April 16, 2006
The Call of the Jungle
By JESSE McKINLEY
New York Times Online
A LITTLE more than 48 hours before the first public performance of "Tarzan," Disney's new multimillion-dollar musical, Bob Crowley, the show's director, took the stage at the Richard Rodgers Theater and told a group of apes they were doing a great job.
"It's been an extraordinary couple of days," he said, sounding tired. "The air of concentration yesterday afternoon was extraordinary. Everybody here was concentrating on what we have to do to make this show happen." The apes and ape-men grunted in agreement, or exhaustion.
Teching the show — the bringing together of the show's lights, sets, costumes, props, hair and makeup for the first time — had taken twice as long as it does for most Broadway musicals. That meant nearly a month in a darkened theater amid millions of dollars of equipment and highly paid brainpower, all for what is one of the most expensive shows ever mounted on Broadway, with a budget rumored to be between $15 million and $20 million.
It is also one of the riskiest, even for Disney, a company which has had an excellent Broadway track record, with three hits in three tries. Most shows open out of town, where problems can be identified and fixed far from prying eyes. But "Tarzan," based on the hit 1999 animated film and the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that inspired it, will land on Broadway "cold."
It's just one of several unorthodox choices that Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatricals and the show's lead producer, has made. Since late March, "Tarzan" has alternated preview performances on the weekends with several days of rehearsal during the week. Furthermore, though it has a score by Phil Collins and a book by David Henry Hwang, it will open without a single major star (barring perhaps Shuler Hensley, a Tony winner in a supporting role in "Oklahoma," in 2002). In the role of lead loincloth is Josh Strickland, a 22-year-old unknown whose most prominent credit is a stint on "American Idol."
In other regards, however, "Tarzan" is a typical Disney production. As with "The Lion King," "Aida," "Beauty and the Beast" and the forthcoming "Mary Poppins," due this fall, the artistic process has been both extensive and expensive. The project spanned three continents (from Geneva to Buenos Aires to Purchase, N.Y.), two boroughs, countless miles of travel (and fake ape hair); and a year's worth of workshops, readings and rehearsals. All told, it will have been five years from its conception to its planned opening on May 10.
This is the first Disney Broadway production for which Mr. Schumacher, a boyish 48-year-old, has had sole responsibility, and he wasn't taking any chances. "Because of the story we are telling," he said, "where physicality is at its core, you can't just develop it as you would a piece of written material. So we went to Argentina to see what does it look like if people are wearing harnesses and they're totally visible, and decided we liked that. In Purchase, we wanted to know what it would look like with polished Broadway performers, so we did that. And in Brooklyn, we wanted to be able to rehearse in the performance space, so we did that."
It was Mr. Shumacher's idea to do the show, and he has been present at every step of the process. Just minutes before the first run-through, he could be found coaching one of the actors playing young Tarzan (Daniel Marche) and his ape brother (Chester Gregory II) on the phrasing of a song. "Is that dialogue too loose?" he asked. Moments later, it was tightened.
For all these efforts, however, at this point the show is still a work in progress.
Ever since the first preview on March 24, audience comments about "Tarzan" have been circulating online. In particular, they have been critical of the show's length (performances have clocked in at more than two and a half hours) and the theater's sightlines, which are crucial to a show in which actors fly over the audience.
Mr. Shumacher says those problems have been addressed. But with only two and a half weeks before opening night, he's feeling the pressure.
"Nervous," Mr. Schumacher said, before the first run-through, "doesn't begin to describe it."
ONE of the first steps was hiring Pichón Baldinu, the Argentinean director and designer behind the hit acrobatic troupe De La Guarda. "Villa Villa," its Off Broadway show, ran for more than six years and featured a group of hyperkinetic young performers ricocheting around the ceiling of the cavernous Daryl Roth Theater.
As Tarzan's "aerial designer," Mr. Baldinu is surrounded by an eclectic artistic team, including Mr. Collins, who is making his Broadway debut and attended auditions and many rehearsals; Mr. Hwang, a Disney veteran who wrote the book of "Aida" and the play "M. Butterfly"; the choreographer Meryl Tankard, a disciple of the celebrated experimentalist Pina Bausch; and the lighting designer Natasha Katz, who won a Tony for "Aida."
