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[0:07] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's the Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon. Well, welcome to the Roundtable, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon, and we're coming to you live from the heart of New York City to talk to one of the directors of one of the season's newest Broadway smashes. Come to be smashed. That's right. The Heart of Rock and Roll is opening in the heart of New York City. And we have Gordon Greenberg with us, and we cannot wait to talk to him. Do you have a favorite Huey Lewis song?

[0:36] Gordon Greenberg: Do I have a favorite Huey Lewis song? I think I like...

[0:50] Robert Bannon: No. Come on, somebody's got something.

[0:52] Gordon Greenberg: Happy to be Stuck with You.

[0:56] Robert Bannon: It's true. Yes, it is true. Well, Gordon Greenberg will be here. We're gonna talk all about it. Alright, so March 29th, everybody. You gotta get your tickets, Heart of Rock and Roll, Bway.com. We have Gordon Greenberg has directed a... he is funny. He is a director. He has been an actor. He's been attacked by Fox News, which I am excited to talk about as well because him and his partner are out here fighting the fight for this community. And I appreciate you, Gordon, and I appreciate you all that you are. Gordon Greenberg, welcome to the show.

[1:32] Gordon Greenberg: Hi, I didn't realize I had such an illustrious list of credits.

[1:37] Robert Bannon: You have an illustrious Fox News target.

[1:40] Gordon Greenberg: Yes, I think that is a badge of honor. I'm here for that. Congratulations.

[1:46] Robert Bannon: Congratulations for last season. I mean, Dracula was a trip and so much fun. We had some of your casts here. We're on the Broadway Podcast Network, so we love the podcast series that was a part of your show. And then you jump from one thing into this big beautiful monster that's about to come to Broadway.

[2:02] Gordon Greenberg: Yes, indeed. I'm so proud and excited for it. We've been on this journey for almost close to a decade at this point because of the pandemic. It all started with an idea from Huey, really, and we developed it under the auspices of Barry Edelstein and the Old Globe, which was amazing and smart and dramaturgically sound and all the things I was hoping for. And then we continued to develop it in New York in and around my other pursuits, as you said, not seeking to become a target of anyone, but putting content out that ranged from I was deep in Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf for a couple of years with Calista and Zachary Quinto. And I must say, coming out of that and moving back into the joy-filled world of Huey Lewis and The Heart of Rock and Roll is really a wonderful antidote.

[3:01] Gordon Greenberg: And I think it takes both. I've always been an equal opportunity lover of theater and passionate about whether I'm working on Ibsen or Grease, the musical. I love it, and it's delicious and full of possibilities. So I'm happy to be here.

[3:18] Robert Bannon: Yes, and I'm here for all of it too. I mean, you could take Zachary Quinto and Calista Flockhart and do something very serious, and you could have a good old time and we could sing and dance and reminisce as you can see the show, you can grab your tickets as we talk about it. I'm supposed to ask you, apparently, about your connection to John Hughes, 80s movies, Huey Lewis. What do you think of when you think back to those growing up in the 80s and all of these hit songs and all of these movies and the nostalgia of the show?

[3:46] Gordon Greenberg: Absolutely. It's funny because you just like Freudian Slip said John Lewis, which is my favorite department store in London, but that's a whole other thing. John Hughes, I'm sorry. But John Lewis is great. I highly recommend it. It's owned by all the employees, so it's good, it's a very fair labor-driven luxury department store. But John Hughes, in high school, Ferris Bueller. That was everything to me. And that was where I learned how to be Matthew Broderick's understudy in every show I did as an actor. But I also found solace. And when you're growing up in the 80s in a high school in the suburbs, it's not always as permissive and open and embracing and certainly liberal as things are now for sure.

And rather than feeling like a freak or an outsider, John Hughes movies told you that you were special and that your greatest liability was actually your greatest asset. And that spirit, those archetypes, that fun is everything that we're trying to infuse into the show. It's a love letter to the 80s, and it's the soundtrack of most many people's high school experience, whether you're in your 50s, 40s, or you know, my nephew who's 13 has this new love for Huey Lewis, not just because of me. I think it's floating around. It's sort of like when I was a kid, we were all listening to the 50s.

[5:24] Gordon Greenberg: And I still love the 50s. I love... I joke that I'm nostalgic for a life I never lived. So anything that was like pre-1970s, I love because I never had to actually live the reality of it. So it just sounds fabulous to me. As someone who was raised in the 80s, especially across the George Washington Bridge in Jersey, I mean, there was not a radio station you could listen to for somewhere to go when we were hearing one of the hits of Huey Lewis. What was it like to be able to... here's a photo of you guys in the rehearsal room starting rehearsing? What was it like when you got to meet him and hear his genius through these pop songs?

