It is early Wednesday afternoon in a cinder-blocked rehearsal space somewhere in Vernon Hills, and director-choreographer David H. Bell of Marriott`s Lincolnshire Theatre is polishing a scene from his latest production, ”Arthur: The Musical.”
”Did that tempo seem a little slow?” he asks Michael Skloff, who answers in the affirmative. ”Well, as far as I`m concerned,” chips in Marta Kauffman, ”just get those lyrics right.”
Skloff is the composer, and Kauffman is the co-lyricist and book writer
(with David Crane) of the show, which is based on the popular 1981 movie about a perpetually drunk, cackling playboy (Dudley Moore) with an acerbic, snobbish valet named Hobson (John Gielgud) who risks losing a $750 million inheritance to toss over his society fiancee and pursue a wacky waitress from Queens named Linda (Liza Minnelli). Skloff and Kauffman also happen to work together as man and wife, ignoring the conventional wisdom that one should marry for better or worse but never for lunch.
”It really hasn`t caused problems,” insists Skloff, after taking a parental play break with Sam, age 1, and Hannah, 3 1/2. ”Somehow, we`re able to switch into different modes.”
”We also have a third party working with us, which definitely helps,”
says Kauffman. ”With just the two of us, I think we`d absolutely kill each other.”
The musical-which had its premiere last August at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn.-will open Wednesday night at the Marriott, with local performers Gene Weygandt as Arthur, Kathy Santen as Linda and William Brown as Hobson.
”I think it was a very, very funny movie,” says the 35-year-old Kauffman. ”I mean, there are lines that people quote to us and say, `Why isn`t this in the play?` But this is a theater piece, and I thought, `As much fun as the movie was, I thought it lacked romance.` Ours is really about Arthur and Linda and their love. I also thought Linda`s character was underdeveloped in the movie. She was a cartoon clown. Now, her character is more fleshed out.
”We went after the fairy tale aspect of it to make the story a little bigger than life for the stage, a little more whimsical,” says the 32-year-old Skloff. ”But also there`s a very big difference in sensibilities in society from 1981 to 1992. It was very funny to be drunk back then. It was the days when Foster Brooks was still a big comic-you know, drunk and falling down all the time.”
”It was really interesting when `Arthur II` came out,” says Kauffman.
”We went to see it-it was so bad, we wanted to leave-but the lesson we learned from it was that Arthur was now married to Linda and he was still drinking, and that didn`t make any sense to us. Because what we`ve been trying to do is say: If you`re going to like this man, you can`t just see him as a basic drunk. He`s not a generic alcoholic who drinks for the hell of it. He`s got to be someone we have to see dramatically. When does he choose to drink, and when does he choose to be sober? Is there something that could save him?
And the answer for us is Linda. Linda has to be able to save him from his life of drinking, from his fiancee and from his family. Those are the reasons that he drinks. The movie never explained why he drinks.
”Arthur`s relationship with Hobson is still pretty much the same. It`s hard, though, for these actors to follow in the footsteps of Dudley Moore and John Gielgud-Gielgud`s especially. I think there are other ways to interpret Arthur and Linda, but I don`t know that there is another way to do Hobson. That`s a very hard thing to do.”
Kauffman, who is constantly rewriting, says that since the Goodspeed premiere, only one song has been rewritten and less than 10 percent of the dialogue. ”Every time we do another rewrite, less and less of the movie stays. At this point, I`d say there`s 30 per cent of the original left. I felt when we started, we didn`t want to just do the movie and sing songs to it. We wanted it to be its own thing. But it`s one of those movies people know backwards and forwards.”
”And that`s the challenge-to make people forget about the movie,” says Skloff. ”If it were a lesser-known movie, it would be a lot easier.”
After acquiring the rights to the movie, Broadway producers Bruce Michael and Joseph Billone shopped the script around to leading composers, including Betty Comden and Adolph Green (”Bells Are Ringing,” ”On the Town”) and John Kander and Fred Ebb (”Cabaret”), and then in 1986 settled on the three, having liked what they saw in ”A . . . My Name Is Alice” and ”Personals.” ”We auditioned our material, and the rest is years and years of history,” says Kauffman. ”It`s hard to get a musical made. It`s the most heartbreaking experience. We had a lot of backer auditions. We had a staged reading at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey which was spectacular, but go ahead and try to raise $4 1/2 million on three unknowns and no stars in the show. It was a long, rocky road. We were going to do it in the fall and then in the spring, then in the fall and then in the spring. Finally, we decided to move to L.A. because we just couldn`t make a living doing theater; there`s no living in New York unless you have a hit.”
Finally, Goodspeed Opera House decided to do the show last August. David Patrick Stearns, critic for USA Today, wrote that while it ”is still a bit unfinished, it has the potential to be more winning than the original. In fact, the plot takes so well to music, you wonder how it ever survived without it.”
And then there was the review of The New York Times` David Richards, who ventured that with Arthur having cut back on his drinking, ”he`s almost no fun at all. Neither is the show.”
”That was devastating,” concedes Kauffman. ”We`ve gotten not-great reviews before, and I don`t mind them if there`s something in them that I can take from and say, `This is what I can learn about the work I just did.` But this was just so destructive.”
By happenstance, the three were all raised in the Philadelphia suburbs. Kauffman and Crane later met at Brandeis University, where they were theater majors and began writing revues, and Skloff-a music composition major at Carnegie Mellon-met his future wife in New York in the early `80s.
Collectively, they have contributed to the off-Broadway hit revue, ”A . . . My Name Is Alice”; created (along with Seth Friedman) ”Personals,” an off-Broadway musical about lonely singles who answer newspaper ads; and are the creative/producing force behind ”Dream On,” an HBO half-hour comedy series that recently started its third season.
Crane and Kauffman also created a TV series for Norman Lear, ”The Powers That Be.”
As for Lincolnshire and ”Arthur: The Musical,” Kauffman says, ”I`m very curious about it being done in the round. I`ve never had anything done that way before. In fact, until I came out here, I don`t know if I ever even saw anything in the round. I`m very curious to see if things can reach out and grab your heart the way they can in proscenium.
”At this point, we`d just like to see a great production of the show, and give it a life. I would love for it to have a life.” A big smile. ”Of course, if it were to end up on Broadway, I wouldn`t exactly complain.”
