Riedel on GYPSY and WEST SIDE STORY...- Page 2
Riedel on GYPSY and WEST SIDE STORY...
#25re: Riedel on GYPSY and WEST SIDE STORY...
Posted: 1/14/09 at 11:14pm
I can see him now, saying "square one" to everyone--the cast, the producers, Michael Reidel--everyone!
Then he and Hal go off to Switzerland on their skiing trip and laugh at everyone.
He comes back, makes three small changes, freezes the show--and that's it!
It opens to great reviews: The Nonagenarian Master Re-Envisions His Classic Masterpiece.
And all the out-of-town kvetchers have egg on their faces.
Congratulations. You've all been Laurentsed.
1957. Washington DC...
Not many changes were made in Washington, despite the protests of lyricist Stephen Sondheim. He felt strongly that "Gee, Officer Krupke," the comic song in the second act, didn't belong there.
"It was out of place in the second act," Sondheim explains. "It should occur in the first act, and ... 'Cool' should occur where 'Krupke' was. Because here are a group of kids who are running from a double murder, and for them to stop and do this comic number about social situations seemed to me to be out of place.
"And I kept nudging and bugging Jerry and Arthur and Lenny, 'Couldn't we please reverse the two? Couldn't we please reverse the two?' And we didn't."
They didn't because Laurents was insistent: "I thought that the tension in the second act needed relief," he says. "And they thought I was being vulgar and inserting musical comedy. So, I got very high-falutin' and talked about Shakespeare and the Porter scenes and his clowns. It was me taking one position, and I had to convince the other three that it was the right position. And I did."
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