Mainly on Directing

the physical production if I agreed to have the orchestra on the stage and freed up the space for more high-price seats down front. That $200,000 was the equivalent of an extra $2,000,000 for a comparable production on Broadway. In the theatre, as everywhere, the modus operandi is to accept or reject flat out rather than make an effort to figure how it might be possible to have it both ways. I wanted the money; I did not want the actors to play in front of the orchestra on stage—but that was where the orchestra had to be for me to get the money. There had to be a way for both Jack and me to get what we wanted. I went to Jim Youmans, our scenic designer.
City Center's stage is extremely deep, so deep that I had asked Jim to cut the stage in half with a scrim. Jim smiles more than any other designer I have ever worked with; the smile is both real and a cover for one of the most interesting and endearing people in the theatre. Behind the scrim, he halved the stage with another scrim, the area between the two reserved for Rose's fantasy world. Jim is the most talented designer of minimalist scenery I know; but this wasn't about scenery, it was about space. The question that needed an answer was: if we put the orchestra against the back wall and put a third scrim in front of it, could we have all the musicians on stage without their being seen? Jim measured; we could. Without those little lights on their music stands being seen? A black scrim would hide them, he assured me.
When you get what you want, you want more. I began searching for moments when the orchestra on stage could work to the advantage of the play. Three popped up immediately: during Tulsa's number, during “Rose's Turn,” and, most potently, during what is arguably the best overture to a musical. For me, the only possible rival is Candide, but after its overture, the music for the play is thwarted.
Gypsy would begin by having rich red curtains part and scrims lift, one by one, to reveal the orchestra, painted with light as only Howell Binkley can. Seeing the dramatically lit orchestra play that overture would silence the chatter that customarily goes on during overtures; instead, the show could start the audience on a high. But then what? The Jocko scene would have to be a letdown unless something unexpected happened before it started. And something did. As the overture came to its end, the scrims that rose to reveal it came down in the same sequence in which they came up, the last being a black scrim that blotted out the orchestra during the closing bars in time to bring down a peeling gilded portal, holes in its rotting frame and rips in its hanging, tattered swags, that said Dead Vaudeville/Dead Dreams. That portal set the tone for the whole show. It startled the audience: this was not going to be the Gypsy they expected. But they applauded the overture and cheered—something they had never done before.
The theatre audience has not necessarily been dumbed down by what's presented to them these years. It still has an imagination, and it still can use it, even with revivals. It's hungry to see a new light on an old scene.
Paradoxically, what started this Gypsy on the road to that memorable closing night was another of the Ninth Floor's inadequate schedules, this one the heedless lack of rehearsal time.
On West Forty-fifth Street, I would have been given four or five weeks with the full company. On West Fifty-fifth Street, out of the central Broadway district, City Center scheduled two weeks with the full company. I bargained: if I used only the four leading players and one pianist, could I have one more week? Jack agreed and got the Ninth to agree. I took that as an opening: with his help, I managed, player by player, to inch the number up to nine.
We started sitting around a table that first day—Patti LuPone, Boyd Gaines, Laura Benanti, Leigh Ann Larkin, Jim Bracchitta, four other actors, and I. Except for a piano in the corner, it might have been the first rehearsal of a play, not a musical. The picture was familiar. For the last ten years, most of my work in the theatre has begun sitting around a table at the George Street Playhouse across the river in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with its unique artistic director, David Saint. George Street seeks new plays; David, who has directed several of mine, is the best director who ever has. Venecia, a new play Tom and I found in Buenos Aires, David produced at George Street. Tom translated; I adapted and directed, with Chita Rivera starring as the old blind madam of a whorehouse with one customer. A lot of rehearsal time was spent sitting around the table even though Venecia is fantasy, farce, and even has a musical number. When I revised and directed Hallelujah, Baby! that began around a table too. We didn't stay around the table as long as we should have. Well, it was a musical. Why, then, did I stay around the table with Gypsy?
So much of Gypsy is about growing up and older that it needs to be rehearsed in sequence. That was impossible at City Center, because the little kids were absent from rehearsal. It was also impossible to stage more than a piece of a scene, because even though the nine players included character men, there was always one character who wasn't covered. So there we were that first day with nothing we could do but sit around the table: nine players and I like nine actors sitting around a table with a director for a play. Gypsy wasn't a play, it was a musical; musicals aren't rehearsed sitting around a table. But it wasn't a musical comedy, it