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[0:03] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process.

[0:18] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode finale: Sunday in the Park, Into the Woods, Crazy for You and Gemignani.

[0:27] David Armstrong: This is the fourth and final section of my conversation with author Margaret Hall about her recent biography of Paul Gemignani.

[0:35] David Armstrong: If you missed the previous episodes in this series, you may want to catch up on those before listening to this one.

[0:40] David Armstrong: Paul Gemignani served as the music director for more than 40 Broadway musicals, including those that are the focus of this episode: Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Crazy for You, as well as the revivals of She Loves Me and Kiss Me Kate.

[0:55] David Armstrong: Here we go.

[0:57] Margaret Hall: Even though this relationship with Michael Bennett comes to an end and the relationship with Hal Prince has come to an end, the core relationship with Sondheim continues and actually reaches some highlights over this next period as we go into Sunday in the Park with George.

[1:11] David Armstrong: Oh, yes.

[1:12] Margaret Hall: Now that is a show that just everyone feasted on the meat of.

[1:16] Margaret Hall: As James Lapine details in his fantastic book, Putting It Together, it was not an easy delivery.

[1:23] Margaret Hall: It was a troubled birth and a troubled pregnancy.

[1:25] Margaret Hall: But everyone was so just in it on that show.

[1:29] Margaret Hall: And specifically with Paul, he had what is called the Barnitzva Boys, which is the three-person pit, quote unquote, that they'd have at Playwrights Horizons.

[1:38] Margaret Hall: But just so people understand, when it started off off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, there was only a band of three people.

[1:45] David Armstrong: Yeah, and they weren't in a pit.

[1:46] Margaret Hall: They were just kind of shoved in a corner.

[1:47] Margaret Hall: And it consisted of Paul Gemignani on drums and conducting the other two with his head, basically.

[1:54] Margaret Hall: Paul Ford on the piano and Michael Sterabin on the synthesizer.

[1:58] Margaret Hall: And Michael Scarabin was also the orchestrator.

[2:00] Margaret Hall: And this show similar in some ways because Michael Bennett has pioneered this workshop system to a great extent.

[2:08] Margaret Hall: Now Sondheim and other people are following this workshop system as well.

[2:12] Margaret Hall: James Lapine, obviously, is the leader of this.

[2:15] Margaret Hall: And he also comes from the off-Broadway world.

[2:18] Margaret Hall: He comes from the Public Theater.

[2:20] Margaret Hall: He comes from that outside of Broadway mentality, which is one of the things that Sondheim was attracted to.

[2:25] Margaret Hall: And not only the outside of Broadway mentality, outside of the quote unquote capital M, capital T musical theater, where Lapine started out as a visual artist.

[2:34] Margaret Hall: And so his approach to making theater is deeply visual and almost aggressively collaborative.

[2:40] Margaret Hall: He insists upon it.

[2:41] Margaret Hall: And if you're not gonna be in the room and you're not gonna play ball and get in the sandbox, you're in the wrong room.

[2:46] Margaret Hall: And people learned that very quickly on the Sunday in the Park with George rehearsal process of like either you're with it or you're not.

[2:53] Margaret Hall: And there's some people where they thrive in that kind of an environment, and there's some who don't, and that's fine.

[2:57] Margaret Hall: It's not like a moral judgment or anything, but there's a very specific kind of person who works really well with James Lapine because he brings out this almost childlike energy out of a lot of his performers and also out of his musicians.

[3:11] Margaret Hall: Paul always talks about how he feels like he lost 10 years while working on Sunday in the Park with George, because just the energy of the piece and sort of throwing yourself into a piece of art about making art, it buoys your soul in a way, especially the song "Finishing the Hat."

[3:25] Margaret Hall: And another one of my favorite stories in the book is about the first time Steve plays "Finishing the Hat" for everybody, and they're all at the West Bank Cafe in like the basement on this beat-up upright that like probably is like beer-soaked and like on its last legs, and everyone is just sobbing.

[3:43] Margaret Hall: It's like you have four men who are very much in touch with their emotions in this small space.

[3:47] Margaret Hall: You have Stephen Sondheim, James Lapine, Mandy Patinkin, who, for the entire rehearsal process, is basically like an inch from a nervous breakdown.

[3:55] Margaret Hall: And Paul Gemignani, who's a very easy cry.

[3:57] Margaret Hall: He looks like a mafioso.

[3:59] Margaret Hall: I understand why people think he's like this big tough dude.

[4:03] Margaret Hall: He wears these like tinted sunglasses, and he's built like a big burly Italian guy.

[4:07] Margaret Hall: He looks like he's an extra on The Sopranos, but he's like a teddy bear.

[4:11] Margaret Hall: And so they're all just a blubbering pile of emotions by the time "Finishing the Hat" is done for the first time, and then they put it in the show that very night.

[4:19] Margaret Hall: That's amazing.

[4:20] Margaret Hall: He's just finished writing it that afternoon.

[4:23] Margaret Hall: Plays it for them, and Mandy Patinkin agrees to do it that night.