[6:00] Gordon Greenberg: It's not easy to write a great pop song that is timeless. It is a special skill, and he has dozens of them. He has it in his bones, I have to say. And we took his ethos, his personality, his generosity of spirit as inspiration for the story that we were creating and telling here, and as a sort of vibe and a sensibility that we fill the room with. This is an incredibly high-spirited, kind, open, ebullient cast, and it shows in the work. The whole thing lives like a foot off the floor, in the most wonderful of ways. And it's kind of, I would say, if I had to compare it to a musical that we all know and love, I would say Mamma Mia is probably the closest because we're telling a brand new story with songs we know that have all been repurposed, refashioned, probably even more so than Mamma Mia, by our terrific music supervisor and arranger Brian Yusuf, into songs that feel like they belong in the theater. And if you remember, his songs had that huge horn section. So now you're hearing it live. Like, I mean, it could be Burt Bacharach, another one of my favorites.

[7:11] Robert Bannon: Me too.

[7:12] Gordon Greenberg: It sounds like that, it feels like that, and it goes from there into full-on 80s Miss Pac-Man world. So there's a lot of fun in store. I think both for people who remember it and people who are discovering it.

[7:26] Robert Bannon: I'm excited to hear all that. Like we said, grab your tickets start at Rock and Roll Bway.com. And we could follow you and all of your hijinks at Gordon Greenberg on Instagram as well. So you have had a wild ride to being a Broadway director. You have been an actor, you have been on Broadway, you have grown up in doing, you know, musical theater camp and dinner theater in New York State and all around. What is it like when you look back and see your journey from you being, you know, 13 years old and doing your first Broadway show to now having a show coming to Broadway as the director?

[8:02] Gordon Greenberg: It is pretty amazing. I have to say, when I was a little kid, all I came over the George Washington Bridge also from Rockland County, and my parents would take me to see shows on Sundays because I would beg them. And I would ask them to take pictures of me with their little Kodak Instamatic under the marquees of every show. And I'd pose like under Evita and under The Wiz and whatever else was playing. Annie, all I wanted to do was meet, you know, Sarah Jessica Parker, who I ended up singing with at this kids cabaret called Something Different, which was hilarious. But throughout those years, all I wanted was to live close enough to be able to see a Broadway show whenever I wanted. So being ultimately in one when I was 13, and then being able to create one a few years back with Holiday Inn, and now doing more is thrilling, and I feel very fortunate and I feel like this is a calling and something that I recognize both the privilege of being able to create and offer that up to people and create a shared experience.

[9:15] Gordon Greenberg: And now I look at it sort of every day as a new challenge because the world has shifted, the context has changed, the context in which we're watching these shows, right? And on some level, these have become almost religious. It's a way for people to share good feelings. People in a world that's so hyperpolarized and where we're almost feeding on this fuel of dissension, of figuring out what we can get riled up about today, which is important. Being political and being active is very important, but at the same time, finding reasons why we're more alike than not, I think is especially crucial right now, just as a reminder. And when we're all sharing a joyful moment together, you can't help but look at everyone around you and feel connected.

And that's what the show does. And that's what's so great about art, and that's what's so great about the work that you do and the enjoyment, no matter where you are in the world, we can all go and check out the show and sing and laugh and stand and clap together. That's a beautiful, beautiful thing for sure.

[10:26] Gordon Greenberg: You have no short list of things you like. You finish this, and then you have The Baker's Wife and more stuff. You're just Gordon.

[10:36] Robert Bannon: Let's go, let's keep a busy plate.

[10:38] Gordon Greenberg: Let's do it. It's a crazy time. I've definitely feel fortunate. I'm going right from this, we're putting together a new musical based on Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet, which was a film from the 90s. And that's gonna open in Taiwan, and then I go right to London where we're opening a revival of The Baker's Life of the Chocolate Factory there. And I also am, I should say, co-artistic director of a program that's been going for... this is its 24th year called the Broadway Teachers Workshop. And we bring together about a thousand teachers who all direct their high school musical from all over the world, and they come together for two and a half weeks, and we do workshops and see shows. This year they'll be seeing Heart of Rock and Roll. And it's another one of my favorite moments of the year because I can invite my friends who I never get to be a fly on the wall in Alex Timbers' room or Tommy Kale's room.

[11:31] Robert Bannon: And I can call and say, come teach a class, and then I get to sit in on it. So that's another great thing that's coming up that I'm excited about. Oh god, Gordon, I'm directing Mean Girls Jr. in New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark right now. I need all the help I can get. Save me, Gordon. Help me.

[11:46] Gordon Greenberg: Oh, you have to come. You are welcome to come. Please email me, and you can you're welcome to sit in on as much of it as you like.

