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[0:10] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, I'm Robert W. Schneider, and welcome to Fifty Key Stage Musicals: The Podcast, a companion piece to the Routledge Press publication Fifty Key Stage Musicals, which is available for purchase by going to Routledge.com or clicking the link below in today's show description.

[0:25] Robert W. Schneider: Today's episode focuses on chapter 22, the 1968 production of Promises, Promises. And with us today is the author of that chapter, David Spencer.

[0:36] Robert W. Schneider: David is an award-winning musical dramatist, author, critic, and musical theater teacher, as lyricist-librettist, two musicals with composer Alan Menken, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Weird Romance, two of my favorites, and the acclaimed colloquial English adaptation of La Bohème for the Public Theatre.

[0:54] Robert W. Schneider: As author, the Musical Theatre Writer's Survival Guide, fantastic publication. There'll be a link to that in today's show descriptions for you to purchase it and read it.

[1:02] Robert W. Schneider: David was a 20-year veteran of the teaching faculty of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and has also taught at HB Studio, Workshop Studio Theatre, plus venues in and around London. David, welcome to the program. We are so happy to have you today.

[1:16] David Spencer: Thank you. Appreciate that.

[1:20] Robert W. Schneider: Why is Promises, Promises a key musical?

[1:25] David Spencer: I think it's a key musical because of a number of factors that kind of coalesced. The technical things or the artistic things that make it a benchmark, but it's the first time where all of those elements combined, and there was an alchemy where they stood out and made a huge impression that would then be emulated. And that happened with Promises, I think because it was the first time ever on Broadway during that era. I mean, Broadway always used pop music to one way or another, but it was the first time where what we associated with pop music was treated without commentary. Usually in a musical like The Apple Tree and Passionella or Bye Bye Birdie, there were references to the kind of composition, and there were various tropes used, but they didn't take that world or that vocabulary, I should say, seriously.

I mean solemnly, but I mean seriously. And this was the first score where they just went for it, you know, and it was a sound that had not been heard on Broadway, but it was a sound that everybody knew because Bacharach and Hal David had renovated what popular music was sounding like at the time. There was nothing there, there's still in a way is nothing like what Bacharach sounds like.

[3:18] David Spencer: And I'm sorry, please continue.

[3:21] Robert W. Schneider: No, it's okay.

[3:23] David Spencer: And Jonathan Tunick getting the gig happened through his having done a show for Montpian Shire that never came into town but played the Westbury Music Fair. And Sondheim was kind of a mentor to them, and he went to the show. And he was amazed at how big the orchestra sounded because, you know, music fair orchestras are typically small and stripped down. And then he looked into the pit, and indeed it was a small orchestra, and he was flabbergasted at how much sound Tunick was getting out of it. And that's kind of like his in a way, it's been his signature because of my orchestrator friend Joji Renault introduced me to the term of transparency, meaning that the instruments function kind of as themselves, nakedly, and doubling is not necessarily a de rigueur part of the chemistry of what you hear.

You'll listen to a lot of more classic scores, and you'll hear things like clarinets and violins doubling each other. You'll hear all kinds of one instrument reinforcing another to send in a message to the back of the theater. And what Jonathan Tunick's orchestrations did for Promises was it was one of the first examples of really letting instruments just function completely as themselves, kind of exposed and, as I say, transparent. He wasn't the first person to do that. I would say that Eddie Sauter did it twice in The Apple Tree and in 1776, but they were more traditional scores. And Robert Ginsler, I think, was he the one who did How to Succeed? Really interesting combinations of things. I don't mean to say that Jonathan Tunick was like the sole innovator, but that technique combined with the Bacharach sound was kind of startling to hear in the theater.

[5:40] Robert W. Schneider: And for a listener who has no idea who Burt Bacharach is, how would you describe the Bacharach sound?

[5:49] David Spencer: The Bacharach sound is possibly arguably the most musically sophisticated sound of 60s, especially early mid to late 60s popular music, not to be confused with rock, which hadn't sort of taken over completely. Because he was unafraid to shift keys, he was unafraid to shift time signatures. I remember reading, I can't remember where it was, but Stephen Sondheim saying that one of the things he learned from Leonard Bernstein was that you didn't have to hold to a four-bar phrase just because you're used to hearing four-bar phrases, and that you don't necessarily need even to hold to a four-bar, you know, a bar with four beats, if you don't necessarily need that for the rhetoric of the lyric to combine with the rhetoric of the music.

And Bacharach traffics in it all the time. If he doesn't need the extra beat, he doesn't do it. You know, and he does all kinds of experimental things with what was then experimental things with rhythm and accompaniment figures and melody figures. And Hal David, his lyricist, was expert at creating lyrics that wrote those very particular and idiosyncratic melodies. The use of brass, the use of guitar, bass guitar, the use of backup vocals, and articulated syllables of backup vocals. There was really nothing quite like it before. And again, you could say there were lots of songs with backup vocals, there were lots of songs that had time signature things, but there was nobody who quite made all of that, synthesized all of that.