[4:28] Margaret Hall: He just pastes the lyrics in the back of his sketchpad and is able to read them off.

[4:31] Margaret Hall: And sort of talk-sings it, maybe to a certain extent, but they get the idea of it in the show at least.

[4:37] Margaret Hall: "Finishing the Hat."

[4:40] Margaret Hall: How you have to finish the hat.

[4:43] Margaret Hall: How you watch the rest of the world from a window while you finish the hat.

[4:50] Margaret Hall: Mapping out a sky.

[4:53] Margaret Hall: What you feel like clouding the sky.

[4:56] Margaret Hall: What you feel when voices that come through the window until they distance and die.

[5:04] Margaret Hall: Until there's nothing but sky.

[5:08] Margaret Hall: And how you're always turning back too late from the grass and the stick at the dog of the light.

[5:15] Margaret Hall: Oh, the kind of woman willing to wait, not the kind that you want to find waiting to return you to the night.

[5:24] Margaret Hall: Dizzy from the height.

[5:28] Margaret Hall: Coming from the height.

[5:29] Margaret Hall: Mandy is really one of the best.

[5:31] Margaret Hall: And it takes such a level of intensity to play George.

[5:35] Margaret Hall: And to make George sympathetic, that's why "Finishing the Hat" was so important.

[5:39] Margaret Hall: People hated George in the show before that song was put in, because he seemed pretty unsympathetic.

[5:43] Margaret Hall: You love Bernadette Peters coming in, and then Dot is immediately charming as all hell in the opening number.

[5:48] Margaret Hall: And then you just see George ignoring her as she's desperately like, hello, I love you.

[5:53] Margaret Hall: Can you just say it back, please?

[5:55] Margaret Hall: Not asking for the world.

[5:56] Margaret Hall: I just need an acknowledgement.

[5:57] Margaret Hall: And when he's not able to do that, at the end of "We Do Not Belong Together," there were a lot of people who hated George.

[6:04] Margaret Hall: Who could not stand him?

[6:05] Margaret Hall: But then you put in "Finishing the Hat" and you have it performed by someone like Mandy Patinkin, and you watch him break his own heart.

[6:12] Margaret Hall: And when the woman had human take go, she can see me a felt will I give what I give.

[6:19] Margaret Hall: But the woman who won't wait for you knows that however you live, there's a part of you always standing by, mapping out the sky.

[6:34] Margaret Hall: "Finishing a Hat."

[6:38] Margaret Hall: "Starting on a Hat."

[6:41] Margaret Hall: "Finishing a Hat."

[6:44] Margaret Hall: "Look, I made a hat."

[6:50] Margaret Hall: "Where there never was a hat."

[6:57] Margaret Hall: Without "Finishing the Hat," it feels like George thinks Dot isn't enough for him.

[7:00] Margaret Hall: You put in "Finishing the Hat," and George realizes he's not enough for Dot, and his act of love, both of himself and her, will be losing her to continue to make his art because that's all he considers himself good for.

[7:12] Margaret Hall: He doesn't consider himself good enough for Dot, good enough for love, all that stuff.

[7:16] Margaret Hall: That's getting in a sort of actor mishmash BFA talk.

[7:19] Margaret Hall: I may or may not have played Dot in college, but so you have personal stake in this.

[7:25] Margaret Hall: I care deeply about this show and about their dynamic.

[7:29] Margaret Hall: They truly captured Nirvana, in my opinion, with Bernadette and Mandy, and I'm so glad we got the PBS recording of it.

[7:35] Margaret Hall: And I think it's one of the most valuable pro shots we have to have that captured.

[7:40] Margaret Hall: When those started coming out, I couldn't understand why every show wasn't doing that.

[7:44] Margaret Hall: To quote the film Tick Tick Boom, I can't wait for every Sondheim musical to be on PBS.

[7:49] Margaret Hall: Sunday in the Park, of course, leads to Into the Woods.

[7:52] Margaret Hall: This is two shows with this same team, Sondheim, Gemignani, and Lapine.

[7:57] David Armstrong: Would you read that quote of what James Lapine had to say about Gemignani?

[8:01] Margaret Hall: The reason Gemignani is a legend in the musical theater is because he approaches the work dramatically first and then musically.

[8:09] Margaret Hall: He wants to understand the story we are telling and how music intersects with the dialogue.

[8:14] Margaret Hall: He strives to understand the intentions of the writers and director before he works with the actors in rehearsal, and later the orchestra in the theater to help bring the two together, connecting what is going on in the pit with what is going on upstage.

[8:27] Margaret Hall: As he once mentioned to me, and I'm paraphrasing here, the musicians are in a dark pit where they have no visual connection with the stage.

[8:34] Margaret Hall: Because of the intensity of the lights on stage, the actors are staring into darkness, unable to see the audience.

[8:39] Margaret Hall: The conductor is the person who brings these two worlds together to tell our story, and Paul is masterful at that.

[8:46] Margaret Hall: Actors and musicians know he is there for them.

[8:48] Margaret Hall: He is always present in performance and he is fierce.

