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[0:00] Ken Davenport: I wanna be a producer with a hit show on Broadway.

[0:07] Ken Davenport: You're listening to the Producers Perspective Podcast with your host, Tony Award winner, Ken Davenport.

[0:12] Ken Davenport: Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Today we have Jack Viertel, a theatrical Jack of All Trades, who's gonna talk about what makes a great musical and why he almost swore off Broadway for good.

[0:24] Ken Davenport: But before we get to that, first of all, big thank you to all for all the notes and reviews we've gotten recently. It means a lot to me and all the guests who've given their time to be here.

[0:33] Ken Davenport: I want to give a shout out to Ken Offricht, Greg J88, and Brittany fan for your great reviews on iTunes.

[0:41] Ken Davenport: If you have a moment, give us a thumbs up or some stars on iTunes or whatever service you're listening to, and that'll help us keep getting great people like today's guests, like Jack Viertel and all the other ones we've had.

[0:53] Ken Davenport: Uh, before we get there, today's podcast is brought to you by Kappa Cabana Coffee. Get it? That's like Copa Cabana, but Kappa Cabana Coffee.

[1:02] Ken Davenport: If you were at our conference and had coffee, you'll have noticed two things. One, we ran out fast, and two, it was good. And we ran out because it was so good. That was Kappa Cabana Coffee.

[1:15] Ken Davenport: They are the premier mobile espresso and coffee catering service in the tri-state area, providing a full service coffee catering solution for your next wedding, corporate event, trade show, or fundraiser.

[1:27] Ken Davenport: Uh, and their coffee tastes so good because of their proprietary blend of espresso beans from around the globe. They'll give you baristas and of course all the vanilla and syrupy good stuff you want. So give them a shout out. Uh, give them a Google Kappa Cabana. And now on with the podcast.

[1:46] Ken Davenport: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you all for listening. Uh, we have a literal Jack of All theatrical trades on the podcast today. Please welcome to the podcast, Mr. Jack Viertel. Welcome, Jack.

[1:57] Jack Viertel: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[2:01] Ken Davenport: So if Jack sounds a little different, as we are recording this the day after the first snowstorm in New York City of the season, and as we all know, that can put a damper on things. So Jack is remotely calling into this podcast. So we thank him for that for the little extra effort and showing up today.

[2:18] Ken Davenport: If you go to Jack's IBDB page, this is how it lists him. Producer, theater owner/operator, conception, creative consultant, writer, and other. Which means he's done even more on Broadway than all the other titles before it. That page goes on and on and on, by the way.

[2:37] Ken Davenport: The full bio is he's the senior VP of Jujamcyn Theaters, has been involved in dozens of productions presented by Jujamcyn since 1987, including Pulitzer Prize winners and Tony Award winners like City of Angels and Angels in America, all the Angels shows, apparently. Also helped shepherd six of August Wilson's plays to Broadway.

[2:56] Ken Davenport: He's the artistic director of New York City Center's acclaimed Encores! series, which is presenting a terrific Chorus Line right now. He conceived the long-running Smokey Joe's Cafe and the critically acclaimed After Midnight. And also this season's The Prom, which opened last night to great reviews as well. He's having quite a week.

[3:30] Ken Davenport: For the American musical. I mean, Jack, you've done it all. Something tells me you like the theater.

[3:35] Jack Viertel: Um, yes. Well, that's an encyclopedic introduction, and I appreciate it, but I have to say it makes me blush. Um, I do love the theater, and I think the only reason I've done so many things, so many different things, is that there was no one thing that I could become the king of because I don't have that kind of talent. So I sort of went in any door that anybody that would open when I knocked on.

[3:57] Ken Davenport: And where did this, uh, where did you get infused with this love of theater? How did it start?

[4:02] Jack Viertel: Well, it literally started with a bang all at once when I was almost six years old, and my parents and my grandmother took me to see Mary Martin in Peter Pan. But that really changed, or as I like to say, ruined my life. Um, but it came out of the fact that my parents and my father's father, you know, going back a couple of generations, we're all theater people in one sense or another. So that the whole family grew up going to the theater, and as the baby in the family, my brother and sister were going all the time. My parents were going all the time. I feel like I just went right from the cradle to the Winter Garden.

