Two Davids plan a musical wedding
Pierce directs Burtka in new comic ensemble
Two actors named
NEW YORK David walk into a room, ready to talk up the new musical comedy that has brought them together,
It Shoulda Been You.
The show marks David Hyde Pierce’s Broadway directing debut and David Burtka’s return to the Broadway stage after more than 10 years.
It takes place entirely on the day of a wedding — “always a place of heightened emotion,” says Pierce, 56, who is married to the show’s librettist and lyricist, Brian Hargrove. “Two tribes come together, and they have to make peace.”
Burtka, 39 and married to Neil Patrick Harris, plays the groom, whose name is Brian.
The ensemble cast includes Sierra Boggess as Brian’s bride, Rebecca, a nice Jewish girl — Brian is Christian — and Tyne Daly and Harriet Harris as Rebecca’s and Brian’s mothers. The moms’ strained relationship is among several speed bumps and twists en route to a happy ending that celebrates tolerance and inclusion.
“It’s for Jewish people, for WASPy people, for gay people, for straight people — for anyone who has found love in a certain way,” Burtka says.
Burtka notes that Pierce and Hargrove both drew on their extensive experience in television. “They come from that world and work at a fast pace, so they were throwing new jokes at us all the time” in rehearsals, Burtka says.
“You guys were very patient with that,” says the soft-spoken, dry-witted Pierce, with typical graciousness.
“There was no tension between them, ever,” adds the more animated Burtka, referring to Hargrove and Pierce’s working relationship. “It was amazing to see. I think I would have killed Neil.”
He’s joking. Harris directed Burtka in a cabaret act at Manhattan’s 54 Below, he notes, and Burtka produced the Web series
Neil’s Puppet Dreams and appeared on TV with his husband in
How I Met Your Mother and,
more recently, American Horror
Story.
In recent years, Burtka has worked as a chef while focusing on his and Harris’ 4-year-old twins, son Gideon and daughter Harper.
While Harris was honing his Tony Award-winning performance in last season’s Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry
Inch, Burtka also found time to give him notes. “At one point in rehearsals (for
Hedwig), there was this rawness Neil was missing,” Burtka says. “It was a little too polished. I told him he should be a little more dirty.”
Pierce quips: “Boy, he sure took that note. I remember him licking that floor.”
Hargrove and Pierce also worked together before Shoulda
Been, but “this is a much more intense version of what we’ve done in the past,” Pierce says. “It was 24 hours. We would literally be next to each other, not sleeping — him thinking about writing, me thinking about directing. Then we’d get up in the morning and go to rehearsal.”
Pierce smiles. “It was, I have to say, bliss.”
“It’s for Jewish people, for WASPy people, for gay people, for straight people.”
David Burtka