In the director's chair sits Mr. Crowley, an acclaimed Irish designer who is also in charge of the show's sets and costumes. This is his Broadway debut as a director, but he has developed a reputation as an unflappable presence on any set. "The older I get the less people I want to work with," said Mr. Crowley, who has a light brogue and a lighter wit. "I'm down to three people I like, and I've discovered two of them are me."
The plan was to move back to front: work out the vine-swinging flights before proceeding with the traditional elements of musicals, like song and dance. It all began last April, when the creative team hopped a plane to Buenos Aires, where Mr. Baldinu lives and where Disney had rented a dilapidated theater in the La Boca district to test out some flying techniques.
In the most simple terms, Mr. Baldinu's effects are created by using a system of bungee cords and military-strength harnesses able to support 3,600 pounds (which would be one heck of an actor). Using momentum and pure physical strength, Mr. Baldinu's system gave the actors in "Villa Villa" the freedom to climb walls, swing, hang free, or run and jump, all effects Mr. Schumacher wanted in "Tarzan."
Last summer the whole operation attended a five-week "aerial lab" on the campus of the State University of New York at Purchase, complete with a half-dozen actors/acrobats slowly earning their wings. Under them, pads: dozens of thick blue gymnastic pads piled all around the Purchase theater and laid across the stage. Above, several actors — in helmets and harnesses — were hanging, spiderlike, from thin nylon cords above the stage. "It's like the world's largest jungle gym," said Marshall B. Purdy, an associate producer. "I've learned more about ropes and bungee than I could possibly imagine."
Mr. Baldinu was already an expert in ropes and bungees, but "Villa Villa" didn't have the several tons worth of scenery and equipment that "Tarzan" has. "In De La Guarda, everybody was flying in empty air," he said. "Here, it's full of elements." "Tarzan" also has a much bigger cast — 34 people in all — than "Villa Villa," meaning more bodies in the air, and backstage.
Part of Mr. Crowley's solution was to use an inflatable set, like a giant air castle. Holes were fashioned to allow actors to enter and exit it, with a texture like a tough plastic balloon to protect them. "There's no scaffolding or walls behind it, and it's soft," he said of the set. "It's real research-and-development stuff." But some of those holes must also be filled with lighting and sound equipment; actors must be very specific about where they're going or they're going to end up inside of a speaker.
While some chorus members learned the ropes in the Purchase flight lab, Mr. Crowley, Mr. Schumacher and the show's casting director, Bernard Telsey, were in another theater across the parking lot auditioning a group of very nervous, very handsome young men for the show's title role. Mr. Telsey had seen hundreds of people for the role, but was down to six candidates, all of whom had been put through an endurance test of singing, climbing, and flying. Oh, yes, and showing off their pecs.
"We saw a lot that either physically looked right but couldn't sing, or could sing but didn't look right physically," said Mr. Telsey. "You're looking someone the audience is going to want to watch sing and act for two hours in a loincloth."
Josh Strickland stood out. "He was so vulnerable and really told the story of a boy becoming a man," Mr. Telsey said.
IN late December, the "Tarzan" crew shifted camp to the Steiner Studios on the Brooklyn waterfront, and put everything from wig design to physical therapy to one entire full-scale set to on-set tutoring under one roof. (Daniel Manche, 13, and Alex Rutherford, 12, play Tarzan as a boy.) On one typical day David Henry Hwang was lying on a yoga mat in one office while in another side room, Mr. Hensley (who plays Tarzan's ape father) and Merle Dandridge (his ape mama), were rehearsing a new song by Mr. Collins, who was accompanying the duo on conga drums. "I've spent three or four years on it," said Mr. Collins of the show. "And I intend to stay with them to the death."
Then, in late February, the company moved into its Broadway home. Adapting Mr. Baldinu's complicated and potentially dangerous acrobatics so that they'd work safely in the 81-year-old Rogers theater required the show's technical team to install a small factory's worth of winches, motors, steel wire and supports, all monitored by a technician who sits in the balcony every performance and by the show's stage manager.
The set, which is bright green, has to be constantly re-inflated as the show progresses, adding yet more equipment to the mix. All of which has made the backstage area of the Rodgers — already cramped with props, electrical cable and myriad moving pieces — look like something out of "Das Boot."
