By Harry Haun
22 Oct 2004

He has toiled on Brooklyn for two and a half years—from workshop to out-of-town tryout to Broadway beachhead—and his advanced musical sensibility is all over the piece, most particularly in the quintet who so vigorously deliver the vocally demanding score: Kevin Anderson, Cleavant Derricks, Eden Espinosa, Ramona Keller and Karen Olivo, all playing homeless street people under the Brooklyn Bridge, each with a story to sing.

Their emotive music is much different from the traditional Broadway sound usually associated with McDaniel. And that's a good thing, in his view: "I love all kinds of music, but I love this kind of rock pop-song music. It makes people feel something, something guttural. There's something that grabs you about it. I love Kiss Me, Kate and Annie Get Your Gun as well, but I'm a big believer in bringing young people into the theatre, and this show really does that. That's one of my favorite things about the show."

Anderson, who played Joe Gillis to Patti LuPone's Norma Desmond in the London liftoff of Sunset Boulevard, is only now getting around to his Broadway musical debut. He's already well-known in these parts for heavy-duty drama, including a brilliant Tony-nominated turn in Death of a Salesman. Did Death come easier, he was asked. "Well, we didn't have to move sets in Death of a Salesman," he said. "I love singing. I love this music. That's the thing that turned me on a couple of years ago when I did the workshop. I couldn't believe how authentic the music was, how soul-driven and real it felt. So many musicals are artificial, but this one—the music kinda hit me in a deep place."

Interestingly, musicals are not a new leaf for him. "Early in my career, when I got out of school, I used to do a lot of musicals. I looked about 12 and I was 18. I used to be the ingenue and always get married. Then I met Steppenwolf, and they, like, totally changed my life. They touched this chord in me and brought out this side of myself—a deeper part of my acting that set me into orbit. Sunset Boulevard is the only chance I've had to sing."

But why this particular character? "It's so wacky, so innovative," he answered. "That's what struck me about it. When was the last time you saw a heroin-addicted Vietnam vet shoot up on a Broadway stage while he was singing a song?" Well, he had me there.

Derricks is making his return to Broadway musical theatre in this, his first appearance since his Tony-winning support in Dreamgirls. That's a lot of film and TV work under the bridge. "I was always hoping to come back," said Derricks, who cranked his theatrical engine up again with the Full Monty tour, "but I didn't know it'd take 18 years to do it!"

In the title role—the Brooklyn of Brooklyn—Espinosa was greeted on her first night as a Broadway star with two—count 'em, two—standing ovations. "It was an amazing night for that to happen," she said. "It has happened before. It's not usual, and it's not all the time, but it has happened before." She comes to Brooklyn the Wicked route as Idina Menzel's underused understudy. "She came to the show a couple of weeks ago, and she gave me a phone call last night to wish me well. And I got a bunch of gifts from everybody over at Wicked. I miss the people there a lot. Everyone was so nice. They all came to the show."

Composer Schoenfeld confessed to goosebumps on opening night. "The reason was the way this fabulous cast performed. You can tickle yourself, but you can't give yourself goosebumps. Our work can't do it for us, but if someone else puts a vibe to it, they can."

He and lyricist McPherson have been on this case for 14 years. "When I originally performed the show for Jeff, the script itself was about 135 pages—it's probably 70 now. There are 17 songs in the show now, but we had to eliminate a good ten to get this many."

That "good ten" didn't go gentle into that good night, according to McPherson. "The hardest thing about this show was figuring out what songs we loved would have to go. We had songs that really meant a lot to us, and we realized they just had to come out."

If two main messages come through to the audience, McPherson would count this as a victory. "One is that when you change someone's life, you change your life. The other is when you leave the show we hope that you look at homeless people with a different eye."