[8:51] Margaret Hall: If an actor or musician is marking a performance, Paul will wake them up and demand their total attention.

[8:57] Margaret Hall: He can be a demanding taskmaster, which is exactly the kind of collaborator a composer, lyricist, or director wants, both in the rehearsal room and especially when at the podium during a performance.

[9:35] Margaret Hall: I'm a guy who's gotta dance.

[9:38] Margaret Hall: Don't know exactly why.

[9:42] Margaret Hall: Music puts me in a trance.

[9:45] Margaret Hall: And I must dance or die mornings, I won't sound a bit to an Irish reel.

[9:54] Margaret Hall: Eventually, Paul gets to work with another legend from the Golden Age, which is Jerome Robbins with Jerome Robbins Broadway.

[10:02] David Armstrong: And this comes through Sondheim again, doesn't it?

[10:05] Margaret Hall: Yes.

[10:05] Margaret Hall: Jerry goes to Sondheim and basically says, Hey, I have the idea to do this thing.

[10:09] Margaret Hall: I want to use stuff from West Side Story and Gypsy and all that.

[10:12] Margaret Hall: And as Jerry's explaining this to Steve, Steve goes, Well, I know who you need to do it with.

[10:17] Margaret Hall: Paul and Jerry were aware of each other.

[10:19] Margaret Hall: They'd met at little things here and there.

[10:21] Margaret Hall: Jerome Robbins mostly left the musical theater by the time Paul comes on the game.

[10:25] Margaret Hall: But like at things like when they did West Side Story at City Center Opera, he showed up.

[10:30] Margaret Hall: But he wasn't working on it.

[10:32] Margaret Hall: He was just around.

[10:33] Margaret Hall: But Jerry knew if Steve said that's the guy, then that's the guy.

[10:37] Margaret Hall: Because he knew that the hardest music in the entire show was going to be the West Side Story Suite.

[10:41] Margaret Hall: And if Steve says that Paul Gemignani can do it, then okay, we've got our guy.

[10:45] Margaret Hall: And Paul immediately jumped on board, sort of head first.

[10:48] Margaret Hall: And this is another show where his personal skills are as important, if not more important, than his musical skills.

[10:53] Margaret Hall: Because again, Jerome Robbins was a very troubled man.

[10:57] Margaret Hall: This is something I always try to be careful about when I talk about, because he did a lot of things throughout his life that were not good.

[11:04] Margaret Hall: However, I do not hold the axe over his head like a lot of people do.

[11:08] Margaret Hall: The man was aggressively troubled, desperately needed therapy from basically the moment he popped out the womb.

[11:14] Margaret Hall: He also had pretty serious self-image issues and self-hatred that he dealt with.

[11:21] Margaret Hall: And his art was so much a part of him that that self-hatred sometimes turned on his own work.

[11:26] Margaret Hall: And he was so aggressively a perfectionist with himself that he had trouble conceiving that other people were not in that same sort of battle to the death with themselves.

[11:36] Margaret Hall: But there were people in his company that actually liked themselves and took care of themselves because they cared about themselves. He struggled with that. Paul was very good at both understanding that about Jerry sort of instinctually, I think, were from what we've talked about. He basically met Jerry and immediately knew this is a very scared man. He's taking a really big risk. And it's not gonna seem like a risk to everybody else, but I have to be the person who takes that seriously. So that when he's sort of like on the side and he's like, I feel like I'm destroying my own legacy, I could be there to be like, no, it's okay, here's five bucks, go to the movies, it's alright. He wasn't like fathering Jerome Robbins, but he was the person who would be there to defuse the bomb, so to speak.

And as Paul saw it, what was the risk that Jerome Robbins was taking? This kind of a show had never really been done before. Yes, Bob Fosse had dancing, which gets sort of cited as the precursor to Jerome Robbins on Broadway. Those were all new dances. That was not a retrospective in any way. Those were brand new dances that he was doing at the height of his career. Truly, people just like to try and compare it because it's two dance shows from roughly the same decade, but they aren't the same thing at all. What Jerry was doing was untrod ground. He had also been away from the musical theater for a long time. He'd been up at the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. And he was taking a really big risk by returning because there were a lot of people who still had a really bad taste in their mouth after the House of an American Activities Committee debacle that happened with Jerry.

And what's interesting, the people who actually were involved in that situation did not hold ill will to Jerry. They're like, yeah, they would have ruined your life. They would have outed the fact that you were a gay man and your life would have been over if you hadn't named names. They had dirt on you and they were going to destroy you. So like Leonard Bernstein did not hold it over his head whatsoever. Zero Mostel did a little bit, but Zero Mostel also held stuff over every single person's head he ever met. That was just him. But it was the people who didn't know Jerry who were like the most up in arms, which was interesting. And so he knew he was coming into that place. And then there's also the question of could he recreate what he'd done?

