Robbie Rozelle: Stephen! Welcome to Fynsworth Alley!

Stephen Cole: Thanks so much!

RR: Tell me about your upbringing. Where were you born?

SC: I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. I’m a Native New Yorker.

RR: Where did you go to college?

SC: Very briefly, Brooklyn College. Very briefly. I was an actor, I went right into the business and started working. While I was in high school, I was working and decided, “Well, do I need this? Do I need that? I’d rather work.” I’m not your major educated writer, which is just fine. I don’t think they could have taught me anything about writing musicals-- certainly not at Brooklyn College!

RR: I don’t really think you can be taught much in the way of theatre at all.

SC: No, you really can’t. I had written my first musical in high school, which got produced at Brooklyn College.

RR: Which was…?

SC: Called “Everything’s Fine.” Which was kind of a steal of “Anything Goes.” It was every 30’s musical, where other people might have parodied the movies, I didn’t parody, I just did a loving version-- I thought, “I’ll write Anything Goes, Red Hot And Blue,” you know, one of those shows. It seemed new. I had seen Bette Midler on the Tonight Show, and I thought, “This is the new Ethel Merman!” I’ll just write this show…

RR: We wish!

SC: Yeah, I know! At the time, it seemed it could have happened. It was in the early 70’s -- the leading lady’s name was Sally Sweeney -- it was her sister! But I was lucky enough to write a show and see it on it’s feet the next year, which was a great learning experience.

RR: What came after that?

SC: Then I just concentrated on acting, which was ok for a while. Then I still wrote lyrics, but I never did another show until I got serious about it.

RR: Did you act regionally?

SC: Yeah, I did a LOT of children’s theatre, I did “To Kill A Mockingbird” at Indiana Rep. I did a lot of films… everything that was filmed in New York in the late 70’s, I was an extra in, or had tiny roles in. I played every kid role there was. And then, suddenly, when I was in my early 20’s, I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I thought, “Hmm…let’s switch careers here.” So I really went back to… I had always written lyrics, and I decided to plunge back in. I wrote a show called “Time Step.” Another learning experience. It was an original, which was very hard to do, and I had no real deadline, and didn’t know what I was doing, and wound up doing a very good reading of it where I realized, it was not going to really get better. But I learned as much as I could from the show and I put it away.

RR: So it’s in your trunk now?

SC: Yeah… and it’s not EVER coming out! Then I did “The Electric Grandmother”.

RR: Based on the movie?!?

SC: Yeah. That was my first show with Matthew Ward.

RR: I watched that movie every year!

SC: Isn’t it fabulous? I started it with one composer, but he moved off to Seattle, and that’s when I met Matthew Ward. I was in the great position of having a book and lyrics, and was auditioning composers. So I had really good stuff for them to see. And I liked Matt a lot. That had an ugly end. That was the show that taught me the great lesson that I like to teach to everybody: Don’t write a show unless you have the rights. I was kind of lied to by the agents, who said, “Oh yeah. Keep writing it! Write more!” Ray Bradbury is interested! Well, we finished it, and we went into the studio and did a great demo with Beth Fowler as the grandmother. We presented it to Ray Bradbury, who had never heard of us. But he liked it, and he said, “This is a good idea. I’m going to write my own musical.” At the time, he was writing musicals. I was devastated, of course, and I begged and pleaded, but… no.

RR: I’d LOVE to hear that!

SC: It’s a great score, and in fact, over the years, we have gone back to Ray Bradbury, and he’s been really receptive, and just as recent as three years ago, he sold the movie rights again. He said, “Come back to me in two years.” I finally got sick of calling him. We had lots of places that were interested in it after “After The Fair.” Actually, three or four melodies surfaced in “After The Fair” from “The Electric Grandmother.” I said, “Oh, come on! Let’s steal that one!” But I would go back to it, if I had the rights. And that led directly to “After The Fair,” which was a public domain piece. I learned my lesson! Once I found that, I knew it was ideal for Matt and I. That was our kick off thing. It only took ten years!

