Dueling Lysistratas

They say all is fair in love and war, but when Hollywood squares off against Cambridge, things can get messy.

When Robert Brustein, Theater Hall of Famer and artistic director of the Harvard-affiliated American Repertory Theatre (ART), chose his last production before his June retirement, he selected an ancient story which incorporates both love and war—Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.

Somewhere along the line, however, the drama with this Lysistrata shifted from onstage to behind-the-scenes.

With two lyricists and two composers out, a writer dismissed, and hurt feelings on all sides, Brustein still searches for a final triumph amidst the chaos.

SIMPLE BEGINNINGS

“Since it was going to be my last show as artistic director at the ART,” Brustein says, “I thought it might be a good idea to turn it into a reunion of people who we love to work with.”

Toward that end, Brustein assembled a team including Tony Award-winning actress Cherry Jones, a founding member of the ART, and writer Larry Gelbart, creator of the hit TV series M*A*S*H* and bookwriter of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum. Brustein also enlisted the help of production designer Michael Yeargan and director Andrei Serban.

In order to meet an accelerated rehearsal schedule, Gelbert continuously e-mailed pieces of his script to Brustein for his approval as artistic director.

But even before Brustein began to review his work, Gelbart admits he was nervous about creating the right tone for the piece.

“I hesitated,” he says of his reaction to Brustein’s initial proposal. “I didn’t hesitate to say ‘yes,’ but... Iwasn’t sure I could be bawdy enough, either.”

Gelbart remarks that Aristophanes’ script demands an explicit style.

“The tone is very overtly sexual because [the play] deals with sexual politics,” elaborates Gelbart.

However, Gelbart maintains that he was assured by Brustein that he “welcomed” the raciness of the script as appropriate.

What began to take shape, Gelbart says, was “a very funny, explicitly vulgar play.”

And it would appear that Brustein appreciated such humor, according to his e-mails responding to the snippets he was receiving.

“I love it so much I’m almost willing to give up sex myself,” wrote Brustein in an e-mail dated March 19, 2001.

Indeed, the script seemed headed for success even after the production schedule was pushed back to allow Gelbart more time to write.

“The new stuff is priceless,” Brustein writes in an e-mail dated just over four months later, “The more you write, the more it seems as if you know our acting company inside out—the roles are perfect for them.”

Gelbart, too, celebrated the collaboration.

“It was enjoyable,” he says looking back. “[It was} made even more enjoyable by Brustein’s wildly enthusiastic comments.”

As they hummed along, the two seemed little bothered by the departure of the original songwriting duo of Arnold Weinstein and William Bolcom, whom they quickly replaced with Academy Award-winning composer Alan Mencken (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) and Tony Award-winning lyricist (and Harvard Law School grad) David Zippel (City of Angels).

Brustein was impressed by the new team’s music, and wrote, shortly after receiving a sample of the music, “The CD arrived and it’s glorious.”

And yet, nary a month later, Gelbart, Mencken and Zippel were all gone from the project, and the relationship between Gelbart and Brustein had become tabloid fodder.

THE “DEAR LARRY LETTER”

The situation may have begun to sour when Yeargan refused to design the play after seeing the script. He “could not bring himself” to do it, reports Brustein.

The nail in the coffin probably came, though, when Jones refused to perform the script as written.

“It wasn’t the vulgarity was the problem, it was that [the script] was unsuccessful,” she explains.

Jones cites the excessive length of Gelbart’s script as a large part of the problem, but stresses her eagerness to remain involved with the project and work with Brustein.

“We would do anything for Bob,” she says. “We just weren’t the people to do the script.”

But whoever or whatever killed the project, once it became apparent that the production could not be mounted, it was up to Brustein to inform his old friend that his script would not premiere on an ART stage.

“This is one of the hardest letters I’ve ever had to write,” begins Brustein in what Gelbart has termed the “Dear Larry” letter in which the artistic director officially removed the writer from the project.

Brustein emphasizes that he had no choice, due to the demands of others, but to drop the script.

“There was no room for argument,” he writes. “My dilemma was either to go ahead with you, Alan, and David, and find a new Lysistrata, plus a new director and designer, or go ahead with my original plan to end my time here with a project from Andrei, Cherry, and the company.”

DENOUEMENT

“I just had miscalculated because I put together a playwright who is essentially a wordsmith...with a director who is essentially an auteur,” explains Brustein.

He also stressed the changing face of the production that resulted from Gelbart’s desire to work with Mencken and Zippel.

“There [was] a growing camp...not the camp of the ART, but that of the commercial theater,” and, as Brustein explains, “We wanted to get back to the purity of the original idea.”

Faced with a commitment to the Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia, which contracted to host the production immediately following its ART premiere, Brustein started from scratch to write his own adaptation. Working around the clock, he produced a first draft in just seven days.

“I got sick, partly a result of all of this,” Brustein says, “I took to my bed for about three weeks and I brought my computer.”

Through the Prince Music Theatre, Brustein connected with lyricist Matty Selman and later with Grammy Award-winning composer Galt MacDermott (Hair), who continue to work on writing songs as the first preview (May 10) rapidly approaches.

Though rehearsals have been somewhat rushed, Jones comments she is pleased with the journey.

“It’s a completely bi-polar experience,” she says, “We have moments of ‘eureka’ and moments of wanting to pull our hair out.”

She also emphasizes the flexible nature of Brustein’s script—so flexible in fact, that both Brustein and the ART company may recieve writing credit in the show’s program.

The new script promises not to forsake the sort of vulgarity appropriate to any adaptation of Lysistrata. Says Jones, “We’re doing our best to make it bawdy, becase that was Aristophanes.”

Yet, it’s tough not to wonder what the original collaboration might have been produced. Says Brustein, in retrospect, “It was theoretically a marvleous team.”