When a Broadway show gets revived or made into a feature film there are quite often some very big shoes to fill. For director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall, who is tackling the musical Sweet Charity, she has to face a very large pair of shoes that laid the groundwork for the whole enterprise: Bob Fosse conceived of the project, choreographed the original production, directed the production and its film adaptation. For Marshall, a nine-time Tony Award nominee and three-time Tony Award winner, she isn’t intimidated at all by Fosse as she tackles the Reprise semi-staged production of Sweet Charity that opens this week at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA.
(Photo credit: Tom Drucker)
Reprise, or rather Reprise 2.0 as they call themselves, is LA’s answer to New York’s Encores. Musicals that don’t get revived very often, or perhaps have not been seen since their original productions, are performed in a semi-staged presentation that has the orchestra and the cast all on stage. There is some choreography, but it isn’t the same as a full-production would offer. When Reprise was looking for someone to launch the 2.0 version, they went straight to Marshall. Amongst the shows she has directed and choreographed are revivals of Anything Goes (with Sutton Foster), The Pajama Game (with Harry Connick, Jr. and Kelli O’Hara), and In Transit.
I spoke with Marshall by phone after casting of Sweet Charity had finished and prior to rehearsals beginning.
When you tackle a musical like Sweet Charity, a show that comes with the intense imprimatur of Bob Fosse, what are the challenges in making it your own, yet something audiences still find familiar in certain aspects because his work is so strongly identified with it?
Obviously we’re not fully choreographing everything. We’ll do what we can in the limited time we have. To me it’s about honoring the time period as much as it is honoring Bob Fosse. It’s the mid-60s in terms of style and filtering that through our contemporary lens. I know. I choreographed The Pajama Game [Fosse choreographed the original 1954 production] and I’ve been down this road before. His style was so unique. The other thing you have when you do a Fosse show is because he was such a genius the dance arrangements and orchestrations are fantastic. So even though you are creating new vocabulary and steps, the road map to a really well laid out production number is already there in terms of how it builds and finishes because you have a master.
Many critics of the original production said that it was Fosse’s choreography that brought the show together and not the score and book. Do you agree with that assessment?
At Reprise the first thing you are doing is serving up there score. You are doing a cutdown version of the book and a sort of blueprint of the staging in some ways. I think the score holds up. I haven’t read the original reviews, but I think the score is fantastic.
Sweet Charity did very well in an Off-Broadway production in 2016 (with Sutton Foster). It hadn’t been seen on Broadway since 2005. Why does Sweet Charity continue to have an appeal for multiple generations?
I think there’s that Charity, even though she takes her knocks, she’s an optimist who fights her way to sunshine and that joy is infectious. It has some real crazy catch songs and songs that make you smile: “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This,” “I’m a Brass Band.” These songs are like sunshine.
How much of the musical’s appeal has to do with the underlying source material of Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. Certainly Giulietta Masina’s performance is one of the best in all of film history.
The movie is more melancholy and tougher in some ways, but I think it’s a gritty world Charity lives in. To try to change her situation is a challenge for her. So I think for me, and we’re going to have a basic look at the show, it’s a gritty New York 1960s feel as opposed to a vibrant 60s Laugh-In pop-flavored show. It’s not a sort of Peter Max bit of colorful world. It’s a tough business in a tough neighborhood in a tough time.
Two other figures looming large over any production are Gwen Verdon, who starred in the original Broadway production, and Shirley MacLaine who starred in the feature. When casting the title character what made Laura Bell Bundy the right person to step into those shoes?
I think because she is, besides being an incredibly skilled musical theatre actor/singer/dancer, she is immensely likable and you root for her. You have to have a Charity you root for, will find love and will find her joy. And I think Laura is amazingly appealing and winning in the way.
How insane is the process of putting together a show like this?
We’ve got ten days of rehearsal on Sweet Charity. You can never do a Reprise process for a new musical. You’re doing something already tried and tested. There’s no way you could put a new show together on that crazy schedule. You might do a workshop with minimal staging for a small invited audience. It’s true that musicals take a longer gestation period than in the 50s and 60s when you could write a new show every season.
Charity goes through a roller coaster ride of being loved and then ignored and loved and ignored. On a professional level can you relate to her journey?
I think Charity is so hopeful and she goes into everything. Like theatre you go in with great hopes it will be successful and you don’t always have control of the results. That’s true that no matter what. You have to pick yourself up and start the next project.
And Marshall already has her next project in place. Once Sweet Charity is done she will make the trek down to San Diego to direct a production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Globe. Performances of that show begin August 12th. Sweet Charity opens on June 20th and continues through July 1st.