Well, dear readers, boy did yesterday’s notes bring back a lot of things I’d completely forgotten about. And what fun to remember them after all these years. After the whole Start At The Top adventure, my acting career continued and so did my writing shows. I got a call from the head of the theater department at LACC asking me if I’d write some songs for their upcoming production of The Comedy Of Errors by Mr. William Shakespeare. I’d played a Dromio in a production at the school back in 1966, which was directed by this same person, James McCloskey. I went and met with him. He told me the show was going to be their entry in the American College Theatre Festival. I came on board, because it sounded like fun. I’d actually written two songs for the production I was in, although neither of them ended up in what would become a complete musical version of the play. I had a great time writing the songs, taking my cues from things in the text. We didn’t have a lot of great singers in the show, but we did have one gal who’d been in Start At The Top, and I knew I could write her a showstopper and that she’d blow the roof off the theater. For her, I came up with a song called What Do I Do Now? You can hear it (as sung by Michelle Nicastro and orchestrated by our very own Larry Moore) on my Shakespeare On Broadway CD. Mr. McCloskey wanted to have Zanies, four comic people to do all the scene changes and stuff. I wrote a big title song to open the show, which they and the full company did, and then I wrote scene change comedy bits for them for each scene change. Randall Edwards designed a brilliant set of revolving panels and elevated playing areas, with the band onstage on an elevated platform. I asked a student named Gary Stockdale to musical direct – he was there as an actor, but he was a terrific musician and pianist. He said yes, and the show basically changed his life and he became a very successful orchestrator, composer, and arranger who is still very active in the music world today. I also agreed to play second keyboard, and we had drums and bass, as well. I was also asked to stage all the musical numbers, which I did, and which I loved doing. The night we opened the show went amazingly well. The audience ate it up, cheering and laughing and several of the numbers got really wonderful reactions. Valerie Gillette, who did What Do I Do Now, did indeed blow the roof off the theater. The act one finale also brought the house down – a number called Things Are So Strange, wherein the entire cast recaps musically everything we’ve seen, with some very energetic staging. The act two opener, Where Is My Man also got an incredible reaction (with adjusted lyrics, the song would end up in The First Nudie Musical – and then would be cut prior to the film’s release – it’s on the DVD and CD). But none of that compared to Dr. Pinch’s Song, which I wrote as a kind of rhythm and blues rock wah-wah guitar number with backup group. It literally stopped the show cold. Every performance was like that – in fact, I’d never seen anything like it – laughs always in exactly the same places, and exactly the same reaction to each number.
We were chosen to be in the finals for the Festival. It was us and about five other shows. We were to do the show in Long Beach. As fate would have it, I got a part on MASH, which was shooting the week of our performance. I was assured I’d be out in time on the day of our show in Long Beach. As usual, things ran late and I didn’t get out of there until around six-thirty. Trying to get to Long Beach from Westwood at six-thirty (for a seven-thirty curtain) was insanity, but they couldn’t start without me. I literally arrived at 7:26, went directly up to the band platform and the show began on time. The performance was fantastic with great audience reaction. In the end, we were not chosen to go to the Festival (the winner went to Washington to perform the show). Instead of a terrific original musical, they chose a pretentious Kabuki production. No one, not even the Kabuki production, could believe it. But people who saw our show still remember it, and when it came time to do the 75th Anniversary Show for the theater department a few years ago, Miss Valerie Gillette came back and did What Do I Do Now, sounding as great as she had close to forty years prior, and we restaged the act one finale as our act one finale. They’ve talked to me several times about doing the show again, but it’s never happened.
My next show after The Comedy Of Errors happened because my cousin Alan had been hanging out with my family a lot, and he’d met my friend Dee Dee and they’d married. We ate a lot of huge and wonderful meals together, and somehow out of all that I came up with the idea for a musical about food, which I called Feast – the story took place at a club for food lovers, where they’d arrive and spend however much time (a week, a weekend – don’t really remember), eating, eating, and eating. In between eating, they would do musical numbers about their food fetishes, needs, desires – we even did a food ballet. Unlike Start At The Top, this was an idea and show that did play to my strengths, because all of it was comedic. It was an ensemble cast, and a terrific one at that. My friend Alan Abelew came back to do it, then student Diana Canova was in it, casting director Caro Jones’s son was in it – a very strong cast. Rehearsals were a blast. I directed it and staged the numbers. We were upstairs in the small theater and the show was an immediate sell out – I think we did six or seven performances. The reaction was great. The fellow who would end up being the co-director of The First Nudie Musical came to see it and flipped out – he wanted to make a film of it. And then there was the night when the entire Partridge Family gang came – Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, Susan Dey, the producers Mel Swope, Bill Bickley, and Michael Warren and maybe Dave Madden. It was a really sharp show that night, and they loved it. At that time I think I was about to do what would be my final episode, the one on the cruise ship. But they loved Feast so much that they wanted to bring that character back and have him write an amateur theatrical show for a theater in Bakersfield, where the character lived. They wanted to use the food ballet number. I gave them my blessing. Unfortunately, the episode never happened and the show went off the air. But they did write the episode and I have it somewhere.
