By Lindsey Wilson
15 Jul 2008

Set in late-18th century England and France, the classic story of love, redemption, and vengeance is required reading in many American schools. Iconic Dickens characters such as the virtuous Lucie Manette (Brandi Burkhardt), the respectable Charles Darnay (Aaron Lazar), and the drunken but ultimately selfless Sydney Carton (James Barbour) play out their grand, heartbreaking sagas under the growing shadow of the guillotine and the advancing French Revolution.

A Tale of Two Cities marks Jill Santoriello's Broadway debut. The musical's 42-year-old composer-lyricist-librettist had been writing songs inspired by the novel since high school, but it wasn't until she was introduced to Russell and Sharpe — through her brother Alex, a Broadway actor — that the prospect of turning her songs into a fully realized musical seemed possible.

"When you start something like that, you dream that it could one day be your full-time job," Santoriello told Playbill.com. "I've never lost my affection for and my inspiration from the story. That's basically why I've been able to not ever give up on it or lose faith in pushing forward with the project, because I just really believed in the story and getting it out there through the musical."

With Russell and Sharpe to guide it, Two Cities went through a slew of workshops and readings, including a symphonic concert in Indianapolis and a 23-track concept album released in 2002. Natalie Toro (who will reprise her role as Madame Defarge for Broadway), Christiane Noll, and movie actress Bryce Dallas Howard are among the 56 vocalists featured on the CD.

Florida may not have seemed the obvious choice for an out-of-town tryout (indeed, Chicago was originally scouted), but Asolo Rep's enthusiasm for the project — not to mention Sarasota's drastically lower expenses — proved too appealing to pass up. Newly appointed Asolo Rep producing artistic director Michael Donald Edwards directed. Edwards has since been replaced for the Broadway run by the Florida production's choreographer, Warren Carlyle.

Legendary set designer Tony Walton (the original productions of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Pippin, and Chicago) was engaged for A Tale of Two Cities. He calls his design a blend of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the infamous French Bastille. Sharpe said that Walton's striking sets have been enhanced even further for the Broadway run.

When asked to describe how he feels as rehearsals begin (on Bastille Day, of course) and Broadway draws ever nearer, producer Sharpe responded, "At the same time [that] you're excited — you're nervous. We're very positive about the show and everything we've put together over the last nine years…I think Broadway's going to be very surprised at the product we've created and really enjoy the show."

Santoriello, a former programmer for Showtime Networks, answered the same question with thoughtful reflection. "There's this theme throughout the show about people's dreams and whether we get to realize them or not," she said. "It's a little ironic that this 20-some-odd year dream is coming true, but I guess it's sort of fitting." Not bad for a self-taught musician.

	Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen in [title of show]
	photo by Carol Rosegg

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[title of show] creators Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell didn't take their inspiration from a classic novel or any other such source material. Their motivation came in the form of desperation.

Conceived in 2004, [title of show] was originally nothing more than a timed exercise to help rejuvenate Bowen and Bell's creativity. The submission deadline for the New York Musical Theatre Festival (then in its inaugural year) was three weeks away, and the 30-something pals agreed to write feverishly for 21 days and mail in whatever they produced. Thus "the musical about two guys writing a musical about two guys writing a musical" was born. A blurred image of Bowen and Bell sprinting, clutching a large manila envelope, even serves as the poster image for the show.

"We almost didn't select it in the first year," says Kris Stewart, NYMF's founder. But as the first round of judging proceeded, he remembered it and thought, "Better than any other show, it reflected the kind of chaotic creativity we wanted the Festival to represent, the kind of risk-taking that we don't get to see in musical theatre as often as we'd like."

Stewart estimates that NYMF typically receives 300-400 submissions each year, 18 of which are chosen for production by a panel of notable theatre professionals.

Other first-year NYMF shows that have gone on to enjoy success regionally and Off-Broadway include The Great American Trailer Park Musical and Altar Boyz, now in its fourth year at New World Stages. However, [title of show] is the first NYMF alum to make it all the way to Broadway, and Stewart is partly to thank. The 34-year-old Australian believed in [title of show] so deeply that he is now one of its producers, his first venture into Broadway.

"The main reason I'm doing it is because I want these guys to get their Broadway dream — I really want to see this story 'finished,'" Stewart said. "Musicals are big and expensive and take a lot of resources, but they need to have the chance to get performed, not just seen in readings or concerts."

