Source: North County Times
Date: March 5, 2008
Byline: Pam Kragen

Bakula hops on the band wagon for Globe's world premiere 'Dancing' musical

Playwright Douglas Carter Beane knows all about low expectations. When he adapted the dreadful 1980 movie musical "Xanadu" for the stage last year, he surprised skeptical critics with a fresh, self-deprecating book that turned "Xanadu" into one of the year's biggest Broadway successes.

But there aren't any low expectations connected with Beane's latest world premiere musical, "Dancing in the Dark," which opened in previews this week at the Old Globe Theatre. Based on the 1953 MGM musical "The Band Wagon," with a new book by Beane, a classic 1930s score by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz and starring veteran television actor Scott Bakula ("Quantum Leap," "Star Trek: Enterprise"), "Dancing" has a good-buzz factor that has been humming ever since it was workshopped in New York last March.

"This is a show we're very, very excited about," said Lou Spisto, the Old Globe's executive producer and CEO. "When you take the music of Dietz and Schwartz and combine that with Douglas Carter Beane, you've got something. After the workshop, we knew he had to jump on the band wagon, so to speak, because it was a show we couldn't afford to pass up."

"The Band Wagon" started in 1931 as a Broadway musical revue starring a young Fred Astaire in his pre-Hollywood days. It was remade into a film musical by director Vincent Minnelli in '53, with Astaire reprising his performance as Tony Hunter, a washed-up movie star returning to Broadway in a troubled new musical that runs aground during an out-of-town tryout. The film's score included "That's Entertainment," "A Shine On Your Shoes" and "Dancing in the Dark," among others.

"The Band Wagon" was a huge box office success in the '50s, but its book ---- penned by "Singin' in the Rain" writing team Betty Comden and Adolph Green ---- was never finished, because MGM canceled Comden and Green's contract midway through the project. In the story, Tony Hunter's musical is sabotaged when the pretentious actor hired to direct the show, Jeffrey Cordova, tries to layer on serious dramatic intentions. Comden and Green even wrote themselves into the film script ---- as the married playwriting team, Lester and Lily Martin ---- who ultimately salvage the show for Broadway with a hasty rewrite.

To finish the film, Minnelli discarded the plot halfway through the shoot and turned the second half of the movie into a series of dazzling musical numbers. While this worked in Hollywood 55 years ago, Beane knew it wouldn't work on the Broadway stage, so a new script ---- and a new show name, to reflect the changes ---- were in order. Beane said he was drawn to the "Band Wagon" project because he knew the late Comden and Green personally and wanted to pay homage to their "love, life and spirit."

"They were the kind of glamorous Upper West Side people who showed up at all the Broadway openings over the years. This was also a chance for me to write about the life that I live in the theater. It's about working on shows with problems and the stories and experiences we all have in the theater," said Beane, whose other Broadway credits include the Tony-nominated play "The Little Dog Laughed" and the off-Broadway hit "As Bees in Honey Drown."

Beane's "Dancing in the Dark" is a mix of old and new. He rescued the smarter, more complicated song lyrics from the '31 stage revue, added two songs cut from the film as well as some other numbers from the Dietz-Schwartz catalog, and developed a time-hopping script that begins in the mid-1950s and flashes back to the '30s, where we learn that Tony and Lily were once in love until he deserted her for Hollywood. Beane said he expanded the Lester/Lily subplot to honor Comden and Green, and he has fattened up some chorus boy and girl parts with real-life details from the young actors appearing in the Old Globe staging.

Since rehearsals began at the Old Globe last month, Beane said he's been doing major rewrites, including scrapping the first two scenes to move the first act along. "I'll change anything that doesn't work ---- that's the whole theme of this show, anyway."

While most of the major musicals at the Old Globe in recent years have been pre-Broadway tryouts, Spisto said this version of "Dancing in the Dark" is still a work in progress.

"It's not a show with a specific date on Broadway," Spisto said. "We're building an extravagant production for the Globe, but this is not the finished project. The producers want to see the material developed as much as we can at this stage."

When it came to casting, Beane and director Gary Griffin ("The Color Purple") decided to follow the art-imitates-life theme by finding an actor (like Tony Hunter) who started on Broadway, went on to success in Hollywood, and was returning to his musical theater roots.

While Bakula is best known as a television actor, he got his start in theater, moving to New York from his St. Louis home in 1976. He earned a Tony nomination in 1988 for "Romance/Romance" and returned to the musical stage two years ago with an acclaimed run in "Shenandoah" at Washington, D.C.'s Ford Theatre and a run last spring in "No Strings" at L.A.'s Freud Playhouse.

At a dance rehearsal two weeks ago, the gregarious Bakula, 53, easily ran through cascades of quick tap steps and high kicks and said he's worked hard to get back into "show shape" for "Dancing in the Dark." The L.A.-based father of four said he was enthusiastic when asked to join the project last fall.

"This is the ultimate experience for an actor," he said. "In film and television you get some rehearsal time, but in the theater you get the chance to really meet new people in a very exposed and intimate environment, then hand it over to an audience. You invest all that time in the show, and if it works and the audience is with you, there is nothing like it on earth."

Bakula said he's enjoyed the development process at the Old Globe.

"In old-fashioned musicals, the characters are often caricatures, and the challenge has been to make them real people with real problems," said Bakula, who's known for playing likable average Joes with issues on TV. "Tony is a guy who has a history and problems, and as we've gone through the rehearsal process, we've tried to build in more and more depth to the character based on the experiences we're having every day."

Yet while fine-tuning the script has been a primary focus of the Globe staging, Bakula said the music is what audiences will remember. "These songs really hold up. The ballads have very sophisticated lyrics and phrasing. It's amazing to me that even after 77 years, these songs feel so fresh and new."

Bakula's favorite number is the gentle duet "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan," which he performs with Patrick Page (who starred as the Grinch on Broadway for the past two years), who plays director Cordova ("It's about the relationship we have and it's got an easy, great feeling to it"). The musical also stars Tony-winning actress Beth Leavel ("The Drowsy Chaperone") as Lily; Adam Heller as Lester; and Mara Davi as Tony's love interest, Gabrielle.

Beane describes "Dancing in the Dark" as an old-fashioned, "jazz-hands" style musical with big dance numbers and a peppy, funny script that tells the stories of real people. Spisto said he thinks Globe audiences will be thrilled with the result, and the now-blazing ticket sales are a reflection of that.

"Audiences in San Diego love being in on the ground floor for a new musical," Spisto said. "They get to see a Broadway-caliber show for a third of the price they'd pay in New York, and they get to see the birth of new material. Our audiences love stories with heart, and this one has not only a great script with heart but exceptional music as well. We know this production will work."

"Dancing in the Dark"

When: Previews performances through March 12; opens March 13 and runs through April 13; show times, 7 p.m. Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

Where: Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego

Tickets: $52-$79

Info: (619) 234-5623

Web: www.theoldglobe.org