Tale for our times
early version while still a student.
“That looked at the relationship between Pippin and his father, Charlemagne. You needed that to talk about what it was like being young.”
Schwartz was born in New York, and studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School while still at high school. By then his fate as a musical theatre composer was already sealed.
“My parents were theatre geeks,” he says. “I grew up on Long Island, and from the moment they took me to see a musical, I was in love with them. I was a musical kid from an early age, and it was clear that I wanted to work in the musical field. Then, as soon as I saw musical theatre for the first time, I knew that was it. I spent my adolescence listening to cast albums and writing little things, then when I went to university, I had the opportunity to write a musical.”
After graduating, Schwartz started working as a producer at RCA
Records, but gravitated to theatre, and became musical director of what is regarded as the first American rock opera, The Survival of St Joan. Schwartz directed the soundtrack album of the show, which featured a young F Murray Abraham in the cast. Schwartz also wrote the title song for Leonard Gershe’s 1969 play, Butterflies Are Free, which was also used in the film version starring Goldie Hawn three years later.
“I was lucky,” says Schwartz. “I graduated at the time pop and rock was coming to the fore, and older producers didn’t really know what to do with that. Andrew Lloyd Webber was almost the exact same age as me, and people like us, who grew up with pop as well as musical theatre could try and do something with both.”
Beyond Godspell and Pippin, Schwartz wrote several other musicals, including Children of Eden, which drew from the book of Genesis. He also penned the scores for two Disney films, Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame before Wicked. Schwartz returned to Disney a decade ago to score the fairytale homage, Enchanted. Last month saw the premiere of a Danish production of The Prince of Egypt, Schwartz’s stage musical of the 1998 all-star animated feature based on the Bible’s Book of Exodus. Bringing things full circle, a long mooted film version of Wicked might see the light of day in 2019.
Given everything he’s done, how does Schwartz judge his back catalogue. Does he have favourites?
“I’m continuing to learn,” he says, “and continuing to try to understand the craft of musical theatre. I know it’s a cliché to say it’s the newest one you care about the most, but I think there’s truth in that. Children of Eden means a lot to me. It reflects my point of view the most, and it’s my best score.”
But what about the power of Wicked? What is it that seems to touch audiences the way it does?
“It’s presumptuous of me to talk about my own work in that way,” he says, “but I know anecdotally from letters and emails I’ve received some people find it inspiring, and it helped them through a darkness in their lives that allowed them to face up to things they were maybe afraid of, but the show isn’t medicine. As a writer, I try to write shows about people that speak to me and ideas that matter to me, and each audience member will get what they want from them. It’s there to entertain and amuse, and if certain philosophies come through then that’s great, but first and foremost it’s there to entertain.”
Wicked, Edinburgh Playhouse, May 8-June 9. www.atgtickets.com