"Big" and "expensive" are not two words normally associated with the Obie Award-winning [title of show] (the cast prefers their own creatively combined words "cramazing" and "tossome.") Besides composer-lyricist Bowen and librettist Bell, the small cast also features Susan Blackwell (Speech and Debate) and Heidi Blickenstaff (The Little Mermaid) as their "talented ladyfriends," and a single keyboard manned by music director Larry Pressgrove. Michael Berresse, better known for his dancing and acting skills in Kiss Me, Kate and The Light in the Piazza, made his well-received New York directorial debut while also serving as the show's choreographer. Four mismatched chairs comprise the otherwise bare set.

A sign that their ambitious little musical was gaining momentum came when the guys realized they would need to hire understudies for the subsequent 2006 run at Off-Broadway's Vineyard Theatre.

Courtney Balan, the understudy for Blackwell and Blickenstaff Off-Broadway and on, explained, "They're really playing characters even though it's based on them as real people. It's the actress Susan playing the character Susan. I'm the actress Courtney playing the character Susan. I'm not trying to be Susan Blackwell."

But it is sometimes tricky to not blur the line between character and actor with [title of show]. As the story moves forward, the audience witnesses the struggles of crushing writer's-block and the giddy joys of opening night. Personal real-life details about the foursome are sprinkled throughout. The musical's hyper self-awareness and autobiographical nature make it a perfect example of "meta-theatre," demolishing the fourth wall and inviting the audience to become completely engaged with not only the characters but the actors, as well.

After they closed at the Vineyard, the cast realized they missed their creative outlet, and they discovered YouTube. Beginning with shaky backstage footage and eventually evolving into "The [title of show] Show," the foursome (with technical help from Matt Vogel) embarked on producing short webisodes cleverly designed to keep their musical on the theatre community's radar. In the pilot episode, Bell and Bowen breathlessly announce that [title of show] is coming to Broadway: "We don't know how. We don't know where. Or when…I guess those are three things we've got to work on."

The ensuing episodes (there's even a Christmas special featuring Xanadu's Cheyenne Jackson) chronicle [title of show]'s self-imposed quest to make it to Broadway. Bowen constructs "the tossibility board" to chart the availability of theatres while the cast muses about which cities would be best for an out-of-town tryout, and some of Broadway's famous faces drop by for cameos. In a poignant episode posted on April 4, 2008, the cast reveals in a "Run Lola Run"-style race around Midtown Manhattan that the rumors (which they started) are true. The episode coincided with the official announcement by producers, who still had an option on the show during the period of the YouTube show. (Find the webisodes on YouTube or titleofshow.com.) [title of show] began Broadway previews July 5 at the Lyceum Theatre toward a July 17 opening.

Just as the musical adapted to its ever-changing stages of development, the Broadway version includes updated material about its Broadway life.

"Because we essentially had almost two years off — it was like a year-and-a-half off because we closed in October of 2006 — we had to incorporate all of that waiting, so the back third has been completely restructured to include the last year-and-a-half," Blickenstaff told Andrew Gans for his Playbill.com Diva Talk column. "The show's not any longer. It's still 90 minutes. We were able to kind of give the show a haircut and take off the parts that didn't quite work or that we wished we could make a little better, we made better. We changed some things, and then we added the last year-and-a-half to the back third."

"Shows like [title of show] should be able to get commercially produced, they should get done," producer Stewart said. "The talent is incredible and I think we all would like to believe, deep down, that there is still a place on Broadway for outsiders, for folks that we haven't heard of but who had clear and incredible talent."

Whether mainstream audiences will embrace the show's quirky sense of humor and obscure musical theatre references (Mary Stout, anyone?) remains to be seen, but the stage door mobs and enthusiastic tossers spotted during the first week of previews certainly reinforce the show's fundamental message.

"My dad is a 60-something-year-old man from New Jersey," understudy Balan said, "and I know he loved the show because it tells a story of friendship, and struggling with your craft, and how to make your dreams come true. That's sort of a universal thing, even if you're a plumber from Wisconsin."

(Lindsey Wilson is a theatre writer whose work has been seen in Playbill.com and the Syracuse Post Standard. Write her at lindseyannwilson@gmail.com.)