PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: The Story of My Life — Hey, Old Friend!
By Harry Haun
20 Feb 2009
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Will Chase and Malcolm Gets with Neil Bartram, Brian Hill and Richard Maltby, Jr.
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
The Story of My Life, which officially started unraveling Feb. 19 at the Booth, turns out slyly to be the story of two lives — best buds since first grade — overlapping and continuing through various ups and downs and all-arounds for the next 30 years.
Thomas Weaver (Will Chase) has come to praise his longtime pal, Alvin Kelby (Malcolm Gets), not to bury him, as the show begins. Being a much-honored writer, he is of course at a loss for words, so the ghost of the dearly departed materializes to prod him into a proper eulogy, and both their lives pass in review in 90 minutes flat.
The flashback-tracking takes the form of word-driven story-songs, written by one person (Neil Bartram). It all seems like a sung-through show, but there are bits of a book here and there (by Brian Hill) setting up or bridging numbers (18 are listed in the Playbill).
Richard Maltby Jr., a director with lyricist leanings (being one with composer David Shire), proves the perfect person to helm this show, having made a career of creating characters and relationships on lyrics alone (Ring of Fire, Ain't Misbehavin').
The combined efforts of these five men gamely go into ticklishly unchartered turf, exploring the boundaries (if, indeed, there are any) of male bonding. It is the first musical to address the question head-on — and, quite possibly, the first play to do so.
"It's a love story between two men," Maltby admitted outright at the Sardi's after-party. "Is there a gay component to it? Maybe. Maybe it's impossible for there
not to be. It's certainly a love story, but how many friends
don't have a love story?
"With women, it's easy. There are lots of women-friends stories but no men's-friends stories. Maybe you tell a gay story or a jock-partner camaraderie one, but there are tons of stories in the middle. What's wonderful about the authors is they set out to do something no one had ever done — write a real story about friendship."
The thing that pleasures him most about this show is "that it makes people feel. People come out really, deeply moved and connected — and it's not because they're sad about the story. It's because of the connections through their own lives. People feel in touch with the things they have lost — friends that really, really mattered.
"We don't often look at our lives in full and realize that there are people who enter our life — not necessarily somebody we choose — who change our life totally and then just sorta drift away. And you want that emotion back, you want that friendship back, you want that feeling back, you want that connection back."
Book writer Hill, whose previous Broadway debut was as assistant director of The Little Mermaid, viewed the opening-night performance from the author's battle-station at the back of the house. "It was hard to tell the audience's reaction from the back of their heads, but the silence couldn't be more thrilling. They seemed to be listening."
He had especially high marks for his two stars, who, once they hit it, never leave the stage. "It's epic, 90 minutes form start to finish. They're absolutely incredible, and it's new and fresh every single time we see them do it. They're just amazing."
Bartram was equally dazzled by his Broadway bow. "Pretty thrilling," he conceded, "seeing your name on the marquee of a Broadway theatre, and that being the Booth which has such a great history, and Jonathan Tunick doing the orchestrations and Richard Maltby directing — it's all those amazing moments along the way."
Originally, he and Hill tried to tell of a man-and-woman friendship but kept slipping into a "When Harry Met Sally" sand trap. After shelving the project for several years, they took it up again as a
mano a mano friendship — a gingerly tightrope walk where no man has gone before, carefully keeping the inherent intimacy in balance.
"It just sorta evolved into what felt right. We didn't really force it one way or the other. It is a love story between two guys. It's not romantic in the traditional sense. It's more complicated than that. It felt like, 'Well, let's sorta throw that up and see what happens.' It's also written within the framework of a story where one of the characters doesn't know all the answers, so the audience is kinda bringing it together with him. We get a lot of people with different connections to the story."
There's no rest for the weary, constantly-on actors, but there are stashes of replenishing water about the stage, hidden in Robert Brill's ghostly suggestion of a bookcase, like Ray Milland's booze bottles. "We asked Richard on the second day of rehearsal if we could have water on the set because we knew that our throats would be getting dry," said Gets. "At this time of year, they pump the heat into the auditorium because the stage gets really dry so we try to be subtle about it, but Richard also said, 'In times like this, let the audience see you drink the water.'"
Gets duly noted that he has put in as much sustained stage-time as this before — "The Mystery of Irma Vep, which was actually much more of a workout than this because I was constantly changing costumes — but this show is definitely a challenge."
Happily, he has an eccentric and winning character to keep him manically occupied. "I love how open he is. I love how resilient he is. I love that he gets knocked over, and he just bounces back up. I love that he's the complete glass-half-full person. For five years on television, I played a guy whose glass was half-empty all the time ["Caroline in the City"], so it's fun to play this because he's the complete antithesis of that character. I've learned so much about myself since I've been playing Alvin. It's easier for me, certainly in New York, to walk around and pretend to be cynical and talk out the side of my mouth — it's the easier, more protective way. It takes a lot of courage to live as openly as Alvin does so it's really gratifying to get to play him."
As for his character's sexual orientation: "If he is gay, I don't think he ever acts on it. I think Alvin goes to his grave with never having been with anybody. I think Alvin just loves. I think he loves his father, and I think he loves Thomas. I'm a gay man, and I don't think that Alvin loves in the way most modern men think of gay love. I think that it's slightly ambiguous, though it's there. I'm glad that they did not spell it out.
"Neil and Brian said originally they thought about writing a piece about a friendship between a man and a woman, but it entirely became romantic. And then we talked a lot about how we didn't want it to be just like it's about a gay man who's in love with a straight man. That makes the story much smaller as opposed to love between two men — gay, straight or otherwise — which is a more complicated piece." Continued...
