#ive found nirvana and mr cobain is not here

[cowardishh]

there's always an explanation. for everything. every time

[gdelgiproducer]

DOTV AU: An Exercise in Alternate History (Part VII)

Parts I, II, III, IV, V, and VI offer more detailed context. (To briefly sum up why these posts are happening: alt history – as in sci fi, not “alternative facts” – buff, one day got the idea that DOTV could have turned out hella different if Jim Steinman looked for a star lead in other places, decided to reason out how that might work.) This is still getting a good response, so I’m gonna keep the train rolling.

Parts of the AU timeline established so far:

Instead of stopping at recording two songs from Whistle Down the Wind on a greatest hits compilation, Meat Loaf wound up taking more of an interest in Steinman’s new theater work than he did in our timeline, and through a series of circumstances found himself volunteering to play Krolock in the impending DOTV when Jim poured out his woes to him about needing to find some sort of star to attract investors. At a loss for any better ideas, Jim accepted Meat’s impulsive proposal, but not without resistance from his manager, David Sonenberg, who proposed Michael Crawford as an alternate candidate. Through quick thinking on Meat’s part, and inspiration on Jim’s, Crawford left the room accepting an entirely different role than he walked in hoping to get, leaving Krolock still open for Meat.

There was a brief speed bump, when Meat disliked Jim’s English script for the show, but after meeting with the original German author Michael Kunze and convincing Jim to compromise, things were on the road to being back on track… at least until 9/11 occurred.

Following a brief hiatus, everyone involved met to re-assess their options. The current game-plan was to put the new script on paper, schmooze with potential investors or producers, and put together a new creative team. Preferably not all at the same time, but with the crunch on, they’d do whatever needed to be done.

So far, the schmoozing has gone well, but everybody that Meat, Jim, and the crew would like to be involved is tentative. The newest conclusion is that they need to show them there’s a working show, and a concert of selections from the score seems to be the route they’re taking, possibly financed by an unlikely source.

Continuing the alternate DOTV timeline, a little differently this time! This time we get a feature on the concert from the New York Post’s own Michael Riedel. Take it away!

VAMPIRES: NEW MUSICAL BLOOD by Michael Riedel

If you’ve heard the buzz on the Rialto of late, you’d be forgiven for wondering if you were having a particularly nasty acid flashback. Dance of the Vampires, a new $15 million musical of the macabre based on the 1967 Roman Polanski movie The Fearless Vampire Killers, is already a monster hit in Austria and Germany, and it’s starting to gather steam here in the States as well, with some... we’ll call it unlikely... star power attached. After all, what other musical (even in a preliminary concert presentation) can boast Courtney Love as an emcee slash investor, and such disparate names as Meat Loaf and Michael Crawford as co-headliners?

Admittedly, Meat Loaf’s presence is slightly less surprising, as the driving force behind the show is Jim Steinman, who wrote Mr. Loaf’s classic Bat Out of Hell albums as well as the lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Whistle Down the Wind.  He has written the score and is co-adapting the book for Vampires with playwright David Ives (All in the Timing), who is also currently at work with Steinman for Warner Bros. on a musical version of Batman, from German dramatist Michael Kunze’s original script. He also co-directed this concert with Starmites composer Barry Keating, though early reports that Steinman would be co-directing the eventual Broadway run with Jane Eyre creator John Caird have ultimately been dismissed.

“Roman directed it in Vienna, but he can’t work here because of his legal problems,” Steinman said, referring to Polanski’s indictment for statutory rape in the 1970′s. “He may be the first director who can’t work over here because of a statutory rape charge.” When queried about who then would be directing the New York run, Steinman was tight-lipped, but among those in attendance at the evening’s proceedings was Urinetown’s Tony-winning helmer, John Rando, who is now rumored to be in talks for the slot. Said Rando of the new show, “It takes the vampire myth and pokes fun at it, but it also embraces it. Its message is about the excesses of appetite. It has wit and an edge to it. I’d love to be involved!”

The presentation (at the 499-seat Little Shubert Theatre, about half a mile west of Broadway; events like this cause us rightfully to wonder why it doesn’t see more use) for a by-invitation-only crowd was kicked off by Ms. Love, Hole rocker and widow of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, in memorable form. Says a source in attendance, “You could sum it up in two words: too drunk. She was literally falling over. She wasn’t coherent at all.” Managing to gather herself enough to announce that Dance of the Vampires is a musical for people “who think musicals suck,” she didn’t manage to say much else of importance. “It just became a little too sloppy, and she was removed.” Insiders report that Steinman’s manager, David Sonenberg, who is also one of the show’s producers (and a first-timer at that), worried that those involved would be seen as taking advantage of a troubled addict. Ms. Love’s performance did little to dispel this perception. Lucky that representatives from noted L.A.-based promoter Concerts West, major music manager Irving Azoff (who numbers The Eagles, REO Speedwagon, Journey, Christina Aguilera, and Sammy Hagar among his clients), film and music mogul Jerry Weintraub, and Broadway’s own Barry and Fran Weissler were in attendance; a cash infusion from such sources may well be needed to save face if she can’t “live through this,” to twist a phrase from her 1994 album of the same name.

