Stephen Flaherty Profile--

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Home is where 'Ragtime' is

Next production for Flaherty: A whimsical musical based on Dr. Seuss

Sunday, October 24, 1999

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Editor

Like giant airplanes stacked up over Broadway, circling for a chance to land -- that's how Stephen Flaherty describes musicals in preparation.

The Dormont native, now 39, has launched several of these hopeful vehicles. His latest is "The Seussical," with a projected touchdown date of about this time next year. And one of the biggest airships in recent years, which pretty nearly set a record for circling, is his "Ragtime," which lifted off in fall 1994, landed in Toronto in December 1996, and didn't make its much-anticipated landing on Broadway until January 1998.

It was worth the wait, bringing a Tony Award for best score to Flaherty and his longtime partner, lyricist Lynn Ahrens. Now "Ragtime" is making its first visit to Pittsburgh, arriving Tuesday for two weeks at the Benedum, giving Flaherty a chance to come home to visit parents Mildred and Bill and celebrate.

"I've never seen [this redirected, scaled-down touring version] on stage," he says by phone from New York, "so I'm really looking forward to seeing it in Pittsburgh for the first time."

We've told the story of "Ragtime" before -- how Flaherty and Ahrens were invited to audition on Labor Day 1994, given just 11 days to create four sample songs for the Toronto producer, Livent, and for E.L. Doctorow, author of the original 1975 novel, and Terrence McNally, who was adapting it for the stage. Of those original four songs, three were in the show that landed on Broadway more than three years later.

Getting the touring version up in the air has been a lengthy process, too. To start, a "Ragtime" tour was opened in Washington, D.C., in 1998. "That was virtually the Broadway production -- that means lots of glass and steel," says Flaherty, referring to Eugene Lee's grandiose original set, with a framework based on Penn Station, an epic platform for an epic story. "It took 25 or 26 trucks to transport."

That company lumbered on to several cities for lengthy stays. It was in Minneapolis when Livent's notorious fiscal and management difficulties resulted in bankruptcy. "The show was doing great business and getting great reviews," says Flaherty, "but there the actors were, stranded in Minneapolis at the start of winter." Their savior was Pace Theatricals -- the same people who package, produce and co-own the Pittsburgh Broadway Series. Under their management, the tour went on to play further long engagements in Seattle and Boston. Meanwhile, a separate company had done about a 10-month run in Chicago.

But "we couldn't keep lugging steel girders around the country," says Flaherty. "You couldn't even get the set down, let alone up," in the time available for the usual tour that closes in one city on Sunday and opens in another two days later.

So they decided to reconceive. The original creators gathered -- director Frank Galati, choreographer Graciella Danielle, designer Lee -- and they re-built the show with a slightly smaller cast and more portable set. "We hand-picked the cast," Flaherty says, commending the new Tateh of Jim Corti: "It's a totally different take, much more Chaplinesque, very charming and sympathetic."

This new "Ragtime" -- "Ragtime Lite"? -- opened Aug. 3 in Houston and sets up at the Benedum this week.

After working on the reconceiving, Flaherty didn't see the result because he and Ahrens were getting their next jumbo jet in the air -- "The Seussical," which, as its odd title suggests, could only be a musical based on the wonderfully eccentric children's books of Dr. Seuss.

This one was already in the works two years ago, with Flaherty and Ahrens writing the book as well as the score. "Livent was in such a transition" -- that's the tactful way Flaherty puts it -- "that Lynn and I were producing, too. We wrote it, cast it -- we learned a lot. Lynn and I basically were the show."

They put together a two-week workshop last spring in New York. Galati came on board as director, for many of the same reasons he had been selected to do "Ragtime." He first scored big on Broadway with his adaptation of "The Grapes of Wrath," and on "Ragtime" he helped preserve the literary quality of Doctorow's book, which was a goal from the start. "He's good at getting dramatic energy into literature on stage," says Flaherty, which is an issue with "Seussical," too.

That spring workshop also included Monty Python alum Eric Idle. "Eric is totally off the wall," says Flaherty. "He's no soft comedian -- he has an edge." Through his 7-year-old daughter, Lilly, Idle was already a Seuss fan. Perhaps inevitably, he played the Cat of "in a Hat" fame.

The next step was a full-scale, four-week workshop in Toronto in July. Galati had to miss the first week to finish preparing the new tour of "Ragtime," but newly on board was choreographer Kathleen Marshall -- another Pittsburgher, well-established in New York as artistic director of the Encores! Series and choreographer of the "Kiss Me Kate" now in Broadway previews.

"We had never worked with Kathleen before," says Flaherty, who was delighted with her "intense focus and incredible whimsy. She was very prepared but also very in the moment. And there's a Pittsburgh reference in the show -- Kathleen loved it."

Idle had been lost to the revamped NBC sitcom, "Suddenly Susan," "so we were short a Cat." Needing someone with "high comedic energy," they came up with Andrea Martin, who won a 1993 Tony in Flaherty and Ahrens' "My Favorite Year." "Our Cat had a sex change!" Flaherty says. "We wrote a lot of new material for her."

Lee was on hand to design "an all-Seuss world," very whimsical and lighthearted. "It has a low-tech look; you can see all the pulleys, lights, speakers, actors moving sets -- it's a Rube Goldberg vision. Everybody gets to perform several characters."

They came out of the summer workshop convinced "Seussical" was ready for Broadway. But with no appropriate theater available, caution prevailed. So it's back circling, while Flaherty and Ahrens continue to tinker. The plan is to produce it out of town next summer, then take it to New York -- producers willing, of course. Flaherty is optimistic about Pace, which is owned by SFX, the entertainment giant, although "I've only met four links in the chain of command."

Somewhere in there he and Ahrens found time to write five songs (and a lot of musical underscoring) for the 70-minute, straight-to-video "Bartok the Magnificent," billed as a prequel to "Anastasia," their 1997 Oscar-nominated animated film. Starring the voices of Hank Azaria, Kelsey Grammer and Andrea Martin (that name again), it will be out next month.

The duo also wrote "With Voices Raised," a piece for chorus, large orchestra and speakers for the Boston Pops, which was telecast July 4. "It's getting done elsewhere," Flaherty says. "I hope it gets home -- if Marvin Hamlisch and the Pittsburgh Pops would do it."

As to future projects, first up is a new musical for Disney TV, a retelling of "Sleeping Beauty" to star Whitney Houston, set in Spain, "with lots of Spanish guitars and rhythms."

The partners insisted on a fresh take. Writer Richard Kramer ("Once and Again") has come up with a frame story of traveling actors. "It has more psychological heft; it's very sexy, not just a children's story." It's also their first chance to write for a movie (not counting some songs for "Anastasia").

"TV is much zippier," Flaherty says. This plane won't have to circle -- not for TV, not for Disney. "Sleeping Beauty" will shoot next summer, another in a series of Disney TV musicals (last year, "Cinderella," and, next month, "Annie") which, coincidentally, were directed and/or choreographed by Kathleen Marshall's brother, Rob.

Flaherty mentions two more projects. With John Weidman (now busy with his hot new "Contact" and his approaching "Wise Guys" with Stephen Sondheim), they have a piece about Renaissance Italian strolling players. And there's a new project with McNally, "a very small-scale, intimate musical with about 10 actors, set in Ireland -- something I've always wanted to do." Flaherty's own forebears came from Galway, and this would give him a chance at Irish musical motifs.

"I never leave my room, but I sure get around," he laughs.

Not entirely true. He's planning a working vacation in Italy this spring, teaching a master class. And the weekend after next he'll be in Pittsburgh, enjoying "Ragtime" with his parents, family and friends.