By Robert Simonson
The two men didn't need an introduction. "He went to Wootten High School. I went to Woodward," said Mayer, mentioning two school in Montgomery County, Maryland. "We were both in Montgomery County Chorus. We were second tenors, so we sang in the same section."
Was the Montgomery County Chorus an important cultural group, locally? "It was important to us, Robert," Mayer said with a laugh. "It's what we had. We were both gay, and not really out about it. This was 1976 when we first met. We were friendly, but not friends." The next year in chorus they became more friendly. Then, in the summer of 1978, the two young men performed together in West Side Story at Wildwood Summer Theatre in Rockville. "I was Action and he was Arab. So we were Jets together. And when you're a Jet, you're a Jet..."
After reconnecting in New York, Scanlan and Mayer vowed to meet each other every week at Elephant & Castle, a pub on Greenwich Avenue. (They still meet, though now they vary the restaurants.)
24 Aug 2010
Michael Mayer
photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN
After two high-profile rock musicals — Spring Awakening and American Idiot — an old-school chestnut like Clear Day seems a radical right turn. ("I really do change it up quite a bit," he admitted.) But his interest in the 1965 show is no whim.
"It's connected to Side Man," told Mayer, beginning the story. (Every show Mayer does, it seems — from Millie to The Illusion — is preceded by a long personal history.) "I was working at New York Stage & Film in 1996. We were doing Side Man up there. I brought with me a bunch of CDs. One of them was On a Clear Day, because it came out on CD that year or the year before. I got so excited, because it was something I listened to constantly during a period of time in my adolescence. There was something about that original cast recording.
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| Michael Mayer at Sardi's | ||
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"I was walking to rehearsal, across the Vassar campus, thinking about On a Clear Day. At that point, I had seen the film. I was thinking about the story, singing it to myself, and I had a revelation about the show. I thought, 'I think I know a way to fix this thing.' It was a little moment. Cut to the next year. I'm doing Triumph of Love out of town in Baltimore. I was having dinner with my designers, one of whom was Heidi Ettinger. We were asking each other dream projects. I said, 'I have a really cool idea on how to reinvent On a Clear Day.'"
Ettinger, it turned out, had just spoken to producer Elizabeth Williams, who was talking to Liza Lerner, the librettist-lyricist's daughter, about reviving that show. The designer recommended Mayer give them a call. "I pitched them the idea. That was 1997. It took a long time to find the right collaborator." That man turned out to be Peter Parnell, who was recommended by Tom Hulce, a producer of Spring Awakening and a friend of Mayer's. Last fall, the men presented a version of the musical to the Lane and Lerner estates. The estates gave the go-ahead.
The Vassar workship was a success, but beset by several family crises. The one that received the most attention involved star Anika Noni Rose, who had to leave the production for one performance due to a death in the family. Another cast member had to depart after learning their grandmother had died; and a third's mother experienced a medical emergency. Mayer, too, suffered a loss. His Aunt Sue — his mother's identical twin — died. Because of his responsibilities to the production, he was unable to get away.
"She was kind of like an Auntie Mame to me," he said, "took me to theatre all the time, took me to Paris for the first time." They remained in touch after he moved to Manhattan in 1980. "Every time she came to New York, she took me to Broadway shows that I would never have been able to afford on my own."
It was around that time that he first entered Sardi's. "I was with one of my friends from the NYU acting program," he remembered. "He had a friend from Michigan who was making his Broadway debut in a big musical. I remember meeting that actor and my friend in the bar downstairs. I felt like such an adult. I felt so inside."
(Robert Simonson is a special correspondent for Playbill.com whose work is also seen in the pages of Playbill magazine. Write him at rsimonson@playbill.com.)
Highlights from American Idiot on Broadway:
