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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to Broadway Nation, the podcast that explores the remarkable history of the Broadway musical with a particular focus on the immigrant, Jewish, queer, and black artists who invented it. I'm David Armstrong, and my guest again today is Joshua Rosenblum, author of "Closer Than Ever," the unique six-decade songwriting partnership of Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire, a terrific new book that chronicles the unprecedented partnership of two of the most gifted songwriters of our time. If you missed part one, you may want to go back and catch up with that episode before starting on this one. One quick housekeeping note, it's spring, and I'm thrilled to be back teaching again at the University of Washington School of Drama, but as a result, beginning today and continuing for the next 10 weeks, episodes of Broadway Nation will be released on Tuesdays rather than Thursdays.

At the end of the previous episode, Joshua had just shared with us the incredible success of Maltby & Shire's first review, "Starting Here, Starting Now," which really put them on the map. So the success of this review, which leads then to "Ain't Misbehavin'," you talk about how that show came together very quickly.

[1:16] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, it was kind of amazing. It was at Manhattan Theatre Club. It transferred. It went from limited run to extended run to limited Broadway run to extended Broadway run to five Tony Awards, I think, all within a matter of months. It just was like a rocket ship.

[1:32] David Armstrong: I remember I went to that show in the standing room because you couldn't get a ticket, and standing in the back of that theatre with that original cast, thinking it was one of the most thrilling theatrical experiences of my life. I still remember the electricity in that room. Part of it was the cast, but a lot of it was Richard's direction, the musical direction, the choreography was fantastic. And it, again, started in a tiny cabaret space at MTC, I think, but then just had no problem filling a Broadway theatre. Now, of course, the performers were bigger than life, but I think what Richard brought to that was this sense of place and of character. Somehow he was able to refract Fats Waller into five different people and have them all embody Fats Waller and be so specific to a time and a place and a feeling, which people have tried to do with other material and it doesn't work nearly as well because those songs are so distinctive of Fats Waller's personality.

[2:32] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, really well put. Richard's, his way of describing it was, you know, you said all the performers are aspects of Fats Waller. I think that's very true. And Fats Waller was incredibly playful as a musician. You know, he would say, here's this lick and here's that lick, and ooh, fooled you, it's down here instead of up here, all over the piano, handful of keys. He said he had the performers do that too, like with their ad-libs and Nell Carter ad-libbing her way through "Honeysuckle Rose." He said that's an embodiment of the Fats Waller piano style.

[2:57] David Armstrong: Clearly. And as you just referred to, Richard wrote lyrics to some of the compositions that were originally just instrumental compositions.

[3:05] Joshua Rosenblum: Yes, that's true. Most notably, in my view, "Lounging at the Waldorf," which I think is a tour de force.

[3:08] ♪ Musical number: "Lounging at the Waldorf" ♪

[6:02] David Armstrong: It's impossible to imagine that that was an instrumental with no lyrics. The lyrics are just so perfect, and when they go together, it's like a miracle.

[6:05] Joshua Rosenblum: It's final form we owe purely to Richard Maltby. In fact, I was a big fan of that album and that song. You know, played it as a cocktail pianist, but never knew that the lyrics came much, much later and were written by Richard long after the fact. I don't think I knew that till I started writing the book. As you say, it is a tour de force. It is a fantastic piece of material.

[6:24] David Armstrong: Let's jump ahead now to "Fosse," which Richard will eventually become involved with, I'm assuming because he has now won the Tony Award as the best director of a Broadway musical, which was "Ain't Misbehavin'" A Review. So he's going to be the go-to guy for this kind of thing.

[6:40] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, it was specifically one of Garth Drabinsky's colleagues who mentioned that to Drabinsky and said, you know, Maltby is definitely the guy. That fellow's name is eluding me at the moment, but Garth Drabinsky was the producer of "Fosse." He then later famously spent time in prison for various financial improprieties and has reemerged and then fell back into his favor again. But he was the driving force behind "Fosse," and "Fosse" was not quite working. He had been in workshop and worked on a few times, and Drabinsky felt it wasn't working. And one of his colleagues said, you need Richard Maltby. Maltby is the one who knows how to put a review together and make it successful. It was Chet Walker's brainchild, and he nurtured it for several years and ultimately felt that his version was a more authentic version of Bob Fosse's work, and was somewhat embittered that it had been taken over and made into something that he felt was something else, that, as he put it, Bob would have hated it.

But it was a big hit and ran for several years on Broadway and was the second review to win Best Musical. So for a while, the only two musical reviews to win a Best Musical Tony were both directed by Richard Maltby. Then, of course, came Jerome Robbins' Broadway, which was also a review that won Best Musical. Two out of three of them were directed by Richard.

[7:47] David Armstrong: And you had a chance to interview almost all of these people who were still around, Chet Walker, people like that. So you really got inside the workings of these shows.

[7:56] Joshua Rosenblum: I really did. And that was, in a way, the most interesting chapter to write, even though, regrettably, it didn't involve David Shire. Finding out about what really happened on "Fosse" was fascinating, also because I happened to be acquainted with the lovely Nicole Fosse, the daughter of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. We worked together on a project and I was able to resurrect my relationship with her, and she gave me a lot of background. And Chet Walker, may he rest in peace, was very blunt with me and honest and forthcoming. There were certain things he would not discuss, which was fine, but I felt like I was able to give a real insider's account of the whole "Fosse" process.

