‘The SpongeBob Musical’ perfectly melds the original with music
Among the dozens of questions Tina Landau posed to her creative team, and herself, once she was chosen to take ‘SpongeBob Squarepants” from the television screen to the Broadway stage, was what a full-length live show featuring the popular metazoan from Bikini Bottom could be about.
“‘SpongeBob’ was a big hit for Nickelodeon,” Landau says in a telephone interview, “and episodes dealt with some interesting topics, but each cartoon lasted about 11 minutes, and we had to engage an audience for a couple of hours.”
Their conclusion? Nothing less than the end of life.
“It was the perfect subject,” Landau said. “‘SpongeBob’ raises environmental issues, and what issue could be more fraught with tension that the end of existence as we know it?”
Asking questions and finding solutions was a constant part of the 10-year process that turned Nickelodeon’s signature program to “The SpongeBob Musical,” which begins two weeks of performances tomorrow night at Philadelphia’s Forrest Theatre.
Landau’s first questions were directed to Nickelodeon and the producers that invited her to pitch them her ideas for a show.
“I had specific things in mind, and I wanted to introduce them immediately so both the producers and I could see if we were right for each other and this venture,” Landau said.
“I wanted first to know whom the producers intended to reach. Was this to be a show directed at children, or was it to be broader based to include adults and attract people who might not be as familiar with SpongeBob as the Nickelodeon viewers?
“I also wanted to be sure there no concept of actors performing in big prosthetic costumes. I would not be interested in working on that kind of show.
“Steve Hillenburg (the SpongeBob creator who died in November 2018 but was alive during the entire cartoon-to-stage process) told me he thought of the show as an alternative program with an indy spirit and sensibility.
“Everything I heard made me feel more confident the producers and I were thinking along the same lines, and they must have agreed because I got the show.”
“Getting the show” meant figuring out a variety of matters. Not only did an ongoing plot need considering, but creating an underwater world and maintaining a sense of fantasy and adventure while keeping on some bounds of reality was a challenge.
“During my pitch, I proposed a series of workshops, each tackling a different aspect of the show. Everything from mechanics to original music would be discussed.
“The overarching purpose was to create something original that was fun and had some thought behind it, and yes, could go over the top while being careful to keep things recognizable and accessible to ‘SpongeBob’ fans. We wanted to be imaginative while also representing what made ‘SpongeBob’ popular. Remember, SpongeBob is a sponge who lives in a pineapple. You want to be fanciful at that level, to create an event that brings Bikini Bottom and that pineapple home to life, to enter the world of Bikini Bottom, while being serious enough to make the characters relatable and the plot conflicts work.
“The first workshop addressed whether we could make the show we envisioned physically happen. Is what we conceive doable? Can we mesh the liveliness and inventive we intend with the cohesive telling of a story? We need to keep these animated characters in their familiar setting. We also needed to establish them as nonhuman but real and vulnerable as well as animated.
“Kyle Jarrow, who wrote the book, and Tom Kitt, who coordinated and arranged the score and wrote the music connecting songs, were there from the beginning. We wanted to see what we could make happen. Would we be able to create the illusion that the show was happening underwater and incorporate the movement and buoyancy that suggests?
“Throughout, we wanted to keep the stakes high, create and address challenges, and keep the adrenaline going. It was exciting to see what could happen and what worked.”
Really exciting is how Landau cobbled together the music for the show. Rather than go the standard route of working with one composer-lyricist team, Landau had the idea to ask several composers from several genres of music to contribute a song to the show.
“I thought of different composers during different moments in the show, so I invited each of them to write a song for that instance. For example, there’s a folksy sequence that is right for a country tune, one in which Sandy Cheeks, the squirrel, sings about being from Texas, and I thought Lady Antebellum would be right for that scene, so I spoke to Lady Antebellum, and they presented a song.”
The composer’s list for “The SpongeBob Musical” is like a who’s who in current music. Besides Lady Antebellum, there are tunes by John Legend, Sara Bareilles, David Bowie and Brian Eno, Cyndi Lauper and Rob Hyman, Yolanda Adams, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, They Might Be Giants, The Plain White T’s, The Flaming Lips, Andy Paley and Tom Kenny, Jonathan Coulton, T.I., Alex Ebert, and Panic! at the Disco. Of course, the “SpongeBob” theme, by Derek Drymon, Mark Harrison, Stephen Hillenburg, and Blaise Smith is also heard.