So that became a defining style, and that sound was bracing in the theater. I saw the original production, I didn't see the original cast, but there's a bootleg sound system bootleg out there of the opening night, which got to me, and I've heard it. And for a whole number of reasons, it's fascinating. But in terms of the context of what we're talking about, just it's a great recording because it has the power to kind of put you in the audience unless to in the sense of sharing their sensibility because the sensibility of the show is, you know, is gone now. The way it treats women and stuff like that. But at the time it was that was not controversial. And listening to the way the orchestra sounded, especially when the micing was new, and listening to the actors who are the first ones to put that stuff over the footlights, and the audience is going nuts. The audience is going nuts at everything, and it's kind of astonishing because they know they're in something, you know, that there's something electric going on, and you can feel it.

[9:33] Robert W. Schneider: Do you know where the idea came from to have Burt Bacharach and Hal David transition from the pop music world to the world of musical theater?

[9:44] David Spencer: That was Neil Simon's idea. David Merrick took him to lunch and said, we want to do a musical with you. What would you like to adapt? And he, you know, I wasn't a fly on the wall, but you know, what I've read about this conversation is he said, I'm really a big fan of the film The Apartment. And he said, Who would you think of for the score? And I guess because Hal David and Burt Bacharach were in the zeitgeist, he said, Why don't we go for these guys? It was not their first musical per se. There was a TV musical called On the Flip Side that they had done. I think it was for Stage 67, which was the same series as Evening Primrose. I've seen clips from it, I've heard the soundtrack. The songs are very attractive.

Hal David was not a great dramatist, but, you know, there are some shows where you could say one or another of the authors wasn't a great this or wasn't a great that, but it's also that moment in the sun because it's the right people in the right room with the right material. And there was something about having Neil Simon do the book for that particular story. Because the way Neil Simon writes, when I think about all of the books that he's written for musicals, his particular style doesn't really lead to, at least as I've seen them and as I've read the scripts, it doesn't really lead to that, you know, paragraph of dialogue that you look forward to as a lyricist when you go, I'm gonna raid that. There's the song. It kind of leads to a respite where it looks like it's a good place for a song to be.

[12:03] David Spencer: But it's really fascinating to me that when you watch The Apartment, there is something kind of 50s and claustrophobic about the same story, but cracked open, and there's almost nothing but daylight in terms of the tone and in terms of how happy it makes the audience feel. When it's done right, when it's done right.

[12:28] Robert W. Schneider: There's a sunniness to it.

[12:34] David Spencer: You're absolutely right on that. Now, Burt Bacharach, who had come from the world of the recording studio where everything is, you know, modulated within an inch of its life and totally controlled by a technical staff. Were there any issues between going from that world to the world of live theater where it changes night by night?

[12:54] David Spencer: He was kind of distressed at the thing that often distresses composers, which was the orchestra kind of being buried under the stage and various inconsistencies. So he was actually the first one to set up a pit orchestra like a recording studio orchestra. He put in baffles, he put in things that would absorb sound, he said mic separate sections separately, and had a soundboard, you know, creating the balance not only in the orchestra but with the vocals as much as was able with the technology at the time. What was interesting about seeing that show and others of the period that used similar technology was how different they could sound later in the run because remember sound guy explaining this to me that you'd get replacements coming in, and the mics were not necessarily calibrated for the new people, you know, and if not right away, so things would subtly start to degrade, and you could go into you could watch Promises, Promises in a subsequent performance, and it's not the same show, you know.

[14:20] David Spencer: Um that happens less now because everything costs so much money, including, you know, especially for the ticket buyer.

[14:29] Robert W. Schneider: Sure.

[14:29] David Spencer: So they're there, so they're they're you know, and technology is better, so people are much, much more assiduous about keeping shows in shape, but it was more challenging back then.

[14:40] Robert W. Schneider: How would you define the role of an orchestrator?

[14:45] David Spencer: It depends on the score.

[14:48] David Spencer: I would say that um if you're the kind of composer who writes down every dot, Stephen Sondheim, you know, uh Steven Schwartz, guys like that, um, then what the orchestrator does is essentially deconstruct and reconstruct. He will um take the piano part, look at its component parts, and reassign them um to instruments to create something that is aesthetically and energetically the same, but not limited by piano technique.

[15:36] David Spencer: For example, um, speaking of Jonathan Tunick, if you go to the score of Company and you listen to uh the piano part of "Not Getting Married Today," that uh uh nervous hyper accompaniment figure um that Amy sings to, it's actually kind of a rolling piano player, goes back and forth. But you do that because you're limited by the technique of the piano.