[4:41] Ken Davenport: And what was the first gig you had?

[4:44] Jack Viertel: The first gig I had?

[4:45] Ken Davenport: Yeah, the first job.

[4:46] Jack Viertel: Well, it doesn't really qualify, but when I got married and moved to Los Angeles, I volunteered for the fledgling Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival just because I didn't know who else to call, and I figured it was a free Shakespeare festival, and they must need somebody if they weren't charging any money for tickets, and I had some hours to give. So I guess that would technically qualify. But my first real gig was as a theater critic for a weekly newspaper out there called The Reader, which was sort of like the equivalent of the Village Voice. It was a paper that was given away and, you know, in boxes on the street corners. Um, and then I went from there to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner as a theater critic, and then suddenly realized in a blinding flash of, you know, intuition that I was in the newspaper business and not in the theater business, which wasn't the point. So I hopped the freight over to the Mark Taper Forum and, you know, got off the devil's side and onto the angel side.

[5:45] Ken Davenport: You're one of the few people, maybe the only, that was a theatrical critic turned producer and writer in the theater. Uh, what did you learn from as a critic that helped you do what you do today?

[6:02] Jack Viertel: You know, I think being a critic was hugely helpful because I had to go watch shows three, four nights a week and write about them the next day, and I had a couple of hours to file a review. And seeing so many stories told theatrically well and poorly, um, I think just after a while it got under my skin and into my blood, so that I had some instinct about where stories go wrong and what it takes to captivate an audience. Uh, I can't say I've ever come close to perfecting it, but there's no doubt that that experience of writing about literally hundreds of shows was a big help in terms of my professional development.

[6:44] Ken Davenport: What's the greatest lesson you learned from being a critic and seeing all those shows, especially the bad ones?

[6:51] Jack Viertel: Um, I don't know if there was a single lesson that I learned. I learned when I was getting bored and when I was getting annoyed. And I think those things came from different sources, sometimes bad performances, sometimes floppy, you know, excessive writing and self-indulgence. Um, but it sort of put me on the lookout for all those things when I looked at projects as a producer later on. And also, uh, on the positive side, I began to notice, you know, certain things that would always engage my attention and other things that would never engage my attention. And I think, you know, that it's helpful to know what those things are.

[7:32] Ken Davenport: So as we talked about, and you've already mentioned, you do a lot of things. Uh, some people, success-minded motivators would say you have to focus on one thing, and that's it. I have a hard time listening to those people myself. Um, but you do a lot of things, and it's a very humble answer to say, well, anywhere that would let me do it, I'll do it. But you've done a lot, and you've done them all very successfully. How do you manage to pull that off?

[8:05] Jack Viertel: Um, it's funny, I don't think about it in those terms. I think I sort of think of each job, even if it's a different type of job from the last job, as a job. And the question is, how do you do this job well? Uh, you know, what's required? What's really needed here to do a good job? And so, um, you know, if you're working as a creative consultant, as which I do now a lot on shows that I'm not producing, and not, you know, I'm just hired on as a hired hand, basically, to say I think this might work better than that. Um, I think one of the things I've learned over the years, and I certainly learned being a critic was helpful because it's the opposite of what I'm about to say, is you have to know that it's the artist's show and not your show.

Uh, so when you want to be helpful, you have to be helpful. You can't say if it were my show, I would do it this way. Uh, you have to say it's your show. How can I help you achieve more of what you're trying to achieve? And that sometimes requires taking a step back in terms of your own impulses of what a show could be, but it also requires a lot of time and energy spent, well spent, um, earning the trust of the people you're working with. Because there's no reason why any artist should listen to me about what's a good idea or a bad idea or how to make a show better or worse, unless they believe that I'm on their side and I sort of know what I'm talking about. And, um, and that takes time. I mean, artists are not actually trusting of people who walk in the room and start to give notes, and I don't blame them. Um, so you have to really become part of the process in a positive way.

