Resnikoff pointed out. "Ideally, we'll be a Broadway manufacturing plant again."

Top photo by Julia Tiernan. Bottom photos by Joan Marcus.

Back to A&E...