[16:04] David Spencer: And so you've got like two notes in the top and one note on the bottom, nervously going back and forth. Tunick was able to do a stretto with strings doing three notes at the same time, which is why when you hear the orchestra, it's they're gonna get together, they got to get together, and then it sounds like they're all doing the same, you know, and they are.

[16:21] David Spencer: Um, but it's linear as opposed to rolling, and it heightens everything. And being able to do it stretto on a string heightens everything because you've got that sharp attack, you know, as the bow hits the string that you can't do with the piano.

[16:35] David Spencer: I mean, you can do other things by attacking the piano more loudly, but you can't get that. And so it's it's heightening the character, it's heightening the technistry of the accompaniment figures. Uh I mean, I meant the character of the music, but also the character who's singing.

[16:56] David Spencer: It becomes another job when you have a composer who isn't quite as musically literate or who is more of a pop composer. I once asked Peter Howard, who did the orchestra who did the arrangements for uh 1776, Sherman Edwards, and he said, Oh, that was me. Of course that was me.

[17:19] David Spencer: And I talked to him, you know, specifically about the things that sounded like a riff on period music. You know, you may harpsichord figures we use and stuff like that. And um, you know, so he did that.

[17:32] David Spencer: I think that there often times when you have a score with somebody who is not quite as accompaniment uh minded, uh, or indeed what I call a Hummer score when you have somebody like you know uh Mel Brooks um you have um somebody who is your de facto arranger like Mel Brooks has Glenn Kelly and um so Glenn Kelly actually does the piano part and then Doug Besterman you know does the same thing but he's really working from Glenn Kelly's piano part rather than Mel Brooks humming um and and you know and there are variations I think they're probably orchestration orchestrators who take on the job of arrangement and the only one I can think of is um everybody's still alive so I don't want to point fingers but um but um you know then then uh it it it I don't read Stephen Sondheim saying then it you know it eventually becomes an arranger score and to a degree you know um I I think a lot has to do with the personality and the imprimatur of the composer.

[17:32] David Spencer: I remember reading that um Frank Loesser always worked with somebody who would not arrange but he'd always have uh musical assistants who would take down his ideas and I think he was very music literate as I uh as I know it I think he played piano but he still wanted that kind of assistance and he you know he made them sign a contract that indemnified him you know because everything well, the composition was still his.

[19:18] David Spencer: Um but you know, it's it's it's it's not on it's not uncommon to do that. Anyway, I'm veering off the question.

[19:39] Robert W. Schneider: Um yeah, go ahead.

[19:41] Robert W. Schneider: The question is uh okay.

[19:41] David Spencer: Um but it's basically to enhance the idea of what the piano part is giving you.

[19:41] David Spencer: I was gonna say, you know, and in your chapter, you you mentioned a few of these individuals, and I'd love to just get some further information on what they contributed to musical theater, which is some other orchestrators besides Jonathan Tunick, uh, individuals like Robert Russell Bennett and individuals like Ralph Burns, and I think a lot of people that enjoy musical theater but are not experts at it might be surprised to know how much of their favorite musical memories were actually created by orchestrators and not necessarily the original composers.

[20:10] Robert W. Schneider: Can we talk a little bit about the contributions Bennett and Burns made to musical theater and musical theater scores?

[20:17] David Spencer: Well, in terms of the contributions, Bennett certainly codified the Richard Rodgers sound.

[20:25] David Spencer: I mean, I don't uh uh or sex say the Richard Rodgers sound when you're thinking of Rodgers and Hammerstein.

[20:30] Robert W. Schneider: Sure.

[20:30] David Spencer: I don't I I you can't really think of their shows uh fully staged with a full orchestra without hearing the Robert Russell Bennett sensibility.

[20:44] Robert W. Schneider: Um did his yeah, what is that sensibility?

[20:48] David Spencer: How would you define that sensibility in the case of Bennett and I can't necessarily articulate it except to say that it sounds like he the sensibility is an exploitation of the soul of the composer, is the best way I can put it.

[21:19] David Spencer: Um you can hear um and that's why it was I think one of its most successful um renderings was that um Ralph Burns was um was also interesting to me.

[21:43] David Spencer: Now this is my opinion, this is not necessarily a fact, but when I live, but when I listen to Ralph Burns' orchestration, say for Minnie's Boys, which is the score I love, Larry Grossman's score.

[21:52] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, yeah, it sounds a little thin to me.

[21:55] David Spencer: Um as opposed to what Jonathan Tunick did for Good Time Charlie.

[22:00] David Spencer: And I go, yeah, that's what Larry Grossman's music needs to sound like. By the same token, the same principles uh apply to Chicago, which Ralph Burns did, you know, for Cy Coleman, and for um Sweet Charity, it sounds exactly right.

