What Musical Should Be Doyle-ified?

the RENT part is a joke, right?

well he Doyleified MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG in England. It was fairly successful. I'm not sure if they're keeping it like that for the 2009 Roundabout revival but I'm excited... even though I'm getting so terribly sick of it.

I always thought Hair could work with this approach.

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Li'l Abner?

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I think it's unfair to say "Doyle-fied." He's not the first director to use the actor-musician concept, and he's only used it for a fraction of all the shows he's directed in his career. It's anything but "his inventive idea."

But, to answer the question, I would have liked to have seen how he did "Fiddler On the Roof." I think before he does another actor-musician show, he should do another more traditionally-directed piece to remind people that he is not a one-trick pony. Maybe he can take his version of "Fiddler" to a regional theatre for a while. Not to Broadway of course, the last revival was enough for a while, but if it did pop up somewhere in the country, I'd try to see it.

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heathurr is correct. "Forced the actors to play instruments"? Hardly. Below are some excerpts from an interview he did just before Company opened in Cincinnati:

"It grew out of economic necessity. I was working at a regional theatre in the early 1990s where we couldn't afford an orchestra. In those early days, performers sat with their music stands, got up and acted and sat down again. The music and the scenes weren't integrated. What I've tried to do is to be more honest with it as a story-telling form. Now we don't differentiate between naturalism and a slightly anarchic way of storytelling. It's been a long evolution. It's not just about how many rules you can break — it's what you can do to take traditional structures and challenge them without negating or devaluing the original material."

"My approach creates a great ensemble. It gets back to what theatre is all about; it gets back to why people perform. The honesty of the relationship between the actor and the audience is key: We're telling you this story. We're not pretending. We're all in the same place at the same time. We want to break through the fourth wall. We're actually here together, the actors and the audience. It's back to basics — people are attracted to the simplicity and the honesty of the storytelling. I always say, "Let's go to the beginning of the story. Let's look at how the choices we make can best inform the story." It was a great challenge to me to find clarity in the story. That's my job, bottom line. That's what I do for a living: I'm a storyteller."


Full Interview

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SweeneyPhanatic, I love that interview. I didn't realize it was online, but it's great.

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He did Fiddler with that conceit? That's something I'd like to see.

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Updated On: 6/12/08 at 10:46 PM

I'm blanking on whether Fiddler had actor-musicians or not. I'm pretty sure it did... I'll check.

And sure, I'll actually just PM you in a little while. Is that cool?

ETA: Or I guess I'll post it.

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Updated On: 6/12/08 at 10:52 PM

I like the opposite concept. Instead of having the principal actors play instruments, have the some of the orchestra members function as an ADDITIONAL part of the ensemble in scenes where it would make sense to have musicians on stage. For instance, in MY FAIR LADY, there could be street musicians (buskers) in Covent Garden, A formally dressed chamber group playing at the ball, some musicians in the pub for "Get me to the Church On Time", etc. Obviously, there would be no onstage musicians in Higgins' apartment.

I'm with Emcee on this the whole way - there's so much thought that goes into this style of direction. It's not just a concept.

And I'd personally like to see A Little Night Music and Assassins done with actor-musicians, partially because characters in both shows already play instruments (Hinkley, and in some productions the Balladeer in Assassins and Henrik in ALNM).

He also did Mack and Mabel that way in London. It was the first staged production of Mack and Mabel I've really enjoyed. I thought it worked well, despite that it wasn't a fantastic cast.

After seeing Sweeney Todd and enjoying it, I really thought that Company would work even better. I'm not sure why, but when I saw it I actually thought it worked less well than Sweeney Todd.

He also, before Sweeney, used instruments in Cabaret and Pal Joey, whose plots both lend themselves to allowing it to feel pretty natural anyway. I think he also did it with Candide?

The Lincoln Center library has a video of a panel discussion/moderated interview he did along with Mano Felciano and Mary-Mitchell Campbell in the summer of 2006, called "An Evening With John Doyle." It's really informative, and goes beyond Sweeney and Company, into his background and general philosophy, etc. It's worth checking out if you're interested in his work.

heathurrr and SweeneyPhanatic, I'll just PM both of you. I don't want to bore everybody else. I'll do it tomorrow, though, I'm about to fall asleep.

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