You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman (26 page)

According to Howard, the conversation continued. “And then [Merrick] said, ‘They’ll have to bring in a new choreographer. It’ll either be Ron Field or Michael Bennett.’ . . . And then he gave me his phone number and said, ‘If things really become troublesome, call me. This is my private number. And I’ll advise you whether you need to go into a hospital with nervous exhaustion.’ He was trying to protect me.”
12

The tension extended to the music department, on one day at least, when the orchestra assembled to play through Larry Fallon’s orchestrations for the first time. Much to Pippin’s surprise, Coleman stopped the musicians with surprising frequency. “I know from years of work that not only is it a terrible way to work; you never get an overall pattern about how something is. Musicians absolutely hate it, because they want to get a feeling of what is this piece like and what are the demands of this piece. And you can’t get that if you’re stopping every few bars,” said Pippin.

Pippin tried to stop Coleman, but to no avail. “I was so annoyed with him, and he wouldn’t stop. And I thought, ‘I’ve got to take a strong stand,’ and the only way was to not go back to rehearsal after lunch. And so they came looking for me, and they said, ‘Cy’s upset that you’re not there. We should get going.’ And I said, ‘Please tell Cy we are both not needed.’ That was the strongest message. And then he apologized to me, and I explained to him why I did that, and I said, ‘Cy, I cannot work this way. The orchestra hates it. They hate you, and we cannot get a feeling of what your music is like.’ And then he stopped and he backed off.”
13

The company eventually left for Detroit for a week and a half of previews, where during the first few performances the show ran over three and a half hours long. Before opening on January 17 it had been trimmed to just under three hours, mostly with cuts to tighten the book, although some of Coleman’s interstitial music, which used snatches of recitative and short reprises, was also excised.

The morning after the opening the reviews from the dailies came in. Lawrence DeVine, writing in the
Detroit Free Press
, was particularly hard on the show, labeling it a “mess.” His chief complaint was that the two-character show had been too aggressively expanded. He observed that Gibson’s original title “has been pared down 75 percent,” and then added, “But everyplace else the scheme has been to add and then add some more.”

The
Variety
review one week later echoed Devine’s sentiments: “It’s not bad enough that Gittel Mosca has a bleeding ulcer. In ‘Seesaw,’ they’ve put her in a busy, cluttered musical and surrounded her with 57 other characters more or less representing New York’s low-level theatrical world.”

Jay Carr, in the
Detroit News
on the morning after the opening, took an entirely different view of how the musical had expanded upon its source material. He praised the fact that “the affair between a dancer named Gittel and an about-to-be-divorced lawyer from Omaha named Jerry is minor compared to the passion between Gittel and New York.”

And while the critics took aim not only at the deficiencies of the book but also at Sherin’s direction and the performers, particularly Kazan, Coleman and Fields’s contributions to the show received generally high marks. DeVine said that it had “a cantering, lyrical score” and Carr described the music as being “suavely eclectic.”

More than the local reviews, it was the
Variety
review that provided advice on what should be done next with the show: “Gittel and Ryan need more time alone to develop their characters and their plight. They should not be interrupted by a Puerto Rican street theatre presentation of ‘Hamlet,’ no matter how quaint.”

Given the notices, producers Kipness and Kasha decided that the show needed a new director, or at least an artist who could come in and doctor it, providing advice on how to improve it without necessarily unseating the existing director. They approached Jerome Robbins, but he turned the project down. When the team called Michael Bennett, he flew to Detroit to assess what might be done.

At this time, Bennett was just on the cusp of what would become his extraordinary career as a director-choreographer, the force behind such musicals as
A Chorus Line
and
Dreamgirls
. Despite the fact that these shows were still in his future, he had already established himself as a formidable presence on Broadway. In 1972 he had just picked up a pair of Tony Awards for his work on
Follies
, one for choreography and one for direction (which he shared with Harold Prince). Among his other credits were Tony-nominated work on Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s
Promises, Promises
and Stephen Sondheim’s
Company
.

