Gene Saks has an hour for lunch. That`s it. That`s all the schedule allows when you`re in rehearsals for a bigtime musical comedy and opening night in Chicago is less than a month away.
A trim, silver-haired man, he breezes into the Metropolis Cafe here and orders-Diet Coke, black bean soup and chicken salad-with scarcely a glance at the menu. He knows it by heart. He`s been a regular at this airy, Union Square restaurant since Nov. 9, when he began directing rehearsals for Neil Simon`s
”The Goodbye Girl” in a studio a block away.
Minutes after Saks arrives, the show`s stars, Bernadette Peters and Martin Short, saunter by, arm in arm, on the way to a table of their own.
The slinky, golden-ringleted Peters and the affable, elastic-featured Short make a handsome comic pair. They will, in effect, be reprising the roles played, as a bittersweet counterpoint of ditsiness and sarcasm, by Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss in the original, 1977 film version of ”The Goodbye Girl.”
Peters, a Broadway veteran, plays the part of Paula McFadden, a down-on-her-luck single mother and fading former chorus girl, who finds herself sharing a Manhattan apartment with Elliott Garfein, a cocky but compassionate young actor from Chicago, played by Short, best known as a comic on ”Saturday Night Live” and ”SCTV Network 90,” in his first Broadway role.
Like an indulgent father, Saks, 71, looks after them fondly. He last worked with Peters, he recalls, when she was about 16 and already ”superbly talented.” The play, called ”A Mother`s Kisses,” never made it to Broadway and, anyway, her part was cut out, he adds with a grin.
This time, it`s different. ”Bernadette finally got a leading role with a part to play where she will sing songs, dance numbers and act,” he says firmly. ”She won`t be playing second fiddle to Mandy Patinkin in `Sundays in the Park With George,` and it won`t be playing the old witch in `Into the Woods.` Now you`ll see her as a character in a story that is really her.
”Martin is going to be a big surprise,” he says, pronouncing Short
”funnier than Richard Dreyfuss” and ”one of the most superior talents I`ve ever worked with.” Even as a singer, he notes, Short is doing ”rather well.”
Rehearsals, he says happily, are going ”great.” He frowns, realizing how predictable that must sound. ”You don`t know me, but I`m an extremely cautious, slightly dyspeptic pessimist.”
Despite a 30-year collaboration or more with Simon on a dozen projects,
”The Goodbye Girl” is fresh territory for Saks.
Although he has directed what amounts to a cavalcade of Simon`s greatest hits on stage and screen-including ”Barefoot in the Park,” ”The Odd Couple,” ”California Suite,” ”Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” the trilogy
”Brighton Beach Memoirs,” ”Biloxi Blues” and ”Broadway Bound,” last year`s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning ”Lost in Yonkers” and this year`s ”Jake`s Women”-he did not direct the film version of ”The Goodbye Girl.”
”He didn`t ask me,” says Saks equably, between spoonfuls of black bean soup. ”In 1977, I guess I was busy.”
In Saks` case, ”busy” amounts to a graceful, rather than coy, understatement of the fact that he had three shows running on Broadway in 1977: ”Same Time Next Year,” ”California Suite” and ”I Love My Wife,”
for which he won the first of his three Tony Awards. He repeated the feat again in 1985 with a new female production of ”The Odd Couple,” ”Brighton Beach Memoirs,” which bagged him his second Tony Award, and ”Biloxi Blues,” which that year earned him his third.
”The Goodbye Girl” represents a unique challenge. It is the first time Simon has taken a script from the screen and transformed it into a musical for the stage.
Saks says he saw the film at the time of its release, but deliberately has not seen it again in preparation for the musical. ”We didn`t want to copy the film,” he says, adding that, in any event, the problems posed by the stage are different.
The first challenge, he said, lies in transforming what is essentially a three-character piece into a musical with an ensemble cast of 27. While Marvin Hamlisch supplies the music, Saks relies on choreographer Graciela Daniele to design dance numbers that not only entertain but spring from the characters and propel the story along.
This is essential to Saks, who insists that ”There`s never a dance for the sake of a dance, and there`s never a song for the sake of a song.”
The settings and attitudes in Simon`s 15-year-old script also needed updating.
”One of the concerns was to move it out of the `60s into the `90s,”
says Saks, who has placed greater emphasis on the trials of being a single mother and explores the plight of a Baby Boomer competing with younger dancers.
But, he says, ”It`s basically the same love story. It`s still New York, and it still has to do with young people-actors-and the problems they face battling New York and battling this business.”
Saks knows well whereof he speaks. Long before he became a director, he was an actor.
After graduation from Cornell University and a stint in the Navy, Saks studied drama at the Actors Studio. For some 15 years, he toiled in the way of young actors everywhere, eventually making it to Broadway in such hits as
”Mister Roberts,” ”A Shot in the Dark,” and ”South Pacific.”
He was getting his first great acclaim on the stage as Chuckles the Chipmunk, the corrosively cute children`s show host in ”A Thousand Clowns,” when he was offered the chance to direct his first Broadway play, ”Enter Laughing,” a comedy with Alan Arkin, in 1963.
It was not only a hit and the launch of Saks` directing career but also the catalyst for what was to become a long and successful collaboration between Saks and Simon.
Simon saw ”Enter Laughing” and was impressed enough to ask Saks to critique a new comedy revolving around a pair of New York newlyweds,
”Barefoot in the Park,” that Simon was tinkering with out-of-town at the Buck`s County Playhouse in New Hope, Pa.
Three years later, he asked Saks to direct the 1967 film version starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, and a team was born. A contemporary of Simon`s, Saks has emerged as a keen, almost intuitive, interpreter of the playwright`s work, empathy honed by shared experiences of time, place and culture as the sons of middle-class, first-generation Jewish families in New York.
In addition to his collaborations with Simon, Saks also directed such hits as ”Mame” (both the stage and screen versions), ”Cactus Flower” and
”Generation.”
In the stage version of ”Mame,” Saks worked with his first wife, actress Bea Arthur, with whom he has two sons. With his second wife, Karen, Saks has a 10-year-old daughter. They will shuttle to Chicago a few times during the seven weeks he`ll be away from home for the launch of ”The Goodbye Girl.”
Despite his phenomonal success as a director, Saks hasn`t lost a certain yearning for acting, his first love. Over the years, he has appeared in a few films, such as Simon`s ”The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” and he doesn`t discount the idea of acting again.
”I`d love to. Offer me a part,” he says, with a smile, as he heads back to the rehearsal hall. The hour is up.