[22:18] David Spencer: You know, it sounds very much more attuned to where Cy Coleman lives, and I just think that was a great alchemy.

[22:25] Robert W. Schneider: And the way that some you can listen to some composers and say, oh, that's a Jason Robert Brown, or you know, that's a Leonard Bernstein.

[22:33] David Spencer: Do we get the same thing with orchestrators?

[22:35] David Spencer: Can you listen to the orchestration of a song and go, oh, of course that's Ralph Burns, or of course that's Jonathan Tunick?

[22:42] David Spencer: Yeah, you can.

[22:43] David Spencer: I think though that more recently, it's a little bit more difficult because with the advent of Jonathan Tunick, you had a lot of young orchestrators who were um emulating that and liberated by that.

[22:59] David Spencer: So you have big sounds that weren't necessarily created by Jonathan Tunick.

[23:08] David Spencer: And you also had guys who especially and then add to that the more recent uh introduction of electronics to um uh orchestrations, and the versatility just expands exponentially.

[23:26] David Spencer: When we were doing Weird Romance, um uh working with Alan Menken, and you know, I guess because I'm a composer too, he's always been very generous with me, you know, having my way with the musical department.

[23:37] David Spencer: And so I actually had um some time with uh Doug Besterman talking about styles of things, and um the uh number "Pressing Onward Moving Forward," for example.

[23:49] David Spencer: Um, you know, he came to my house and we we we played, you know, drop the needle on the record, or you know, play the CD track.

[23:56] David Spencer: I said, can we make it sound something like this?

[23:59] David Spencer: And I remember I put on a CD I just bought with it, it was the soundtrack of Around the World in 80 Days.

[24:07] David Spencer: I think it was Billy Goldenberg, which has that really expansive, wonderful main theme.

[24:13] David Spencer: And I played that for him, and I said, I want it to sound, you know, I I think that's the sensibility.

[24:18] David Spencer: And Doug looked at me and he's like, okay, David, but I've only got four musicians.

[24:23] David Spencer: And then he went home and he did it anyway.

[24:25] David Spencer: You know what I mean? He was able, he was able to synthesize that.

[24:29] David Spencer: Uh pun not intended, but it's a good pun.

[24:33] David Spencer: And um, you know, and and those techniques are um, you know, you've got guys who can be incredibly versatile now.

[24:43] David Spencer: And I think that they're they're more stylistic as I hear it, they're more stylistic chameleons now.

[24:54] David Spencer: And um I'm not sure, I may be wrong about this.

[24:58] David Spencer: I may be I may be a generation too old to make this this generalization with impunity.

[25:05] David Spencer: But um I'm not so sure that their styles are instantly as recognizable as what Jonathan did, or Ralph Burns, or um Eddie Sauter.

[25:21] David Spencer: Um I think now that there's uh might depend more on the character of the uh of the show that they're trying to orchestrate.

[25:36] David Spencer: As I say, that but I think that's inevitable.

[25:38] David Spencer: I think that's inevitable too, come to think of it, there being chameleons, because I think that you know, right now, as you're well aware, in the in the cultural zeitgeist, there's a very big emphasis on diversity.

[25:53] David Spencer: And there are and and you know, there was a time when uh musical theater was about 90% Jews.

[25:59] David Spencer: Um and that is less and less now.

[26:02] David Spencer: And the reason I don't think is as much about um the timing of diversity as it is the change in electronic media and everything being available worldwide.

[26:16] David Spencer: I mean, you know, there's if if you're assiduous about it and and you really, you know, and you're young enough, but you want to see things and you know where to go, which is not hard to find, you can find bootleg recordings, video recordings of shows going back at least to the late 70s.

[26:34] David Spencer: There's nothing that you can't actually see.

[26:36] Robert W. Schneider: It's not like being in the theater.

[26:38] David Spencer: Yeah.

[26:38] David Spencer: But there's very little that you cannot watch, you know, and take note of.

[26:43] David Spencer: And when things like that are widespread and people care about musicals, they start to absorb them, you know, more.

[26:52] David Spencer: Um, because you can absorb them anywhere in the world.

[26:56] David Spencer: And I think the same thing may have been happening with orchestrators too, because they've been listening, especially the young ones, because they've not just been watching shows and listening to LPs, they've been listening to CDs, they've been, you know, working with those people as their mentors.

[27:11] David Spencer: They've been looking at the bootlegs same as you and me, you know.

[27:14] David Spencer: And I think that that that's an that's an education.

[27:18] David Spencer: Osmosis is uh is an education unlike any other.

[27:23] David Spencer: And I think that might be what's happening now too.

[27:26] Robert W. Schneider: Can you walk us through uh what an orchestra would be like pre-Promises, Promises versus what Promises, Promises then brought to the table.