[9:41] Ken Davenport: Since you were a critic before, how do you feel about them now when you're involved with a show like The Prom? Obviously, last night you probably feel great about them because they do a lot of left.

[9:52] Jack Viertel: Last night they were all geniuses.

[9:54] Ken Davenport: Um, most of them were anyway.

[9:57] Jack Viertel: When I was a critic, I felt like I was telling people the truth about their show, and that was the only truth that there was about their show, and it was very arrogant. And I did not actually know how shows got put on at that point in my life. I was relatively young and sure of myself at a time when I shouldn't have been. And I've come over the years to think that, you know, critics do have their, I, but I don't think I'd call them prejudices, but their preferences anyway, in terms of the kind of material that appeals to them, the kind of performances that appeal to them. And so they're really doing their job, and all we can do is do our job. And I think trying to second guess a critic is a terrible mistake.

And the one thing I really push back against when people in our industry say it is, oh well, he hated that show last night, so he'll probably like this show today because he isn't gonna want to write two pans in a row. I don't know any critic who ever thinks that way. They go into the theater hoping to have a good time, and they come out and say what they thought. And you know, I think we attribute a kind of, you know, evil monster quality to them that just is simply made up in order to comfort ourselves.

[11:16] Ken Davenport: Yeah, we've had a, you look, we had Ben on this podcast, we had Charles on this podcast, Chris Jones, and the one thing I was reminded of in talking to all of them is that they love the theater. That's why they do what they do. That's why they do it. They want to go. You know, if they were in it for the money, just like all of us, we'd all be investment bankers or something.

[11:34] Ken Davenport: So, uh, what do you think the most important job of a producer is?

[11:41] Jack Viertel: Well, I'm, I'm not, this is a two-parter. What do you, when you started in the business, what was the most important job of a producer? And has that changed? And if so, what's the most important job today?

[11:52] Jack Viertel: Well, I don't know that you can actually quantify something as the most important job. What's changed most in my lifetime is I always think of producing as something that is split into two not exactly separate but almost separate but equal parts. And one is having some creative vision around what you're trying to do, although it's the artists who have the real creative vision. But you're starting, particularly with musicals where there are multiple authors, you're starting with a leadership role in figuring out what you think a show should be, why you think a show is worth doing, how you think you can help the development of the show. And for a while, for a long time, that's the most important job.

[12:36] Jack Viertel: But once a show is up and running, there's a separate component, and that has gotten a hundred times more complicated in the time that I've been here, which is how to run the show, how to manage the show, how to promote the show, how to sell the tickets, you know, how to market the show.

[12:53] Jack Viertel: Um, that was a fairly simple process in 1987. You know, you opened the box office, you took an ad in the New York Times, you had an ad agency, you had a press agent. And, you know, you saw who showed up to buy a ticket. Um now, with the advent of social media and all kinds of internet and marketing, and the many different ways that we sell tickets and different ticket sellers we deal with, that has become a hugely complicated job.

[13:20] Jack Viertel: It was always a time-consuming job, but it never had as many dimensions as it has now. I must say that for me, the creative part, the part before opening night and before you start spending enormous amounts of time sitting around with people trying to figure out marketing, that creative part has always been the more enjoyable part for me.

[13:42] Jack Viertel: So you conceive Smoky Joe's Cafe.

[13:46] Ken Davenport: Correct.

[13:46] Jack Viertel: Which is one of the longest-running reviews on Broadway, if not the, right?

[13:51] Jack Viertel: It's the, we've always said it's the longest-running musical review on Broadway. Um, and it may actually be the longest-running review, I don't know. But if it was a particular kind of review. And if you go all the way back through the history of Broadway, there were lots of reviews that had sketches that had even mild stories to them. So we never compared ourselves to those shows.

[14:12] Ken Davenport: So let me ask you a business question first. Because I remember working, I was at the Brett Adams agency as an assistant to Brett at the time. And I don't remember who was associated with the show, but we used to get royalty statements on it. And I remember Brett saying to me, like, this show, we didn't think it was gonna last past three, four or five months, and it's going and going and going.