[8:34] David Armstrong: Yeah, I thought that was a very engrossing chapter. Thank you. So let's talk about "Baby." As you look back on writing about "Baby," what are the things that stand out to you about that show?

[8:40] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, my first memory of "Baby" was being in grad school and going to the record store and seeing the cast album with all these rave reviews plastered all over it. And I thought, oh, wow, those starting here, starting now guys have a big hit, big Broadway hit. Good for them. Well, it sort of seemed inevitable. So, you know, when people say "Baby" was, and I've heard this before, that "Baby" was a disappointment, that was a shock to me. I mean, I didn't know anything at the time. I was just a student.

[9:00] David Armstrong: Yeah. I think partly for some of us, we went with such expectation and there was so much that was great about it. And yet somehow, and I'm speaking just from my own point of view, it didn't quite feel like it went all the way. And it had a couple elements to it. I'm sure Richard would not like me saying this, but it had a very unfortunate set design with these curtains on a traveler that is my main memory of "Baby" is these curtains that you, I often play this game of if you could change one thing about a show that would improve it 300%, what would you do? With "Baby," I would cut those curtains because they made so much noise when they kept rearranging themselves. They were on these tracks and they kept going around and reshaping the space, which was a cool idea, but they made so much noise doing it.

[9:50] Joshua Rosenblum: That's not so good. I'm surprised Richard tolerated that.

[9:55] David Armstrong: Yeah. I know. I probably couldn't fix it. I'm sure they tried to fix it. Maybe.

[9:59] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah. I never saw the original Broadway production, so I don't have that point of reference. I mostly know it from the album and I've seen productions subsequently. I grew up listening to cast recordings and thinking that the songs were the show. And, you know, sometimes you hear people say, well, it's got a great score, but it's not a very good show. And to me, that doesn't make any sense. It still doesn't. Even having been in the professional for decades now and played and conducted a whole bunch of Broadway shows myself, I still think it's all about the score. And if "Baby" is all about the score, it's a fantastic show. You know, I have trouble getting past that, even though I know, well, it has to tell a story really effectively. And if the book doesn't work, then the show doesn't work. And the production design is important and all the other elements, of course. Orchestrations, which I think are an underrated aspect of most musicals.

[10:37] David Armstrong: And those are brilliant. Those "Baby" orchestrations are fantastic.

[10:40] Joshua Rosenblum: Yes, they totally are. The brilliant, inimitable Jonathan Tunick, who I've also interviewed a lot, both for this book and for my next one.

[10:49] ♪ Musical number: "The Story Goes On" ♪

[12:46] Joshua Rosenblum: You know, where does "Baby" fail? To me, it doesn't.

[12:46] David Armstrong: You know, I've read some of the reviews. Frank Rich liked it.

[12:48] Joshua Rosenblum: He liked it a lot at the time, and he was pretty influential back then. So it had a noisy set, which I didn't know until this minute, and no stars and no big production values, and it doesn't really tell a gripping story overall, even though a lot of the songs are gripping and the characters are interesting. Some people say Baby is a concept musical, that it's not really a book musical. I'm not sure if I agree with that, but that's something I heard a few times. I can see why people say that, because we're going to write a musical about people having a baby is sort of like we're going to write a musical about marriage. I can see the idea. But it actually has three plot lines that are fairly traditional plot lines.

For me, it didn't quite move you at the end the way you wanted it. It didn't culminate in enough at the end. I have the same thing with you. You listen to that album, you think this is the best show ever, and it had to have been a great hit. Right. They did change the ending. The ending is now basically a reprise of A Few of the Numbers. Originally, it was a song called I Wouldn't Go Back, which is now part of Closer Than Ever, but they decided that it wasn't the right ending for that show. It didn't adequately tie up the plot lines. It's possible with I Wouldn't Go Back at the end that it would have more of an emotional culmination. Yeah, we'll never know. You also talk later in the book about the various rewrites of Baby over the years, including quite recently, which was also fascinating. Did you get to see any of those?

[14:10] Joshua Rosenblum: I did. I saw the out-of-the-box Baby revamp, reboot. You could say they brought it very up-to-date. They had a blind actress playing Lizzie and a deaf singer playing Danny. They were both astonishingly good. The deaf guy in particular had such great pitch. I have no idea how he did it. He sang it so beautifully, it was flabbergasting to find out that he was actually hearing impaired. The characters are written as hearing impaired and visually impaired. Richard came and rewrote it for that production.

[14:39] David Armstrong: Yes, he did. A lot of people thought, well, the characters are written that way, but those actors aren't really deaf and blind. They couldn't be, but they were. There were two other multi-racial couples and a lesbian couple. It was very inclusively updated racially and in terms of sexuality. And it worked. It didn't seem like a gimmick at all. It could have been gimmicky and politically correct, but it was wonderful, really. And now that version is being licensed and has been done a few times. I look forward to seeing that somewhere. I wish I'd seen it in New York.