What happens if you have a tall actor?
"You stoop," Mr. Schumacher said.
During the technical period the orchestra pit came to resemble a NASA control room, with dozens of flat-screen computer monitors used by everyone from the sound designer to the assistant stage manager. The lobby was even more chaotic, as technical workers hoisted equipment in and out of the theater. Backstage, people were tucked into rooms throughout a honeycomblike lair; in one, scores of wigs, made out of Lycra and human hair, sat atop fake heads; in another, just off stage right, Mr. Hensley was having his ape makeup applied.
Mr. Crowley acknowledged that overseeing all these diverse elements has been a challenge. "I've become more patient than Mother Teresa," he said. "And she wanted to direct as well."
ON the night of March 24, a sell-out crowd — the entire creative team, Disney executives, and more than a few Internet spies — gave the theater the buzz of an opening night. In the cleaned-up lobby, souvenirs were selling briskly.
Holding a wireless microphone, Mr. Schumacher addressed the audience: "A lot of you are that curious breed," he said. "Freaks of the first preview, welcome."
The opening image — an elegant blue map of Africa — was projected on the stage, and a elaborate soundscape (seagulls, waves, a groaning ship) filled the theater. And then, with a clap of thunder and a flash of artificial lightning, the hall went dark and the first act began.
The show ran almost three hours, including a 30-minute intermission, which was significantly longer than the creative team hoped eventually to make it. But there was flying, singing, ballads and apes. And at the end some of the audience stood for an ovation.
Since then, Mr. Shumacher said, there have been cuts, and not a few. Four minutes are gone from Jane's first scene — a fantasia involving a giant spider and a half-dozen upside-down actors — and two scenes have been combined into one in the second act.
Ticket sales have been strong, with a reported advance of nearly $20 million, or about as much as the show is estimated to have cost. Mr. Crowley, meanwhile, continues to watch the show nightly, often changing seats at intermission, and changing the show afterwards, consulting with a creative team who all will soon face the critics.
Does he think they'll have kind words?
"I expect words, period," he said. "And a lot of them."
The Call of the Jungle
By JESSE McKINLEY
New York Times Online
A LITTLE more than 48 hours before the first public performance of "Tarzan," Disney's new multimillion-dollar musical, Bob Crowley, the show's director, took the stage at the Richard Rodgers Theater and told a group of apes they were doing a great job.
"It's been an extraordinary couple of days," he said, sounding tired. "The air of concentration yesterday afternoon was extraordinary. Everybody here was concentrating on what we have to do to make this show happen." The apes and ape-men grunted in agreement, or exhaustion.
Teching the show — the bringing together of the show's lights, sets, costumes, props, hair and makeup for the first time — had taken twice as long as it does for most Broadway musicals. That meant nearly a month in a darkened theater amid millions of dollars of equipment and highly paid brainpower, all for what is one of the most expensive shows ever mounted on Broadway, with a budget rumored to be between $15 million and $20 million.
It is also one of the riskiest, even for Disney, a company which has had an excellent Broadway track record, with three hits in three tries. Most shows open out of town, where problems can be identified and fixed far from prying eyes. But "Tarzan," based on the hit 1999 animated film and the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that inspired it, will land on Broadway "cold."
It's just one of several unorthodox choices that Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatricals and the show's lead producer, has made. Since late March, "Tarzan" has alternated preview performances on the weekends with several days of rehearsal during the week. Furthermore, though it has a score by Phil Collins and a book by David Henry Hwang, it will open without a single major star (barring perhaps Shuler Hensley, a Tony winner in a supporting role in "Oklahoma," in 2002). In the role of lead loincloth is Josh Strickland, a 22-year-old unknown whose most prominent credit is a stint on "American Idol."
In other regards, however, "Tarzan" is a typical Disney production. As with "The Lion King," "Aida," "Beauty and the Beast" and the forthcoming "Mary Poppins," due this fall, the artistic process has been both extensive and expensive. The project spanned three continents (from Geneva to Buenos Aires to Purchase, N.Y.), two boroughs, countless miles of travel (and fake ape hair); and a year's worth of workshops, readings and rehearsals. All told, it will have been five years from its conception to its planned opening on May 10.