[14:34] Ken Davenport: Uh, and ran a long time, obviously. What was the secret to you all stretching out that run like you did?

[14:42] Jack Viertel: Well, initially the show was very, you know, was faltering. Uh, it didn't get great reviews. Um, and it got some outwardly very, I mean, some, you know, really hostile reviews. Uh, and there was nothing in particular to sell about it, didn't have a big star or a great, you know, it wasn't written by a famous playwright or anything like that. So we were just sort of, it was sort of a business in which we just kept plowing back by any money that we got into the show, and then it really was turned into a hit by two things not entirely in our control.

[15:15] Jack Viertel: One was the appearance on the Tony Awards, and the other was the fact that the radio jock Don If was a huge fan of the show, and in those days his show was a local New York show, it was not a national show. So he was free to talk about it as much as he wanted, and he talked about it endlessly and with huge amounts of enthusiasm. So the show became a hit. The show is not an expensive show to run. You know, it had a relatively small cast and a small band.

[15:42] Jack Viertel: And as it began to fade, after three or four years, we started to bring stars into it who were not Broadway stars. They were, you know, rock and roll stars in the oldies world, people like Benny King. And that kept the box office, you know, up above average for a long time. And it was the kind of thing that is now absolutely routine to do if you look at a show like Waitress and how it's cast and recast and recast. You know, everybody does that now. But we were one of the early ones in that.

[16:17] Ken Davenport: So that's my business question. Now I want to talk the creative part because you did conceive it. What does that mean exactly? And how did it happen on Smoky Joe's? Tell us that story.

[16:29] Jack Viertel: Well, I'll yeah, I I'll admit the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I wanted desperately to do a Lieber and Stoller show. Lieber and Stoller were heroes of mine when I was a little kid. I mean, I Yakety Yak got me through summer camp. Um, and I knew who they were, even at age nine or ten. I mean, I didn't know who they were in any detail. I just knew that they were the writers of every record that I, not every record, but so many records that I love.

[16:55] Jack Viertel: And I love the comedy, you know, the sort of novelty quality of a lot of the records. And so I was just a Lieber and Stoller guy. And it occurred to me at some point, probably two or three years before the show saw any kind of light, that you could do a Lieber and Stoller review the same way that Richard Maltby had done Ain't Misbehavin', which was a Fats Waller review.

[17:18] Jack Viertel: And I've always considered Ain't Misbehavin' the most perfect example of that kind of musical review ever created. And I still think that, even as the conceiver of Smoky Joe, I think it. And so what I did was I took, I literally did this. I put up a big bulletin board on my wall, and I took every song in Ain't Misbehavin' and I put it on a file card and who sings it, and I made a long column of Act One and then a second long column of Act Two.

[17:47] Jack Viertel: And then I took a bunch of blank file cards and put them next to the file cards from Ain't Misbehavin'. And I thought, I'm just gonna steal Ain't Misbehavin', lock stock and barrel, and started asking myself, okay. So why does this person sing this song at this point? What's really going on here? And I realized that Ain't Misbehavin', the entire show is a trajectory towards black and blue.

[18:08] Jack Viertel: I mean, everything that happens in that show and every lyric that Richard rewrote, and everything that he brought to the table in terms of the kinds of people he cast in it was headed toward that moment of confronting what it meant to be black in America. And I thought, okay, so you have to get to something like that. And little by little I began to put together what seemed to me a trajectory about it started in a neighborhood, and then everybody grows up and they get older and they go out into the world and they get in trouble and they fall in love and they fall out of love, and eventually they're reunited after, you know, a series of particularly kind of, you know, traumatic torch songs.

[18:48] Jack Viertel: So it didn't have the social angle that Ain't Misbehavin' had. It wasn't about a social issue, but it was about, I thought, a human issue. And like in Ain't Misbehavin', audiences don't even know that that's happening when they're watching the show. Um, and so that's I guess what I mean by defeating the show.

