Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz by Greg Lawrence, John Kander, Fred Ebb Page A
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can’t tell you what that meant to me. I told him later outside the theater when Chicago opened how I always remembered that advice. Then he went around telling everyone, “I’m responsible for his entire career!” But I feel the same as you do. I loved him, that wonderful, impossible bear of a man.
EBB: We were extremely fortunate with the revivals of both Chicago and Cabaret , the most recent ones, but the fact is if I go see Cabaret today, I know I would want to change things. I saw Chicago recently and there were moments where I thought I could have written a better line, where I didn’t think a number was as good as it ought to be. Among other things that you taught me is to leave well enough alone. Don’t mess with it. I have to let it be because I may in fact ruin a number by refusing to leave it alone.
KANDER: Whenever you have a revival, you always find things that you want to change. When Cabaret , the show, first came out, it was considered highly innovative and it later influenced other shows. But by the time the first revival was mounted in 1987, it no longer seemed new to people. Even with some changes in the score and staging, it was more or less a re-creation of the original production.
EBB: Many people had already been exposed to it with the movie.
KANDER: In a way, Sam Mendes’s current production is like a renewed experience. The show suddenly seems innovative and daring in the way the original production seemed. But this same production in ten years would probably look very tired if we remounted it.
EBB: It would probably look tame in ten years.
KANDER: Sam’s production was done in London in 1993 at the Donmar Warehouse before it came to New York—
EBB: But I don’t think seeing it at the Donmar you would
for a second have thought the show would become the kind of hit that it has become. Sam’s artistry was not all that apparent to me then. I could see the production was very well done, but I thought the leading lady was terribly miscast, and I didn’t like it a hell of a lot.
KANDER: Oh, I did, though she was all wrong. I thought Sam’s concept was just brilliant, but it was made immensely better by Rob Marshall when it came to New York, and it was essentially the same concept. In the original Cabaret , we actually had two different orchestras. Within one large orchestra, there was the cabaret orchestra, and whenever we were doing a number there was a certain number of instruments that we used for that particular piece, and whenever we were doing integrated songs for scenes outside the Kit Kat Club, the orchestra was a different orchestra. That was all deliberate.
Orchestrally, I think this current production of Cabaret is ingenious because the orchestrator, Michael Gibson, created an orchestration which has more instrumental parts than we have performers. The entire cast is now the orchestra. All the performers have to play an instrument, and if one of the actors who is performing that evening plays the harp, she has a harp part, and if not, she will play another instrument. I don’t know how Michael did it even though we talked about it endlessly. You can recast that show all over the place and still have an orchestra and be able to switch instruments.
One of the reasons I don’t orchestrate is that I’m not very good at it. I can orchestrate if I have to, but not wonderfully. It’s also very time-consuming. You can’t stay home and orchestrate and go to rehearsal and write. All that you can do is supervise. Michael is like a musical right arm. What I get from him is exactly what I intend musically instead of someone coming in and trying to improve me. We will often talk on the phone, and he may say something like, “I hear an oboe here.” Then both of us will imagine
hearing that, and I may say, “That sounds good, but what if we tried …” We go back and forth that way. Since Woman of the Year, Michael has done most of our shows and we have a wonderful
EBB: We were extremely fortunate with the revivals of both Chicago and Cabaret , the most recent ones, but the fact is if I go see Cabaret today, I know I would want to change things. I saw Chicago recently and there were moments where I thought I could have written a better line, where I didn’t think a number was as good as it ought to be. Among other things that you taught me is to leave well enough alone. Don’t mess with it. I have to let it be because I may in fact ruin a number by refusing to leave it alone.
KANDER: Whenever you have a revival, you always find things that you want to change. When Cabaret , the show, first came out, it was considered highly innovative and it later influenced other shows. But by the time the first revival was mounted in 1987, it no longer seemed new to people. Even with some changes in the score and staging, it was more or less a re-creation of the original production.
EBB: Many people had already been exposed to it with the movie.
KANDER: In a way, Sam Mendes’s current production is like a renewed experience. The show suddenly seems innovative and daring in the way the original production seemed. But this same production in ten years would probably look very tired if we remounted it.
EBB: It would probably look tame in ten years.
KANDER: Sam’s production was done in London in 1993 at the Donmar Warehouse before it came to New York—
EBB: But I don’t think seeing it at the Donmar you would
for a second have thought the show would become the kind of hit that it has become. Sam’s artistry was not all that apparent to me then. I could see the production was very well done, but I thought the leading lady was terribly miscast, and I didn’t like it a hell of a lot.
KANDER: Oh, I did, though she was all wrong. I thought Sam’s concept was just brilliant, but it was made immensely better by Rob Marshall when it came to New York, and it was essentially the same concept. In the original Cabaret , we actually had two different orchestras. Within one large orchestra, there was the cabaret orchestra, and whenever we were doing a number there was a certain number of instruments that we used for that particular piece, and whenever we were doing integrated songs for scenes outside the Kit Kat Club, the orchestra was a different orchestra. That was all deliberate.
Orchestrally, I think this current production of Cabaret is ingenious because the orchestrator, Michael Gibson, created an orchestration which has more instrumental parts than we have performers. The entire cast is now the orchestra. All the performers have to play an instrument, and if one of the actors who is performing that evening plays the harp, she has a harp part, and if not, she will play another instrument. I don’t know how Michael did it even though we talked about it endlessly. You can recast that show all over the place and still have an orchestra and be able to switch instruments.
One of the reasons I don’t orchestrate is that I’m not very good at it. I can orchestrate if I have to, but not wonderfully. It’s also very time-consuming. You can’t stay home and orchestrate and go to rehearsal and write. All that you can do is supervise. Michael is like a musical right arm. What I get from him is exactly what I intend musically instead of someone coming in and trying to improve me. We will often talk on the phone, and he may say something like, “I hear an oboe here.” Then both of us will imagine
hearing that, and I may say, “That sounds good, but what if we tried …” We go back and forth that way. Since Woman of the Year, Michael has done most of our shows and we have a wonderful
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