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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process. I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode Finale, Sunday in the Park, Into the Woods, Crazy for You and GEMIGNANI. This is the fourth and final section of my conversation with author Margaret Hall about her recent biography of Paul Gemignani. If you missed the previous episodes in this series, you may want to catch up on those before listening to this one. Paul Gemignani served as the music director for more than 40 Broadway musicals, including those that are the focus of this episode, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Crazy for You, as well as the revivals of She Loves Me and Kiss Me Kate.

Here we go. Even though this relationship with Michael Bennett comes to an end and the relationship with Hal Prince has come to an end, the core relationship with Sondheim continues and actually reaches some highlights over this next period as we go into Sunday in the Park with George.

[1:11] Margaret Hall: Oh, yes. Now that is a show that just everyone feasted on the meat of. As James Lapine details in his fantastic book, Putting It Together, it was not an easy delivery. It was a troubled birth and a troubled pregnancy, but everyone was so just in it on that show. And specifically with Paul, he had what is called the Bar Mitzvah Boys, which is the three-person pit, quote unquote, that they'd have at Playwrights Horizons.

[1:38] James Lapine: Just so people understand, when it started off off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, there was only a band of three people.

[1:44] Margaret Hall: Yeah, and they weren't in a pit, they were just kind of shoved in a corner. And it consisted of Paul Gemignani on drums and conducting the other two with his head, basically. Paul Ford on the piano and Michael Starobin on the synthesizer. And Michael Starobin was also the orchestrator.

[1:59] James Lapine: And this show, similar in some ways, because Michael Bennett has pioneered this workshop system to a great extent, now Sondheim and other people are following this workshop system as well. James Lapine obviously is the leader of this. And he also comes from the off-Broadway world. He comes from the public theater, he comes from that outside-of-Broadway mentality, which is one of the things that Sondheim was attracted to.

[2:25] Margaret Hall: And not only the outside-of-Broadway mentality, outside of the, quote unquote, capital M, capital T musical theater, where Lapine started out as a visual artist. And so his approach to making theater is deeply visual and almost aggressively collaborative. He insists upon it. And if you're not going to be in the room and you're not going to play ball and get in the sandbox, you're in the wrong room. And people learned that very quickly on the Sunday in the Park with George rehearsal process of like, either you're with it or you're not. And there's some people where they thrive in that kind of an environment, and there's some who don't, and that's fine. It's not like a moral judgment or anything, but there's a very specific kind of person who works really well with James Lapine, because he brings out this almost childlike energy out of a lot of his performers and also out of his musicians.

[3:11] Paul always talks about how he feels like he lost 10 years while working on Sunday in the Park with George, because just the energy of the piece and sort of throwing yourself into a piece of art about making art, it buoys your soul in a way, especially the song Finishing the Hat. And another one of my favorite stories in the book is about the first time Steve plays Finishing the Hat for everybody. And they're all at the West Bank Cafe in like the basement on this beat up upright that like probably is like beer soaked and like on its last legs. And everyone is just sobbing. It's like you have four men who are very much in touch with their emotions in this small space. You have Stephen Sondheim, James Lapine, Mandy Patinkin, who for the entire rehearsal process is basically like an inch from a nervous breakdown, and Paul Gemignani, who's a very easy cry.

He looks like a mafioso. I understand why people think he's like this big tough dude. He wears these like tinted sunglasses and he's built like a big burly Italian guy. He looks like he's an extra on The Sopranos, but he's like a teddy bear. And so they're all just a blubbering pile of emotions by the time Finishing the Hat is done for the first time and then they put it in the show that very night. That's amazing. He's just finished writing it that afternoon, plays it for them, and Mandy Patinkin agrees to do it that night. He just pastes the lyrics in the back of his sketchpad and is able to read them off. And sort of toxins it maybe to a certain extent, but they get the idea of it in the show at least. Yeah, they get the shape of it.

[5:05] Margaret Hall: Mandy is really one of the best. And it takes such a level of intensity to play George and to make George sympathetic. That's why Finishing the Hat was so important. People hated George in the show before that song was put in because he seemed pretty unsympathetic. You love Bernadette Peters coming in and then Dot is immediately charming as all hell in the opening number. And then you just see George ignoring her as she's desperately like, hello, I love you. Can you just say it back, please? Not asking for the world. I just need an acknowledgement. And when he's not able to do that, at the end of We Do Not Belong Together, there were a lot of people who hated George, who could not stand him.

But then you put in Finishing the Hat, and you have it performed by someone like Mandy Patinkin, and you watch him break his own heart. Without Finishing the Hat, it feels like George thinks Dot isn't enough for him. You put in Finishing the Hat, and George realizes he's not enough for Dot. And his act of love, both of himself and her, will be losing her to continue to make his art because that's all he considers himself good for. He doesn't consider himself good enough for Dot, good enough for love, all that stuff. That's getting in a sort of actor mishmash BFA talk. I may or may not have played Dot in college, but...