RR: Ten years!

SC: Every year there was a progression. We’d do a reading, or we’d win a contest, we’d do another reading, or a workshop, until finally we had a premiere, and then it just snowballed, which was nice.

RR: In the cast, you had the fabulous Michelle Pawk.

SC: Yes! It was a great cast! We’ve always had great casts. Actually, as great as the Off-Broadway cast was, the London cast was fantastic. Although I would have loved to have taken Michelle. When we did it in London, it was so exciting, because those people didn’t have to act! They didn’t have to play being English. The unspoken stuff in the script and the class consciousness and who these people were, and what the accents were… it was there, and it was there in the audience. It just went even better.

RR: You won the Ed Kleban Award for “The Night Of The Hunter.”

SC: For the libretto! I was so surprised. I had entered the contest with “After The Fair” a few times, and nothing had happened, and I thought, “You know, I’m gonna throw this one in instead.” And I always thought I would win for lyrics, but no. The book. That was kinda exciting.

RR: I just watched the movie “The Night Of The Hunter.” I was astounded when I watched it… so much has been pulled into the show. Who found the movie?

SC: It was Claibe Richardson’s idea. I had approached Claibe, I mean, we ALL love “The Grass Harp.” I was working on a show, which I still am, called “Time After Time,” and I was looking for a composer. And I went, “Who do I want to work with, who do I think is brilliant?” And it was Claibe. And it was not even “The Grass Harp,” I had seen his other show, “Lola,” at the York, and it’s an exquisite score, and I love both very much. I’m going after somebody I think is fabulous, and I haven’t heard from, and I picked up the phone and called him, which I normally wont to do. We had a meeting, and I gave him a lyric for “Time After Time” that I had just written, and he liked it enough to write some music, although he said immediately, I don’t think I’m the person for this show, because it needed more contemporary music than he likes to write. But I thought, “I’ll convince him anyway.” He wrote this unbelievably exquisite piece of music that had taken off from the lyric where I would have to go back and rewrite the lyric, but it was so beautiful, I wouldn’t have had a problem. I was thrilled. He decided not to do that show, but we sat down and said, “Why can’t we do something else?” Out of those talks came “The Night Of The Hunter.” We watched the film, and on first viewing, I thought_ “Oooh… I don’t know. This just doesn’t scream musical.” Because it was difficult. Then I read the novel, which is even better. And we got the rights, and we started working on it.

RR: It workshopped at the Vineyard, with my girl Carolee Carmello…

SC: Right, and Martin Vindovic.

RR: Then the concept cd..

SC: The concept cd was planned before the Vineyard. We had done a couple of demos, with Ron Raines, who ended up starring on the cd, and will ALWAYS star in the show, and a wonderful singer named Lynne Winterstellar.

RR: From “Closer Than Ever!”

SC: She was Willa on the demos. We had four songs; the preacher’s first number, “The Wedding Night” and that’s when the company got interested in doing a concept album. So we were encouraged to keep writing, and get it right and get it on cd. The Vineyard took us on a slight left turn, because a lot of the material changed for the worse. It was not the experience that Claibe and I wanted it to be. At the time, we were on the Vineyard’s schedule to have a full production that season.

RR: I remember reading a review, Peter Filichia…

SC: Oh, he loved it! We didn’t love it as much as he did. It went very well, but it wasn’t the piece we envisioned, so we decided not to go ahead. Then we did the cd, so we could put back more of what we saw as the show, and the cd reflected our vision of the show. It was a fantastic experience. And really quick, as far as recording. One day for the orchestra, one day for the singers. We rehearsed it to death. Ron was very rehearsed, Dorothy [Louden] was very rehearsed…

RR: She needs to come back to New York.

SC: I know, I know. We got her for that, Claibe and I. I had written a song for her. Remember a show she did called “Comedy Tonight?”

RR: Oh yeah! It was hardly there!

