'Sweet Smell of Success' hits stages
By Michael Kuchwara
Associated Press
NEW YORK — The film was a classic of its kind. A dark, brooding slice of 1950s New York City night life, an unsparing examination of the seamy side of show biz, a world of gossip, rumor, innuendo and power.
Filmed in the moodiest of blacks and whites, it was punctuated by Elmer Bernstein's jazz score and starred Burt Lancaster as a ruthless newspaper columnist and Tony Curtis as the toadiest of press agents.
Now "The Sweet Smell of Success," originally a long short story by Lehman, has been reinvented as a $10 million Broadway musical, the most widely anticipated show of the new year. Currently in previews at Chicago's Shubert Theatre, it premieres there Jan. 13 and arrives in New York in late February. An opening is scheduled for March 14 at the Martin Beck Theatre.
"The movie is a starting point only — an inspiration," says the musical's director, Nicholas Hytner. "It provides us with the characters and certain basic events. Thereafter, we are on our own."
Interest in "The Sweet Smell of Success" is high, not only because of the production's platinum-plated source material. There's the caliber of its collaborators, too.
In the early 1990s, Hytner was the man responsible for reimagining Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel," first in London and then at New York's Lincoln Center. His designer for that memorable production, Bob Crowley, will do the same for "Sweet Smell."
Reworking the story is playwright John Guare, author of "The House of Blue Leaves" and "Six Degrees of Separation." Music is by Marvin Hamlisch, composer of "A Chorus Line" and "They're Playing Our Song." Lyrics are by Craig Carnelia, a favorite of discerning cabaret artists who have given several of his songs, particularly "The Kid Inside" and "Pictures in the Hall," cult status.
And its stars? John Lithgow, last seen on Broadway in 1988 in "M. Butterfly," plays J.J. Hunsecker, the Walter Winchell-inspired columnist. Brian d'Arcy James, best known for "Titanic" on Broadway and the off-Broadway version of "The Wild Party," portrays Sidney Falco, the obsequious flack who does Hunsecker's dirty dealing. In this case, the deeds involve breaking up the romance between Hunsecker's young sister (played by Kelli O'Hara) and a jazz musician (Jack Noseworthy).
The musical was the brainchild of Hollywood producer David Brown who took the idea to Canadian impresario Garth Drabinsky. He, in turn, hired Guare, who was a big fan of the film. "I remember the night I first saw the movie — I was a junior at Georgetown," recalls the 63-year-old Guare. "I sat through it twice."
Yet the playwright didn't see it again until he was hired to do the adaptation — with no composer or lyricist in sight. "Garth believed that the book had to be ready first," Guare says. A complete draft was finished before Hamlisch and Carnelia were considered. The songwriters were put together at the urging of Drabinsky associate Marty Bell.
"They first wrote four songs — and three of those four are still in the show," says Guare.
The musical has been percolating for four years. During the musical's first workshop in Toronto, Drabinsky's company, Livent, went bust and the rights to the show were in limbo.
Today, the musical has a parade of producers including Bell, Brown, Bob and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax fame, and, most prominently, Clear Channel Entertainment, which had inherited much of Livent's properties.
On the Web:
sweetsmellthemusical.com