[19:05] Ken Davenport: Yeah, hold on. I think I have Richard Maltby on the other line right now saying, "What the..." We've talked about it a million times.

[19:13] Jack Viertel: Um, but I love that, you know, it's genius because so much of creating something new is looking at the structures, right, of the classics that have come before you.

[19:24] Jack Viertel: Uh, you did. And the thing that I really had faith in, and I'm glad it turned out to be true, because it might not have, was that because these songs were so different and written in a different era for a different audience, even if I stole the damn thing almost to a point where he could sue me, you'd never recognize it.

[19:43] Jack Viertel: So it just would be a new thing by the time you got finished with it. And it is a new thing. And, you know, Richard and I laughed about it. So do you think, let's take a more traditional musical for a moment. So you sit down, you got a blank sheet of paper, you're gonna write a brand new musical. We can use The Prom as an example, or we can use a fictional, whatever you'd like.

[20:02] Jack Viertel: Do you do something similar, or do you recommend other writers do something similar, like look at a classic and where are your highs and peaks and valleys, lows and highs, ballads and uptempos?

[20:14] Jack Viertel: Oh yeah. I think, I mean, you know, I think one of the reasons that people complain all the time about the lack of quote "original" musicals, meaning musicals not based on any underlying material, but the reason so many of the successful musicals are based on underlying material, I think is that's how material works. It has a structure, it has a story that is reliable, and it gives you a lot of hints about how to do what when in terms of both the book and the score.

[20:45] Jack Viertel: So you are always, I think, to some degree retelling some kind of classic story in a musical. Not, and when I say always, I don't really mean always, but I mean most often. Um, and I think you definitely sit down and you look at kind of identifying what the source material of your show might be, even if it officially has no source material.

[21:08] Jack Viertel: And then you start to think about why does that story work and what makes it work? And what happens at this point in the story that turns it in a different direction? And you know, you can learn a lot from that without really slavishly imitating something.

[21:21] Ken Davenport: Do you think any idea can become a musical, or there's some stories that are just best not told on the musical stage?

[21:28] Jack Viertel: Well, I think there probably are, you know, a number of stories for various reasons that don't need to be musicals because music doesn't help them at all. Um, but I will say that the one, and I raise this point in my book sort of emphatically, or maybe overemphatically, the one sort of rule that I live by is it's almost impossible to write a successful musical unless you have a protagonist who is active and wants to achieve something very specific and wants it desperately enough to fight for it virtually to the death, which is not true of movies and not true of novels, but it does seem to be true of musicals.

[22:02] Jack Viertel: You've got to have somebody who gets out there and says, "I'm gonna be a producer" or "I'm gonna be something," you know, or else they tend to be very, it tends to be very difficult to keep the audience's energy focused because the story isn't being driven hard enough.

[22:19] Ken Davenport: Do you have any example from history of a musical that did not have that, that didn't make it?

[22:26] Jack Viertel: Well, there are lots of musicals that didn't make it because of that, I'm sure. And I suppose I could think about the one I like to point to because it's one of my favorite shows that has never really been, you know, a blockbuster in any form, is Company.

[22:40] Jack Viertel: You know, Company has a great "I want" song, but it's the last song in the show. Um, and until that point, that character is sort of adrift. And I think that the show, which I, as I say, I'm not totally in love with, it brought me back to Broadway after I swore off Broadway forever for a brief period.

[22:58] Jack Viertel: Um, has never found mass success in part because it doesn't have a trajectory that just goes forward the way that, you know, West Side Story goes forward or The Music Man goes forward or Hairspray goes forward or Hamilton. I always say that Sondheim is probably the only author that can pull that off.

[23:17] Ken Davenport: Yeah, no one else has that kind of genius to make a show that shouldn't work on a musical stage.

[23:22] Jack Viertel: You can make people like them, yeah.

[23:24] Ken Davenport: Yeah, and yet when you look at something like Sweeney Todd, which has exactly that kind of character I'm talking about, it's been seen by many more people than Company because that story is irresistible.

[23:34] Jack Viertel: Right.

