[On Sunday, 1
November 2020, the New York Times inaugurated a short series in response to
the many closings and non-openings of stage productions caused by the
coronavirus shut-down of New York City’s theaters that started in March. A
number of shows hadn’t made it to previews and stopped rehearsing when the
theaters closed on 12 March 2020; others were in previews but closed before
officially opening.
[Within weeks or months, several of those productions
announced that they wouldn’t resume preparations or performances, such as
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” starring Laurie Metcalf and
Rupert Everett that closed at the Booth Theatre after nine previews; the
Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway revival of How I Learned to Drive by
Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel didn’t even make it to previews, which were
scheduled to begin at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on 27 March 2020.
[In
“Unopened,” the Times is looking at plays scheduled for Broadway runs before
the pandemic struck and still didn’t make it to opening. Of the five shows
profiled in the series, some closed out of town during try-outs and others
closed during New York previews. In its introduction to the series, which I’ll
be posting in order, the paper’s editors wrote:
Among the casualties of the current Broadway shutdown are shows in previews that will never officially open, as well as those whose futures are still in limbo. This series is looking at the curious history of five other shows aimed for Broadway that never got to opening night.
[The Times started “Unopened” in the “Arts &
Leisure” section of the Sunday paper and ran it on five consecutive days in
the print edition. The first article, below, reports the fate of 2004’s Lone
Star Love, an up-dated and musicalized adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The
Merry Wives of Windsor. (The online series started on Thursday, 29 October
2020, then skipped to 1 November and finished on the three succeeding days.
The web version of this report is entitled “A Not-So-Merry Mix: Shakespeare,
Bluegrass and Randy Quaid.”) I’ll be spreading the articles out a little more
than that.]
“SHAKESPEARE’S BLUEGRASS TRAGEDY”
by Lisa Birnbach
The Broadway marquee was up,
but this crowd-pleasing musical never made it out of Seattle. Among the creative
differences: How fat should Falstaff be?
Among the casualties of the current
Broadway shutdown are shows in previews that will never officially open, as well
as those whose futures are still in limbo. This series is looking at the curious
history of five other shows aimed for Broadway that never got to opening night.
Shows stumble and fall on the way to Broadway all the time. Then there’s “Lone
Star Love,” which after nearly two decades as a regional-theater staple, finally
crashed thanks to the mercurial behavior of its star, which resulted in his
lifetime banishment from Actors’ Equity.
The actor: Randy Quaid [b. 1950], who
with his wife/manager, Evi Quaid [b. 1963], has since been in the news largely
for brushes with the law. Today, almost 13 years after its aborted Broadway
opening, the creators of the show are reluctant to speak the names of the couple
at the center of the cancellation.
He is “the actor who caused an unbelievable
fracas,” or simply “that actor”; she is known as “her.”
Flash back, though, to
happier times, when “Lone Star Love” was simply a bouncy Texas-set updating of
Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” complete with bluegrass music.
Its
origin story begins in 1973 with John Haber [b. 1948], a young graduate of the
University of North Carolina who returned home to Chapel Hill with an M.F.A. in
directing from New York University’s Tisch School. The local troupe Everyman
Company asked him to direct “Henry IV, Part I” at the outdoor Forest Theater on
the Chapel Hill campus.
They wanted to cast the banjoist Tommy Thompson
[1937-2003], a member of the local bluegrass band Red Clay Ramblers, as
Falstaff, the portly friend of Prince Hal in the drama. Falstaff, as you may
remember, was a vain rogue said to be Shakespeare’s own favorite character.
Haber thought that the comic Falstaff from “The Merry Wives of Windsor” was
better suited for the company’s mostly amateur cast. So he modernized and set
the production in Windsor, Texas, post-Civil War. The band played incidental
music from the side of the stage, and at the curtain call performed “Happy
Trails.”
[“Happy Trails” is a song released in 1952 by cowboy entertainers Roy Rogers (1911-98) and wife Dale Evans (1912-2001) that became the enduring theme song for their radio program (1944-55) and television show (1951-57).]
As a noble, Falstaff is an outlier, but “‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’
is Shakespeare’s only play about common people,” Haber explained recently.
“After the Civil War, Texans started making money as cattle ranchers, just [the
way] wealth was being accumulated in England in the 15th century. And I could
picture John Falstaff as a southern colonel.”
