Mr. Nowack said: "I will forever be fascinated by the insane production design of the original Broadway production."
Funny story, that. Originally, the design team of the Broadway production (Robin Wagner -- sets, Randy Barcelo -- costumes, Jules Fisher -- lights) was assembled to work under a different director entirely, Frank Corsaro, who was most known at the time for staging such successful Broadway plays as A Hatful of Rain and The Night of the Iguana, and most recently, at the time, multimedia productions of classic pieces at the NYCO. (This drew Rice and Webber to him in particular.) Indeed, Corsaro played a huge role in shaping the eventual Broadway production (it was he who suggested the creation of "Could We Start Again Please" and lengthening the Trial scene because the score ran so short by theater standards, and many of the cast members eventually chosen for the show initially auditioned for him), but he was in a severe auto accident and was unable to do the show.
So the producer, Robert Stigwood, went back to pursuing his first choice, Tom O'Horgan, who had the cachet from Hair at the time. Initially, Tom had used his commitment to Lenny as an excuse to say "no," but after Corsaro's accident, the calls began again in earnest. Tom held out until they finally offered so much money to do the job that it would have been an absurdity to refuse. So he was now stepping in as director on a show with a firm opening date that had as yet never left the drawing board, and he needed a new concept. (Thankfully, he'd worked with the design team before, so he saw no reason to dispense with them and start afresh -- good thing, too, as it would have set the show back even further.)
But now he had a limited time-frame in which to come up with a concept for the production. And limited time, as it often does, led to ideas that seemed really great in his head, but proved impenetrable to an audience once they left it.
Quoting Tom (in Lawrence Thelen's great book The Show Makers):
"I had seen -- and I never told anybody this at the time -- a documentary about insects. The view that I took was that this was a reenactment of the Christ story by a future, future, future group of people who are really insects. So, if you look at the costumes of the priests, for instance, they really are some kind of insect. You see that through the whole piece."
Later, in Elizabeth Wollman's The Theater Will Rock, he said basically the same thing:
"I had gone to the Museum of Natural History, and there was a whole thing about insects when I was in the process of putting it together. So I thought, maybe I would do this piece as if a further civilization of evolved insects looked back at this primitive society's myth and decided to make a version of it. I don't think anybody ever got that. But if you look at the costumes, for instance, Judas is resurrected as a butterfly, and Christ comes up out of the ground in a chrysalis, and it breaks open and becomes a great moth."
As I understand it, with more time to plan and to come up with his own ideas, and perhaps having already been told his New York concept would never leave Gotham, O'Horgan came up with a much better concept for the outdoor production at the Universal Studios Amphitheatre in L.A.
Formerly gvendo2005
Broadway Legend
joined: 5/1/05
Blocked: After Eight, suestorm, david_fick, emlodik, lovebwy, Dave28282, joevitus, BorisTomashevsky, Seb28
Updated On: 4/4/16 at 08:18 AM
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(96)/discogs-images/R-2731379-1328232147.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(96)/discogs-images/R-2731379-1328232163.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(96)/discogs-images/R-2731379-1328232174.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(96)/discogs-images/R-2731379-1328232193.jpeg.jpg)