[15:03] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, as Vicki Clark, the Tony-winning actress and director and good friend of mine, put it, Baby was always so white, white, white. And I think this production was partly to correct that.

[15:11] David Armstrong: White, white, white, and straight, straight, straight.

[15:16] Joshua Rosenblum: Definitely both of those. Although I don't think at the time that had any effect on its success or its failure.

[15:24] David Armstrong: No, I don't think so. Those were not really concerns in the mid-1980s. It was not something you would have thought about, especially in the middle of the British invasion, where everything was white, white, white.

[16:02] Joshua Rosenblum: Don't go away. Broadway Nation will be back right after this quick break.

[16:25] David Armstrong: After Baby, Richard becomes involved, and I actually forgot about this entirely. I forgot how involved he was with three shows that I have to deal with. We just talked about the British invasion a couple of seconds ago, right? He gets involved with these creators with Song and Dance, Miss Saigon and the Pirate Queen.

[16:41] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah. And the one that I completely forgot he was the director of Song and Dance. When I read it in your book, I was like, really?

[16:50] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[16:50] Joshua Rosenblum: In which he got nominated for a Tony Award, so it wasn't like it was not of note.

[16:54] David Armstrong: Yeah, that's easy to forget, because you think Andrew Lloyd Webber and you think Bernadette Peters. Andrew Lloyd Webber always eclipses everyone else.

[17:02] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, Richard adapted it. I never really did much compare and contrast on that, and I really should have, because it would have been interesting to see what the original British version was versus what Maltby turned it into, quote unquote, Americanizing the show.

[17:12] David Armstrong: And did he write some lyrics for it as well?

[17:14] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, I think that's the point, is he altered some of it. He's the one who, at the request of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron McIntosh, figured out how do you put together Act One, which is basically a song cycle, and Act Two, which is a solo dance piece. How do you make that make sense?

[17:29] David Armstrong: And I do remember that was a very clever connection. I didn't think it necessarily paid off in the choreography in Act Two, but I do remember this specifically being something that's emblazoned in my memory. And I think it was a very clever way of putting it together.

[17:45] Joshua Rosenblum: It's emblazoned in my memory is we never see who her love interest is in the first act, because it's only Bernadette Peters as the only person. But she had these cowboy boots that he'd left in her apartment, apparently, that she was holding on to or singing about or something. And then at the top of the second act, I forget who the dancer was now, a dancing star, comes out in those cowboy boots.

[18:07] David Armstrong: Right. So that's one big connection.

[18:09] Joshua Rosenblum: And that was like, oh, now these stories connect to one another. Now we're seeing the guy who was the offstage character in the first act. Peter Martens was the choreographer for it, and who, of course, was a great idea as Balanchine's protege at that point. And Balanchine certainly had a great success on Broadway. The second act didn't quite tell enough of a story to complete the evening for me, but I thought clearly that was Richard's idea, I'm assuming, to make that connection.

[18:35] David Armstrong: And you mentioned it in the book.

[18:37] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, it must have been. And that was really smart. He's a smart guy.

[18:41] David Armstrong: And then Miss Saigon, talk just a little bit about that.

[18:44] Joshua Rosenblum: Richard writes the entire lyrics for that show.

[18:48] David Armstrong: Yeah, in collaboration with Alain Boublil.

[18:50] Joshua Rosenblum: Footnote, I spent six years of my life in the pit orchestra of Broadway Miss Saigon.

[18:54] David Armstrong: So you know it well.

[18:55] Joshua Rosenblum: I know it intimately, sometimes playing, sometimes conducting. No one really thought of that as a Richard Maltby show. It was Claude-Michel Schoenberg and Alain Boublil, but they worked it out together. There's a whole set of French lyrics that came first. And then again, Cameron McIntosh wanted Richard to work with Alain to create an English libretto. I got to hear both from Alain and from Richard about that process. And that was really fascinating.

[19:18] David Armstrong: And what is the name of that chapter? You have a humorous name to that chapter.

[19:21] Joshua Rosenblum: It's called French as a Language That Doesn't Scan, I think is the title.

[19:25] David Armstrong: Explain that a little bit.

[19:26] Joshua Rosenblum: Well, Maltby does it brilliantly, as with many things. He says, when you speak French, it's a string of syllables all at the same intonation. Whereas English has its ups and downs, and you accent certain words, and you can follow the trajectory of the line in terms of the rising and falling. And when you have an accented syllable, it has to go on a strong beat in the music. So all lyricists know that. A lot of beginning lyricists, many of whom I teach, do not understand this. And they put unaccented syllables on strong beats of the music, or they put accented syllables on weak beats of the music. You can't do that, or the song will not be intelligible. Like Sunset Boulevard.

[20:07] David Armstrong: Sunset Boulevard, Miss Scans Boulevard was the famous lyric in Forbidden Broadway.

[20:12] Joshua Rosenblum: Oh, funny.

[20:15] David Armstrong: I don't know that show, so I didn't know that was Miss Scans.