When Haber moved back to New York,
he joined the Dodgers, a producing entity, and worked on other shows. The Red
Clay Ramblers came to have a higher profile as well, releasing several albums
and touring internationally.
The play’s journey restarted in 1987, when the
renowned Alley Theater of Houston asked the Ramblers if they had any ideas for a
show they might bring to the venue. The band had just performed there (and in
New York) in Sam Shepard’s “A Lie of the Mind.” Thompson remembered the
Texas-set “Merry Wives” he had once done, and called his old friend Haber.
The
Ramblers wrote a full score of music and lyrics, and Haber made changes in the
script that combined Elizabethan language with cowpoke action. The musicians
played Col. John Falstaff’s wingmen, held up props, and generally added to the
merriment of the enterprise.
The Repertory Theater of St. Louis put it on the
following year. From there the show meandered — the Players Theater in Columbus,
Ohio; Duke University; the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.
It was a bona fide
regional theater crowd-pleaser. Next stop? New York.
Workshops were organized in
1996, and in 1999, with Jim Belushi [b. 1954] as Falstaff. “We loved him — he
was great,” said the composer, Jack Herrick [b. 1969] of the Red Clay Ramblers.
Unfortunately, Belushi had commitments to his ABC-TV series [probably According
to Jim, 2001-9, of which Belushi was executive producer] and couldn’t stay with
the musical, which was now called “Lone Star Love; or, the Merry Wives of
Windsor, Texas.”
It took five more years, but “Lone Star Love” finally opened at
the John Houseman Theater Off Broadway, under the auspices of AMAS Musical
Theater. The production was immersive before that became so trendy; audience
members were ushered to the stage where the cast served up a barbecue meal.
(Some thought that was too country, but when the 2019 Broadway revival of
“Oklahoma!” did something similar it was considered brilliant.)
Jay O. Sanders
[b. 1953], a New York stage stalwart, portrayed Falstaff Off Broadway. Beth
Leavel [b. 1955] played one of the merry wives. “Pleasant, competent, thoroughly
innocuous” were some of the phrases Charles Isherwood used in his Dec. 9, 2004
New York Times review.
Still, “Lone Star Love” had a lot going for it: words by
Shakespeare, a familiar plot, charming music and, most important, investors who
were willing to put money into it.
They included the seasoned Broadway producer
Bob Boyett [b. 1942], as well as Ed Burke [b. 1943?], a newly retired
businessman from Chapel Hill. He had just sold his company and wanted to get
into the producing game. He flew to New York to take a three-day seminar to
learn how. Given his North Carolina provenance, the instructor introduced him to
“Lone Star Love.”
That the creators were fellow Tar Heels felt promising.
“Living in North Carolina,” Burke told me over the phone recently, “I was
country come to town. But I got hooked.
“I went to opening night, I wrote a
check, and I met Bob Boyett, the lead producer,” he added. Before long, he and
his wife, Eleanor, were writing checks frequently.
A cast album was recorded and
the show was nominated for best musical by both the Outer Critics Circle and
Lucille Lortel awards. Though it didn’t win, it had momentum, and after closing
Off Broadway in 2005 the producers had Broadway in mind as the next logical
step.
Boyett suggested that John Rando (“Urinetown”) come aboard to direct. (His
eventual credit was creative supervisor; Randy Skinner [b. 1952] was the
director/choreographer). He also called in Robert Horn (who later won the Tony
for “Tootsie”) to co-write the book.
The gang realized they needed a higher
profile star for Broadway. In 2007 Rando and Horn met with Randy Quaid at the
Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills. In 2005 the actor, a native Texan, had been Emmy
nominated for playing Col. Tom Parker in a mini-series about Elvis Presley. The
same year he had a choice movie role in “Brokeback Mountain.”
Despite a career
filled with distinguished performances, though, he was still best known as
Cousin Eddie from the “National Lampoon’s Vacation” movies. This musical
Falstaff would mark his Broadway debut.
“He was smart and understood where we
were going,” Horn said of the meeting. “It was a lovefest — we thought we’d
found the perfect fit.”
Looking back, Burke said, “Boy, did we pick the wrong
horse.”
That August, after some New York rehearsals, the production moved to
Seattle’s Fifth Avenue Theater for a pre-Broadway tryout, with the New York
opening scheduled for December. (“Hairspray” had gone to Broadway from the same
theater.) In order to procure Quaid for the gig, he was given an unusual amount
of creative approval.