SC: Right! It was really three or four nightclub acts. One of them was hers. And it wasn’t going well out of town, and I was asked to come in and help but not enough. Jeff Saber and I wrote a song for her called “Am I Too Broad For Broadway?” It was about making this comeback, but maybe she was too broad for the shows that were on, and that’s why she hasn’t worked, and it was very funny. Alex Cohen was the producer, and everybody wanted this song to go in. They were previewing it in New York, and everybody was going “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Dorothy said, “I’m not learning that!” In previews? It’s too hard! So we never got the song in, but we became friends. Claibe and I picked up the phone and played her “The Night Of The Hunter” material, and she flipped and wanted to do it very badly. The cd came out and caused a great stir…

RR: Billboard loved it.

SC: The Billboard review was spectacular. I had never read a review like that. Then it won an award, which I’ve never quite seen, but it’s from the German music critics. Claibe has a copy of it. Best show cd, or something, of that year.

RR: I push the cd on everybody. I was visiting a friend out of town, I said, “You must listen to this, this is the future of musical theatre.” He went nuts for it and stole my copy. I had to buy another!

SC: Good! It’s only two-thirds of the score. We chose not to record everything, because we knew the time limitations of the recording. There’s a fully musicalized chase after the preacher kills the mother that is amazing, like it’s own little mini-opera. And then, it had a wonderful success story up to a certain point. The Goodman Theatre in Chicago was interested, and Bob Falls wanted to direct it, which was very exciting for us. We waited and waited, and finally did a workshop of the show which WAS the show we wanted it to be, and Bob was extremely helpful with that. We did it with Ron Raines and an amazing Chicago cast. It went so well, they took an option on it and wanted to do the show, and Bob Falls went off to do “Aida.” And the momentum started getting lost. AND after he did “Aida,” he was so exhausted, and dispirited about doing a musical, that he decided he did not want to do another musical. He said he would only be a hindrance to our show. He just did not like the process. So we got out of our option with the Goodman, and now I think we have something solid where we’ll be doing the big New York workshop that might, please God, lead to Broadway. Before Ron Raines is 80!

RR: What else is in the works?

SC: Claibe and I have another show in the works, called “Saturday Night at Grossingers.” I’m very excited about it; it’s taking on a new life. While we were working on “Night Of The Hunter, “ he had been working on “Grossingers.” The lyricist was Ronnie Graham, the book writers were Doris Silverton and Rita Laketon. Over the years, the book writers kept shifting. Ronnie finally threw his hands up and quit after ten years, and Claibe asked me to take a look at it, and I said, with baby eyes, “You just aren’t telling the story. “ You have to tell the story of Jenny Grossinger and the birth of the Catskills. The book writers paid me a commission to rewrite the show, and Claibe and I set to work and wrote the blatantly delightful musical comedy. We did a reading, and the audience went out of their minds. It’s a fun, huge, musical comedy score, with six people in the cast. We’re planning a Florida tour. I want to get this show to the people who want to see it before they die.

RR: Tell me about “Casper,” which recently premiered near me, in Pittsburgh.

SC: It started out on the West End, written by David Bell. It was kind of a Christmastime pantomime for the kids. I went to see it, and didn’t really like it. They thought I could fix it, and I thought, “No.” Months went by, and I got a call from David, and he told me how brilliant I was, how much he liked “After The Fair” and “The Night Of The Hunter,” and he asked me if I would meet with him. Pittsburgh had “Casper” on its schedule, with or without me. I was determined on the plane to write a new show, that I could not fix the old show. Not one note was kept. So I brought in Matthew Ward. Matt and I write very fast. David was the director, and he was thrilled. I wound up getting Chita Rivera, which was a dream. I wrote the part with her in mind, never dreaming in a million years that I would work with her. We opened cold. They ran three weeks, real summer stock. No previews. Just open and run.