All of the music is written specifically for “The SpongeBob Musical.”
“I wasn’t’ interested in a jukebox musical,” Landau says. “I didn’t choose songs from a variety of songwriters. I wrote and told the composers what I looking for and how it fit in a particular scene. The wonderful part was how enthusiastically everyone responded.
“No one refused or insisted on being the sole composer on the show.
“What was really amazing is how the material came in. Some of the songwriters went into their studios and sent fully orchestrated, beautifully produced tapes of their song. Others sung them into their phones and sent that rough version. One practically hummed the song.
“Every artist we worked with related well with our method and did everything they could to make sure we had what we needed.
“The mix of styles is really great. It provides juxtaposition and contrast. It fits into the DNA of the ‘SpongeBob’ series, which is eclectic. I joke about the score having a Dadaesque sensibility, a lot of disparate parts fitting together so neatly, they become interesting for that as well as what they are a individual songs.”
As mentioned, Tom Kitt, known best for composing “Next to Normal,” which played locally at the Arden, Media, and Bristol Riverside Theatres, knit all of the compositions into a unified score.
Landau speaks of the workshops that led to “The SpongeBob Musical” with fondness. She describes meetings with designers, puppeteers, and others.
“I wanted to hear every idea. I wanted the workshops to be like the musical, a playground in which to share thoughts and make a mess, the epitome of silly, and then come to the serious work of choosing what will work best.
“The show addresses the end of life, but in the long run, it celebrates life and the celebrating and
scattering of joy. My hope is audiences will join in that celebration.”
‘Mrs. Maisel’ comes back Friday
Television finally provides something to really celebrate as Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” returns for a third season Friday.
Now established as a nightclub comedian, Midge goes on tour, and it will be interesting to see her in various settings.
Also returning for a new season is Bravo’s “Project Runway,” a fashion design competition that comes back with fresh shows on Thursday.
Of some interest may be “The Moodys,” in which Elizabeth Perkins and Dennis Leary head a dysfunctional Chicago family as they have their holiday gatherings. The series has six episodes, two of which air back-toback Wednesday on Fox (Channel 29), while the remaining four play next Monday and Tuesday, December 9 and 10.
A tribute
Condolences to Channel 17 traffic reporter Jenna Meissner on the Nov. 14 loss of her father, Douglas.
Meissner was active in the Media community as the owner of Meissner Chevrolet and via work with the Media Youth Center, the Nether Providence AA, the Media Little League, and St. Mary Magdalen Parish. Besides civic activities, he was known for being a self-professed food critic and gift critic and enjoyed golfing at Springhaven Club.
In addition to Jenna, Meissner is survived by his wife, Lynne, daughters Tara and Alexa, and four grandchildren.
New host
Pardon me. I was such a fan of Jason Silva as host of National Geographic Channel’s “Brain Games,” I failed to notice he will not preside over the eighth, and current, season.
The new host of the show is actor-sketch comedian Keegan-Michael Key.
‘College Behind Bars’ worth a look
I was also remiss in not calling viewer attention to an excellent documentary series that aired on Channel 12 last week and will stream on PBS for the next two months.
“College Behind Bars” shows the genuine strength of education when supplied to people to whom it is often denied, prisoners.
Bard College gives comprehensive courses in many New York prisons, but two are singled out in this four-part program directed by Lynn Novick and produced by Ken Burns.
Men from Eastern State Correctional Center in Napanoch, N.Y. and women from a Bedford
Hills institution are shown in their two contrasting settings, their classrooms and their cells.
Several of the convicts have committed crimes that warrant their long incarceration. Many perpetrated those crimes while young, some at the age of 16.
“College Behind Bars” shows how receptive the competitive selected students are when offered an education. Spirited discussion are heard regarding literature, history, and even math. Conversations are conducted in Mandarin, which some of the students are learning.
Through it all, Novick shows you the person behind the prisoner, particularly the person who has a new understanding of himor herself and the world. Their perspective is not always shared by corrections officers who continue to see the inmates are people to be confined and, in one instance, almost ends a prisoner’s scholarly career over a stupid, moralistic infraction that the student excuses faster than I would.