Only Randy Newman would feel compelled to explain why he depicts God as a good guy–in this case, in his musical version of “Faust.”
“He’s got to be a good guy,” the caustic singer/songwriter/composer/playwright says in an office at the Goodman Theater, where “Faust” opens Monday. “He’s got to be liked and decent or there’s no nothing. You can’t make fun of Him, you know. I didn’t think I did, but who the hell knows.”
Well, the all-star album version of “Faust,” released last year, does feature the Lord (James Taylor) recalling how he dealt with a couple of Buddhists at the Pearly Gate: “Had to have ’em put out with the trash!”
And in 1972’s “God’s Song,” Newman’s Almighty taunts the miserable, pleading humans thusly: “I take from you your children, and you say, `How blessed are we.’ “
Newman’s sensibility, in other words, isn’t exactly in sync with the life-affirming landscape of the American musical, which is what makes the collision of the two in “Faust” so intriguing. The show, for which the 52-year-old Newman wrote the music and book, debuted last October at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse to mostly positive reviews, with some complaints about a lack of emotional involvement with the story.
The Goodman run, with La Jolla artistic director Michael Greif (who also directed the smash Tony Award-winning musical “Rent”) back at the helm and playwright David Mamet added as a co-author, marks stage two of a journey that Newman and crew would like to see lead to Broadway, though they won’t say that’s the ultimate goal.
The “Faust” legend previously has been retold as a Broadway musical with “Damn Yankees,” but that 1955 show didn’t address topics such as God’s moral culpability about a sniper who kills a little girl in a Burger King, escapes justice and can go to heaven if he repents. Yet Newman’s “Faust,” an adaptation of the Goethe version, remains a comedy–one that, in his eyes, harks back to a musical era that precedes the operatic spectacles that have dominated the past two decades.
” `A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’ is a precedent in that it’s entirely comedic,” Newman says. ” `Faust’ is almost entirely comedic, this version of it, except for a ballad here and there, a few deaths.”
The story entails the Lord (Ken Page, like the other leads, a holdover from the La Jolla cast) betting the Devil (David Garrison) over whether the latter can convince a self-absorbed, 19-year-old, third-year Notre Dame freshman, Henry Faust (Kurt Deutsch), to turn over his soul in exchange for any material rewards while on Earth. If the Devil wins, he gets to return to heaven.
Newman’s score mixes gospel (“Glory Train”), rock (“The Man”), sweet balladry (“Feels Like Home”) and the type of New Orleans piano shuffles (“You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down”) he’s been playing for almost 30 years as a gruff-voiced singer/songwriter. His script is packed with humor that stretches high, stoops low and mingles with the philosophical sparring.
A devil’s advocate
Newman, who was raised Jewish in New Orleans but considers himself an atheist, is with the Devil on at least some of the arguments. “I can’t accept the fact of a God, particularly in this kind of a cruel, random world,” he says. “I can’t take as an answer, `My ways are mysterious.’ The Lord uses that (in `Faust’). There’s no answer to that, of course. . .
“The Lord in `God’s Song’ is a good deal nastier than this one. But what remains essentially the same is that there’s some occasion to doubt his existence. The Devil puts forth that postulate anyway.”
Still, Newman insists, his show “isn’t some kind of atheistic rant. What’s the point of being a militant atheist? I can’t think of a more pointless pursuit than going, `Yeah, I don’t believe in this!’ “
Newman considers both the Lord and the Devil to be sympathetic in their own ways. “The really difficult person is the kid, Faust,” he says. “You feel sorry for the Devil and the Lord having to deal with a schmuck like this.”
Presenting unsympathetic characters is nothing new to Newman. “Randy always takes a character’s point of view, be it `Davy the Fat Boy’ or a bigot singing about `Short People’ or a slave trader singing `Sail Away,’ ” says Goodman artistic director Robert Falls, who produced a revue of Newman’s music at the Wisdom Bridge Theatre in the mid-’80s. “Because he writes so strongly for characters, I think he’s ideally suited to be writing for the theater.”
Yet Newman has found he must work his characters into a framework that allows the audience to have some emotional stake. “I didn’t care whether (Faust) went to heaven or hell,” he admits. “It wasn’t the plot that it was about to me. People sort of know the plot, I figured, somewhere in their subconscious. But Michael Greif convincingly says–and Mamet is ruthless on it–that things that don’t relate to the plot shouldn’t be in there.”
“A great challenge is really how to balance Randy’s satiric point of view with the opportunity for an audience to really empathize with characters,” Greif says before running his cast through a rehearsal at the Goodman. “I think that tone is still something that we’re wrangling with.”