In addition to Sonenberg, already attached to Vampires on the producing side are Andrew Braunsberg (another first-timer, who also produced Polanski’s 1971 film version of Macbeth), Leonard Soloway, Bob Boyett (Sweet Smell of Success, Topdog/Underdog), Lawrence Horowitz (Electra, It Ain’t Nothing But the Blues), and Barry Diller and Bill Haber’s USA Ostar Theatricals. Boyett, a TV producer turned legit entrepreneur, used the phrases “trial by fire” and “going to war,” perhaps because while some novice producers just put up the money, get the credit and run, Boyett says he’s been taking the process very seriously: “I went to all the meetings and learned, like it was grad school.” While some Hollywood types find Broadway “less cutthroat,” Boyett finds it “more restrictive.” He mentions the sheer physical space of the theaters but also all the rules and regulations: "I’ve dealt with unions all my life, but I do find Actors’ Equity is very restrictive to the creative process.” Further, he regrets that Vampires will not have an out-of-town tryout. “I loved the experience of taking Sweet Smell of Success to Chicago,” he says with real enthusiasm, as if the project ended happily. “It was helpful to have the critics say what they did.” Not that Boyett thinks the right message from the critics got to the creative team. 

As for Boyett’s teammates, Bill Haber attended on behalf of USA Ostar, and although he wouldn’t consent to a formal interview, he couldn’t resist answering one question -- and it has nothing to do with Dance of the Vampires. Why is Haber’s other fall production, Imaginary Friends by Nora Ephron, being called a play if it has six songs by Marvin Hamlisch and Craig Carnelia? “It has nothing to do with how many songs there are,” he shot back. “It has to do with the fact that if you took all the songs out, it still works and you still have a play.”

And all this before we even get to the show itself. Vampires is your typical erotic musical about an innocent girl (played this evening by impressive newcomer Mandy Gonzalez, currently standing by for the role of Amneris in Aida and late of Off-Broadway’s Eli’s Comin’) choosing between two lovers, in this case an older, aristocratic vampire (Loaf, whose appearance here marks the first time he has worked with Steinman in theater since the early Seventies) and a hunky young grad student (Max von Essen, who reportedly also appeared in the Steinman/Caird-helmed reading in April 2001) under the tutelage of a rather intensely wacky vampire hunter (Crawford). Given the level of Loaf’s obvious commitment to the piece, it is surprising that his manager (Allen Kovac, of Left Bank Management) was a no-show, and in that light, rumors that Loaf has yet to formally sign on the dotted line for Vampires (in spite of previous announcements to the contrary, no less) prove even more curious. Calls to Kovac’s office were not returned. The rest of the cast, boasting some fine voices indeed, was filled out by assorted Broadway names and members of Meat Loaf’s long-time touring band, The Neverland Express, which also provided accompaniment for the evening under the crisp musical direction of veteran rock bassist Kasim Sulton (best known for his work with Todd Rundgren and Utopia, among others).

Speaking of the music: the score, as per Steinman’s usual style, is appropriately big and Wagnerian, with plenty of luscious, operatic melodies, including one familiar favorite that sticks out like a sore thumb: Steinman’s famous “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” under whose operatic pretensions I swooned as a teenager. “I couldn’t resist using it,” he says of a song that goes, ‘Once upon time there was light in my life / But now there’s only love in the dark.’ “I actually wrote it for another vampire musical that was based on Nosferatu, but never got produced.” Close listening to the CD sampler for interested investors also reveals a rehash of the vigorous “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young,” his song for the film Streets of Fire, which I saw in Los Angeles in 1984 and sent me racing along Mulholland Drive to keep up with the propulsive beat.

As for the new stuff, maybe 50′s rock ‘n’ roll with a 70′s preen isn’t what the 80-year-olds who constitute Broadway’s audience want to hear (and Jim’s rock-mock-Wagnerian shtick admittedly tends to play better in London and Las Vegas than in Manhattan), but my sources say they knew from the first number --  an angelic trio with a beguiling (what did they used to call it?) melody and some expert (the Andrews Sisters used to do it) harmony -- that this would be my kind of score. Frankly I’m glad; since the prehistoric vinyl days, Steinman has been the guy I keep calling for to rejuvenate, or just plain juvenate, the Broadway musical, in a world where the musical theater establishment pronounces old ABBA records a hip pop sound.

The book, while reportedly in better shape than the April reading, is something else again. From the excerpts on display last night, the mix of bawdy humor and eroticism still needs fine-tuning. Says Sonenberg, “By the time we open, it will be a new version of the show, significantly changed with a view toward a New York audience, but right now it plays very much like the original in several respects.” Adds David Ives, “The German production is probably more faithful to the film, but it’s a fairly humorless show, with people getting hit on the head with salami. And I’ve been brought in to take out the salami and put in the chorus girls, without veering into camp in the process. Now it’s just a question of finding the balance, which, needless to say, isn’t easy. But I like what we’ve accomplished so far: Meat’s character is vastly different, a much more multifaceted, dynamic, complete figure. We’ve also made other changes and cuts and restructured the show into a book musical, with dialogue; the original is all sung. I think we’ve made it a much more interesting story.”

Time, as always, will be the ultimate arbiter of fate.