By Harry Haun
16 Oct 2009

Robert Longbottom, who directed and choreographed Birdie, is also doing those same two chores—simultaneously—for Dreamgirls, which starts previews Nov. 6 at The Apollo for a Nov. 22 opening and a year-long tour.

How does he do two things at once? "I have a lot of help, and I'm very organized," he said. It helps that he had an out-of-town tryout of Dreamgirls—way out of town, in Korea—"so I have a formula for the show, with a brand-new African-American cast."

Longbottom has made quite a few alterations in the original text. "The first act wasn't touched, not a word of it," he quickly pointed out. "The second act—I wasn't crazy about the way one thing flowed to the next. Nor were Charles and Lee, so we all put our heads together and looked for ways to make it a little more cinematic. "We found a better place to put 'Kids,' and I got rid of the Shriner's Ballet, which I had no interest in doing. It was [the original director] Gower Champion's number. It had nothing to do with the plot. It forwarded the plot nowhere. I didn't really want my leading lady on her knees underneath a table, actually. Which is exactly what that was. I didn't quite get that. I'm sure it was fabulous, but it wasn't for me."

Composer Strouse and Adams added two songs to their Birdie score after the Broadway run. One, written for the road-company revival with Tommy Tune and Ann Reinking—"A Mother Doesn't Matter Anymore"—gave Marilyn Cooper one of her last showstoppers. (The comedienne died last April 23 and will be remembered in a memorial service Oct. 22 in Sardi's Eugenia Room.)

The other, recalled Strouse, was for the 1963 movie. "They flew us out to California. It was a typical Hollywood junket. We stayed at the best hotel, and all we did was wait at the swimming pool. They paid us what I thought was a great deal of money at the time, aside from buying the film, because they wanted us to write a title song for Ann-Margret, whom we didn't even think was right for the role at all—and she ended up being the hit of the film."

Which may explain why Charles Strouse is a great songwriter and not a producer.

The most surprising first-nighter was Dean Stolber, the original Harvey Johnson, the voice-cracking gentleman caller in "The Telephone Hour" number. "I know that Elliot Lawrence, who was the original musical director, is here tonight," he announced after searching the house for old friends. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

Stolber turned out better than the unpromising adolescent he played: "I run MGM On Stage. It's the division that deals with taking the MGM film titles and licensing them for the stage. We've had Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, we've had Legally Blonde, we have Minsky's [by Strouse and Susan Birkenhead], which is on the way, we have Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which was in Australia and is now running in London and is coming to Toronto. I come up with the idea and find the producers and the talent to put them on, so I've kept my hand in the theatre."

Graham Phillips, now of TV's "The Good Wife," attended the opening as a show of support for his pals from 13. In addition to Trimm, that includes Brynn Williams and Riley Costello. "I thought they all did great."

Michael Mayer, the Tony-winning director of Spring Awakening, was still wearing a Cheshire-cat smile over the success his Green Day musical, American Idiot, which lifted off with much noise last week at Berkeley Repertory: "It went really great. We extended again, so it will be through Nov. 15. I'm going back out there for the last two weeks, maybe do a little more work. And then we hope, y'know, for a future for it . . ." A future, like maybe a Fall Awakening, one is tempted to ask? "I'd be very happy if that happened. A lot of it is about real estate more than anything, so that remains to be seen. We need the right theatre at the right time. I believe things happen when they're meant to, so I'm not pushing one way or another."

Marilyn Maye, who has two more nights to go on her current gig at The Metropolitan Room, remembered fondly the original Birdie. "When I was recording in New York, I caught it. It was so much fun." And she had no problem identifying her favorite song: "'Put On a Happy Face'—I put it on my first album."

While Jan Maxwell is at play with The Royal Family, her husband, actor Robert Emmet Lunney, said he has drummed up a little work for himself as a director: "I'm going to direct something in connection with the international celebration of playwright Howard Barker, and it's going to be at Drama Book Shop, with Jefferson Mays in the cast. It's a piece called Pity in History Oct. 23. It was a teleplay, broadcast in 1984, and I think it works on stage."

Other first-nighters included Howard Stern, the book-writers of the last two shows to play the Miller (Cabaret's Joe Masteroff and Urinetown's Greg Kotis), composer Robert Lopez and his lyricist-wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez, a bewhiskered Boyd Gaines ("I'm recording a long book—The Clinton Tapes—and I don't want to shave"), the cast of Roundabout's The Understudy (Julie White, Justin Kirk and Mark-Paul Gosselaar), designers Willa Kim and Tony Walton, playwrights Christopher Shinn and Terrence McNally, Bryan Batt of "Mad Men," writer-directors Richard LaGravenese and Alex Timbers, Perrey Reeves (who plays Jeremy Piven's wife on "Entourage"—you remember Jeremy Piven), Kyle MacLachlan, Jim Dale (who tried out his new one-man show in Connecticut), John Weidman, radio's Joan Hamburg,The Public's Oskar Eustis, the designer and composer of next month's Apollo-bound Dreamgirls (William Ivey Long and Henry Krieger), Birdie's orchestrator and lighting designer (Jonathan Tunick and Ken Billington), director-choreographers Kathleen Marshall and Rob Ashford, Speech & Debate playwright Stephen Karam and Stephanie March.