Was he still capable of it? Because dance, it's this hard art form. It really, it's like trying to hold the ocean in your hands. And it's one of sort of the massive tragedies of the AIDS crisis. Is it cut the line of dance in the American musical? Because if you write down a Bach concerto, and then it's played 200 years after Bach dies, you're still playing the same Bach concerto, the notes that he intended. It's not gonna be the exact same, but musical notation works in such a way that you can get pretty close. Dance, technically, you can write it down, but I don't know a single dancer who's gonna tell you that, like, oh yeah, I work off a lead sheet. It's something that's taught dancer to dancer.

It's like almost an oral history that gets passed down, even though it's not oral, it's physical. And it's taught from dance teacher to dancer, on and on and on. And Jerome Robbins had all these dances in his head. But one of the big problems that they kept hitting with Jerome Robbins is they're like, okay, we're like 15 minutes into this sequence, and I can't remember what comes next. And so they'd have to call and like they'd call like a dancer who retired 15 years ago. And like, do you remember what you did here? Because Jerry does not know, and neither did any of his assistants, and we don't have video footage. So if you don't remember, we're just gonna have to make something up. And then it's not the recreation that Jerry wants to be doing.

He put so much pressure on himself, more than anyone else did. No one was expecting Jerome Robbins on Broadway to be this like time capsule, but Jerry did. And he really pushed himself hard. And he pushed his dancers hard as well. But it's an interesting thing. I talked to easily 80% of the cast of Jerome Robbins on Broadway. And even the people who got in like full on screaming fights with him, which is detailed in the book, came out of it loving him and missing him. And a lot of them were just like, oh, I just want to fight with him one more time. That's a direct quote from one of the dancers where he's like, I just want to fight with him one more time. Not I want to dance with him one more time, not I want to work with him one more time.

It's like, I want to be in a room and just fight with him. Because so many of them, when they talked about it, they're just like, yeah, we were fighting, but it was because we loved it so much. And here was someone who loved me and my art so much that he was driving himself insane if I didn't expect the same of myself. He demanded your 100%. And Robert La Fosse likes to put it Paul gained their respect through sort of like love and tenderness and comfort. And that's how he got your dedication and your drive to be the best. Jerry got it through sort of intimidation, but both worked. One is more pleasant than the other. But it is inarguable to say that the arts have never had taskmasters. It's just not how it works.

And that's who Jerry was. And Jerome Robbins on Broadway, it's an incredible show that really, in my opinion, was the turning point for the generations. Jerome Robbins on Broadway was a direct handing of the baton from Jerome Robbins to these dancers of saying, This is my life's work. This is my legacy. It's up to you now. It's in your hands. I have done what I can and shall do. It's your time now, to quote Sondheim. And I find that to be an incredibly sort of emotional thing, and I completely understand why Jerry was so worked up and emotional throughout the entire process. Because I think he was fully aware of that in every single second. And it's why he was constantly changing who was in what number and what numbers were even in the show. They did six months of rehearsals. That's ten times the normal length, basically. Normally it's six weeks.

[17:02] Margaret Hall: Because he was basically crafting like the perfect jewel of the best of himself to leave behind. Good evening. The numbers you are about to hear are from musical shows produced between 1944 and 1964. Created by a variety of writers and composers, and all staged by one man. Welcome to Jerome Robbins on Broadway. Don't go away. Broadway Nation will be back right after this quick break. And that's what Jerome Robbins on Broadway is, really at the end of the day. It's him creating his own memorial, which is kind of grim to think about in that context. But I think he was very aware of it. We're in the middle of the AIDS crisis when this show is coming out. Jerome Robbins is a gay man, and I think he was very aware that dance is this thing that is disappearing very quickly, because all of these chorus boys are dying, and all of these great choreographers are dying.

And every time another person dies, that's another part of the dance family tree that's just cut off. And it's part of why I think we are only just now starting to recover as an art form and start to establish dance as a real part of our storytelling. I think it's why things like Phantom and Les Mis become so popular, is because they're shows that don't rely on the dance because there were not the dancers and the choreographers that were needed. Well, they filled a vacuum. Not that they weren't great popular shows, but they definitely had even more impact because there was this vacuum that had been created for them, the space that became available to them. And I think it's also why revivals had a gigantic moment in the 90s. Because if the people aren't there to be creating this new work, well, let's look at the stuff that inspires us.

Let's try and engender a new movement. And that's kind of not to transition on your behalf, but that's kind of what gets us to Crazy for You. Jerome Robbins on Broadway is this incredible exploration of where we've been. And then Crazy for You is this exercise in reframing where we've been as where we are. What do you mean by that? So Crazy for You is loosely based on Girl Crazy, the Gershwin show. It's recontextualizing all of these songs that have become embedded in the American Zeitgeist. They are the American Standards songbook. And breathing life into them and sort of making these songs belong to the musical theater again, belong to this art form where they had almost kind of become divorced in some ways.

And to a lot of people, they would think of a song like Someone to Watch Over Me as belonging to the jazz world more than the musical theater world, no matter where it originated. Ella Fitzgerald's version became so iconic, and rightly so, Ella Fitzgerald was one of the greatest singers to ever live. But Crazy For You brought what was the musical theater into what is the musical theater and made it belong to us again. And it was sort of like reclaiming that history as a way of then springboarding from it. It's interesting. I see Crazy For You as the late entry in the nostalgia craze of the 1970s. I think that's also accurate. Which really starts off Broadway with Dames at Sea and things like that.