This is the first Disney Broadway production for which Mr. Schumacher, a boyish 48-year-old, has had sole responsibility, and he wasn't taking any chances. "Because of the story we are telling," he said, "where physicality is at its core, you can't just develop it as you would a piece of written material. So we went to Argentina to see what does it look like if people are wearing harnesses and they're totally visible, and decided we liked that. In Purchase, we wanted to know what it would look like with polished Broadway performers, so we did that. And in Brooklyn, we wanted to be able to rehearse in the performance space, so we did that."
It was Mr. Shumacher's idea to do the show, and he has been present at every step of the process. Just minutes before the first run-through, he could be found coaching one of the actors playing young Tarzan (Daniel Marche) and his ape brother (Chester Gregory II) on the phrasing of a song. "Is that dialogue too loose?" he asked. Moments later, it was tightened.
For all these efforts, however, at this point the show is still a work in progress.
Ever since the first preview on March 24, audience comments about "Tarzan" have been circulating online. In particular, they have been critical of the show's length (performances have clocked in at more than two and a half hours) and the theater's sightlines, which are crucial to a show in which actors fly over the audience.
Mr. Shumacher says those problems have been addressed. But with only two and a half weeks before opening night, he's feeling the pressure.
"Nervous," Mr. Schumacher said, before the first run-through, "doesn't begin to describe it."
ONE of the first steps was hiring Pichón Baldinu, the Argentinean director and designer behind the hit acrobatic troupe De La Guarda. "Villa Villa," its Off Broadway show, ran for more than six years and featured a group of hyperkinetic young performers ricocheting around the ceiling of the cavernous Daryl Roth Theater.
As Tarzan's "aerial designer," Mr. Baldinu is surrounded by an eclectic artistic team, including Mr. Collins, who is making his Broadway debut and attended auditions and many rehearsals; Mr. Hwang, a Disney veteran who wrote the book of "Aida" and the play "M. Butterfly"; the choreographer Meryl Tankard, a disciple of the celebrated experimentalist Pina Bausch; and the lighting designer Natasha Katz, who won a Tony for "Aida."
In the director's chair sits Mr. Crowley, an acclaimed Irish designer who is also in charge of the show's sets and costumes. This is his Broadway debut as a director, but he has developed a reputation as an unflappable presence on any set. "The older I get the less people I want to work with," said Mr. Crowley, who has a light brogue and a lighter wit. "I'm down to three people I like, and I've discovered two of them are me."
The plan was to move back to front: work out the vine-swinging flights before proceeding with the traditional elements of musicals, like song and dance. It all began last April, when the creative team hopped a plane to Buenos Aires, where Mr. Baldinu lives and where Disney had rented a dilapidated theater in the La Boca district to test out some flying techniques.
In the most simple terms, Mr. Baldinu's effects are created by using a system of bungee cords and military-strength harnesses able to support 3,600 pounds (which would be one heck of an actor). Using momentum and pure physical strength, Mr. Baldinu's system gave the actors in "Villa Villa" the freedom to climb walls, swing, hang free, or run and jump, all effects Mr. Schumacher wanted in "Tarzan."
Last summer the whole operation attended a five-week "aerial lab" on the campus of the State University of New York at Purchase, complete with a half-dozen actors/acrobats slowly earning their wings. Under them, pads: dozens of thick blue gymnastic pads piled all around the Purchase theater and laid across the stage. Above, several actors — in helmets and harnesses — were hanging, spiderlike, from thin nylon cords above the stage. "It's like the world's largest jungle gym," said Marshall B. Purdy, an associate producer. "I've learned more about ropes and bungee than I could possibly imagine."
Mr. Baldinu was already an expert in ropes and bungees, but "Villa Villa" didn't have the several tons worth of scenery and equipment that "Tarzan" has. "In De La Guarda, everybody was flying in empty air," he said. "Here, it's full of elements." "Tarzan" also has a much bigger cast — 34 people in all — than "Villa Villa," meaning more bodies in the air, and backstage.