[20:17] Joshua Rosenblum: But yes, you're right. It's all about scansion. But French as a Language That Doesn't Scan, because you say all the syllables at the same pitch, and they go, no, no, no, no, no. Richard's funny. He does nonsense French syllables, and he just does them in a monotone. And that's how you speak French, and that's how you write French lyrics. So it's much easier in French, because you don't really have to scan, because the syllables aren't naturally accented. So Alain Boublil did not understand this, through no fault of his own. And he cheerfully claims that Richard Maltby taught him how to write English lyrics by paying attention to scansion. So they are credited together with the English translation, but Maltby was, as he often is, was the teacher in the process.

Alain thought he learned the lessons well enough that he could then do the English lyrics on Pirate Queen himself, and he did. And apparently, they mostly turned out much better. But then Maltby was called in to be a show doctor on that show, too, and rewrote a bunch of them.

[21:05] David Armstrong: Oh, and by the way, I played in the pit on Pirate Queen also.

[21:07] Joshua Rosenblum: Oh, you did? Both the Maltby collaborations with Rubio and Schoenberg?

[21:11] David Armstrong: Yes, indeed. You were there just once it arrived in New York?

[21:15] Joshua Rosenblum: Yes, I did not do the whole out-of-town circuit with them. I was not in rehearsal much with them, so I didn't get to see any of that collaborative process. But I played the whole run, and it was only six weeks, sadly.

[21:23] David Armstrong: Yeah, that was a show that did not work. Did you see that one?

[21:27] Joshua Rosenblum: I did, yeah.

[21:28] David Armstrong: Did it feel that way in the pit, or you couldn't?

[21:30] Joshua Rosenblum: No, in the pit, we thought, this is great. Julian Kelly, who's this brilliant British musician, was the music director and the orchestrator. He was a brilliant conductor. Just watching him was like taking conducting lessons. The orchestrations were exquisite. It was an amazing group of musicians. We felt like we were playing chamber music at the highest level. I felt like it was a privilege to be down there with those folks working so hard to make it beautiful, and everyone hated it.

[21:56] David Armstrong: So I had a completely different experience from the people who saw it and were bewildered.

[21:59] Joshua Rosenblum: Well, a better experience. It was sad, and I think I mentioned this in the book. Dave Roth, my friend who's a percussionist and was hired as the in-house orchestra contractor, had an interview with Julian Kelly, and Julian said, how do you feel about a 20-year run?

[22:14] David Armstrong: Wow.

[22:14] Joshua Rosenblum: Because it was the composers of Les Mis, and it was the producers of Riverdance, and how could it not be a huge monster hit? That's what everyone felt, and of course, that expectation didn't help it.

[22:26] David Armstrong: I think that helped kill it, yeah.

[22:28] Joshua Rosenblum: You went in assuming it was going to be sensational, and then even the slightest disappointment is then going to be magnified.

[22:35] David Armstrong: Exactly.

[22:35] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, we were digging our heels in for a long run. Dave and I still joke about it. We're still supposed to be doing Pirate Queen.

[22:42] David Armstrong: That's funny.

[22:42] Joshua Rosenblum: So let's move on to the two biggest events of Maltby and Shire together of their career, in terms of, I think, what has had the lasting effect is Starting Here, Starting Now and Closer Than Ever.

[22:53] David Armstrong: Right.

[22:55] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, Closer Than Ever is, the Maltby Shire fanatics are just rapturous when they talk about Closer Than Ever. Like you were saying, Starting Here, Starting Now seemed like the cutting edge, and this is what theater should be, and this is what we're all singing and learning. I heard that even more about Closer Than Ever. I was music director at the Candlewood Playhouse, which was this summer stock spot in Connecticut. My assistant was our mutual friend, Joel Fram. There was a post-show cabaret every night in the little restaurant next door, and Joel basically turned the post-show cabaret into greatest hits from Closer Than Ever. Everyone just got up and sang their favorite song from Closer Than Ever.

It just seemed like that was where it was at. That was my first encounter with it. And I think that's a generational issue. I think I'm less enthusiastic about Closer Than Ever, but I think it's because when I went to see it, I had such expectations from Starting Here, Starting Now.

[24:44] David Armstrong: Really?

[24:44] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah. It just didn't rise to the level of Starting Here, Starting Now, although I think I've played that album hundreds of times, and there's such great material, Miss Bird, and so many great songs in it. But somehow, as an evening, it didn't have the same effect for me.

[24:55] David Armstrong: Interesting.

[24:55] Joshua Rosenblum: Those guys say that Starting Here, Starting Now seemed more integrated, and Closer Than Ever was more like a book of short stories. And the through line was that they all had the same author, but that they weren't integrated as a musical theater piece in the same way that Starting Here, Starting Now was.

[25:17] David Armstrong: So maybe partly reacting to that.

[25:19] Joshua Rosenblum: I think that could be true. I didn't remember that, but that makes sense to me. It does seem like you start over every time in Closer Than Ever.

[25:27] David Armstrong: Yeah, I think that's true.

[25:29] Joshua Rosenblum: And there's no through line to the characters, really. In Starting Here, Starting Now, you can sort of get, oh, this person is the same character who sang that same song three songs ago. But there's intentionally no sense of that in Closer Than Ever.

[25:41] David Armstrong: That's very interesting. That could be it. But some of those songs are just blockbusters.

[25:44] Joshua Rosenblum: Amazing.