RR: I remember thinking, “How do you make a musical out of Casper?” This isn’t Little Orphan Annie…

SC: It had to have a supernatural cartoon feel to it. I created the villianess for Chita. The whole show was a reality TV show. The kids had to spend the night in the house, and find the deed to the house, to win a million dollars. I invented a back-story for Casper, why he and his rotten uncles were there for 50 years. Casper’s parents had been on a skiing trip when he died in a freak lightening accident, and thinks his parents are still coming for him, so it’s really a tender story. It’s _Home Alone, _ but it’s a scream. If anyone else gets the deed to the house, they will tear it down, and he won’t have anywhere to wait for his parents. Once we had Chita, I said, “OK, we need five great dance numbers!” It needed a lot of work, but it was on tour. It went to Kansas City, Atlanta, Dallas. The whole summer, but I couldn’t make changes.

RR: Is there going to be an afterlife for “Casper?”

SC: : I hope so… it’s just… it’s another big show.

RR: And a cast album…?

SC: It almost happened. It just wasn’t the right time. Back to “Saturday Night At Grossingers,” I would love to do a concept album. If this Florida tour happens; I think there are going to be a lot of wonderful people buying cd's in the lobby. The title is magic. I’m hoping for an all star type concept album. It takes a funny. It takes Bette Midler, but we’re not going to get her. Really funny, really pushy…

RR: Almost a Patti LuPone..?

SC: That name has popped into our heads. Judy Kaye did a demo for us. Faith Prince’s name has popped up. It’s moving forward somewhere, somehow.

RR: You’ve written two books, and a third one is in the works…

SC: “That Book About That Girl,” which is delicious, and “Noel Coward: A Biobibliography,” which is part of that series at Greenwood, which I enjoyed doing a lot.

RR: And now a book with Ken Bloom on the lyrics of Jerry Herman.

SC: Mm-hmm… I think we have a publisher now. So that should be moving ahead. It’s with Jerry’s blessing and push. He wants this to happen, and that’s exciting. It’s been hard to get a publisher to agree to what we want, which is a very fancy coffee table book. The book would also include a cd with a bunch of rare Jerry Herman stuff on it. It’s all with Jerry’s participation, including--since he’s a designer-- he wants to have an eye on that. So we want to do this really well. Ken and I did the two “Mermania” cd’s, and we wanted to do something else together. We were both so disappointed by the lyric book of Alan Jay Lerner, “A Hymn To Him.” So we thought about doing a Lerner book, but we went right to Jerry. Jerry thinks he’s a better lyricist than a composer, and I agree with him. I have always admired the craft and cleanness of them, especially the comedy stuff.

RR: I agree with you. He’s a brilliant lyricist. Tell me about the two songs you wrote for the Fynsworth Alley artists. Emily Skinner’s amazing, amazing, balls-to-the-wind, “The Long Way.”

SC: (laughs) Isn’t that a great number? I am so happy with that! That was my first collaboration with Todd Ellison, who has music directed many cd’s on the label, including “Night Of The Hunter.” We became friendly. He called me one day and said, “Emily Skinner’s going to be doing this album,” and he had just seen “The Full Monty” in LA or wherever it was, and he said, “I know what she needs, I know what this voice is,” and she was starting to pick material. He wrote the melody from beginning to end with no lyrics. No idea, no nothin’'. He handed me a tape, and I liked it, but to come up with a stand alone lyric…I took the tape with me to Fire Island a couple of summers ago, played it and played it. I wanted it to sound like an eleven o’clock number in a musical. As soon as I heard that note, which was a loooooooong note, I thought, “Ok, let’s go with the obvious.” I was so proud of it. She’s fantastic. It was a great album.

RR: And Guy Haines’ “Gettin’ Nowhere Fast.”

SC: Todd, again, with that wonderful insight as to what’s missing. We thought of a big band number. He wrote everything but the verse. My goal was a kind of Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh number like “When In Rome.” I had a great time. I didn’t go to either session. But I love them. I wish they would do more solo albums, so I could write more songs! I’m available! It’s fun to do something like that. It stretches the muscles.

RR: Well, I certainly look forward to seeing what’s in your future. Thanks for taking the time for talking to me, Stephen.

SC: Thanks for having me.

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