David Spencer. Photo credit: Rose Billings
Hot off a successful run in Montreal, the original cast recording of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz tells the fascinating story of an ambitious young man who would seemingly stop at nothing to achieve his dreams.
Perhaps even more winding than its protagonist’s road to success is the show’s road to the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts. We sat down with David Spencer, who worked with Alan Menken to bring the story to life. He walked us through the challenges and wonders of bringing this show to Canada (and maybe beyond).
Could you tell me a little bit about the show, and the production in Montreal?
My first show was at The Public in 1984, I’d written an English adaptation of La Bohème. Right around that time, someone approached Alan Menken about Duddy Kravitz, and he thought that would be in my wheelhouse, so we started talking about it. We were eventually partnered with Austin Pendleton, who was then the director as well as the librettist. He had a co-librettist byline with Mordecai Richler [who wrote the book upon which the musical is based], who was alive and on hand at the time. They talked about stuff all the time, but really the hands-on writing was done by Austin. We went to the American Music Theatre Festival in Philadelphia. It was a terrific cast and a really noble try, but it didn’t quite work. Austin eventually got fired, though not by us.
I lobbied to take over as librettist, and after a lot of misadventures I was given the green light to do it. I tried very hard to do some kind of revisionist version of what we’d done in Philadelphia, because we had the score. But after a while, I just couldn’t make it work, and I realized I had to start from scratch. Of course, when you do that, and you come up with a new approach, and a new thematic center, what happens is that everything that doesn’t adhere to that has to go away. So, about three-quarters of the score that we had in Philadelphia went bye-bye. Basically, it became a new score. A new show with the same title.
We had many misadventures trying to get it on. Several readings, great and not-so-great. Through a series of serendipitous connections that are so insane that they still boggle my mind, we were connected with the Segal Centre. I got very hooked on a Canadian TV show called Republic of Doyle. Jonathan Monro [the musical director of Duddy Kravitz] was an actor, and was told by one of his collaborators that I was a fan of the show. I gave him a song for Krystin Pellerin [star of Republic of Doyle], which she loved, and he loved, and it was going to be included in their upcoming concert. Shortly thereafter, he called me and he said he wanted more of the score. So, with new orchestrations, we did three songs in front of the orchestra. Off of that experience, we started to talk about the show. Next thing we knew, we were networking in the Canadian theatrical community.
That was one thing that started the ball rolling. Now the other thing that happened, a whole other line of coincidences. A number of years ago, there was a musical theater writer who was based in Montreal named Elan Kunin. He came to New York for a number of weeks with a show also based on a Canadian classic, called Lies My Father Told Me. I’d written a book called The Musical Theatre Writer’s Survival Guide, and he contacted me on Facebook asking questions about it. Over the course of about two years, periodically we would chat on Facebook. Right around the time that we started networking Duddy, I was typing with Elan in Montreal, telling him what we were doing. He suggested the Segal Centre.
He spoke to his wife [Lisa Rubin], who was the artistic and executive director of the theater, and she was very interested. A day or two later, he called me and we met at a little Thai restaurant. It was one of those great meetings where you meet somebody and know you’re instantly in sync, and you know you’re in good hands, and you don’t have to test it. It doesn’t happen often, but with someone where you feel like you know them and they know you, you get each other. She just wanted to do it. She was as big a Broadway fangirl as I was a Canadian TV fanboy. That’s pretty much how it happened. I asked if Austin could direct it, and she said yes.
We had a great time. I think it was probably the best experience of my life, professionally. We had a great cast, some of the best actors in the land. Auditions were wonderful, rehearsals were wonderful. We had our bumps, but basically Montreal was wonderful.
That sounds incredible. It’s a winding road, but what an amazing story! If we could go back to the beginning of it all, what first drew you to this book and this story?
I have found that oftentimes when a project is brought to me, it’s not always oh gosh I have to do this. It’s sometimes the challenge of it, because I knew what other writers had faced. Ours was not the first adaptation. There was a Canadian version prior to ours, and their librettists were fired. We came on with the understanding that it was going to be an entirely new adaptation. Ours was the second version. Mine was the third book. There were little gaps and misadventures. There was a brief period where we didn’t have the rights, and there was a Yiddish version. Then we got the rights back, and more misadventures eventually led us to Canada.
When it was first thrown at me, I knew I understood the language and the characters – up to a point, in terms of them being urban Jewish characters. More was understanding the Canadian sensibility, which I didn’t have in me at the time. That was something I had to learn. But, it was more about how do I crack this? The challenge of it was the first thing that got me into it. Really caring about it happened a little bit of the way in. I knew I would care about it, but sometimes it’s really just that somebody threw a challenge at you. The story is very complex, it has an element of serious darkness to it, but it’s also very funny. It was just the challenge of finding a structure, and a way to make a morally ambiguous character empathetic, and to some degree sympathetic.
He’s definitely a very compelling protagonist. Do you have any future plans for the show?
We are talking with people about future productions now, which is not necessarily indicating that anything is definite yet. I’d love to have it done in New York. I’m hoping that the album is going to help. It’s been around for a while, and I think that up until the advent of the Canadian production that we had in Montreal, there was a sense that it had been shopped and shopped. When we did get to that production in Montreal, it found a new life and a new buzz. We sold out and extended twice. We came back with a kind of a new and refreshed life.
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is out now on Ghostlight Records. To order, visit sh-k-boom.com/duddykravitz
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Auriane Desombre
Auriane is a New York-based writer who's contributed to Cracked and Urbanette.com. She spends most of her time in student rush lines.
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The post Interview: Lyricist-Librettist David Spencer on Working with Alan Menken, Canadian Networking, and “Duddy Kravitz” appeared first on StageBuddy.com.