While researching the origins of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels one name kept popping up: Jack O'Brien, the artistic director of San Diego's Old Globe Theater since 1981. O'Brien originally produced Scoundrels, the current offering by Dallas Summer Musicals, at his Old Globe before transferring it to Broadway. He teamed with choreographer Jerry Mitchell, the same duo that originally brought The Full Monty to the Old Globe before taking it to Broadway.
Both plays began their lives as films. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' music and lyrics are by David Yazbek, who also collaborated with O'Brien on The Full Monty. O'Brien and Mitchell also teamed up on the Broadway production of Hairspray. I wanted to know their secret for success.
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PCP: I notice that you have been very successful transforming old movies to the stage with Hairspray, The Full Monty and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Of all the movies out there, how do you decide which ones will transfer successfully to the stage?
O'Brien: Good question! There is something -- a whiff?, a feeling that some stories "sing," and others do not. I find, which isn't a cardinal rule or anything, that a show that demands "performance" (small, chubby girl wishes to dance on television or two cons enjoy "showing off" for each other) is part of the secret. I don't necessarily believe "The Garden of the Finzi Continis" would translate. Although...
PCP: I also notice that this is the third time you have teamed up with Jerry Mitchell and the second show in which you have worked as a team with both Yazbek and Mitchell. What is the magic in this pairing?
O'Brien: It was the chicken, as it were, somewhat before the egg. I had been searching for a collaboration for Jerry Mitchell and me for years; I had offered him the Globe (for) How The Grinch Stole Christmas! in its inaugural San Diego outing, but a Broadway gig for him (Charlie Brown) got in the way; so when The Full Monty came along, he, who had already done such a stunning turn with "Broadway Bares," seemed to be the "go to guy" for taking off clothes on stage! We had such a wonderful time that we became very close pals as well, and Hairspray and Imaginary Friends followed hard upon, as well as Monty in London and in Australia.
When we opened originally on Broadway in front of the tsunami that became The Producers and were pretty much swept away, Jerry and I were personally concerned that David Yazbek, in his maiden voyage, would be deeply discouraged and promised whenever he wrote his next show, we'd be there. Dirty Rotten [Scoundrels] was the show, and we were, indeed, there!
As for David, Lindsay Law, the producer of the film, The Full Monty, and I had been close friends for eons. I had directed many of his American Playhouse productions, and when we began to explore turning [The Full] Monty into a musical, we had no real composer, and, as it was to be the first new musical of the 21st Century, we thought it would be appropriate to put some new talent into the stream. Adam Guettel was doing his Floyd Collins at my Globe Theater, and actually (we) went to him first, but he was already engaged with Light in the Piazza, and he recommended his good friend, David Yazbek, about whom he said two crucial things: that his music had "edge," and that he "knew the hook of a song," both sentences of which were music to my ear.
David sent some CDs, then did a couple of songs on spec, almost all of which remained in the show. He was a natural, and we were elated. We still are!
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