Kathleen Marshall, far right, in front of a mirror at a Manhattan rehearsal studio, working on her latest project.
In a recent rehearsal for her new musical, "Nice Work If You Can Get It," Kathleen Marshall showed actor Matthew Broderick how to propel both legs in the air with a flying kick while gripping two chorus girls alongside him. After a vague look of horror crossed his face, he gave it a try. Ms. Marshall beamed, then pressed on to the next sequence, instructing the dancers: "Now we're going to start getting him undressed."
As a director-choreographer with an old soul's love of classic musicals, Ms. Marshall has built a reputation for taking material from a bygone era and getting it to resonate with modern audiences—whether that means throwing in a daring dance move, injecting humor into a scene or stripping off some costumes. The theater veteran, who started as an assistant choreographer in the early 1990s, is now embarked on "Nice Work," an original musical about a 1920s playboy and a bootlegger, with a range of songs by George and Ira Gershwin. It's set to begin performances March 29 on Broadway. The show follows her hit production of "Anything Goes," which won the 2011 Tony Award for best musical revival and netted her a third best-choreography Tony.
Nicholas Heavican for The Wall Street JournalDRAW A MAP: Kathleen Marshall draws 'ground plans' that note performers' positions on the stage with x's, similar to a football diagram. This is a plan for a scene in 'Nice Work If You Can Get It.'
The Smith College alum starts with research. For "Nice Work," she and her creative team plunged into 1920s music, listening to tunes by big-band jazz innovator Fletcher Henderson and greats like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. She obsessed over the Gershwin songbook. "It feels like every night, there's a different song that's rummaging around in my head," she said. She studied period speaking and singing styles, listening to recordings of Helen Kane, often cited as a model for Betty Boop, and Gertrude Lawrence, the first person to perform the Gershwins' "Someone to Watch Over Me."
Ms. Marshall maps out the blueprint for each number weeks ahead of time. For "Nice Work," she locked herself in a studio with collaborators, including musical supervisor David Chase, recording the choreography and putting the footage on her laptop. She also uses chess pieces to help block scenes involving lots of characters. She tracks other details, like calculating when performers can catch their breath, since actors can't dance at full tilt at the same time they're supposed to belt out a solo.
In rehearsal, often clad in black with a sweatshirt cinched around her waist, the 49-year-old mother of twin toddlers—her husband is Scott Landis, a "Nice Work" producer—speak-sings the lyrics as she shows the moves to her cast before a mirror. Recently, as a pianist launched into a tune, she called out instructions to the beat—"one, two, and bah and bah"—and used shorthand like "that has two hips" and "toss this on that downbeat."
Her choreography draws from an established vocabulary—yes, there are jazz hands, the familiar cabaret-style hand waggling, in "Anything Goes"—or ideas she finds by chance. When Hurricane Floyd raged outside as she choreographed "Kiss Me Kate" in 1999, Ms. Marshall drew from its manic energy and sideways-sweeping rain. The song "Too Darn Hot" ended up including a sequence dubbed "The Floyd," a series of flick-kicks with sharp, audible exhales by the dancers, who moved in fast unison until the end, when they dropped to the floor, fizzling out like a spent storm.
Enlarge Image
Close Nicholas Heavican for The Wall Street JournalVARY THE VIEW: In rehearsals, Ms. Marshall consults a binder full of set renderings (photographs of small-scale models) to help her envision the flow of dance numbers and other scenes.
Knowing the costumes and set early on also helps: For "Nice Work," Ms. Marshall studied footage of dances by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in which Ms. Rogers is wearing trousers. Then Ms. Marshall studied photographs of a dollhouse model of the set. That helped her plot a number with Mr. Broderick and the brassy, pants-clad heroine played by Kelli O'Hara in which the two share a romantic and sweeping spin to "'S Wonderful."
When Ms. Marshall is stumped, she focuses on the story instead of the steps. "I have to know who is dancing and why," she said. She hit such a snag with the company-picnic number in "The Pajama Game." She thought the sight of disparate factory workers dancing in unison looked artificial—"It felt like we were at the theme park," she said—so she had the performers play picnic games like tug of war and sack races to find an organic way in to the number that still highlighted the individual personalities of the characters.
In staging revivals, Ms. Marshall must contend with the ghosts of Broadway legends. To put her mark on "Steam Heat," a number in "The Pajama Game" famous for the movements of Bob Fosse, its iconic choreographer, she added a new story line to the dance: A boyish heroine in a suit blossoms into a woman with the help of a sexy corset. Her brother, stage and film director Rob Marshall, saw an early performance and suggested a tweak: The dancer's bowler hat could get tossed up from the orchestra pit in a sly twist. She used the idea.
Having grown up playing classics like "Funny Girl" and "The Music Man" until the records skipped, the former dancer from Pittsburgh channels her fascination with old Broadway into her work. But not all her efforts are about finding new steps. She quotes a famous stage direction to fidgety actors, "Don't just do something, stand there." "Knowing when to be still," she said, "can be very compelling, too."
No comments:
Post a Comment