[23:35] Ken Davenport: That guy has been wronged and he's gonna get his revenge, and now you're interested.

[23:38] Jack Viertel: Yeah, there's no coincidence why that is his most quote unquote popular.

[23:44] Ken Davenport: Yeah.

[23:44] Jack Viertel: Uh, so I laughed when you said it, but I'm not gonna let you get away with saying it without digging into this a little more deeply. Why did you swear off Broadway for a while?

[23:55] Jack Viertel: Well, I have to remember this is nine, this was in 1968 that I swore off Broadway for a while. Uh, and you know, we were deep, deep in the anti-war movement. And, you know, it just seemed like commercial claptrap to an 18, 19-year-old college boy who had lived and died by it for many years, and I thought, well, you know, I'm gonna reform now. I'm not gonna do this.

[24:19] Jack Viertel: And that Company was trying out in Boston, and I was in school in Boston, and I had love, uh, funny thing happened on the way to the forum when I was a kid, and I'm one of the few people who I wish I had saved the stub to prove it, who had actually seen Anyone Can Whistle. And I was just a big Sondheim fan, and he hadn't been heard from in a long time.

[24:39] Jack Viertel: So I went to the, I did it try out of the Colonial, I think it may have tried out at the Schubert. But in any case, it was in Boston. And I was just floored by it because it was actually about a serious subject and was unbelievably contemporary, and the music was really exciting. And I thought, well, if the hell with swearing off Broadway, I'll get back into it as long as this guy's in it, I'm in it.

[25:01] Jack Viertel: Um, but there were a lot of, you know, it was not a, those years, those 67, 68, 69, those were not great years for classic Broadway shows.

[25:10] Jack Viertel: I mean, we was just sometimes sort of redefined that world at a time when I badly needed redefining.

[25:19] Ken Davenport: Well, now look, I just uh walked to my office down a few streets which have Broadway theaters on it, and I saw Frozen and I saw Harry Potter and I saw a bunch of jukebox musicals.

[25:30] Jack Viertel: A bunch of people would argue we're a commercial claptrap now. What do you think about the battle between commerce and art right now?

[25:39] Jack Viertel: I think it's a really fascinating time because what you know I I don't want to characterize any show as commercial claptrap anymore because after all, I'm a Broadway producer. But uh uh I what I find so fascinating is that people have grown to love musical theater in a different way, and so the result is that anything can be a musical. I mean, not any not not everything is a good idea for a musical, but shows like Dear Evan Hansen and Fun Home that would positively have been straight plays in 1970, uh, are now musicals because any subject is fair game, and that really was not true when I was growing up. I mean, there were the occasional big tragedies like West Side Story, but there were not a uh a regular menu of shows of musical shows on consequential and difficult subjects.

It really was the era of the tired businessman musical for the most part. Uh and now we can do anything we want as a musical, and it's a thrilling time. Simultaneously, of course, there's a big commercial uh um entertainment business going on on Broadway that includes Disney and you know other other uh organizations that are sometimes producing shows that are you know done principally because they believe there'll be a lot of ticket buyers who want to see them, as opposed to because of the subject matter or uh, you know, political stance that they have or whatever. But it's it's it's it's so much more variegated uh feel than it used to be, which I find just thrilling.

[27:10] Ken Davenport: Yeah, I I agree with you. I actually think there's something for everyone right now, including the family audiences, et cetera, that Disney has helped, frankly, I think they've helped rebuild Broadway over the last year.

[27:21] Jack Viertel: No question about it. And Harry Potter is a perfect example of a show that would seem commercial but is so artistically done. It's a great marriage of both roles.

[27:29] Ken Davenport: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, and and and these shows do have commerciality built into them, whether, you know, shows like Harry Potter before they before you even know whether they're any good or not. But the ones that are good are good.

[27:41] Jack Viertel: Yeah. So for someone who loves musical theater as much as you do, Encores must be like a giant sandbox for you. Just like what a playground.