After Bennett saw the troubled show he met with the producers and outlined what they would have to agree to before he would consent to working on
Seesaw
. Some of his demands involved money for new sets and costumes. Beyond this, Pippin recalled, “He made it quite clear that he would come in, but only if he had dictatorial—and that was the word he used—dictatorial control of that show. He said, ‘There is no time to meet with people, discuss it, argue about it, anything.’ He said, ‘We only have time to do what I feel I can do with the show. Period.’ And that’s the way it worked. And no one was allowed to interfere with him at all.”
14

The producers agreed, and within a week of the opening Ed Sherin was let go from the production. Bennett put out phone calls to longtime friends and colleagues, asking them to come to Detroit to help him with the overhaul of the show, which was only four weeks away from its scheduled New York opening. Bennett knew that he would not be able to do all of the needed work on his own.

In short order, Bob Avian, Baayork Lee, Thommie Walsh, and Tommy Tune were in Detroit. Tune recalled how he came to the show: “I’d just gotten back to this country from making
The Boy Friend
over in London, and Michael Bennett was going to let me stay in his apartment for a while ’til I could find a place to live. . . . So, as I’m going into Michael’s house—he left the key under the mat—the phone’s ringing. So I answer it, and it was Michael, and he said, ‘Don’t unpack. Come to Detroit. I’m taking over on a show called
Seesaw
, and I need you to choreograph some numbers for me.”
15

Sherin wasn’t the only person who was fired from the show. Leading lady Kazan was also let go and replaced by—as Merrick predicted—Michele Lee, who had gotten a phone call from Kasha asking her to read the script and consider the part. She did so, agreed, and was soon on her way to Michigan.

As for Kazan, she recalled: “I remember [Ed Sherin] taking me out to dinner and saying, ‘I’ve been fired, but you’re going to be great. Just stick with it and roll with the punches. It’s going to be a wonderful success, and I leave you with love.’ It was very sad. And then, when Michael Bennett came in, oh my God. He didn’t even say hello to me. He didn’t even acknowledge me. And one night I called him and said, ‘Please, Mr. Bennett. I would just like to have you hear me and see me in what I do, and then if you don’t like what I’m doing you can tell me. I’ll change it. I’ll do whatever you want. I’m an actress. I can do it.’ And he sent a message back to me, I swear to God, with his assistant, and he said, ‘Tell Ms. Kazan I’m too stoned to come down to see her.’”

In looking back on what happened in Detroit, Kazan called it all a “nightmare” and remembered that even Coleman, to whom she had been so close ten years earlier, was not available to her. “I guess his business hat was on more than his affection for me. . . . It was as though he couldn’t allow himself to be soft to me or open to my problems because he had problems of his own. And I didn’t understand that. That’s where it ended for a while. But, you know, we came back together as friends and spoke, but it was a distant relationship after that.”
16

Despite being fired, Kazan continued to perform while Bennett worked with Howard, Lee, and the company (which was also being radically reconfigured) during the day on a new version of the show. Lee recalled, “I don’t know how Ken survived. I mean, the brain. Forget it. He would do the show at night with the songs and dialogue as they were, and then during the day we’d rehearse the ‘new
Seesaw
’ changes, which weren’t just changes in scenes and some characters but also in the musical numbers.”
17

This grueling schedule for the performers and the creators continued for two weeks as
Seesaw
finished its engagement at the Fisher. For Coleman, suffering from the London flu, which had hit the United States in epidemic proportions that winter, it meant not only writing new songs but also providing new dance arrangements.

Among the first of the new numbers that Coleman and Fields wrote was “Welcome to Holiday Inn,” which replaced “You’re in a Highly Emotional State,” a song for Gittel just before she and Jerry might spend their first night together. It wasn’t only the song that changed but also the scene in which it was delivered as Bennett began reshaping the musical. Instead of having a bittersweet tone that closely mirrored Gibson’s play, it became one that was both direct and filled with a bit of comic romance, thanks to the new song. The change to this section of the show did not mean, however, that “Emotional State” was lost entirely (at least at this point). Bennett shifted it into another scene, and had Jerry deliver it as “I’m in a Highly Emotional State.”

Such repurposing extended to other numbers, such as “Ride Out the Storm,” which Sophie originally sang after nailing an audition. This scene in the second act, which featured her delivering a hefty section of Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra
, was cut entirely, and the song was shifted to the first act and performed during a party that Gittel attended when she was supposed to be meeting some of Jerry’s business associates.

