Today I profile the acclaimed artist who is creating this new musical's Book - one of the American Theatre's greatest and most prolific playwrights - Terrence McNally.
Terrence is the recipient of 4 Tony Awards and his many acclaimed plays and musicals include Love! Valour! Compassion!, Master Class, The Ritz, Lips Together Teeth Apart, Frankie And Johnny In The Clair de Lune, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Full Monty and Ragtime which will be revived on Broadway this fall.
Terrence was born in 1939 in St Petersburg, Florida, and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas where from an early age he became interested in musical theatre.
“The biggest influences on me as a child were opera and musical comedy. I fell in love with opera in the sixth grade. I was at Catholic school and a nun played Puccini love duets for us, and I liked it right away. The way most people like strawberry ice cream cones – that’s how is was for me with Italian Opera. When I was much younger, about five or six, my parents took me to see Annie Get Your Gun with Ethel Merman and when I was twelve they took me to see the King And I with Gertrude Lawrence, and those were the only two theatre experiences I had as a child – both on trips to New York. But the opera was something I was able to fantasize and dream about because of the Texaco Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and I use to build little sets in the little theatre I made.”
He attended Columbia University where he majored in Journalism returning to Texas during the summers to work on the Corpus Christi Caller –Times.
After graduation, Terrence moved to Mexico to focus on his writing, completing a one-act play which he submitted to the Actor's Studio in New York for production. While the acting school turned down the play, the Studio was impressed with the script, 
and he was invited to serve as the Studio's stage manager so that he could gain practical knowledge of theater. During these early years in New York, Terrence was a protégé of the noted playwright Edward Albee .
In 1964, at the age of 23 Terence made his Broadway debut with his play Things That Go Bump In The Night. Over the next 40 years he would go on to create nearly 40 plays and musicals produced On and Off-Broadway and at theatres around the world, as well as numerous film and television projects.
In addition to his four Tony Awards and one Emmy Award, he has earned two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, a Joseph Jefferson Award, the Lucille Lortel Award and the Hull-Warriner Award. In 1994 he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his play A Perfect Ganesh.
Terrence is a consummate man of the theatre and it has been a thrill to watch him work on this show -- especially his collaboration with our incredible quartet of stars -- Norbert Leo Butz, Aaron Tveit, Tom Wopat and Kerry Butler.
It is clear to me that they are the prefect actors to bring Terrence’s work to the stage.
“The two musical comedies I saw as a child had extraordinary star performers, Ethel Merman and Gertrude Lawrence and my work is best served by actors who are (and this is not a pejorative word) performers and less well served by “Method” actors. My ideal artistic collaborators are actors who find the feeling in lines without having to add “uhs”, “you knows”, ‘I means” – and just go with the language. They say the words and the feeling follows. So many actors have to have the feeling before they can say the line – it’s not my music.”
You will certainly hear Terrence McNally’s music, as well as that of all of his collaborators, in our World Premiere of Catch Me If You Can.
In the meantime, click here to view one of Terrence’s several fascinating interviews with PBS’s Charlie Rose in which he discusses the writing of his acclaimed plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class.
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5 comments:
We saw today's afternoon performance, not knowing how they would take a film without significant music and make a visually-interesting musical out of it. While (of course) not knowing any of the songs, all were at least satisfactory, one almost memorable, the best IMHO being the duets between males Frank Sr. and Frank Jr. (the former played by "Dukes of Hazzard" and "Cybill" co-star Tom Wopat, who proved that he could also carry a tune, his "Hazzards" co-star John Schneider at one time being more known for it) , Frank Jr. and Hanratty, and the male/female duet of Frank Jr./Brenda, both of whom had an opportunity to demonstrate their tremendous range and enthusiasm in later solos. The actress playing Brenda's mother also surprised by playing the accordion during one of the numbers! The biggest surprise, though, was the amount of swear words in the first half, with wide range of curse words employed and people using them, i.e. they weren't identifiable to one particular character, and none seemed necessary/beneficial to the scene or the song where they were used. Observing as many young children in the audience, it seemed that hearing the several "G-D's" and what sounded like and f-bomb among the a, b, s, etc. that I heard was particularly inappropriate and got me wondering if musicals need to be rated like motion pictures and video games are. That aside, the use of the orchestra, on a stage that slid back and forth from the back of the stage, the sets and imaged backgrounds (the FBI office was depicted with images of rows of file drawers), and the dancing that included a fantastic Rockettes-like leg-kicking number made for an enjoyable show, and a high bar set for the rest of the 2009/10 season. This was approximately a "greatest hits" of scenes of the movie, with of course some omissions - none serious (e.g., no France, no getting by the FBI by getting surrounded by stewardesses-though this was one of the funniest parts of the movie, no jail to name 3), changes (being caught in Miami), and considerably more humor, particularly by the actor that played Hanratty-he seemed to enjoy "hamming it up" and nearly stole the show, save the strong singing performances by the actor portraying Frank Jr. in particular (given his time on stage vis-a-vis the actress portraying Brenda, for instance). At least an 8 out of 10.