[11:53] Robert Bannon: I appreciate you. I'm very grateful. This is the first time I've ever directed anything, and your first professional directing gig was Jesus Christ Superstar with Billy Porter.

[12:03] Gordon Greenberg: You must read Wikipedia. You know a lot. I love your whole life. I'm good, I that's when you when you did uh Jesus Christ Superstar. Do you look back and think about how much you learned? Or were you just born a director? Were you ready to just get in there and start blocking and choreographing and doing?

[12:24] Gordon Greenberg: No, that was a big it is something that I had thought about for a long time. And honestly, when I was an actor, I remember being at um where was I Indiana Rep doing my 19th production of Broadway Bound and Libby Apple, who was running it at the time, who later ran Oregon Shakespeare's or maybe it was right after that, phenomenal director, kind of um a mentor figure. And I remember going up to her at one point saying, I think he's doing this wrong. This is not what the scene wants. And she said, Gordon, there are 8,000 ways to do this. This happens to be my production, but the fact that you feel that so strongly means maybe there's a director in you. And if you'd like, I will write you a reference for um UCLA NYU, Juilliard.

We talked about a lot of schools, and I was on the brink of going to grad school. I applied to a few and got in, and um and then I got an opportunity to direct Jesus Christ Superstar through friends, people you know, just working it. Um and I had Billy who wanted to do it, and my friend Stephen O'Remus, who hadn't yet worked on a on a show, um, and Ken Rogerson, um, who hadn't yet choreographed Avenue Q, and we put together this team, and um they welcomed it.

[13:39] Gordon Greenberg: And interestingly, I had this notion because my grandparents were from South Africa, that if we focused on the political for a moment, the historical uh context of of the story of Jesus' story, that we could look at it as an occupied territory, which is what it was at the time, and we did um sort of Rome as the occupiers and the Israelites as as the people who were um indigenous to the area at the time, which was called Judea. Um, and uh we told the story from that POV and used it uh as South Africa as a metaphor. So Billy was a Nelson Mandela type character, and the Afrikaners were the Romans. Um Nathan Lee Graham was Herod, uh Drew Sarich, who was right out of school, um, played Judas, and then immediately went to Vienna, I think, or Berlin to be the hunchback in the first version of Disney's Hunchback, met his wife and moved there.

Um, and didn't come back until he did the ill-fated Lestat, which closed really quickly. And then we absorbed him into my first show in New York, which was uh Jacques Brel, um, and he ended up joining that cast. So it was an amazing group. Emily Skinner, of course, um, was Mary Magdalene, and um it was terrifying, exciting. I didn't know enough to be worried about anything. We just put out big ideas.

[15:05] Gordon Greenberg: The first review that came out was in the you probably remember the Gannett Journal News was like our local Rockland Westchester newspaper. And um, the review was horrible, cruel, mean. I mean, I was reduced to tears by Mr. Jacques Lesord, may he rest in peace. Um, who basically said I I was sacrilegious and and a terrible person, and you should close your eyes and maybe just enjoy Billy's voice. And so I showed it to my parents, and I said, Well, I guess I'm not a director, I'll just go back to acting. And then the next day, the New York Times review came out, and it was ebullient and um very much uh a rave and said, Who could imagine after all these years coming upon a thrilling new uh interpretation of Jesus Christ Superstar?

Uh, and then I got my first agent from that review, John Bizzetti, who's still a close friend, and one of my agents at William Morris. Um, and uh I got a call from Andrew Lloyd Weber, uh, well, their company, and I thought it was gonna welcome me to direct it on Broadway, but they said um you need to close the production down because we didn't sanction it, and it's too too much, too big an idea. Um, but it was over Christmas, so and it was just a few weeks, so we made it. But I did connect with Tim Rice, which was awesome.

[16:24] Gordon Greenberg: And um, he called and he saw it, and we had a great um sort of meeting, and it was uh it was an excellent beginning um to directing. And it's interesting because sometimes I miss that that feeling that anything's possible and I'm gonna be wrong. Because in order to be creative, you have to be willing to be totally wrong. Um, and as a writer, the more I've been writing, I had to learn that sometimes with a little liquid courage, you know, a shot of Schnapps or or a glass of red wine, and what I'm writing is just a spew, and it's gonna be terrible today. And if I look back on it two days later and I find one good thing, it was worth it. And I think it's the same as a director, as an actor. It's why so many times when you're rehearsing a scene, you'll see there's like um almost a subconscious need for an actor to mess up.

Um, and something happens. And once the milk is spilled, once the cat's out of the bag, once every metaphor has been exhausted, then they can they can just feel free. Like you don't have to be perfect. Um, and that's a big lesson for every artist.