[27:36] David Spencer: And I believe you had mentioned at some point in your chapter this idea of Broadway orchestras at some point trying to emulate like the Hollywood studio orchestra.

[27:47] David Spencer: Well, actually, I think that happened, I think that happened later.

[27:50] David Spencer: Great.

[27:51] David Spencer: Uh I think that happened, I think that happened uh um subsequent to Jonathan Tunick, because I think that the introduction, or not the introduction, but what for lack of a better word, I'll call the codification of transparency as a technique lent itself to bigger orchestrations and a bigger sound and a more versatile sounding pit because you gave yourself more choices.

[28:20] David Spencer: Um Jonathan also kept redefining those choices because especially when he started working with Sondheim, there's no two of those scores that sound alike, though they all sound like the combination of him and Sondheim.

[28:35] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah.

[28:36] David Spencer: Um and so every reuse of the orchestra um expanded the possibilities.

[28:44] David Spencer: For example, um I remember reading he said of Follies, um, in particular the Follies numbers, he said he didn't orchestrate what that actually sounded like during the time when those kinds of songs were being performed. He said, because it would sound like a circus band. What he orchestrated is what you thought it sounded like and what you thought you remembered it sounded like. Oh, interesting. You know, which of course plays right into the whole memory thing of the show, too. But the orchestrations do sound very much bigger and lusher, but they retain the spirit, which is what the composition does. And um when you listen to say Pacific Overtures, um, as you probably know when Sondheim was looking for the vocabulary for that score, his research into Eastern music was not particularly helpful.

Um I heard him say, uh, he was talking about like if you if you listen to a Samazan player, that so much of the emphasis is on the note, how a note is attacked, how a note is released. And that doesn't help Western ears at all. And he was looking for the Western equivalent of the Eastern sound, and then he hit upon the music of uh the Spanish composer Manuel De Falla, and it doesn't move around much harmonically, it'll stay in one place for a long time. Um if you listen to Falla's music, and then you listen to like Pacific Overtures right next to it, you go, holy cow, geez Louise, you know, and there's Jonathan Tunick channeling both of them, you know. Um, and again, it's Sondheim's sound, it's Jonathan's sound, but it's also Falla's sound.

Um, and I think the more those two guys kept redefining the uh uh the the ways in which you could use the tools of a full orchestra. Um, and of course the ensemble changes somewhat depending you know from show to show, but uh I think that too was part of the osmosis uh training for a lot of the the younger orchestrators.

[31:07] David Spencer: After Promises, well, you know, I you know you said also in your chapter, and I thought this was so interesting that uh, and please correct me if I'm paraphrasing the idea that Promises, Promises is the last real successful book musical before the Sondheim Revolution happens with Company. Is that a correct well? I mean I in the sense that I was thinking about that as I reread the chapter preparatory to this. It was sort of like the last redoubt of the traditional book musical at that time. It's starting to come back, it's never entirely gone away, but it was away for a long time, I think. Yeah. Um, but just in terms of how it was structured, uh, in terms of the relative, not complete, but relative lack of dramatic movement in the songs.

Generally, once the songs in that show start, you know what the deal is, and they're not going, they're not going anywhere that's going to surprise you, except musically. The build and all of that and the performance. Um and and the verisimilitude isn't broken. But in terms of how song functions, um Susan Shulman, when she was teaching a libretto class at BMI, she used to make the point that if you could take the songs out of a musical, the script should stop making sense. You can remove those songs, and the book would still pretty much play. Sure. Um, you'd feel something missing, you know. It's not a play, it's not a play with music. It is a musical, it feels like a musical, but there's very little that happens in those songs that the book can't accommodate somehow.

Um places, no, I wouldn't even say except, but I mean there are places where again they just kind of expand upon what's going on, like like uh well, you know, you know what it reminds me of in a bit, a bit, um, to talk about my own show. When we were doing Weird Romance, and um I was working on the second of the two one acts for Pilgrim's Soul. Um I had a hell of a time with that. I hadn't really actually even planned to musicalize that, to be honest. What had happened was I was trying to uh I was talking with Alan Menken about um what kind of a show we might try. And I said, you know, speculative fiction, science fiction, it's a lot more than zap guns and space operas. And I played him the Twilight Zone episode for Pilgrim's Hole from the 80s version that was written by Alan Brennert.

And um at the end of the episode, appropriately enough, he was crying and he was moved, and he said, I want to do that story. And I said, like an idiot, okay. And we wound up and and really that afternoon we called, we got connected with Alan Brennert, and he said, Okay, you know, and then suddenly we'd be doing it. And then I spent about six months trying to solve it because it didn't readily lend itself to song. It was so beautifully constructed. And but I there were emotions there that you could sing about. Finally, I understood that the way that you had to musicalize that, I had to tease it open and find places where there was unarticulated emotion or things that I could expand and let those things kind of rise up to the surface.