Just as Bennett had Stewart trim the book in Detroit, Coleman and Fields’s score was also truncated, with “Pick Up the Pieces” and “More People Like You” among the songs that were jettisoned entirely.

Changes also extended to the orchestrations and arrangements for Coleman’s music, which had originally been done by Larry Fallon, who had only minimal experience in musical theater but a lengthy string of credits in the world of popular music, including working with Coleman on singles for pop records. Larry Wilcox, a veteran of five Broadway shows, came in to reorchestrate the show. As music director Pippin remembered it: “Wilcox, who was a fabulous orchestrator, came in and changed a lot of the orchestrations and did some of the new ones. . . . He did some great work in that show.” Pippin also recalled, “Another major orchestrator, Jonathan Tunick, came in and did a couple of numbers too.”
18

As for the dance arrangements, Coleman always preferred to do them himself, and during rehearsals Coleman spent time in Grover Dale’s studio watching as he created various numbers with his assistant and future wife, Anita Morris, as well as Michon Peacock, who was in the ensemble and also the show’s dance captain.

Despite the flu and the need to write new songs with Fields, Coleman still wanted to work on the dance arrangements in Detroit, and they were at the center of Tune’s first meeting with the composer. “I needed dance music, of course. And I said, ‘I’m different than other choreographers. I like to dance to the melody.’ That made him so happy because usually a dance arranger comes in and does variations on the theme. But I really like to dance to the melody, if it’s a good melody. If it’s not, then you sort of have to tamper with it. So we hit it off great, and then he wrote a countermelody for me for ‘It’s Not Where You Start,’ because even he didn’t want it played over too many times.”
19

But Coleman couldn’t redo all of the dance music himself, and so another artist, Marvin Hamlisch, was brought in. “You know a lot of people helped,” said Howard, “But I think of Marvin Hamlisch more because he was right at the piano as we were adding phrases and more music that we needed. He was a big part of it.”
20

By the time the show reached New York, it had been radically trimmed. It also had a new leading lady and featured a largely new ensemble, which included Dale’s assistant Morris as well as Bennett’s associates Walsh and Lee. And there was one new principal, Tune himself, whose facility with the dances led to his assuming the role that had been played by Bill Starr. “Michael said, ‘I love these numbers, but I like the way you do them better than the guy playing the part; so I’m firing him and I’m putting you in.”
21

It was all part of an overall vision to transform the show, which Peacock described as having been originally “like
In the Heights
. There was a feel like being in the ’hood, being in the barrio, the
real
barrio.” Bennett’s vision she described as “slick city, hot stuff. I mean he went all the way. It just went from one far extreme to another far, far extreme.”
22

Still, Bennett had not finished with his work on the musical, and he also needed to make some changes to the theater itself. Howard recalled, “I remember Michael Bennett coming into the Uris Theatre and saying, ‘I’m not opening this show with white walls.’ So he made them paint the walls a darker brown. He tried everything he could to make the place kind of warm.”
23

Previews finally began on February 19, but there was still work ahead for Coleman and his fellow creators, and some of the changes that Bennett still wanted finally pushed book writer Stewart to the brink. He took his name off the show, and in a last-ditch effort Neil Simon, who had already earned the nickname “Doc” because of his ability to diagnose and fix the problems of flailing shows, was called in to make recommendations about how to improve
Seesaw
.

Among Simon’s suggestions was a new opening number for Gittel, one that would better explain the story. In short order, Coleman and Fields produced “Nobody Does It Like Me” to replace “Big Fat Heart.” Simon also recommended that Bennett cut an appearance by Jerry’s former wife (a role played by Amanda McBroom, the singer-songwriter who would go on to write “The Rose”). “Neil said, ‘Look, she’s very good. There’s nothing wrong with what she’s doing. But in the audience’s mind, she’s not an equal. She’s not a threat. If it were a movie, you’d need somebody like Dina Merrill. What you’re going to have to do is let Amanda McBroom go, and I’ve written this scene, a very funny phone call in which the audience imagines the likes of a Dina Merrill . . . that will solve the problem.”
24
McBroom wasn’t let go, but her speaking role was eliminated.