[27:49] Jack Viertel: That is what it is. It is an amazing, amazing uh thing that's happened to me. I I consider myself the luckiest person in the world when I walk through the stage door of City Center. Um, you know, we've been able to do pretty much anything we want to do uh for the last however many years. We're the series is 26 this year, but you know, it took a few years to get established. Um and the result is that we've discovered a number of really wonderful shows and semi-wonderful shows that have really wonderful elements in them. And we have a loyal audience. And so if we want to reconstruct, you know, Cole Porter's The New Yorkers, which I haven't seen in 80 years, we just did it. And uh God bless uh you know Ben Pradley for loving it. But it was, you know, that kind of that's if you love musical theater the way I do, it's hard to picture anything that's more fun than that.

[28:40] Ken Davenport: What's been your favorite production up there?

[28:43] Jack Viertel: I don't think I have a favorite. Um there have been some there have been some awfully big highlights. I was felt very lucky to be able to do Follies, which is my personal favorite musical. Um we did the Most Happy Fellow really well, I think. We did do the New Yorkers really well. Uh that production of Brigadoon last year that Chris Wheeldon did for the City Center Gala was amazing. Um there's been a lot. And sometimes the things that don't present the most obvious profile have so much gold in them, even though they're not wholly successful shows as shows, like there's a Gershwin show called Pardon My English that I'm thinking of, that the opportunity to take this stuff out of the box and dust it off and look at it and figure out a way to make it entertaining for an audience today, is just a blast. It's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun work.

[29:33] Ken Davenport: What's uh what's a show in the musical theater canon that has yet to be revived that you would love to see on stage again? Whether it would work or not.

[29:44] Jack Viertel: Oh, there are there are many of many different types. I mean, going all the way back to Little Johnny Jones, which was in 1906, the George M. Cohan show, which did have a very brief, I believe, one performance revival in the 80s. Uh, but the original version of Little Johnny Jones, I'd just love to know what that show is. You know, it has this chunk of it in the in the Jimmy Cagney movie uh about Cohan, but I I'd love to just know what that show is. And then more recent things, you know, we all have our guilty pleasures, uh uh uh shows that we saw when we were young that had a big impact on us that may not be perfect shows, but we'd sure I sure like to see I get it for your wholesale again, and you know, I'm hoping I will at oncourse soon, but um you know, there are a lot of shows like that.

And then there are great shows where I I mean if I could get on a time machine and go back and see what the original production of Showboat really looked like, that felt like it sounded like, I'd be on the time machine.

[30:41] Ken Davenport: One of the you've worked on a whole bunch of shows, and obviously the odds are that more are going to be less successful than others, shall we say? Uh how do you not swear off Broadway every time one of these shows doesn't work that you've invested so much in creatively, emotionally, financially? How do you pick yourself up and keep going?

[31:06] Jack Viertel: I'll tell you, it all it literally comes down to one particular moment that I had after we had done a show that was a complete that that was sort of went out on a limb for this was back in the days when Rocco Landisman was running to Jujamcyn. And uh it was a disaster, it closed in a week, basically. But the morning that that we came in after the reviews, all of which were terrible, uh and this had been kind of a pet project of mine. Rocco said to me, Well, you have to kill yourself. And what he meant was, you don't have to kill yourself. You know, if you know. If you you of course you feel like you have to kill yourself, but you don't actually have to kill yourself. This is part of the business. And I carry that with me all the time. Like it's okay to wake up in the morning and say, I have to kill myself about a Broadway flop. But you know, it's not my funeral, it's only a flop.

[31:59] Ken Davenport: What was the show?

[32:01] Jack Viertel: Oh, I don't think I want to mention the title. It hurt some people's feelings.

[32:08] Ken Davenport: Well, you'll tell me off the air, and then I will tweet it.

[32:11] Jack Viertel: No, I won't, I promise. Uh so I I want to you talk about Rocco and and we I want to get a little bit into your role at Jujamcyn. The role of the theater owner, how has that changed over the last few decades?

