The Muny's Paul Blake sings a new song

Source: St.迷你倉 Louis Post-DispatchJan. 05--Paul Blake was feeling very, very good."Life is exciting," he said by phone from his office in New York last month. "The holidays are here, the streets of Manhattan are jammed with people, and I have a show on Broadway."It's sort of what he had in mind in 2011, when he stepped down after 22 years as the Muny's executive producer. He was succeeded by Broadway producer Mike Isaacson of Fox Theatricals.At the time, Blake declared that he was ready to begin his "third act." Now, he says, that act looks "Beautiful."Blake is the lead producer of "Beautiful," a musical about songwriter and performer Carole King.The show concentrates on her early days in the music business, when the nervy Brooklyn teenager scored a job writing chart-toppers at the legendary Brill Building. Now in previews, "Beautiful" officially opens at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on Jan. 12.The show is generating "a lot of strong buzz on the street," said Stages St. Louis executive producer Jack Lane, who plans to see it this month. "It could be the sleeper hit of the year."Lane -- one of the producers of the Broadway hit "Peter and the Starcatcher," which comes to the Peabody in March -- pointed out that the reviews from San Francisco, where "Beautiful" tried out, were terrific. Furthermore, he said, "everyone is crazy about Jessie Mueller (who plays King)."This will make her a star."The show is packed with songs written by King, working with and without former husband Gerry Goffin, and by their friends Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, another songwriting couple. It adds up to a trip down memory lane: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?," "Up on the Roof," "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," "So Far Away," "I Feel The Earth Move" and more.At an early reading, Blake said, Disney Theatrical Group president Thomas Schumacher "came up to me with tears in his eyes and said, 'You have made a "Jersey Boys" for women.'"That's considerable praise for a show that almost didn't happen.Blake has had other successful shows. One of his movie-inspired Muny productions, a musical version of "Roman Holiday," did very well in Europe and played to capacity audiences last summer at the Guthrie in Minneapolis.In 2009, Blake made his debut as a Broadway producer with "Irving Berlin's White Christmas," a musical adaptation of the holiday movie classic that debuted at the Muny in 2000. Since then, it's had a second Broadway run, and turned into a popular seasonal show at theaters around the country.It also led straight to "Beautiful."Blake was surprised when a record executive called him a few years ago to suggest that he develop a musical based on the songs and life of Carole King. A Broadway baby through and through, Blake was a little bit puzzled.He admired King, of course. "I still own her 'Tapestry' LP," he said. "I lived in San Francisco then, making nothing, so even an LP was a major financial commitment. But I remember listening to it and liking it a lot."Then I went back to Cole Porter records and 'My Fair Lady.' But I knew then that she was an extraordinarily gifted person."One of the all-time best-selling albums since its release in 1971, "Tapestmini storagey" hardly lacks for fans, on or off Broadway. Blake had to wonder why the executive tapped him to turn King's story, and songs, into a show.It was because he was the man who persuaded the Berlin sisters to bring "White Christmas" to the stage.Blake explained that for years, "White Christmas" looked like the show that never would happen. Irving Berlin's daughters "had turned down Jerome Robbins, turned down Tommy Tune," he said. "Yet I got them to say 'Let's try it.'"But compared to the people who needed to go along with a Carole King show, the Berlin sisters look like a trio of kittens.King, Goffin, Weil and Mann each had his or her own ideas about what the show should be like -- and one of them "didn't want to do it at all," Blake said.That one was King, who walked out of the reading that so moved Schumacher. But it turned out that her sudden exit didn't imply refusal.Blake feels a lot of sympathy for King. The two of them are close in age; she grew up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn around the time that he was growing up in a Jewish family in the Bronx. The reading, and the show itself, simply proved too much for her."She said, 'I lived that, and I don't want to sit there and go through it again,'" Blake recalled. "'But you are all very professional people. So go ahead, make a show. I just want nothing to do with it.'"She was very ambivalent about the whole thing, and I guess she still is. I think that now, she is about 95 percent 'yes' and about 5 percent 'oh God.'"It was the other way around first."Although she still doesn't plan to attend the opening, her tentative approval was good enough for Blake, who had resolved to "just keep going, no matter what." The book, written by Douglas McGrath, took shape; the songs were already proven hits.Blake forged ahead. After some three years of work on "Beautiful," he wanted to get set for an opening."People said, 'You can't open a show that fast!'" Blake laughed. "I said, 'Why not? Let's just do this fast, the way that we did at the Muny.'"A lot of people associated with "Beautiful" appreciate exactly what that means. Director Marc Bruni, making his Broadway debut with "Beautiful," staged six Muny productions; another producer, Mark Bosner, grew up in St. Louis, where he was associate producer at the Muny for five seasons, under Blake. Terry Schnuck of the Muny board of directors (and producer of, among other things, the off-Broadway production of "Falling," by Mustard Seed Theatre artistic director Diana Jent) is a producer, too.The connections continue onstage. Jeb Brown, a frequent Muny performer, portrays music executive Don Kirshner, and four of the five women in the ensemble earned their Actors' Equity cards at the Muny under Blake.With just a few weeks before "Beautiful" opens on Broadway, Blake sounds happy and almost weirdly calm. "They say we should be anxious because this is a new work, which is true," he said. "But we all do the same things whenever we put on a show. And at the Muny, I used to do a whole season in four months."Copyright: ___ (c)2014 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at .stltoday.com Distributed by MCT Information Services儲存