The Racine Theater Guild’s production of Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls” (one of the best productions with which I’ve been associated over the years) is running through next weekend, but there is no time for resting-on-one’s-laurels. There’s a new show to mount and yesterday was the first cast meeting for our summer production, “Side by Side by Sondheim.” There is something so fun and exciting about the first time the cast gathers for a new production; it’s pretty much all about meeting one another and then just sitting and listening to the show, start to finish. The hard work of actually learning the show and choreographing the moves and building the sets and all the rest is not yet begun; this is basically a day for getting excited.
Ahead of this first meeting Doug Instines and I had to cast the show, which meant listening to auditions, choosing our seven performers, and then – hardest of all – determining exactly what each of our performers would do in the show. When you’re doing a standard show like “The Music Man” or “Gypsy” it’s not an issue: Teri Wilson is Mama Rose or Matt Spect is Harold Hill and that’s what they sing in the show. But in a musical revue like “Side by Side by Sondheim” – especially when the show was conceived for 3 performers but we are expanding the cast to 7 – we have to figure out who sings what. It’s a matter of balancing who can sing a given song well versus who can perform (act) it well – and if those two considerations yield different names, then it gets to be really challenging. It gets quite tricky with certain duets, because you want two people who can be plausible partners, visually, and also sound good together – but we also want to try to mix up the coupling a bit, if we can. We went round and round with several songs and for awhile I thought we might have to resort to arm wrestling to come to a decision – but in basically every case we were able to make some sort of adjustment or create some sort of compromise. But then when we had come up with a list of songs and performers, it was time to do the math and make certain that everyone has been given their fair share of the spotlight – roughly the same number of solos, duets, etc. plus a nice balance of comic and serious numbers, which meant some shuffling. Honestly, after a few days of mental tug-of-war, it was tempting to just draw straws and be done with it! Anyway, we were finally able to get it all put together- and without killing each other! – but now we have the fun of figuring out the order in which we will do the songs. (We don’t want a given performer’s solos bunched up in one stretch of the evening, and we also want to be sure that there is a sense of flow through the evening, while at the same time giving the audience plenty of variety. ) Arrrrrrrrrgh!
Of course, all of the work behind the scenes gave way to the excitement of Opening Day, and as we listened together to the original cast recording (which, by the way, features some rather dreadful singing, I’m afraid) and followed along with the scores, you could really sense the mounting enthusiasm in the room. By the way, we seem to have assembled for ourselves a gifted and personable cast who will be really fun to work with. And one of those gifted seven is my wife- who will be rendering “Send in the Clowns,” one of the greatest songs ever composed, among other things in the show. I suspect that this single performance alone will be worth the admission price- in my entirely unbiased opinion, of course. 🙂 Along side her will be Ann and Rita and Alexa and Dan and Keith and Ryan. . . talented performers all and more than equal to the challenge of bringing these immensely complex, wonderfully satisfying songs of Stephen Sondheim fully to life.
pictured: most of our seven cast members listening to the show at our first meeting in the RTG’s green room. Just out of camera range was Marshall, who came to see “Guys and Dolls” Friday night and stuck around to see “Iron Man” Saturday night.