The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
A story of bad choices, healing set to bluegrass
Martin/Brickell’s ‘Bright Star’ to shine at Shubert
When “Bright Star,” the Steve Martin-Edie Brickell musical arriving in New Haven Thursday, opened on Broadway two years ago, it was unlike any of the other musicals that anyone had ever seen. It was an original story, starred no marquee names in the cast, and featured a score mostly consisting of bluegrass music. Still, director Walter Bobbie embraced these differences, as well as the show’s unabashed heart and humanity.
“I was so moved by the idea of well-intentioned people behaving badly, or making bad decisions, or there somehow being a healing or a resolution of it all,” Bobbie said. “I’ve always been moved by that. Forgiveness makes me cry.”
“Bright Star,” which runs Thursday through Sunday at the Shubert Theatre, is a fable-like tale of undying love and redemption set in North Carolina during the early 1920s and the end of World War II.
The story follows Alice Murphy, an aspiring writer, first as a young woman whose separation from her newborn, illegitimate child is, by turns, unjust, tragic and overcome.
After she achieves success in her profession, she yearns all the more to reunite with her long-lost son.
Both Martin and Brickell came up with the story and music for “Bright Star,” while Martin wrote the book and Brickell the lyrics. Though Martin is — among his many successes — an established playwright, “Bright Star” is his first Broadway musical. Brickell, an accomplished singersongwriter, was also writing her first large-scale musical theater piece.
Bobbie, 72, was a natural to helm the show, having worked nearly nonstop on Broadway since his debut in 1971 as a performer. (He’s currently acting in Daniel Sullivan’s Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan.”) Since debuting as a Broadway director in 1993 for the Rodgers and Hammerstein revue “A Grand Night For Singing,” he has since directed several successful plays and musicals, including the long-running revival of “Chicago” and a string of well-received productions during his tenure as artistic director of the “Encores!”
series. Yet for all of his range of experience in musicals, Bobbie had not seen anything quite like “Bright Star.”
“You know when I came to it, when Steve gave it to me, it was quite early, and it was not very ... fully formed,” said Bobbie. “But I read it and I got to the end of the first act and that horrible (first act’s) action. And I just said I have to do this. I have to figure this out.”
As soon as Bobbie flew out to California to meet with Martin, the director was impressed with his collaborator’s dedication and gift of invention.
“After two days, I said, yes, he’s a natural collaborator,” Bobbie said of Martin. “He’s a remarkably open-minded and skillful artist, and so I knew that it was going to be an invigorating process. He was fearless. You know, so that was a joy, his great mind.
“I mean, he will never stop rewriting,” said Bobbie, who, with his writers, tightened the musical at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and New York Stage and Film in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “At some point, you have to go ‘Steve, stop, enough, stop.’ I have to say, in our sessions work together, it was always story, story, story, character, character, character.
“I never worried about whether there were going to be any laughs, or that it was going to be funny, because I knew that that was in his DNA. The same with Edie. When she knew what the character had to say, there was no question that she was going to be able to. She wrote the opening number two days after we left for Washington, D.C., when it was finally clear to her what had to be said before the story began.” Shubert Theatre, 247 College St., New Haven, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 2 and 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 1 p.m. Sunday. $39-$126. Call 203-562-5666 or 800-7453000 or go to shubert.com.
Bobbie’s work on the show didn’t stop after “Bright Star” closed after a three-month run on Broadway. He took choreographer Josh Rhodes and Berman out to California to work further on the show, once he finished casting the national tour.
“The interesting thing is,” Bobbie said, “I took the opportunity in California to make two additional changes at the end of the first act. We involved the ensemble in a way we hadn’t before. So we took the top of the second act and I got rid of all the characters in ‘The Sun is Going to Shine Again,’ and I said, ‘you know, we don’t really need to catch up on all these other people. We don’t care about them at this point.’ And that song is now just between the mother and the daughter, with the ensemble involved as back up.
“Live shows are never finished if you have the time.”
According to Bobbie, the choice to color the score in bluegrass, as well as traditional roots music cum Broadway style, was organic to the dramatic unities of time, place and action.
“I think it was integral to the nature of the storytelling that this be the music,” he said. “I remember when I called my friend, Rob Berman, to help come in and collaborate with us on arrangements and musical directions, he said ‘Well, I don’t know bluegrass music ... I don’t know.’ I said, ‘Yes, but you know music and that’s what I care about.’ ”
Another bold choice Bobbie and his collaborators agreed upon was to situate the musicians’ center stage in a structure seemingly half-front porch, half-gazebo. Audrey Cardwell, who plays Alice Murphy in the touring production, said that having the musicians onstage adds to the musical’s intimacy.
“It is one of my favorite parts of the show,” she said. “Also, the ensemble’s on stage pretty much the entire time as well, so one of my absolute favorite moments is at the very end of the show. It’s the last big song — ‘At Long Last’— and I have the great fortune of singing that song, standing center stage, and the ensemble is right behind me. And right behind them is the band on the house. And it’s this incredible moment where I know I’m standing up there and, yes, I’m in the spotlight, and yes, this is my song, but we are all sharing the experience and sharing that moment together. That is why I love having the house on stage and having the ensemble on stage because you know that you’re never alone.”
Bobbie credits scene designer Eugene Lee with that bright idea. “You know he can do something great and baroque like ‘Wicked’ but he also knows how to reduce things down to their essence, after 40 years of ‘Saturday Night Live,’” said Bobbie. “The first thing he said is, ‘This is about a train.’ He built this train trestle, which gave the show this kind of proscenium.
“And that we had these cute little houses and I said, ‘How about if we just had one of those, and we put the band in it?’ The essential idea, I said to Eugene, is that the show is not going to be a big dance show, so the scenery is going to be choreographed. The set has to dance in some ways.
“So, Eugene, in his wisdom, found a way to engage the audience’s imagination — which is my favorite kind of theater.”