Feast was a fantastic experience. A short time later a friend asked me to help a director who was struggling with Plautus’ The Manaechmus Twins, which was the show that inspired Shakespeare’s The Comedy Of Errors. Since it was territory that I knew, I came in and wrote and staged a couple of numbers, but the director just didn’t know what he was doing, and the producer finally asked me to take over. Once I said yes, I added quite a few more songs, brought in Diana Canova and my friend Becky Logan and a couple of other City College folks and we put it all together in a hurry. It was better than it had any right to be, getting lots of laughs, and I had some real fun staging the twenty minute finale of the show – a real feat of legerdemain as I had one actor playing one set of twins, and one actor playing the other set of twins. I devised a very clever way of having the actor play both twins onstage at the same time – it really was funny. Up to then, I’d gotten fairly good reviews for my writing. This time, a man named Lawrence Christon reviewed us for the LA Times. And he HATED the show and acted like I was the devil incarnate for having wrought it. It was, in fact, one of the most vicious reviews I’ve ever seen, before or since. But the audiences enjoyed it and I was asked to do another show and I offered them Feast, which they thought sounded like a fine idea. That production wasn’t quite as good as the one at City College, but it was still fun. We had many of the same cast members. Once again, Mr. Christon showed up and once again he gave us a scathing review. I believe it began “The oleaginous Bruce Kimmel is back.” It was vicious beyond belief. It would be the last time he reviewed a show of mine, but not for want of his trying. During that time, I was working on the screenplay of The First Nudie Musical. And I just took the Diana Canova and Alan Abelew characters from Feast and plopped them into Nudie Musical, where they worked equally as well.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because the hour is late and I am tired and you’ll know the reason why as soon as you get to the next section. For now, I leave you with the opening lyric of a song from Feast, sung by one of the characters performing his food love for the rest of the company (each character performed their food “deal” as a performance number, like a talent show). The character was dressed in full Harry Belafonte garb and had four backup singers behind him:
Food
Me say food, me say food, me say food, me say food
Oh, how we all love the cheap food!
I love the tacos and I love french fries
I love the malts and shakes and the chili size
But when I’ve had all them I simply must come back
(Must come back)
Daylight come and me wanna Big Mac.
Yesterday was a really long, involved day. I got up a little later than planned and did the long jog right away. I then had to deal with an annoying e-mail, an adjunct to the annoying e-mail of last Friday. I dealt with it swiftly and strongly, and then e-mailed the legal department at MGM – they understood what was going on and told me to simply refer these “people” to them, which is what in essence I did anyway. The CDs arrived and it was madness but we got all the Kritzerland orders boxed up and to the post office in two hours. I then had some supper with the Druxmans, and then helper and I boxed up the big online orders and then took those to the post office, where I deposited them in the drop box. So, with the exception of the biggest online order (which goes out first thing this morning), everything is shipped and should be arriving soon. After all that, it was ten o’clock and I was too pooped to pop although I did try popping, unsuccessfully. I was also too popped to poop, but that’s entirely another story for another day.
Today, I have to take a LOT of big, heavy boxes to UPS first thing this morning. Then I must go the the Wood of West for a noon lunch meeting. After that, I’ll return to the home environment, do some work, ship out some orders that arrived late last night, and perhaps be able to relax a little and maybe even soothe my aching muscles in the Jacuzzi.
Tomorrow, I have a hair appointment with Teddy and then a lunch with Mr. Barry Pearl. On Thursday I’ll be taping a radio show with Mr. Donald Feltham, all about Anya.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog, ship a lot of big, heavy boxes, have a noon lunch meeting, and then try to relax and catch up with several telephonic calls and whatnot. Today’s topic of discussion: What are the wildest and weirdest productions of Shakespeare plays that you’ve ever seen – ones that really did far-out things or went in crazy directions – different periods, weird stagings, all of it. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland.