Fred Hanson is in Tokyo directing “Miss Saigon” with four different Japanese casts. It’s interesting work, but only if you can put up with ego-bruising circumstances. Hanson, who grew up in Downers Grove, is one of Broadway’s best-known re-staging guys. He re-creates hit shows.
This theatrical equivalent to the Hollywood rewrite guy makes a decent living but has to toil in relative anonymity.
It goes like this. Big-name directors like to originate productions either on Broadway or in London’s West End. Nicholas Hytner directed the first “Miss Saigon” more than a decade ago, and Trevor Nunn forged an acclaimed 1998 revival of “Oklahoma!” at London’s Royal National Theatre. Assuming the original show’s a hit–as were both of the above titles–various other versions are spawned for the road or in international cities.
If the original director is “unavailable,” say, for the non-Equity tour of “Oklahoma!” that will spend the next two weeks at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre (beginning Tuesday), that’s where Hanson comes in. Someone has to re-stage–sometimes called re-creating or adapting–the original production, exactly what Hanson did with Nunn’s “Oklahoma!”
The presence of someone other than the original director is neither unusual nor necessarily reflective of lower quality. Both Susan Stroman and Julie Taymor, for example, turned over the day-to-day rehearsals of “The Producers” and “The Lion King,” respectively, to someone else. And the re-creation of choreography is such an established practice that it’s often built into rights agreements.
Still, re-directing Broadway hits is a tough business. Directors like to have their own way with their own ideas–that’s what makes them directors. But if you are selling tickets based on someone else’s concept, using that person’s set, you are bound by certain expectations.
How does Hanson make it work?
“It all depends on the original director’s mandate,” Hanson said from Japan last week. “The original directors don’t necessarily want a carbon copy. But they do want the ideas, concept and the heart of the show to be the same.”
Since theater is very much a human business, copying is virtually impossible. Telling an actor to duplicate another performance usually is a recipe for nothing but disaster. “You have to work with the actors at hand,” Hanson said. “If the part is not paired with the performer, everything ends up flat.”
Ken Gentry, producer of this “Oklahoma!” said he made one mistake earlier in his career with a touring, “re-created” production of “Victor/Victoria” that tried to duplicate the Broadway original, even down to the hand gestures. As I remember, it didn’t work.
“It took the heart right out of the show,” Gentry recalled earlier this week. “The show just didn’t have its own proprietorship.”
Thus with Nunn’s blessing, Gentry told Hanson to be true to the spirit of the original but to be unafraid of going in some different directions. “At the end of the day,” Gentry says, “we have to feel like this is our own show.”
Hanson got some help from the way the show is credited. If you look at your “Oklahoma!” program next week, you’ll see that this production is “based” on the Nunn original–it’s not billed as a precise re-creation under Nunn’s name, as was the case with “The Lion King.”
“That billing is key,” Hanson said. “It means I had some freedom. I felt like I could change some things without it having to masquerade as Trevor’s work.” Nunn, incidentally, hasn’t seen Hanson’s “Oklahoma!”
I saw and enjoyed Hanson’s production in Denver at the start of its tour in December 2003. This being a tour designed for single-week engagements in a variety of cities, it came with some constraints when compared to Nunn’s massive National Theatre original. “The show on Broadway had an 80-foot cyclorama in the back,” said Gentry. “Ninety percent of theaters across the country cannot take anything that big.”
So the cyclorama is gone. So is the on-stage orchestra. There are fewer musicians on tour than were on Broadway, so the visual appeal would not have been the same anyway. “It did not deliver,” Gentry said, “a lot of bang for the buck. And most theaters we are playing just do not have the depth.”
Then again, most of the costumes on stage are the Broadway originals. So is much of the ingenious set, which uses a variety of miniature models to provide a social and aesthetic context for the dust bowl setting. In this bigger-than-average touring show, most of what made Nunn’s “Oklahoma!” distinctive is present and correct.
In Chicago next week, you will see different human beings singing and dancing from those in New York. For these youngsters (and many of them are strikingly young), a Chicago opening is a big night.
Who cares where the show has been before? This is everyone’s chance to make an impression. Including, albeit very subtly, the director.THEATER/ BACKSTAGEWho cares where the show has been before? This is everyone’s chance to make an impression.
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`Oklahoma!’
When: Tuesday-Aug. 1
Where: Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy.
Price: $22.50-$72; 312-902-1400