[17:27] Robert Bannon: Like perfect cannot be the enemy of good. I I that is I'm gonna take that with me. That is that is the and that story is absolutely amazing and ahead of its time because now they take all these Andrew Lloyd Webber shows and they flip them on their head and they make all these you you we were we were ahead of your time uh a little bit ahead of the of the curveball on that one like Joseph ahead of my time and Regona writing you have TV like I'm ready to to send myself tape in Gordon come on um Andy Cohen I'm here I'm ready he's amazing I have to say that show I mean we sold it during the pandemic um this idea that was when I really pivoted into writing because obviously theater wasn't happening um and I worked on a few TV shows and that one I was very excited about um I'm not sure if it's gonna go because the people that bought it as often happens um at a studio have been fired and replaced and there's a life cycle um to people in the studio but um it's a great pilot I'm really proud of it and it's about Andy Cohen um planning his bar mitzvah and also in the process discovering that he's gay so you know kind of the blonde um uh very gentile nemesis at his high school ends up coming and there's a thing happens and let's just say Susan Lucci is the godmother the fairy godmother I should say quite literally.

[17:33] Gordon Greenberg: I think you wrote this show for me I think this is I am the audience so we'll be we hope we hope it gets to see the light of day and we'll be rooting and cheering for it for sure. Can you are you you have you're in rehearsal today can you give us a little sneak peek what what is the day in the life of rehearsing this show like sure um well this is really week one the end of week one since we started on a Thursday.

[19:17] Gordon Greenberg: Um, and uh this week has been rough, I'll say, because McKenzie Kurtz, our um leading lady, has been sick almost since day one um with the flu. So we've not had her, and we're having to kind of put it together um around that. However, this the group is so uh so capable and exciting and full of ideas that we've been every day sort of putting up a scene. You sit in a room, you read it around a table, you talk about it, you make sure we've you know started to mine each moment for truth for humanity and most importantly for humor. Um, and then I always like to say um it takes a long time to write a short scene.

[19:57] Gordon Greenberg: So um we have to keep essentializing and pairing away what we don't need to figure out what we absolutely need to tell the story and making it as simple and clear as possible. So that's been from a storytelling angle what we're doing, and even choreography. Lauren is out there, you know, with so many steps that um you know it could be Radio City Music Hall, and then we sit together and go, all right. What if we took that away? What if we took that away? It's like looking at a painting, you know, at the Met. And if it was surrounded by 20,000 other paintings all on one wall, you would you'd hardly notice. But if it was alone with a lot of empty space around it, it's beautifully focused.

[20:38] Gordon Greenberg: Um, so that's that's sort of the process now is putting up, taking away, putting up, taking away. Well, we're excited, and we can't wait to see the finished product, and we'll be rooting and sharing for it all along the way. You can go to Heart of Rock and Roll. It's if you're listening to us, the link is below us in the Broadway Podcast Network link. It's rock and roll b way.com, and we can follow you at Gordon Greenberg on Instagram. Congratulations. Have the best rehearsal period. Break all the legs, and we'll see you. We'll see you when the show is open and ready to go.

[21:09] Gordon Greenberg: Yeah, I think I'll probably see you March 4th, I think is our press day. I think.

[21:12] Robert Bannon: I can't, I can't. I'm there. I'm already there. I'm over set. I'm bringing a copy of the pilot for you.

[21:20] Gordon Greenberg: I'm ready. I want sides, please. I'm gonna have my ring light and I'm gonna be, I need a reader. Somebody get a reader.

[21:29] Robert Bannon: And thank you for all the work that your your partner. I I I said I talked about Fox News before in joke, but your part as a school teacher in real life in New Jersey, I've had many kids who have come to me and as an out teacher talk to me about their journey, their experience with gender, with sexuality, and to have professionals and people there that are on the front line to provide medical care and provide help and services to these children and their families is really God's work. So I want to say thank you to you both for the work that you do.

[21:55] Gordon Greenberg: He's a good egg. He's a good egg. If you have students out there who are uh under 24, really and and needing uh gender dysphoric care uh for the physician, um he's he's one of the best, Dr. John Stever and he's at Mount Sinai. I feel like I'm doing commercial for him.

[22:12] Robert Bannon: Well, I love it. It's free care, and it's all you know, it's all free of charge clinic and um it's non-judgmental and open and nurturing, so that's what they're looking for.

[22:22] Gordon Greenberg: Well, if they're attacking you, that means you all are doing something right because uh we all need all the help and support we can get. So thank you.

[22:29] Robert Bannon: Thank and thank you, please. It was a pleasure. Congratulations, have a great day today.

[22:34] Gordon Greenberg: Likewise, I love your energy.

[22:36] Robert Bannon: Thank you, thank you.

[22:39] Gordon Greenberg: Back at you.