In 1996, the New York State Theatre Institute produced "The Snow Queen," a musical by Richard Peaslee, who wrote the score for the Royal Shakespeare Company's MARAT/SADE, and the wonderful Adrian Mitchell, lyricist for the MARAT/SADE. I had loved the MARAT/SADE score so I was happy to be asked to work with Richard.
NYSTI had done the show about 10 years earlier, when it was scored by Bruce Coughlin, and I think Richard was unhappy that I was working on this revised version. Peaslee, Coughlin, and I were credited for the orchestration, although at least 50% of the scoring was mine and the other half was revised by me to work with the 5-piece band. Richard did very little, which was frustrating, and at one point to get him motivated, since Pat Birch had asked him for weeks for a dance arrangement for the Crows' dance and he was unable to provide it, NYSTI brought Dennis Buck up from Manhattan to write an arrangement. This gave Richard a blueprint to work from and he finally produced the dance music that I scored.
I loved working with Pat and the NYSTI folk, but it was not a pleasant experience. When the script was published, I was the only person on the NYSTI production whose name was omitted from the credits. I haven't seen Richard since then, and - while I think his music is wonderful - I really have little to say about him that's kind. Adrian Mitchell, who died recently, was the opposite, a kind and generous man I liked very much.
Still, the music from the show is glorious, and I wish we'd recorded it in Troy in 1996 with the full band, rather than the synthesizers they used in London. There were also song changes made for London, but I'm not sure if the two or three new songs are better than what they replaced.
I just discovered the audiobook made of the London production is available from audible.com as a download, so I bought it yesterday. There's one cast change from the Troy production, but a lot of my NYSTI friends are in it, and it's fun to hear. The story's my favorite Hans Christian Andersen story, and the production was funny, ingenious, and extremely moving. I wept through several rehearsals and performances when Gerda left her granny's rose-covered garden to give up everything to save her friend Kai from the Snow Queen before his heart turns to ice and he loses his soul.