Newman learned other lessons between La Jolla and the Goodman, as well, such as that he has to reprise some of his songs. “I think he felt when we first began, he felt, `Why do a reprise? I mean they’ve heard it already, the song was terrific, let’s give them another song,’ ” Greif says.
“I appreciate the fact that this is not one of those musicals that has three songs in it that you hear 85 times in 84 different keys and in three different rhythms. But I also am happy that he’s taken some of the great musical themes in the piece and let them come back to work on you both intellectually and emotionally.”
Newman also wrote two new songs for the Goodman production, though only one (“Never Good Enough”) made the final cut. Another song from the album, “Happy Ending,” has been reinserted after being dropped at La Jolla.
Newman says he and Mamet were already mutual fans when he–with the encouragement of Greif and Falls–called the playwright for help with the book early this year. Mamet’s changes were mostly structural, Newman says–and most of the profanities were already in the script before Mamet got involved.
Mamet currently is directing a movie, “The Spanish General” (not based on his play of the same name), and could not be reached for comment.
“Mostly (the revisions) have to do with clarifying some story lines and developing some characters and some reshaping and re-emphasis of some themes,” Greif says. “I think it’s going to be tighter, and I hope that its culmination is perhaps more meaningful.”
But he adds that the “wackiness and the arbitrariness of Randy’s vision” have not been streamlined out of existence.
“I’m very proud of the fact that we haven’t abandoned a lot of the zaniness for something that might be more straightforward,” Greif says.
Falls adds, “It’s sort of all over the place. There’s no question that there’s a messy, quirky sensibility, but it’s very original. It’s totally Randy Newman.”
Movie music’s a family legacy
Newman began work on “Faust” more than a dozen years ago, then set it aside as he followed in the footsteps of uncles Alfred, Lionel and Emil Newman and got busy composing movie soundtracks; he’s been nominated for six Oscars, including two last year for “Toy Story.” Even while making revisions to “Faust” earlier this month, he was spending his mornings composing the soundtrack to Nora Ephron’s upcoming comedy, “Michael,” which stars John Travolta as an angel.
In a sense, “Faust” has been his fun time while taking a break from his real work. “I worked just as hard on (`Faust’) as I can conceivably do,” he says. “But it isn’t like where I live. Writing for an orchestra ultimately is where I live, and conducting, too. It’s a strange thing, how I take songwriting kind of for granted; it’s probably what I do best, almost certainly. . .
“I’m sensitive about writing for orchestra and conducting, almost certainly because that’s where my family is from. It’s hardly the most important thing that I do. Movie music you don’t hear half the time, someone turns a knob up, and it’s gone. Conducting, God knows if they’re watching it or not. But I just sort of care about it.
“And I care about this, but it isn’t quite life or death, and as stupid as movie music is, it’s life or death to me.”
Newman will be conducting members of Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Oct. 21 at Orchestra Hall in a program of excerpts from movie scores, “Faust” and his pop catalog.
He doesn’t consider “Faust” a reaction to current Broadway fare, though it might as well be. “I can’t lie and say I love what they’re doing on Broadway,” he says. “I don’t. I don’t even understand it. And yet I’m trashing the place before I’m invited. It’s like telling people they’re house is (crappy) when I’m trying to get invited there.
“And it won’t be easy. There isn’t easy access to it. This thing doesn’t say `money’ all over it. I think that it’s sort of middle of the road-like, but I’ve never been right.”
Greif knows about scoring with a non-traditional musical on Broadway, though he considers “Rent” and “Faust” to be different beasts.
“We worked very hard to bring some irony and some humor into `Rent’ because the place where Jonathan (Larson, its late writer) wrote from was extremely open-hearted and generous and sometimes very sentimental,” Greif says, adding with a laugh: “It’s quite the opposite situation with this musical.”
For his part, Newman says he liked “Rent.” “It does a better job to me of creating an authentic sort of bohemian world–except for the dope, there’s not enough dope in it–but it does better than Puccini at that,” he says. “It’s not Puccini’s music, but `La Boheme’ with a bunch of fat people is laughable.”
Broadway-bound or not, Newman says “Faust” has been a success for him, and he hopes to write another musical–his humorous take on the end of the millennium. “It’s been one of the best working experiences of my life, one of the most fun, the most laughs,” he says. “It’s mostly pretty lonely what I do.”
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THE FACTS
`Randy Newman’s Faust’
When: Previews 2, 7:30 p.m. Sunday; runs Monday through Nov. 2
Where: Goodman Theatre, 200 S. Columbus Drive
Tickets: $26-$40
Call: 312-443-3800