[25:45] David Armstrong: Fantastic songs, yeah.

[25:46] Joshua Rosenblum: And a very enjoyable show as a whole. I think just for me that it didn't quite achieve what the previous show had done.

[25:55] David Armstrong: Right. Plus, the stuff you love in college will always have sentimental value for you.

[25:59] Joshua Rosenblum: Totally.

[25:59] David Armstrong: And seem better than anything that comes afterwards.

[26:02] Joshua Rosenblum: Pretty much.

[26:04] David Armstrong: Which is not fair.

[26:06] Joshua Rosenblum: What's your highlight of the songs in Closer Than Ever? What's your go-to song?

[25:37] Joshua Rosenblum: That's one of what I call the Maltby-Shire head-versus-heart numbers. It's like the quintessential head-versus-heart, meaning your intellect is telling you it's stupid for me to feel this way, but your heart is taking you somewhere you cannot resist. It sounds like she's just had a bad breakup, and she's intellectualizing how much better members of the animal kingdom handle romantic couplings than humans do. She's a scientist, and sounds like an animal biologist, and she'll run down all these habits of the animal kingdom who take a very pragmatic approach to mating, but she still can't let go of the fact that she is probably going to have yet another string of bad boyfriends that she can't resist getting involved in.

[26:43] David Armstrong: There's another one, yeah, the song about, I'm not going to be able to remember the title now, but it's the song about the fact that they are both the sons of bandleaders.

[26:51] Joshua Rosenblum: It's called "If I Sing." I can't even really think about it without tearing up. Let's just explain this. This is an autobiographical song that they wrote specifically about the fact that they both are the sons of bandleaders.

[27:04] ♪ Musical number: "If I Sing" — performed by Maltby & Shire ♪

[31:05] David Armstrong: Wow. I have to listen to that again. I didn't know that story when I've heard the song before.

[31:10] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, I can't talk much more about it without tearing up.

[31:14] David Armstrong: All right, we don't want you to break down here. But everyone should listen to "If I Sing." If you listen to one song. Even though I didn't pull that out as my favorite, that is the most emotionally penetrating of anything they've written.

[31:24] Joshua Rosenblum: Wow. And David wrote that alone?

[31:27] David Armstrong: No, they did the lyrics together.

[31:29] Joshua Rosenblum: They did the lyrics together. But you know, after a lot of back and forth, of course. It's interesting to see also having a father who was musical and influential. One of the most fascinating chapters is called "It Should Have Been Called Small."

[31:40] David Armstrong: That's funny.

[31:43] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah. And you explain as the chapter. So this is, of course, about their musical "Big."

[31:47] David Armstrong: Right.

[31:48] Joshua Rosenblum: Which was, unfortunately, a big disappointment, not just to them, but to all of Broadway at the time. I remember everyone being so excited about the idea of this show and that it was going to be a Maltby and Shire show.

[31:59] David Armstrong: And Susan Stroman and Mike Ockrent.

[32:02] Joshua Rosenblum: I mean, it was a dream team coming together to create the show.

[32:06] David Armstrong: It was. And John Wideman on the book.

[32:08] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah. What happened?

[32:11] David Armstrong: To sum it up briefly, I think you could put it in two categories. Number one, there was a lot of, I think, manufactured outrage that F.A.O. Schwartz was a corporate sponsor of the show. And people thought that it was just a commercial product and that F.A.O. Schwartz had undue corporate influence on the content of the show and that it was a product of business rather than art. None of which was true.

[32:35] Joshua Rosenblum: And, of course, F.A.O. Schwartz was in the story from the beginning.

[32:39] David Armstrong: Yeah, it was an inherent part of the story. I think I said, if you remember anything from the movie, you remember Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia on top of that toy keyboards, that keyboard roll on the floor that you could dance on and play music. So you have to have that in the musical and you can't have that in the musical and not be inside F.A.O. Schwartz because it's their toy. So there was a lot of grumbling about that inappropriately. And I think something that would seem ridiculous to us today, the way the world has changed, the way Broadway has changed, the idea of turning a movie into a musical was much more controversial at that time and it's sort of in the same lines as the F.A.O. Schwartz idea, seen as a little bit of a corporate...

[33:16] Joshua Rosenblum: Like a cynical move.

[33:17] David Armstrong: A cynical move, yeah.

[33:18] Joshua Rosenblum: Like a get-rich-quick scheme.

[33:20] David Armstrong: Exactly.

[33:21] Joshua Rosenblum: Which, again, it was not. Their view, and this is reflected in that title, was that this is a small, intimate story about a boy's fear of growing up, which is something very personal and something that everybody can relate to. You know, wanting to be a grown-up, but then when you're a grown-up, you feel, gee, maybe I'm not ready to be a grown-up. The contrast between adulthood and childhood and the two-way tension of how each feels about the other, that to them was what this was about. And that's the story they wanted to tell. And in their view, it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of production values, and it sort of overshadowed the intimate story. That's one thing that went wrong. And the other thing that went wrong, you can sum up in one word, and that word is Rent.