Problem No. 1: the fat suit. According to Burke, Quaid, on
the advice of his wife, refused to wear it for the role.
“Not only did our
script contain references to Falstaff as a fat man — I counted eight at the
time,” Burke recalled, “Jack had even written a production number called ‘Fat
Man Jump.’ ”
Instead the couple suggested, over many objections, that Falstaff
should wear a “gigantic codpiece,” as it was described to me. An actor from the
Seattle company remembers a crack that was shared among the performers: “It
looks like he’s wearing his understudy in his underpants.”
Participants in the
Seattle production were generally loath to be quoted on the tryout, but did
provide glimpses of the turmoil as captured in emails from the Quaids to the
creative team.
“With all the deceit going on and lack of paying key creative
elements for the production Randy’s contract being unethicly [sic] passed
around, he has no trust in the working process he does not agree to any
changes,” read one note from Evi Quaid. “He no longer trusts the creative teams
[sic] agenda or to Honor his contractual rights in this production. He is not
willing to make changes in the script.”
As friction grew between the Quaids and
everyone else, life in Windsor, Texas, became far from merry. One day Horn said
he went to the Quaids’ hotel room to talk over line changes. “Mr. Quaid was
agreeing with me and showing me respect,” he recalled, “but Mrs. Quaid didn’t
like the fact that he was trying to find a middle ground.
“The nice conversation
descended into chaos,” he added. “I got out of that room. It was the last time I
ever spoke to them.”
Stories of misbehavior flew out of Seattle and into the New
York tabloids.
“Jack [Herrick] and John [Haber] suffer from the fact that I was
not a New York producer,” Burke recalled. “If you write enough checks you can
call yourself a producer. But we had an unmanageable situation. Our contract
wouldn’t allow us to hire another actor. It guaranteed that Randy Quaid would
take the role on Broadway.”
When it became clear that “Lone Star Love” with
Randy Quaid could not transfer to Broadway, a closing notice was posted, per
union requirements. Quaid’s understudy performed as Falstaff for the final two
weeks.
Twenty-three members of the cast and crew formally complained to Actors’
Equity about the actor’s behavior, on and offstage. After a Los Angeles hearing
to review the complaint, he was banned from the union for life and fined $81,000 [about $105,000 today] — two weeks’ pay for the other members of the company.
[Correction – Nov. 10,
2020: An earlier version of this article, relying on information from one of the
show’s producers, described incorrectly the timing and purpose of an $81,000
payment. The producers Ed and Eleanor Burke made the payment as severance to
members of the show’s company before it closed, not to pay a fine by Actors’
Equity against Randy Quaid. —New York Times]
In a 2008 article in Backstage
magazine, Quaid shared a letter indicating that he had chosen to resign, saying
the union “tolerates racism and mounts witch-hunts and McCarthyism.”
The marquee
was already up at the Belasco Theater on Broadway, but the show never made the
move. The New York Times reported the shutdown briefly: “Over the past few
weeks, Mr. Quaid’s wife, Evi Quaid, said, there had been backstage bickering
between the Quaids and one of the show’s producers, Ed Burke. Mr. Quaid had
negotiated an unusually high degree of creative approval for the show, and there
were disagreements about his interpretation of his character, who is based on
Falstaff.” “How do you take a fornicator, an adulterer, an alcoholic and an
identity thief and make a family show around him?” Quaid was quoted as saying.
(Efforts to reach the actor and his wife for this article through their lawyers
in Vermont, Virginia and Los Angeles were unsuccessful, as was outreach through
their social media channels.)
Boyett, the lead producer, remembers things a bit
differently.
“The cast wasn’t the biggest consideration for me as a producer,”
he said by telephone. “I don’t really blame the Quaids. When we closed the show
out of town we thought we should rest the property. The timing wasn’t good. And
then we all were busy with other things.”
Subsequently, the Quaids were charged
with vandalism on their former California home and for failing to appear in
court while on bail. (The office of the Santa Barbara district attorney
confirmed this week that the charges were still outstanding.) In recent
interviews and on social media they’ve attested to the presence of what they
call “Starwhackers” — a cabal of people who are out to kill celebrities.
Almost
30 years since he first got involved with what promised to be a lighthearted
romp, Herrick of the Red Clay Ramblers remains philosophical about the
experience.