I was down from Vancouver for the weekend, and felt obliged to catch the show on Sunday night. This is a Big Show—technically and musically brilliant, up to and including a bouncing ball!—and I have no doubt that it will proceed on its merry, often moving way to the Great White Way and beyond. Only downer, and a slight one at that, was the closing number on the bare stage. After the great solos and all the rest that had gone before, I waited for the tempo and mood to change—the 'sound' that would send me singing into the Seattle night. But not until the bows did it pick up and get us out of our seats. I hope I haven't upset you all. I WAS one of the first to stand and cheer.
I came to the 7/31/2009 show. It was great and I thought it superb. One suggestion is that there appers to be too many detectives..I think you need a few to develop the lead detective but 4-5 is too many. I loved what you did with the orchestra and loved the rest.
I came to the 7/31/2009 show. It was great and I thought it superb. One suggestion is that there appers to be too many detectives..I think you need a few to develop the lead detective but 4-5 is too many. I loved what you did with the orchestra and loved the rest.
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN...A cautionary tale...Notwithstanding the feloious activities embraced by the lead character, it is refreshing to visit the more innocent times of the sixties. No bar codes, pin numbers, BlackBerrys, or recorded phone voices. Our here's conrelies solely on his charm and extraordinary ability to relate to and understand his "victims". We love Frank because he presupposes he will succeed in a country where success is sthe gold standard for acceptance. His strong belief in himself, his determined lack of fear, and insouciant bravery in the face of capture gives us an old style American hero. A picaresque character who defies the odds, conventions, and (most especially) his background to become (after a trail by fire) our ideal: a man who discovers himself quite in spite of himself. One could call this "The Daddy Show" given there are three men who guide our hero to his ends. it takes a village to create this fellow and each empowers him with their brand of virtue. Honesty and chicanery, air and substance form equal parts in this lad until the transformative power of love intervenes demanding he face his life squarely. Frank is American...in his hopes and expectations, his energies and ambitions. He is us in the late 50's/60's and before the morass of Viet Nam, before ignominious defeat and national upheaval, before our benighted republic faced assissinations and body bags. Here WE are forty years later and the gradually eroded romantic view of America stares back at us through Wall Street, Abu Ghraib, steroids in sports, millions with no health care, and outsourcing of our once bustling industries. America must face it's truth courageously that our promise has been wasted, our potential debased, and the virtues which we trumpet to the world vaingloriously defrauded. These are harsh words but like Frank we need to face our demons and accept our crumbling facade and go about finding the "happy ending" to our story. When faced with prison our hero departs the "dark side" for his long sought "real"father whose harsh words of wisdom and self-sacrifice are the boy's salvation. We in America need such a parent or we need to better parent ourselves. We need to look critically at how we are received in the world, our individual contributions, and our unrelenting accumulation of more and more. We need to find our real character, one that combines the virtues of our founding fathers, the pride of our accomplishments, the recognition of our national disgraces, the acknowledgement of our differences and the strength to face the challenges ahead. In short, we need like Frank to grow up. Quite apart from how this musical makes you think of our national character...it is beautifully performed and produced. The music quite fits each character's persona and the arc of the main characters was fully formed. Bravo 5th Avenue, bravo the writers, director, designers, tecnicians, musicians, and performers for creating an important and entertaining evening.
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