But No No Nanet is what makes it happen on Broadway. And then we have 10 years of what had never happened on Broadway before. People always talk about revivals, but these were revivals of shows that were dead that had never been revived on. There's a difference between reviving Gypsy every 10 years and reviving No No Nanet. Exactly. Or On Your Toes, or any of the shows that happened during that period. My One and Only is part of it. That's the first Gershwin revisal, which goes so far that they change the name. They change it so much that they have to change the name of the show too, because it's no longer Funny Face. The same thing sort of happens with Crazy, although they do that intensely.

They never intend it to be Girl Crazy. Right. Yeah, it's absolutely a part of that tradition. And I think both things can be true. And a big part of it, I think is you've got Mike Akran at the helm with Crazy For You, and you have Susan Stroman. What was Paul's contribution to Crazy For You? So he basically served what a composer would normally serve on a show like this. Because George Gershwin, God bless him, had been dead for about 70 years. And so Paul's job was to think like a composer and like a music director at the same time. Because while they're technically adapting Girl Crazy into Crazy For You, it's like the loosest adaptation in the world. It's up to Paul to decide where songs are gonna go.

You can kind of argue that Crazy For You is a Gershwin jukebox musical where he had decided, okay. So this is the emotional beat. I have access to roughly the entire Gershwin song catalog. What fits this the best? And some of the songs he pulls out are like the ones that everyone knows. Like I've Got Rhythm is gonna be in the show. They knew that coming in. But then you've got deeper pulls like Stiff Upper Lip, which no one came in expecting to have like a full moment in act two, but it does. What causes that? Also in act two. She's so full of trickery. Life is bitter as chigori. Bitterness fills my cup. I'm sorry you brought that up. Once I thought I'd search around for the little church around the corner, but now I see it never was meant to be.

A great comedic number that Paul sort of dug out of the trunk isn't like one of the most famous Gershwin songs. Again, it's not Someone to Watch Over Me, it's not, but not for me, which are also in the score. But it's a song that perfectly fits the moment when he finds it. Then I'm away from her, I start despairing. Hoy yo. You want to know by now what causes that? Yeah, I got pretty good ideas. I'm growing bolder from the hair I'm carrying.

[23:00] ♪ Musical number ♪

[23:23] Margaret Hall: Loving her is what causes that.

[23:27] Margaret Hall: So he has to basically become a Gershwin expert to do the show, while also music directing it with his standard duties and casting it, and also dealing with the fact that the show is under extreme flux. They completely scrap the second act on the train to out of town, which is just wild to me. They basically completely recreate a new second act in like three days or so before they do the Kennedy Center run. It's nuts, but it really works.

[23:51] David Armstrong: I didn't realize the show had gone into that kind of revising right before they tech'd it, which is a risky thing to do. So the show that they had would have worked. If it hadn't worked in tech, they would have been like, okay, we're just gonna have to do what we have. But Mike wanted to try for it because he knew the show could be better. And it's another case of like it's an artist who takes the art so seriously, where this isn't just a check to him. Because a lot of people who do stuff like this where they're like, oh, we're just sort of recontextualizing. So long as people hear the songs they want to hear, who cares? Mike, Paul, and Stro took it very seriously. They're like, no, we are trying to create the new great Gershwin show. And it needs to be on par with what that means. And so they took the risk and it paid off. The second act is very good and Crazy For You.

[24:32] Margaret Hall: Absolutely. Paul doesn't do a lot of revivals in his career, but he does do Kiss Me Kate, which you had said earlier was possibly his favorite show.

[24:41] David Armstrong: Yes.

[24:41] Margaret Hall: Neck and neck with South Pacific.

[24:43] David Armstrong: Depending on what he's eaten for breakfast that morning.

[24:45] Margaret Hall: Did he turn down a lot of revivals, or they just didn't come his way?

[24:49] David Armstrong: Paul has turned down shows that would turn your hair white. Because again, he doesn't do it if his heart's not in it. Yeah, it might make financial sense to do some of the shows he's turned down. But he's okay. He owns his house, he makes enough to feed him and his wife and their dogs. He put Alexander through college. He's got his necessities covered. And so he does the shows that speak to him as an artist. And Kiss Me Kate, to directly quote him, is a show with a score so romantic it brings him to his knees. And it also is a show that now is like permanently tied to him and his wife, because they got married during Kiss Me Kate. But it's a show that the music speaks to him so much. And after working on Crazy For You, he was inspired in a lot of ways to figure out how do I save this score from this book?

Because Kiss Me Kate had started to be thought of as unrevivalable because the book was a mess. After learning how to work with the Gershwin estate, he and the team for Kiss Me Kate worked with the Cole Porter estate to really rework it. People don't realize how much that 90s revival shifted things, but it made it producible again. And then he did it again 20 years down the line from 1999. He then does it again in 2019, and they revise it even more. Because this music is worth the retooling. Specifically, the song So in Love is a real big thing with him. It's one of, in his opinion, and frankly mine as well, one of the best romantic songs written for the musical theater in the 20th century. And keeping it alive in some kind of a context outside of a jazz standard cabaret placement is valuable.

