Stephen Flaherty is the Dynamo of Broadway

The Dormont-born composer keeps up his frenetic pace with two shows

Thursday, December 05, 2002

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Editor

NEW YORK -- Who would think writing theater music could be so aerobic? Stephen Flaherty does. "I knew this would be like the Olympics," said the Dormont-born composer as he worked simultaneously to bring two musicals to fruition. "It takes good nutrition and exercise -- musicals are a lot about energy, your own energy."

His bright eyes shone. It was early morning and Flaherty was as upbeat as ever, talking at his mid-town Manhattan apartment before diving into a frantic and creative day. It was the end of summer, and he and his lyricist partner Lynn Ahrens were going full-blast. At Lincoln Center, they were rehearsing a brand new musical, "A Man of No Importance," even as they worked in a mid-town rehearsal hall on revisions and rehearsals for the national tour of "Seussical the Musical."

There are really no weekends in theater, Flaherty noted. He and his life partner Trevor Hardwick also have a house at the far end of Long Island, but even when he could get away to it, he would work throughout the bus trip with a laptop and music software. "A day off is when you do rewrites," Flaherty said.

"Seussical" opened on Broadway in December 2000, after a rocky tryout in Boston. Sensing blood, the New York critics circled like sharks, reviewing the production history as much as the result on stage, and in spite of bringing in marquee-worthy stars (Rosie O'Donnell, Cathy Rigby), "Seussical" lasted only six months.

But now it was getting a second chance, a whole new production with new designs -- "more minimalist, more in the spirit of what we had in the workshop," Flaherty said.

"It's a writer's dream" to be able to give a work a second chance, he said, bubbling about rediscovering the piece's distinctive charm. They had cut just one song, but small nips and tucks left it "virtually sung-through -- the structure is mainly in the songs."

The new director, Christopher Ashley, also directed the recent Broadway revival of "The Rocky Horror Show." Flaherty credited him with "verbal and visual wit, a love of language and a wacky side." The resulting "Seussical the Musical," with Cathy Rigby playing The Cat in the Hat, would go on to open in Indianapolis in September. It comes to Heinz Hall, April 8-13, as part of PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh.

But "Seussical" was getting less than half of Flaherty's busy split days. It rehearsed from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the third floor of the Ford Center. Meanwhile, "Man of No Importance" rehearsed 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lincoln Center. Flaherty started each day at "Seussical," then moved on to "Man," then back to "Seussical." In the evening, he'd work late on revisions, then start over the next day.

Did he feel splintered? "No, because I'm fully in the moment wherever I am." He couldn't write two shows simultaneously, he said, but revising and rehearsing is a process of infinite detail. All it takes is energy, and Flaherty has that to spare.

"Man" had a double impetus. Because he, Ahrens and librettist Terrence McNally had such a good time working together on the epic "Ragtime," they wanted to collaborate again -- this time on "something small, chamber-like." And the variable Flaherty, whose musical styles had already included Caribbean ("Once on This Island"), rags, marches, waltzes and klezmer ("Ragtime"), traditional Broadway ("My Favorite Year") and magical fantasy ("Seussical"), had long wanted to write an Irish piece.

"My parents would always say, 'When are you going to do an Irish musical?' " He couldn't count the Irish bits in "Ragtime," since the Irish fire brigade are villains who didn't end up singing much in the final version. And Flaherty said he wasn't interested in doing "a potato famine musical."

Then McNally suggested the 1994 movie of "Man of No Importance" starring Albert Finney as Alfie Byrne, a Dublin bus conductor, a suppressed homosexual expressing himself only through the amateur drama group he directs. McNally's idea was to expand on the inner life of Alfie, who is obsessed with Oscar Wilde. But how to dramatize that? Flaherty credits McNally with the breakthrough idea to make Wilde a character, as a way to probe Alfie's psychology.

It isn't just Alfie, Flaherty notes: "Virtually every character has a secret." He contrasts this with characters like "Gypsy's" Mama Rose, "who hits the stage like a torrent because she knows what she wants." Not so in "Man," where the characters have to be teased out of concealment. The story is set in 1964, which Flaherty calls "a big crossroads time. The younger characters have more of a pop sound," in contrast to the traditional Irish sound on which Flaherty largely draws.

He described working with the score in rehearsal as "imagining the stage pictures. It's almost like scoring a film" -- taking into account the actors' timing and the choreographic concept, "bringing new ideas into the room, shaping and tailoring." His score includes a song about collaboration among the St. Imelda's Players that Flaherty said is "very reflective of our own collaboration."

"Man" opened Oct. 12. For the recording, Flaherty and company decided to break the theatrical "tradition to knock yourself out opening the show, then, the first day off, you abuse the actors by doing a recording session." Instead, they'll do the recording after the show ends its run on Dec. 29.

Though he's now written his Irish musical, Flaherty hasn't yet been to Ireland. But he was excited about an upcoming visit to Wales, where a concert version of "Ragtime" with the Welsh National Symphony and a choir of 100 voices would be the centerpiece at an international music festival in Cardiff.

He and Ahrens have other irons in the fire, of course. In June, they had a first reading of an unfinished piece based on a novel. Flaherty would say little about it except that it's set in the 19th century South and involves two women who never met in real life, played, in the reading, by La Chanze and Donna Murphy.

Flaherty described Ahrens' text as "like an opera libretto." Traditionally, they have worked together, but in this case she gave him her text and six weeks later he handed her 50 minutes' worth of music that he said had come forth "like torrents. It has the potential to be my opera."

He and Ahrens also wrote a song for La Chanze in honor of her husband, killed on 9/11, which she then performed at this year's memorial. And the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Flaherty's alma mater, recently created a revue of his music, which he also thinks might have a future in regional theaters.

There's more. There always is with Stephen Flaherty, restive, ebullient, hard-working, full of ideas. "I'm really enjoying what I'm doing," he said. It shows.