[35:10] David Spencer: That didn't necessarily have to be expanded, but you're very happy they expanded it. Do you think that a lot of Promises' success, especially with songs that are lyrically and dramatically static, that Tunick's orchestrations gave the illusion that something was occurring? Oh, absolutely. Something was changing. And is there is there a song that you could specifically point to, possibly, that says this is a great example of that? Well, uh uh, I'll give you a compound answer. I do think it was Jonathan Tunick hugely because he provided the motor, but um the orchestral motor, but he also was very conscious about understanding that this was a Burt Bacharach score, and his job was to communicate the Burt Bacharach sound, and he made it his business to make what was sounding like what was coming from the pit sound as much like one of Bacharach's albums as possible.

So in emulating Burt Bacharach, I think it was both of them. Also, as I was researching this, I found out that uh, for example, um, as you may know, when he was orchestrating Company, and he got to um the repeated part of "Being Alive" in the second part of the song, he used um Company as a counterline in the strings. As Bobby singing "Being Alive," you can hear it in the background. And he said he knew you know he knew it was a big liberty, and he was very relieved that Sondheim came walking up the aisle nodding his head like, yes, that's great. I'm not so sure Burt Bacharach would have done that, would have agreed to it. It's uh in my research, it seems that every time Tunick added a line or a fill or an accompaniment figure that was not in Burt Bacharach's piano part he almost inevitably said no I don't want that he wanted it to be exactly what he had written so um in terms of I don't think it was just Jonathan I think it was the two of them um but yeah he he manages to find the orchestrations manage to find the emotional fun or the urgency in what's going on um and I think that there's a really interesting I'm not sure I know why it works it just does there's a kind of a magic trick to songs like "Wanting Things," you know um why should you even care about that guy in that song you know and dramaturgically speaking why does he act that way if he has that much insight about himself yeah you know and yet the alchemy of Edward Winter that orchestration that context um the audience on opening night went nuts now that said um interestingly enough because I have seen the show subsequently and I've heard the London cast album.

James Congdon was not as good an actor, not as good a vocalist, and the audience didn't go nuts. Yeah. It was okay, you know, they said that's fine. But when you've got that kind of electricity going on, it the the emotional uh call it truth because you buy into it. You don't feel like you're being lied to. Whatever's going on there, you just you just say, okay, fine, I'm gonna go with it, and you do.

[39:03] David Spencer: Um Promises, Promises is also an interesting show, and uh, you know, I talked about it's effective if you do it right. Doing it right is very generational, I have found. It's not the only musical I can think of like this, but I think it's the one that's most like this. Sure. Which which is that for example, the casting of Chuck Baxter, in revival, almost always. Chuck Baxter is cast and played as kind of a nebbish who learns to be a man. That's not the way it was originally done. If you look at um who originally was playing that role on Broadway, it was Jerry Orbach, followed by Tony Roberts, followed by a great guy who became a friend of mine named Gene Rupert and uh an actor named Bill Gerber.

These were tall galoots, you know. These were guys, they walked on stage, they were men, you know. Yeah, and I and it was a story about a guy who sold out his own manhood and had to reclaim it. And that's very different in terms of the acting style, you know, and the road companies, it was the same guy, you know, guys like Will Mackenzie. Uh, you know, and and it was just it was very different sensibility in terms of approach, and it affected the chemistry of the show.

[40:29] Robert W. Schneider: And you know, that's such an interesting point that you make because you know, in recent major productions of it, uh, we've had Jason Alexander, we've had Martin Short, we've had Sean Hayes. Uh, why do you think that transition occurred when they went from the Jerry Orbach type to a Martin Short type or a Sean Hayes type, and you could not have more polar opposites than one another.

[40:52] David Spencer: Well, I didn't see I've had no exposure to the Jason Alexander uh interpretation, although I would bet that he was smart enough to be closer to the original. He was yes, he was. Because I think that's his natural energy. But I think that the reason is um simply because newer generations who are who were born after those shows were done, it's like they don't have access to that sensibility in in what they've been exposed to. Now, I don't think it's just a matter of birthright, because I know people who are younger than I am who, you know, uh um uh instantly get onto it, but you know, you sort of have to, you know, you you think of someone like Seth MacFarlane, who's a stylistic chameleon who was very young when he started, but seemed to understand everything going back to the beginning of the 20th century.

Yes. Um but um, you know, it it's it's just just something about I remember I was talking with um Evan Pappas about a particular actor in a particular role, and Evan was saying, Well, I remember when I was that young actor, and you know, I was, you know, had the pressure on me, and I was uh, and I said to him, No, Evan, Evan, Evan, listen, you and I popped out of the womb knowing how to do a cold reading. Okay. And you know it, right? And and you want you you have to do it. And he said yes, finally, he said yes. But um, you know, the that there is something about uh the people who popped out of the womb knowing how to do a cold reading, you know. I've rarely seen The Apple Tree done in any way that actually connects to the sensibility that was Jules Feiffer, you know, or the tone of The Diary of Adam and Eve, the way it was originally done. You can hear it.