[32:24] Jack Viertel: Well, in our case, when I got to Jujamcyn in 1987, our mandate from Rocco, who had just been appointed president of the company, and Jim Binger, who owned the company at the time, uh, was in order to fill our theaters, which were all empty, we're gonna have to produce every single show that goes into our theaters because there's no way to be just a landlord anymore because there is no Broadway to speak of. I mean, it's almost impossible to imagine in today's landscape, but uh four of our five theaters were empty. I would guess 10 or 11 of the Schubert theaters were empty. I mean, there was nothing to put in these theaters except Cameron Mackintosh, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Peter Shaffer, you know, all of whom were very, very close to the Schubert organization.

So if we wanted to do a show, we'd have to produce it. And so we produced everything in those early years. We put enormous amounts of money into shows, starting with the original production of Into the Woods and Butterfly in the same season. And um, we worked hard creatively on all of those shows. And little by little, as the landscape transformed itself completely, the theater owner became less and less important as a producer because we were able to book shows, which was much lower risk than producing them. And Jim Binger, who lived in Minneapolis and owned the company, said stop using my money to produce these shows. We don't have to do it anymore. So we stopped, except for, I mean, I think Rocco said to him, okay, but I'm running your company, and I'm to go produce shows that I love and want to produce.

I'm not going to produce everything. And Jim said, okay, just don't lose any of my money. So, you know, and that led to things like The Producers and you know, some other some other Angels in America. But um, you know, the theater owner simply isn't the driving uh creative force behind Broadway that that he or she once was. Although I think in each case, you know, there are things that Jordan Roth, who now runs Jujamcyn, feels very strongly about artistically, and that will have an impact on what's in Jujamcyn theaters. And I think that's true of each of the theater owning chains. But they aren't in a position where they have to produce everything that goes into their theaters.

[34:39] Ken Davenport: Okay, my last question, which is my genie question. I want you to imagine that the genie from Aladdin comes to visit you and wants to thank you for everything you've done for the theater. Uh by granting you one wish. So, what's the one thing that really gets you upset these days about the state of Broadway that actually would make you want to swear it off right now? Uh that you'd ask this genie to wish away in an instant.

[35:08] Jack Viertel: Hmm. That's a hard question. Um, make it harder.

[35:13] Ken Davenport: You can't say ticket prices.

[35:15] Jack Viertel: Uh no, you know, I actually think ticket prices are a very open question because I think they're very expensive tickets, and they're also very good discount tickets. So I I have a, you know, I I'm trying to have a very broad view of that. No, what I actually think it would be, and this will probably end up being saying this, Sonny, you know, to you in a place that's going to be broadcast could be the end of my entire career. I wish that there were fewer producers of each show. I wish that the shows were not so expensive to produce, that they didn't have to have 15 or 18 voices in the room, and another 25 or 30 people who either think they should have a voice or resentful that they don't have a voice.

You know, there was a time when producers were one or two people, partners, who would put on a show and it would be their vision that would control the show. And there are so many people to answer to today, many of whom aren't really experienced theater people, uh, that that I think does not help. And I I would like I would I would ask the genie to get us back to the point where we have very small and uh um well coordinated collaborating producing teams.

[36:27] Ken Davenport: Yeah, producing by committee certainly never works. It's gotta you still have to have one captain of the ship.

[36:30] Jack Viertel: Correct.

[36:35] Ken Davenport: Well, a very good answer, and I think your career's safe there.

[36:39] Jack Viertel: Something tells me you're gonna be okay.

[36:41] Ken Davenport: Okay, well, I appreciate your faith. Uh thank you so much for for being here. Uh, everyone out there, go see The Prom just opened last night to great reviews, as of the date of this recording, anyway. And go get his book. It's terrific, The Secret Life of the American Musical, available on Amazon. We will put a link in the blog post about this podcast.

[37:01] Jack Viertel: Thank you all of you for listening. We will see you next time.

[37:08] Ken Davenport: Hey, do you want to sponsor this podcast? Email Chris at Davenport Theatrical.com and you can reach thousands and thousands of theater fans as well as producers, marketers, and actors all across the world who have one thing in common they love the theater. Email Chris at Davenport Theatrical.com to hear how you can sponsor the podcast.