[33:59] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[34:00] Joshua Rosenblum: Which opened at exactly the same time and was already the stuff of legend because Jonathan Larson had died in the first preview off-Broadway, and so he was sort of being deified. And Rent was the wave of the future, and Rent was a progressive rock-and-roll musical. Baby seemed like a relic of the past in terms of the old style of Broadway songwriting, which Richard and David are very much part of the tradition and the best exemplars of it alive, but Rent was the thing. It sort of got overshadowed.

[34:28] David Armstrong: Absolutely. Again, your research and your chance to interview people, Susan Stroman, and to hear the contrasting versions of the story, nobody with any axe to grind in a way.

[34:38] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, she was great. She's the loveliest person around. I felt very lucky to be able to interview her, who was on another show at the time. We had to meet at 8 in the morning before she went to rehearsal, but she was willing to do it. God bless her. And I felt very lucky to have her insights.

[34:51] David Armstrong: Yeah, that was fascinating. And just to hear the different perspectives on something that everybody had the best intentions and it just didn't come together. Again, this is a show that's been reworked and rewritten since then. What do you feel about the current version of it? Have you seen any recent incarnations of it?

[35:07] Joshua Rosenblum: I did see it at the York. They had this series called Musicals in Mufti. The idea you do it practically in street clothing and you don't do much staging. You almost do it as a concert version with minimal staging. And I thought it worked really well. That's a tiny space, so it has to be stripped down, and it can be small like they always wanted it to be.

[35:23] David Armstrong: Well, Susan Stroman's take on that is small. No one ever said small. This is a big Broadway musical. You've got a big cast of adults. You've got a big cast of kids. It takes place in New York. How do you do it small? So she has a point, too.

[35:33] Joshua Rosenblum: Absolutely. And again, this is a place where, as I remember it, the design was not the show's friend. It looked like it was happening in a mall.

[35:40] David Armstrong: That's funny.

[35:41] Joshua Rosenblum: Well, there are scenes that take place in a mall.

[35:43] David Armstrong: Yeah, but I think that went too far in terms of the set design for it.

[35:46] Joshua Rosenblum: Could be.

[35:47] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[35:48] Joshua Rosenblum: When they got to Chicago or Detroit, wherever it was, for the out-of-town tryout, they walked into the theater and they said, holy crap, this isn't what we had in mind at all when they walked in and saw the set.

[35:55] David Armstrong: Never a good thing to happen.

[35:57] Joshua Rosenblum: No, that's a sad tale. I detail this at some length. A lot of the songs got thrown out because Mike Ockren would re-write the book scene. The song wouldn't belong anymore. And they would say, yeah, you're right, the song doesn't belong anymore. So they'd write a new one and they thought it wasn't as good. So it ended up with a lot of songs that they thought were second rate. Although Susan Sturman says, I think that score is beautiful. Don't tell me anything in there is second rate. So, again, interesting to have the different perspectives. But for the national tour, they rethought it and they restored a lot of their favorite songs. And then that apparently on tour got much better reviews. So they're very happy with that version.

And it's closer to that version that is licensed now. And it has their favorite song back in it, which is Little Susan Lawrence. And I have a chapter about that, too. It was very interesting chapter, although it's not on the original cast album, obviously, because it had been cut.

[36:37] David Armstrong: Right, exactly.

[36:38] Joshua Rosenblum: But it is on the U.K. cast album, so you can hear it there. If that were not available, I probably would not have indulged in a full chapter on that because I wouldn't want to write about it if people couldn't hear it. But you can find it easily on YouTube.

[36:48] David Armstrong: Yeah, great tip.

[36:49] Joshua Rosenblum: And Little Susan Lawrence is in their third review. The last review in the trilogy now has Little Susan Lawrence. If that review takes off like the other two have, people will know it.

[36:58] David Armstrong: So let's talk about their upcoming projects or still in the works projects, one of which I was connected with, which is Waterfall, which is still on its way. I know it was recently, not so long ago, done again in Bangkok. Talk just a little bit about that, and then I want to hear about the review as well.

[37:15] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, Waterfall has been kicking around for a long time. They did get financing to do this big production in Bangkok, as you said, and that was videoed professionally, like with eight cameras, I think. The video capture is extraordinary, and it was screened here in New York about a year ago, maybe. Maybe it was last fall. But it is stunning. It is absolutely gorgeous, and it is beautiful.

[37:36] David Armstrong: Yeah, I had a chance to see it.

[37:38] Joshua Rosenblum: You saw the video?

[37:39] David Armstrong: Yeah, I was sent a copy of it.

[37:40] Joshua Rosenblum: Wow.

[37:41] David Armstrong: Yeah, would you agree?

[37:42] Joshua Rosenblum: I do. I think it's spectacular, and I had seen the video of the first production that they did, because just to fill in the blank, we did a co-production of Waterfall at the Fifth Avenue Theater with the Pasadena Playhouse.

[37:54] David Armstrong: Now, when was that?

[37:55] Joshua Rosenblum: Eight years ago or something like that.

[37:57] David Armstrong: So you were artistic director at the time?

[37:59] Joshua Rosenblum: I was the artistic director, producing artistic director at the Fifth Avenue then, and so we were heavily involved in making that show happen. It opened first in Pasadena, and then I think there was two months in between or something like that before we did the Fifth, so we did a lot of reworking and rewriting. And you reminded me of that new song that they wrote for the end of the first act, you talk about in your book, that was the highlight of the production.