[26:26] ♪ Musical number: "So in Love" ♪

[28:55] Margaret Hall: And that's the kind of revivals he does. Where he feels like he's doing something in service of the music. Not just to do the show to do it, but to do it because he's trying to do something with it.

[29:06] David Armstrong: Certainly that show needed a tremendous amount of streamlining. I did that show when I was in high school, so I remember how that version that they sent you was just filled with all kinds of stuff. You're like, what the hell is this? What did they even do? Obviously, shows had a lot more time back then and could be looser, even though it's in the golden age. It still had a lot of extraneous things in it. There are still people who write like this, but there was very much a period where people considered more show to be better show. And it's very much was originally crafted with that in mind. And we're just gonna give them all of the show.

[29:47] Margaret Hall: Talk a little bit about his work at the Ravinia Festival, where two colleagues come back again and again into his life.

[29:55] David Armstrong: Patti Lupone, of course, and Lonnie Price, who was one of those kids you talked about in Merrily We Roll Along.

[30:01] Margaret Hall: Oh, that was a huge full circle moment. So Paul loves Lonnie.

[30:05] Margaret Hall: And now that Steve has passed away, Lonnie's probably Paul's best friend. They really have a loyalty and a trust and a love for each other. And getting to work with him as a director after having known him as an actor really was like a big full circle thing. So that was his initial draw to Ravinia is like working with Lonnie and getting to be with Lonnie. And then they created this dream team, which consisted of Patti Lupone, Michael Cerveris, and Audra McDonald, where they just go out to Ravinia outside of Chicago and do the shows they'd always wanted to do. And that was basically their criteria. Some of them were just sort of for fun, where it's like, I just feel like you should do this role.

And we're not gonna have time to do a full revival. So let's just do this for a couple of weeks, and it'll be great. And that's something like Annie Get Your Gun with Patti Lupone as Annie Oakley, which is perfect casting. And then you have things where it's the actors have always wanted to take on these roles, but it just never worked out for them schedule-wise. And then you get Sunday in the Park with George, starring Michael Cerveris and Audra McDonald. And then you get things where it's just like, how has this not happened yet? And then they realize it's because of New York bureaucracy, and they're like, Well, we're not in New York, and so we're gonna do it. And that's how you get Patti Lupone and Gypsy, where it just was inconceivable that it hadn't happened yet, but because Arthur Laurents was who he was, it couldn't happen in New York.

But they could do it in this little outdoor semi-staged production. Which then, of course, proved that it could be done, I guess, for New York. Yes. Arthur Laurents then decided he suddenly had the bright idea that it should happen. I won't spoil how that plays out because I think it's a moment in the book that plays out best read, but it does not go the way everyone wanted it to go. And people will note if they look at the credits. For the 2008 revival of Gypsy, there are two names notably missing from the credit list: Mr. Paul Gemignani and Mr. Lonnie Price. And there's a very specific reason for that, and that's within the book. It's good to give people incentive to read the book. Just a couple of things before I just recount the whole thing to you all. Exactly. Do you say in the book that Paul Gemignani through his career between 1973 and 2013, he never had gone more than six months without a show?

[32:15] David Armstrong: Mm-hmm.

[32:15] Margaret Hall: That's incredible. How many shows do you know? Do you have you counted them?

[32:19] David Armstrong: I haven't counted that section, but he had 43 credits on Broadway.

[32:22] Margaret Hall: 43 Broadway shows. That's really, really amazing. It's wild. He was busy. And there's a reason I include the timeline at the end of the book, like I do, so you can see it laid out starkly. How much everything is overlapping with everything and how he's just going from thing to thing to thing to thing. And I understand why people describe the period after Kiss Me, Kate as sort of being a pullback, but he's no less busy. He's just enjoying being married to the love of his life. And instead of throwing himself into his work, he's throwing himself into being happy.

[32:54] Right.

[32:55] Margaret Hall: But he moves out of New York. So he moves out of New York in 2013. But he gets pulled back for at least one more show. So the first time he gets pulled back for what he thinks is gonna be the last time, and this is sort of okay, I've steeled myself. This is me saying goodbye to this part of my life, and that's She Loves Me, which is another show he'd always really enjoyed. He loved Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. He comes on to She Loves Me to do this production with the Roundabout, who he's created this really strong relationship with over the years. He'd known Scott Ellis since Scott Ellis was a dancer in the rink.

[33:29] Right.

[33:29] Margaret Hall: It's like he's built another sort of family within Roundabout. He comes to do She Loves Me, has an amazing time making She Loves Me. They do the broadcast. It's one of the only ways that you can see Paul Gemignani truly conducting a show. Because the way that that filmed broadcast is shot, if you look to the far left of your screen, you can see where he's sitting and you can watch him in the wide shots. And I really enjoy doing that. Because he's just having the time of his life up there. He's clearly pouring every ounce of his love for everything into this show. And he loves the company. He adores Laura Benanti. He basically has like his perfect bow on it send-off. He has a beautiful final lunch with a bunch of his musician friends that's in the book.

