I think I can say that the new musical is entitled The Roxy and concerns the meeting of a young lad who wants to be a Roxy Usher in 1939 because he feels it will be the start of his realizing his dreams and finding his life, and the gangster Louis Lepke. It's got some comedy (not enough, actually), but is equally a dramatic musical with a lot of fun stuff thrown in, i.e. numbers that take place at the Roxy, where they did stage shows - we've got real-life characters like Sophie Tucker and the Nicholas Brothers - one of the things I've done is to make sure that the Roxy numbers are never there for no reason - they always come out of or precede sequences where they comment on the action, much like the cabaret numbers in Cabaret. They used to just sort of happen for no reason.
It's becoming a very interesting show, but there is much to do to get it right and sometimes it's hard to get the authors off things they're in love with, but they've been really good eggs about ultimately doing it. I don't think there's anything that I've asked them to think about that they haven't thought about and then done. The show last night was much more focused in its storytelling than the unwieldy mess they had last February, and the score is coming together, but it still needs some major work.