[42:57] David Spencer: I never saw, I didn't see the original production, alas, I wish I had. But you can hear it on the cast album. There's a kind of—I hate to say delicacy, but there is this kind of you're walking that fine line between being satirical and taking the universe seriously at the same time.

[43:19] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah.

[43:20] David Spencer: And that's, you know, that's very much a part of television now when you see things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and things like that. But it had not been mainstreamed then, and in the theater, it's like, well, we either have to be satirical or we have to be real. No, you can—two things can be true at the same time. If you were casting a revival of Promises, Promises today, who do you imagine the ideal Chuck Baxter would be? Do we have anyone like Jerry Orbach type?

[43:50] David Spencer: We probably do. I'm not sure I know enough of the young actors in my— in the Rolodex in my head to name names. You know who might be a good Chuck Baxter is Andy Carl.

[44:03] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, great choice.

[44:04] David Spencer: Rocky, wonderful, wonderful actor. That's because, you know, he walks on again, and he's just, you know, this is a—this is a guy. You know, I don't have to worry about, you know, his manhood. I worry about him when he sells it out. And then the rest of the show is I have to reclaim it. Got it. You know, and that's where—then that's the right of passage toward, you know, him finding his ethical center. I would think it's about—it's about an ethical center. It's not about a manhood center. I think that's the thing.

[44:33] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, that's what a fabulous point. I would love to talk about the song that crossed over from just being in the musical theater world to being a pop standard, which is "I'll Never Fall in Love Again." How much of Tunick's orchestrations or the orchestrations of that original number do you think played a part in allowing this song to do a crossover, if any?

[44:57] David Spencer: I don't know, to be honest. Um, I thought about that too, in preparation for this, because I listened to the song again, and I also listened to it on the London album with Betty Buckley and Tony Roberts. And what I was struck by—and it's not the only song in the score that I've—I'm struck this way about—is there's a certain, um, I mean, as you're observing it, incongruity between the song styles, even to some degree what happens in the songs and the story. I mean, suddenly Chuck Baxter picks up a guitar and he's a pop strum and, you know, a fool. I'm like, where did that come from? Nobody cares, you know, it just happens to, you know.

[46:02] David Spencer: Not only that, but in picking up the guitar, he is making a book song a diegetic song, but it's not a diegetic song, you know. Um, "A Young Pretty Girl Like You," that's a circus song, right? Um, what is it called this? Uh, someone like me, I'm blowing the title. You'll think of someone, thank you. Uh, yes, and you know, and you listen to happy little things like climbing hills and rowing boats on a lake. You people are in the middle of New York City. Yeah, what are you talking about? Right, you know, you know, the basketball thing, okay, basketball, the Knicks and thing. But I mean, in the film, he's waiting for her in front of The Music Man, and she never shows up, you know. So, but that—you don't care, you actually don't care.

Is there's something about the style of the music, and I think very possibly the familiarity of the Bacharach sound because at that point everybody knew it. And again, this is my opinion. I did see the show. I did see the original production. Uh, and I saw really good. The first time I saw it, I saw it was in really good shape. Um, and my friend Gene Rupert was standing by for Tony Roberts. I never got to see Tony Roberts, but Gene was fantastic, and he eventually took it over. And there was something about hearing the Bacharach sound in a live theater performance that was cathartic. It just had not been done before. And it's like this is something new, and you could feel it. You could absolutely feel it.

[48:16] David Spencer: So I think that that energy and that sense of catharsis. Something just occurred to me. Um, I have a fantastic therapist. I've been in therapy for years, just normal maintenance, but very helpful. And I have a very small—very—okay, there you go. Very, very smart therapist. I won't name him, I don't know if he'd be embarrassed, but he's a very smart guy. And I learned a number of principles from him. Some of them are actually original to him, and some of them he said came from mentors that he's had. But one of the most useful is there's your intellectual life and there's your emotional life. And one thing has nothing to do with the other. Which I, you know, in terms of my own life, I take it to mean, you know, you don't have to castigate yourself for having a feeling.

You know how to behave. So you can let those feelings happen without, you know. But in terms of this show, I think the same thing is going on. These shows—these are songs that operate on a much more emotional level than an intellectual level. You know, you can theorize about why they work and maybe even be right, but then there are those stylistic and lyrical incongruities, and nobody cares, nobody points them out. Not in any of the reviews do they say, why are they talking about climbing hills and rowing boats? There's just—when it's done right, you sit back and you go, okay, I'm on board. And I think it's because it taps into something emotional. You want to see, and it may also be because, again, and it's just the alchemy of who was writing it and who was in the room and who the actors were.