[38:27] Joshua Rosenblum: I know, it's heartbreaking. And Jonathan Tunick specifically singles that out as one of the best songs they have ever written. I'll tell a story about Jonathan Tunick. It's my favorite aspect of Waterfall, which is a show I had a lot of affection for and I still have high hopes for. I think there's a tremendous show there, like everything else. It's finding the show, ultimately. But the producers were obviously trying to save money everywhere they can, and they insisted that there only be 13 musicians in the pits. And because the way regional theaters work is we pay for what we would ordinarily pay for if we were doing a production of, say, you know, Hello, Dolly. And then the producers, the enhancing producers, pay for things that are on top of that.

So the orchestrations are almost always in their purview. So it's not something either we or the Pasadena Playhouse could affect in terms of those numbers. And Jonathan was furious about this. He was so... And he ended up writing the most beautiful orchestration, the most effective orchestration you will ever hear. And I remember saying to him after opening, I said, now they're never going to let you have more than 13 people. It's true. Right. He digs his own grave by being so brilliant at making a small number of musicians sound like a full orchestra. And I think I was right. I think he still, I think the most recent shows in New York, he had 13 musicians on.

[39:45] David Armstrong: Probably. Merrily, which he just won the Tony for, of course. Well, not just, but last year. Recently. I think he had to reduce, do a substantial reduction from the original Broadway forces.

[39:54] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah. He complained nonstop. It sounded like 37 people in the pit.

[39:58] David Armstrong: It was. It really did. He's a magician like that. But the ones in Bangkok were redone by someone local.

[40:04] Joshua Rosenblum: Oh, interesting. Well, there was a lot of new material, right?

[40:09] David Armstrong: Yeah. Well, you probably know better than I do because you were intimate with the Seattle production. You saw the video. How similar did it seem to you?

[40:13] Joshua Rosenblum: There was quite a lot of new material. The whole opening was different. There was a brand new opening number. There were quite a few things, but still some. And as you talk about, there's some very strong, effective pieces in that score that have stayed in there the whole time. And the ending when he does his whole monologue about, I'm a better person for having loved Catherine, that is deeply moving that they've been forced to be apart for their whole lives. And they have one brief meeting at the end. He says, everything I've accomplished professionally means nothing. The person I am, it's because I loved her.

[40:40] David Armstrong: Yeah, that's an incredibly moving moment that show needs to be done. And just the cross-cultural aspect of it is amazing. Three different countries, three different styles of music, but all integrated because they all sound like David Shire. It's just so brilliant. David's description and your rendition of it, of how he approached writing Thai music, Japanese music, and American music in very specific, authentic ways, and yet then have to make it just work for the story in the end. It was really interesting.

[41:01] Joshua Rosenblum: Oh, good. I'm glad. Yeah, he's very fascinating on that topic. I was able to pull out the actual modes, the collections of pitches that he uses for the different nationalities. I hope musicians will find that interesting.

[41:20] David Armstrong: Yeah, absolutely. They'll find it even more interesting when they can hear the score.

[41:25] Joshua Rosenblum: Yes, which I hope we all will get to. That's going to be a very expensive Broadway show if anyone ever produces it.

[41:29] David Armstrong: Yeah, absolutely. Well worth doing. I agree completely. They're still working. They're both the same age, right?

[41:34] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, they must be. I think I wrote it. Again, I have to look it up. 85. I think you said 84 when you wrote the book, so I was assuming they must be 85 or 86 now.

[41:38] David Armstrong: Yeah, David Shire is 87.

[41:45] Joshua Rosenblum: Wow. Man, God bless him. They're still working.

[41:51] David Armstrong: Yeah, they are. Probably right now. They're working on getting that third review they see as the final part of their legacy. They really want that review to be in ship's shape before they're gone.

[42:00] Joshua Rosenblum: And do they have a title for that?

[42:05] David Armstrong: It's called About Time. And you write about that very interestingly as well, how they arrived at that title.

[42:10] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah. So starting here, starting now is youthful exuberance and first love and first relationships. Closer than ever, you've been around the track a few times, you're middle-aged, you've got kids, possibly you're on your second spouse. And About Time is the long view. They said, we don't want it to be an old people's musical. We don't want it to be geriatric. But there's something great about having the perspective of a lifetime. A lot of those songs really sum it up well. And Little Susan Lawrence works great. In Big, it's sung by maybe a 35, 40 year old, but in the show, it's gonna be sung by 70 plus maybe. And thinking about your grade school boyfriend at that age, there's just something wonderful about that. I love that.

[42:42] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah. Like the other two reviews, this is made up of trunk songs, basically. Largely, yes. Although, once again, they are writing a few songs specifically for it. And that No One Will Know song that you like, and that I like, and that Jonathan Tunick loves, that is in it, but it is completely rewritten. I went to David and said, Oh, I'm so glad you were able to reuse that and give that song a place. And he said, No, this one's brand new. And I said, No, it isn't. I'm your biographer. I know this. That needs to be in Waterfall. He said, Really? I said, I promise. It was opening night in Seattle. It definitely was.

[43:16] David Armstrong: Yeah, you did every performance in Seattle.

[43:20] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, right. But that just shows you how different it is with the rewritten lyrics.

[43:25] David Armstrong: Right. They've written so many songs. It's fairly typical for composers and songwriters to not necessarily remember everything they wrote in every version.

[43:29] Joshua Rosenblum: Yes, of course. Not to mention, at age 87, good God.

[43:35] David Armstrong: Exactly. And are there plans for this show to premiere? Is there anything in the works?

[43:41] Joshua Rosenblum: They just had a workshop not too long ago and a few private performances. I do not know what the latest is. I've been out of touch, sadly, because I'm working on my new book. But I should follow up and find out. And my friend Dennis Cordell, who is a great pianist and music director, and is sort of their amanuensis, and frequently is a music director for them, and played for all the incarnations of About Time. I'm in touch with him periodically, and he'll know. I should catch myself up.

[44:03] David Armstrong: And you mentioned the book you're working on now. Before we go, tell us just a little bit about what can we expect next from Joshua Rosenblum?

[44:08] Joshua Rosenblum: Yes, this is my book about Mari Yestin. Mari Yestin, of course, the composer of Nine and Titanic and Death Takes a Holiday and the quote-unquote other Phantom. There's a Mari Yestin, Arthur Coppett Phantom that is... I remember it well, yeah. It's actually the better version of Phantom, but now I assume is never to be seen again, probably.

[44:28] David Armstrong: That is what many people say about the Yestin Phantom. It has had literally hundreds of productions around the world.

[44:33] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah. It obviously couldn't get anywhere near New York, but it is very popular among audiences and singers and aficionados. That's an interesting part of the Mari Yestin story. I was a student of Mari's. I took Mari's songwriting class when I was a Yale senior. I have stayed friendly with him over the years, and Oxford University Press was pleased with the Maltby Shire book, and they said, hey, how about a book about Mari Yestin? I said, as it happens, I'm very well situated to write about him because I was his student and I know a lot about him and his music. So that's what I'm working on now. I'd say about 75% of the way through. I've done about 12 interviews with Mari and lots of people in his orbit, and he's really fun to get to know and write about.

[45:12] David Armstrong: He certainly is a raconteur.

[45:13] Joshua Rosenblum: That is a good word for him. So you've had the Mari experience?

[45:17] David Armstrong: I've had a little bit of the Mari experience, yeah. He never stops talking, which is great in a very entertaining way.

[45:24] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, it makes it very easy to write about him.

[45:27] David Armstrong: I'm sure he writes it for you.

[45:28] Joshua Rosenblum: Almost. Yeah, I have to be careful not to let him write too much. I can't just be Mari on Mari. As my editors have said, there has to be some critical distance. That's my challenge.

[45:39] David Armstrong: Fascinating that both your books are about living writers of, I don't know how to say this, but not the most famous living writers of the time, but both with incredible success and highly influential.

[45:52] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, I would say that's all true. I would say they're both beloved but possibly underappreciated by the public at large. But I think if you drew the lines to the generation behind them, they've had tremendous influence, as much as anybody else, on the younger writers of today.

[46:08] David Armstrong: I think you're right, for sure. And Mari in particular ran the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop for about 20 years. So he literally mentored the new generation, Bobby Lopez. I mean, I know for a fact Pasek and Paul were highly influenced by Maltby and Shire in many, many ways.

[46:24] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, I can see that too. But Mari's teaching is just as important to him as his composing. He's very proud of his 12-year tenure teaching at Yale and the legacy of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, which he started out in himself when Layman Engle created and ran it. Nine came out of the Layman Engle BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. When Layman died, Mari was the obvious person to take it over. Nine had just opened on Broadway. That legacy is very important to him.

[46:48] David Armstrong: Well, we will have to have you back when your book is out.

[46:52] Joshua Rosenblum: Thank you. It would be my pleasure.

[46:53] David Armstrong: Not too far in the future.

[46:56] Joshua Rosenblum: As you know, the publication process is pretty lengthy.

[46:59] David Armstrong: Absolutely.

[46:59] Joshua Rosenblum: Yeah, maybe in about a year, year and a half, we'll have the Mari book.

[47:02] David Armstrong: That sounds right.

[47:03] Joshua Rosenblum: Good.

[47:04] David Armstrong: Again, thank you, Joshua Rosenblum, for joining us today on Broadway Nation to talk about Closer Than Ever, the unique six-decade songwriting partnership of Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire.

[47:16] Joshua Rosenblum: Thank you, David. You asked great questions, and it sounds like you know more about them than I do. So thank you very much.

[47:22] David Armstrong: I don't think so. But now after reading your book, maybe that's true.

[47:25] Joshua Rosenblum: Oh, good. I'm glad. All right.

[47:28] David Armstrong: Thanks so much.

[47:28] Joshua Rosenblum: It's been a pleasure.

[48:04] ♪ Musical number: "Travel" — performed by Joshua Rosenblum ♪

[50:03] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help with editing this episode, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

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[50:15] ♪ Musical number: "Travel" — performed by Joshua Rosenblum ♪

[51:07] ♪ Musical number: "Home" — performed by Joshua Rosenblum ♪