I think of it as like Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, is how I picture it. Where it's like you've got Paul, who's just like telling all these stories, and everyone around him just like, oh my god, what's happening? Because no one realized that that's what this was until like the end. The only people who really knew were Michael, who was his assistant, who's been his assistant conductor on a ton of things. So that happens. It's like he closes the door. He doesn't lock it, but it's just it swings gently closed.

[34:32] Margaret Hall: He goes down south, hangs out with his wife Darren, his dogs Tony and Bennett. He enjoys the sun and not being on his feet for six hours a day. And then he gets another phone call from Scott Ellis going, hey, so we want to do Kiss Me Kate, and we're not sure we can do it without you. And so, as both a favor to Scott Ellis and because I don't think Paul can ever be entirely retired, the door will always be cracked because he loves what he does so much. It really is just these days a matter of he's an 83-year-old man and people don't realize how physical conducting is. It is a workout. It is like you're an athlete up there, and it just takes a lot out of you. And so if he's gonna do it, it's because it's either worth it to him or it's like a one-night concert.

But Kiss Me Kate was worth it to him. He came up and he did the production with Kelly O'Hara and Will Chase. In many ways, it was kind of like an echo. It's an echo of like this great moment for him, which was the 1999 production. Maren Maisie had just passed away, who was someone he cared about very deeply, and who was in the 1999. And to like literally watch the shadow of her walk across the stage in the intro when Maren's hat is literally on Kelly O'Hara's head, and when Kelly's got her head down, and all you can see is the half and where she's sitting, it looks like Marin is on the stage. It's literally like being haunted by the memories of his career and by the people he loved. And then Hal Prince dies almost immediately after.

And so in many ways, if She Loves Me was the perfect bow, Kiss Me Kate was the wax seal locking the bow in place. The door is not closed. Putting this out there to anyone, Paul needs to do a funny thing happen on the way to the forum. He has done every single other Sondheim show. That is the only one he's never done a full production of that he's coming out of retirement for. Wow. But beyond that, it has to be what speaks to him. And thankfully, he's been very lucky to do almost all of the shows that really speak to him in a deep way. For a long time, Carousel was one of the ones he would have wanted to do, but after the most recent revival starring his son, Alexander, he's sort of like, I got what I needed from that.

I got to see Alex do it, and that fulfilled me in that way. We're into his legacy now, and obviously, one of the biggest parts of his legacy will be his son, who grew up there in rehearsals for Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, and has become a major Broadway performer.

[36:51] David Armstrong: He has, yes, and also followed in Dad's footsteps in a lot of ways. He's music directed quite a bit. He music directed the most recent revival of West Side Story. He did a fantastic production of Merrily We Roll Along. And he's also become a composer in his own right. He's been working on a show called Diamond Alice for a long time now. Which is fascinating with Alex because Paul never thought this was what he was gonna do. There was no like showbiz parent pressure whatsoever. For a long time, Alex thought he was gonna be a professional baseball player. He loved sports and he really connected with his grandfather about that, actually. Paul has never really cared for sports, but Ezio loved them and then Alexander loved them with his grandpa.

And so he loved baseball, but then he ended up transitioning from baseball in high school to theater and to music specifically. He was a trumpet player. And so he went to college to be a trumpet player at the University of Michigan. And then while he was there, he realized I can be a pretty good trumpet player, but I know just enough about music, and I've been in this world long enough that I know that I'm not gonna be the best trumpet player, and I don't think I want to just be good. If I do this, I think I want to be Wynton Marsalis, and I'm not. So what can I do where I'm not gonna be frustrated with my own capabilities? And he ended up sidestepping into the University of Michigan Musical Theater Program, which is of course legendary these days.

He's one of the first classes to come out of that program immediately after he gets into Assassins. Not because of Paul. Paul literally leaves the room when Alexander auditions because he's like, I can't do it, it's too weird. And so Joe Mandla auditions him alone, but he's an incredible Hinckley. And then off of that, he goes into Avenue Q. He goes into the Sweeney Todd revival, which Paul was not involved in that revival whatsoever. And he's gone on to have just this incredible career. He was at one point the youngest Jean Valjean in Broadway history. He was Tony nominated in 2018 for his turn in Carousel as Enoch Snow. And he's just this incredibly empathetic performer. And I believe it's because of Paul.

And it's because he's so aware of the music and of the pit that he is to the orchestra what Paul is to the actors. Where Paul connects these performers to the void, so to speak, the black void that Lapine talks about. Alexander looks out into the void and he sees his friends and he sees his family and he sees the music and he's never alone up there in the same way that Paul's never alone in the pit. And it's a very interesting thing. And I love watching Alexander conduct because he conducts just like his dad, but in a different syncopation. The way Bernadette Peters describes it, because she's been conducted by the both of them. If you close your eyes, it's the same. But if you open them, Paul goes side to side and Alexander's up and down.