Um, there's just some—I think also because they were average Joe characters in a way. Neil Simon made Chuck Baxter larger than life, but he really wasn't, yeah. Edward Winter made Sheldrake bigger, but he really wasn't. Um, you know, all of those actors made an impression in the film, which because of a film, everybody's up close, and you know, but they were not larger than life characters, personalities, yes, but not larger than life characters. The musical makes them larger than life in some ways, but they're still regular folks, but then when they sing, they are transported out of that world, yeah. And there's something heavenly that happens. Again, when the show is done right. And when it's done right, it's extraordinary. When it's done right, you forgive it everything.

[51:11] Robert W. Schneider: Exactly, exactly. And of course, you know, one of the great things that leads to that, of course, is the brilliant orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick. Now, Burt Bacharach never came back to the theater, is that correct?

[51:23] David Spencer: He never came back. Um, he found the process so exhausting and so emotionally draining that he didn't want to put himself through it again. Um, and I guess I understand that because part of the process of doing a musical, it involves the rewrites and the problem solving. And even when you're involved in a musical that is going extremely well, and everybody knows what the show is, and everybody's on the same page, there are those moments that, um, you know, people can butt heads. Um, you have to love it somehow, you know, somehow it just has to juice you. Um, when we went into Dougie Kravitz, for example, um, there were three parts of the script, three moments in the script that I had never ever been able to solve.

Um, but one of the reasons why I wanted to work with Austin Pendleton is he's the only guy I know who's a better dramaturg than I am. And um, I knew that I didn't have those moments solved, but I also had complete confidence that in rehearsal we would solve them because I was working with Austin, and sure enough, you know, when we got to those moments and they didn't work, he was always able to pinpoint, not tell me what to do, but pinpoint conceptually where I was thinking the wrong way, and so I could shift the perspective and go, oh Christ, that's why I didn't do it. And then I was able to write it like a breeze, and I think you have to get off on it, you know, even though you know you've got a problem, even though you know you're under pressure.

There is something about doing it and doing it and living the life—you have to love it, because there's nothing better than when you get it right, you know, and you've gone through all that. And I understand, you know, it's like there are people who are born New Yorkers who were not born in New York, yeah, right. And there are people who are not New Yorkers who are born in New York and can't wait to get out, you know. I think if it's not in your blood, you're not gonna be happy, yeah, you know, or satisfied or whatever, or you're gonna find it too exhausting. And that's why Mr. Bacharach has not returned to us.

[54:12] Robert W. Schneider: David, our last question for you is why did you want to write this chapter? You could have picked any one of the 50 titles, but there was something about Promises that gravitated you towards it. What is it? Why did you want to codify this?

[54:25] David Spencer: I think by the time I got to it, some of the others have been vacant, to be perfectly honest. Great, great. Um, I think—I think there was—it may have been down to—I don't remember how many, but it was also—it wasn't so much the amount of titles that were left. I think it was the ones that I felt I was qualified to write. Um, I think I tend to think orchestrally anyway when I'm working as a composer. As I told you before we started this, um, I did the—I did fairly expansive orchestral synthesized tracks for the theater work shows. And I compose—I orchestrate as I compose. Um, especially if I know that I'm gonna go to a demo first, or I'm composing tracks for a touring show. Uh, I don't start with a piano vocal score.

I'm gonna go right for the tracks and then dumb down to a piano vocal score later. And those kinds of—the orchestra—the great orchestrators were my teachers, not only the show albums, you know, the orchestrators we talked about, but Lalo Schifrin, Earl Hagan, Michel Legrand, Mancini, uh, John Addison, John Williams, uh, John Barry, um, God, all of those incredible, incredible composers and arrangers, Hugo Montenegro, um, and the British guys, I just—I just have just absorbed all that. And so it was a pleasure and a privilege to explore that um with this chapter, because that's very meaningful to me.

[56:13] Robert W. Schneider: And like I've said before, and I will say again, David, the chapter is so wonderful, and you put in so much brilliant information about how orchestration has developed because of Promises, Promises. It's—and like I said, every time I read it, I immediately run to the cast recording and play it and try to figure it out exactly if I can identify what you're talking about.

[56:35] David Spencer: It is—thank you.

[56:37] Robert W. Schneider: And David, thank you so much for joining us today. Please make sure to purchase a copy of 50 Key Stage Musicals by visiting Routledge.com or clicking in today's show description. If you want to learn more about Promises, Promises, please also review the links in the below description. I'm Robert W. Schneider, and thank you so much for listening to 50 Key Stage Musicals, the podcast. Bye bye.

[56:57] David Spencer: Remember, I feel free. Now I can look at myself and reprise.