Part of Mr. Crowley's solution was to use an inflatable set, like a giant air castle. Holes were fashioned to allow actors to enter and exit it, with a texture like a tough plastic balloon to protect them. "There's no scaffolding or walls behind it, and it's soft," he said of the set. "It's real research-and-development stuff." But some of those holes must also be filled with lighting and sound equipment; actors must be very specific about where they're going or they're going to end up inside of a speaker.
While some chorus members learned the ropes in the Purchase flight lab, Mr. Crowley, Mr. Schumacher and the show's casting director, Bernard Telsey, were in another theater across the parking lot auditioning a group of very nervous, very handsome young men for the show's title role. Mr. Telsey had seen hundreds of people for the role, but was down to six candidates, all of whom had been put through an endurance test of singing, climbing, and flying. Oh, yes, and showing off their pecs.
"We saw a lot that either physically looked right but couldn't sing, or could sing but didn't look right physically," said Mr. Telsey. "You're looking someone the audience is going to want to watch sing and act for two hours in a loincloth."
Josh Strickland stood out. "He was so vulnerable and really told the story of a boy becoming a man," Mr. Telsey said.
IN late December, the "Tarzan" crew shifted camp to the Steiner Studios on the Brooklyn waterfront, and put everything from wig design to physical therapy to one entire full-scale set to on-set tutoring under one roof. (Daniel Manche, 13, and Alex Rutherford, 12, play Tarzan as a boy.) On one typical day David Henry Hwang was lying on a yoga mat in one office while in another side room, Mr. Hensley (who plays Tarzan's ape father) and Merle Dandridge (his ape mama), were rehearsing a new song by Mr. Collins, who was accompanying the duo on conga drums. "I've spent three or four years on it," said Mr. Collins of the show. "And I intend to stay with them to the death."
Then, in late February, the company moved into its Broadway home. Adapting Mr. Baldinu's complicated and potentially dangerous acrobatics so that they'd work safely in the 81-year-old Rogers theater required the show's technical team to install a small factory's worth of winches, motors, steel wire and supports, all monitored by a technician who sits in the balcony every performance and by the show's stage manager.
The set, which is bright green, has to be constantly re-inflated as the show progresses, adding yet more equipment to the mix. All of which has made the backstage area of the Rodgers — already cramped with props, electrical cable and myriad moving pieces — look like something out of "Das Boot."
What happens if you have a tall actor?
"You stoop," Mr. Schumacher said.
During the technical period the orchestra pit came to resemble a NASA control room, with dozens of flat-screen computer monitors used by everyone from the sound designer to the assistant stage manager. The lobby was even more chaotic, as technical workers hoisted equipment in and out of the theater. Backstage, people were tucked into rooms throughout a honeycomblike lair; in one, scores of wigs, made out of Lycra and human hair, sat atop fake heads; in another, just off stage right, Mr. Hensley was having his ape makeup applied.
Mr. Crowley acknowledged that overseeing all these diverse elements has been a challenge. "I've become more patient than Mother Teresa," he said. "And she wanted to direct as well."
ON the night of March 24, a sell-out crowd — the entire creative team, Disney executives, and more than a few Internet spies — gave the theater the buzz of an opening night. In the cleaned-up lobby, souvenirs were selling briskly.
Holding a wireless microphone, Mr. Schumacher addressed the audience: "A lot of you are that curious breed," he said. "Freaks of the first preview, welcome."
The opening image — an elegant blue map of Africa — was projected on the stage, and a elaborate soundscape (seagulls, waves, a groaning ship) filled the theater. And then, with a clap of thunder and a flash of artificial lightning, the hall went dark and the first act began.
The show ran almost three hours, including a 30-minute intermission, which was significantly longer than the creative team hoped eventually to make it. But there was flying, singing, ballads and apes. And at the end some of the audience stood for an ovation.
Since then, Mr. Shumacher said, there have been cuts, and not a few. Four minutes are gone from Jane's first scene — a fantasia involving a giant spider and a half-dozen upside-down actors — and two scenes have been combined into one in the second act.
Ticket sales have been strong, with a reported advance of nearly $20 million, or about as much as the show is estimated to have cost. Mr. Crowley, meanwhile, continues to watch the show nightly, often changing seats at intermission, and changing the show afterwards, consulting with a creative team who all will soon face the critics.
Does he think they'll have kind words?
"I expect words, period," he said. "And a lot of them."
