When I bump into the three-times Oscar-winning musical composer Stephen Schwartz on a Southwark street I can tell that he is, despite the opaque wraparound sunglasses, hiding his eyes.
“One’s face is all over the internet,” he says later when we are safely sitting at a bar table in the Menier Chocolate Factory, the tiny, big-hitting venue which is home to much of London’s most eye-catching musical theatre. Its latest production is The Baker’s Wife, starring Lucie Jones and Clive Rowe in the title roles.
“You’ve heard of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame,” continues Schwartz. “Well, the joke my friends say is that I have 15 blocks of fame. They are in Manhattan from 42nd Street to 57th Street on the West Side. There, I am mobbed.” He’s exaggerating for comic effect.
Village scandal: Lucie Jones in The Baker's Wife
If he has no wish to embrace celebrity culture, he is also suspicious of some of the new controversial doctrines that have arisen in his industry, such as the notion of cultural appropriation.
“Whatever I’m writing, I try to get inside each one of my characters and look at their world through his or her eyes. That’s the job. So to say I’m only allowed to write from my own life experience flies in the face of what the what the task actually is.”
Perhaps he was not exaggerating about being mobbed when walking through the 15 blocks of New York’s theatre-land. Musical theatre’s home city is not known for its reserve when it comes to adoring its heroes. And with Schwartz there is a lot to adore. He exploded onto the theatre scene in 1970 with Godspell. Then came Pippin, the rites-of-passage fable following the young son of a Roman Emperor.
“The shows I have done have taken one of two trajectories,” he observes. “They either did not work initially or they were hits like Godspell, Pippin or Wicked.”
Ah yes, Wicked, the Wizard of Oz prequel based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, the show whose big number Defying Gravity made Idina Menzel a star.
Idina Menzel arriving at an award ceremony in Los Angeles last year
However, The Baker’s Wife most definitely belongs to the “didn’t work initially” category. The out-of-town try-out tour was in 1974. Schwartz was then a 26-year-old hit machine and had teamed up with Joseph Stein whose reputation had been immortalised as the book writer of Fiddler on the Roof.
Stein had adapted Marcel Pagnol’s Provencal-set comedy film of 1938, La Femme du Boulanger. It is a work in which close-knit village life dovetails into big emotions. When a stranger eyes the wife (Jones in the Menier production) of the village baker (Rowe), village gossip rises to scandal.
Back in 1974, producer David Merrick was so unhappy with the badly received out-of-town try-out tour, he stole the sheet music of the show’s signature tune Meadowlark which Merrick believed was one of the causes of the show’s woes.
Today it is the musical’s stand-out tune and for Jones, a previous Elphaba in the London run of Wicked, the song is to The Baker’s Wife what Defying Gravity is to Wicked.
“I’ve been under the weather and I can’t wait to give it the full beans,” she tells me later. “The end of Meadowlark is thrilling. When I’m back to full health I can’t wait to have the feeling of that moment.”
Lucie Jones as Genevieve and Clive Rowe as Aimable in The Baker's Wife
Jones is aware of the show’s history of troubles and has read Patti LuPone’s account of her unhappy experience. She starred with Chaim Topol who was reportedly one of the show’s problems and later one of a few creatives to be sacked. LuPone reportedly said he was unprofessional.
“Then in the 1980s, Trevor Nunn kept hearing songs from the show from performers who were auditioning for Les Misérables,” says Schwartz. “He got in touch with me and asked about doing a production. And so then Joe Stein and I worked with Trevor and I have always and continue to credit Trevor with solving the show’s problems for us.”
Schwartz adds: “I did find Topol unhelpful while we were developing the original production. Joe and David had wanted Zero Mostel, but when Mr. Mostel decided to do a high-paying tour of Fiddler instead, it was Merrick who pushed for Topol. He felt his name would be a good selling point and that, having successfully played another of Joe's memorable characters, he would be good for this, too. Topol resisted playing an older man who doesn't seem immediately virile and in charge. This obviously got in the way of the story arc. But while Topol wasn't a helpful collaborator, I don't blame him for the problems of that original production.”
Chaim Topol played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
Despite memories of some pretty brutal reviews during that first try-out, Schwartz is not opposed to using what theatre critics say is part of the creative process. On more than one occasion he has collected all the notices together from try-outs and used them see what might be going wrong.
“Things emerge. I did the same for Wicked when we opened out of town in San Francisco.” And does he read them after a show opens on Broadway?
“To what end? I once read somewhere, that compliments are just criticisms in disguise. Good responses are even more destructive than bad because you get hungry for it.”
Schwartz counts himself lucky that he knew from a very young age what he was going to do. He was once taken to a Broadway show that was written by his neighbour, the composer George Kleinsinger. The show was not a success. But “the fire was lit,” says Schwartz. “I was maybe nine and immediately thought, ‘This is the world where I want to be.’”
Prior to that evening, Schwartz would occasionally visit Kleinsinger next door while the composer was playing the piano. Even though the boy could not play an instrument he would play his own response to Kleinsinger’s music on the composer’s piano. Schwartz was so good, Kleinsinger told Schwartz’s parents that they must buy their son a piano and lessons.
“Musical ability is inherited rather than learned,” says Schwartz. “That’s why you have musical prodigies. It is as inherited as eye colour.”
Baker's dozen: A scene from The Baker's Wife by Stephen Schwartz
That said, the root of his talent was not his parents Sheila, a teacher, and Stanley, a businessman and entrepreneur whose projects resulted in a “very up-and-down childhood” for Schwartz and his sister. One minute the Schwartzs were well off thanks to the success of one of Stanley’s products, a projector for businesses that used polarised light, the next, sales would drop and they were relatively hard up.
“They are not musical at all,” he says. “Music was just something I had.”
It is striking that when Schwartz, 76, speaks of his parents he uses the present tense. “ ‘Are’ not musical?”, I ask.
“My dad is 104 and my mother is 99. If she makes it another year I’m calling TV stations. They still live in their apartment. They have some help but they’re trundling along.”
Their son, meanwhile, is as energetic as ever. While he is working on the London revival of The Baker’s Wife, a new musical is about to receive its world premiere in Boston, the same city where The Baker’s Wife started, though not the same theatre.
“It’s called The Queen of Versailles and is about Jackie Siegel, the wife of the American [Jewish] timeshare mogul David Siegel.”
Jackie built America’s biggest home inspired by the palace of the same name. “It’s a lot about American values and income inequality. But it’s comic of course.”
What interests him about that story? “I think again it has a lot to do with how people are seen and what they really are. What are they presenting in order to meet their goals of becoming rich and famous? And why is becoming rich and famous the central goal of somebody’s life?”
On top of that, there is also the much-anticipated two-part movie version of Wicked to look forward to. The first part arrives in cinemas in November and boasts Ariana Grande in the role of Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. The consensus is that this is an inspired piece of casting. Was Schwartz involved?
“Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible was my suggestion. I did see screen tests for Glinda and Elphaba, and Ariana and Cynthia were just the best for the roles.”
Behind Schwartz, the musical director is patiently waiting to go over some notes made during the first previews of Gordon Greenberg’s production.
This may be a revival, but the work ethic Schwartz is bringing to the production is as strong as he would for a new show. “I thought maybe he’ll come in and watch a run through or something,” says Jones after Schwartz joins his musical director for a meeting.
“But he came and did a music call and we sang through the whole show and he worked through every single moment. I still think ‘Holy s***! You are the greatest living composer in contemporary musical theatre. Hands down. And here I am working for you!’”
The Baker’s Wife is at The Menier Chocolate Factory until September. menierchocolatefactory.com