That's how they keep their beat. But they feel a beat in the same way. They're their own men. Alexander is not a clone of his father. He is his own incredible artist who does his own incredible work, but he holds that same magic within him that Paul has.

[39:44] Margaret Hall: Most people will not know who Paul Gemignani is.

[39:48] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[39:48] Margaret Hall: Before they read your book. One of the questions I'm sure has come to you is why would you spend all this time and all this energy talking about someone who is so unknown to the average person? What made that worthwhile?

[40:00] Margaret Hall: This is my purpose in life. And the way Paul's purpose is to breathe life into music, mine is to breathe life into other people's lives. And I believe every single person is worthy of this kind of treatment. I am one person and therefore not capable of writing eight billion biographies of every person currently on the planet. Wish I could. Just don't have that capability.

[40:19] David Armstrong: Don't underestimate yourself.

[40:21] Margaret Hall: Just goes to the grindstone. Let's go. But for sort of the question underlining that, which is why Paul, my rebuttal is why not Paul. He's the glue of all of these shows that we care about so much. Sondheim's work has touched so many people, as we all saw on November 27th, the day after he passed, the tributes pouring in from every which way. And his work would not be the same without Paul. Steve himself as a person would not be the same without Paul the person. On that level, he's important. But he's also important as his own human being. He is an example of, in my opinion, the best of artists, which is an artist who makes art for themselves, but not in a selfish way. They make it because their soul demands it.

They communicate the stories they communicate because to not do so would be the death of their spirit. The way that he follows his heart, his commitment to goodness and honesty and lifting others up with him is, I believe, the best of us. We need more music directors like Paul. And one of the big reasons why Paul agreed to do this book when Lonnie finally got him to do it was because so many music directors don't realize the power they have. They've started to believe the lie that's been told to them by penny pinchers and things like that, where it's like, oh well, you're not that important. You're just that person down in the hole with a stick. So you'll make minimum wage and you'll nod your head politely and you'll do what do we tell you to do.

There's so much more power to it than that. And there's so much more power to every one of us. There are so many reasons why this book. But at the end of the day, that's not even the question. Because I didn't choose the book, the book chose me. I woke up on May 5th and had been given sort of a call to action. And I rose to the occasion, I'm pleased to say, and I wouldn't change it for a second. Because this book needed to exist, and I am just lucky enough to be the vessel for it. But if I hadn't done it, A, I worry it would have been no one, and that's part of why I had to do it, even when I felt like I was in over my head. But even when I felt sort of my most confident, I had to do it because it had to exist.

And I think it's part of one of the benefits of my approaching it from the beginning of being like, here's why I want to read it, is because there's a value there, and there's a value in every one of these stories. And I would love to like turn around and just like write a book like this about every single profession in the musical. There's a big section in the book that readers can see where I go through over a hundred different professions that are needed to just do one performance of a musical over a hundred people. And again, if I had my druthers and I happened to be an immortal being, I would write a book like this for every single one of them. Because every single one of them is important to the puzzle.

Just as you can put together a 1,000-piece puzzle, and if you're missing one piece in the middle, you're gonna be pretty upset. Sure, like your odds are pretty high. Like, oh, 99% of the pieces are there. Yeah, but I'm missing the piece. Paul's the piece. Everyone's the piece. And that's why I love what I do. And I truly do believe, even if I had not written it, if I had just found this book in a bookstore and it just existed external from me. This book is important because it not only examines one person who's a piece of the puzzle, but it was also a really salient reminder that we're all a piece of the puzzle. And climbing over each other and sort of all the stuff that happens is not important compared to seeing the humanity in each other and making an active choice to choose to elevate your own humanity every single day. And that was a very long answer to a very simple question.

[43:45] David Armstrong: It was a very good answer, though. Thank you, Margaret Hall, for joining us today on Broadway Nation to talk about your new book, Gemignani. It's been a great pleasure to have you.

[43:55] Margaret Hall: Thank you. This has been lovely, David.

[44:07] David Armstrong: Margaret's book is titled Gemignani: Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond. And if you're interested in purchasing a copy signed by both Paul Gemignani and Margaret Hall, you can order it exclusively through the website of Buxton Books, an independent bookstore in Charleston, South Carolina, that Paul and Margaret have designated for this purpose. That's Buxton Books, B-U-X-T-O-N, on their website. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to follow, rate, and review it wherever you listen. I'm happy to say that Broadway Nation has received more than 75 five-star reviews. One of the most recent is from listener Debbie Klein, who writes, "The best of podcasts is here. I think this podcast is unbelievable, and I have tears in my eyes just writing about it.

I have a deep love for Broadway shows and music, and I finally found someone who shares that with me. Thank you, David, for bringing my love alive." Well, thank you, Debbie Klein, for your very kind words. I'm so happy that you enjoy listening to Broadway Nation. My sincere hope is that many of you will help me achieve the goal of 100 five-star reviews before the end of the summer. Thank you in advance, and I look forward to hearing from you. Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help in editing this episode, to KVSH 101.9, the voice of beautiful Vashon Island, Washington, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.