“You can’t hold your breath for Broadway,” he said, chuckling over
the phone from Chapel Hill. “Work has continued on that show, and the producers
have abiding faith in it.”
[Readers of Rick On Theater may recall that on 14
April 2010, I posted an article on “Camino Real, The Musical,” an abortive 1976
attempt by a Buffalo, New York, theater company to develop a musical adaptation
of the Tennessee Williams play from 1953. As with some of the plays in the New
York Times series, it never made it out of the starting gate.
[But I had a
somewhat closer connection to a play putatively on its way to New York City and
Broadway that never quite got here. I wasn’t in it or even associated with the
show, but I was acquainted with several people who were—and I was a grad school
classmate of the playwright.
[Neil Cuthbert (b. 1951) was a Master of Fine Arts
candidate in playwriting at the Rutgers University School of Fine and Performing
Arts, now officially christened the Mason Gross School of the Arts. I was there
for an acting MFA from 1975 to 1977; I believe Neil completed his degree in
1976.
[Neil was one of a small group of MFA students at Rutgers who had
essentially completed their degree requirements before the MFA was officially
authorized by the university’s board of governors in 1975. (Another was actor
Avery Brooks, about whom I’ve written recently; see “Some Out-Of-Town Plays from
the Archive: Othello,” posted on Rick On Theater on 22 December 2020.)
[Dubbed
“shadow MFA’s,” Neil and his contemporaries had to remain in residence in the
newly-formed school of the arts one more year to fulfill the administrative
requirements for the MFA.. (I was part of the first class to enter the arts
school after the degree was fully accredited.)
[One of the things Neil had to
accomplish was present his thesis play and then defend the thesis itself. The
play was a script called Hot Potatoes and it was part of a spring repertory of
three plays performed by the MFA acting company in April and May 1976. (The
other two plays in the rep were Anton Chekhov’s The Wood Demon, staged by actor
David Margulies [1937-2016], and Joseph A. Walker’s The River Niger, which Avery
directed.)
[Because Neil had been around the theater program for a time before
the MFA was official—I think all the shadow MFA’s had been undergrads in the
theater program at Rutgers’ Douglass College, the seed of the graduate
program—he’d already written plays and one, The Soft Touch, had been staged at
Rutgers in 1974 and went on the win the American College Theater Festival’s Best
New Play Award, for which it received a performance at Washington, D.C.’s John
F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Eisenhower Theater.
[The play’s
director was Jack Bettenbender, who died in 1988 at 67 and was the head of the
program (which he also devised), and the designer was Joe Miklojcik, the theater
program’s TD, with both of whom I later worked. Several cast members were still
in or around the program when I was in residence.
[The play was optioned by Gene
Persson in association with Ted Chapin and Pangloss Productions for a Broadway
run. It was scheduled to open at the John Golden Theatre (demolished in 1985) on
21 September 1975 under the direction of Alan Arkin; the stars were Lenny Baker,
Richard Libertini, Josh Mostel, and Jo Anne Meredith.
[Kevin Kelly in the Boston
Globe declared that a description of the play “makes it sound better than it is”
and dubbed it a “truly sophomoric piece of theater.” The Soft Touch closed in
Boston on 13 September after a two‐week run at the Wilbur Theatre.
[With respect
to Lone Star Love, the production at UNC that started the project to musicalize
Merry Wives was called The Merry Wives of Windsor, Texas and ran at the Forest
Theatre at Chapel Hill in the summer of 1973. The Off-Broadway première of the
play, now entitled Lone Star Love, was staged at the John Houseman Theatre on
Theatre Row from 8 December 2004 to 6 February 2005 (previews started on 21
November 2004) under the direction of Michael Bogdanov. The limited-run
production was nominated for two 2005 Lucille Lortel Awards (Outstanding Musical
and Outstanding Choreographer) and a 2005 Outer Critics Circle Award
(Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical).
[The Seattle try-out of Lone Star Love
opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre on 8 September 2007 and closed on the 30th.
The abortive Broadway première had been scheduled to open at the Balasco Theatre
(now the New Victory Theatre), on 42nd Street west of Broadway on 3 December
2007 after starting previews on 1 November. The producers announced the
cancelation of the Broadway engagement on 24 September.
[Next in “Unopened” (1
March): “A comedy of mistaken racial identity inspired by ‘Miss Saigon’ crashes
and burns.”]
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