[7:20] Margaret Hall: So you have a personal stake in this. I care deeply about this show and about their dynamic. They truly captured Nirvana, in my opinion, with Bernadette and Mandy, and I'm so glad we got the PBS recording of it. And I think it's one of the most valuable pro shots we have to have that captured. When those started coming out, I couldn't understand why every show wasn't doing that. To quote the film Tick Tick Boom, I can't wait for every Sondheim musical to be on PBS. Sunday in the Park, of course, leads to Into the Woods. This is two shows with this same team, Sondheim, Gemignani, and Lapine. Would you read that quote of what James Lapine had to say about Gemignani?

[8:01] Margaret Hall: The reason Gemignani is a legend in the musical theater is because he approaches the work dramatically first and then musically. He wants to understand the story we are telling and how music intersects with the dialogue. He strives to understand the intentions of the writers and director before he works with the actors in rehearsal and later the orchestra in the theater to help bring the two together, connecting what is going on in the pit with what is going on upstage. As he once mentioned to me, and I'm paraphrasing here, the musicians are in a dark pit where they have no visual connection with the stage. Because of the intensity of the lights on stage, the actors are staring into darkness, unable to see the audience.

The conductor is the person who brings these two worlds together to tell our story, and Paul is masterful at that. Actors and musicians know he is there for them. He is always present in performance, and he is fierce. If an actor or musician is marking a performance, Paul will wake them up and demand their total attention. He can be a demanding taskmaster, which is exactly the kind of collaborator a composer, lyricist, or director wants, both in the rehearsal room and especially when at the podium during a performance.

[9:35] Margaret Hall: I'm a guy who's gotta dance, don't know exactly why. Music puts me in a trance, and I must dance or die. Mornings I waltz out of bed to an Irish reel.

[10:00] David Armstrong: Eventually, Paul gets to work with another legend from the Golden Age, which is Jerome Robbins with Jerome Robbins Broadway. And this comes through Sondheim again, doesn't it?

[10:04] Margaret Hall: Yes. Jerry goes to Sondheim and basically says, hey, I have the idea to do this thing. I want to use stuff from West Side Story and Gypsy and all that. And as Jerry's explaining this to Steve, Steve goes, well, I know who you need to do it with. Paul and Jerry were aware of each other. They'd met at little things here and there. Jerome Robbins had mostly left the musical theater by the time Paul comes on the game, but like at things like when they did West Side Story at City Center Opera, he showed up, but he wasn't working on it. He was just around. But Jerry knew if Steve said that's the guy, then that's the guy. Because he knew that the hardest music in the entire show was going to be the West Side Story suite.

And if Steve says that Paul Gemignani can do it, then OK, we've got our guy. And Paul immediately jumped on board sort of headfirst. And this is another show where his personal skills are as important, if not more important than his musical skills. Because, again, Jerome Robbins was a very troubled man. This is something I always try to be careful about when I talk about, because he did a lot of things throughout his life that were not good. However, I do not hold the axe over his head like a lot of people do. The man was aggressively troubled, desperately needed therapy from basically the moment he popped out the womb. He also had pretty serious self-image issues and self-hatred that he dealt with.

And his art was so much a part of him that that self-hatred sometimes turned on his own work. And he was so aggressively a perfectionist with himself that he had trouble conceiving that other people were not in that same sort of battle to the death with themselves. That there were people in his company that actually liked themselves and took care of themselves because they cared about themselves. He struggled with that. Paul was very good at both understanding that about Jerry sort of instinctually.

[11:47] Margaret Hall: I think we're from what we've talked about he basically met Jerry and immediately knew this is a very scared man who's taking a really big risk and it's not going to seem like a risk to everybody else but I have to be the person who takes that seriously so that when he's sort of like on the side and he's like I feel like I'm destroying my own legacy I could be there to be like no it's okay here's five bucks go to the movies it's all right he wasn't like fathering Jerome Robbins but he was the person who would be there to defuse the bomb so to speak and as Paul saw what was the risk that Jerome Robbins was taking this kind of a show had never really been done before yes Bob Fosse had dancing which gets sort of cited as the precursor to Jerome Robbins Broadway those were all new dances that was not a retrospective in any way those were brand new dances that he was doing at the height of his career truly people just like to try and compare because it's two dance shows from roughly the same decade but they aren't the same thing at all what Jerry was doing was untrod ground he had also been away from the musical theater for a long time he'd been up at the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center and he was taking a really big risk by returning because there were a lot of people who still had a really bad taste in their mouth after the House of Un-American Activities Committee debacle that happened with Jerry and what's interesting the people who actually were involved in that situation did not hold ill will to Jerry they're like yeah they would have ruined your life they would have outed the fact that you were a gay man and your life would have been over if you hadn't named names they had dirt on you and they were going to destroy you it's like Leonard Bernstein did not hold it over his head whatsoever zero must still did a little bit but zero must also held stuff over every single person's head he ever met that was just him but it was the people who didn't know Jerry who were like the most up in arms which was interesting and so he knew he was coming into that place and then there's also the question of could he recreate what he'd done was he still capable of it because dance it's this hard art for me really it's like trying to hold the ocean in your hands and it's one of sort of the massive tragedies of the AIDS crisis is it cut the line of dance in the American musical because if you write down a Bach concerto and then it's played 200 years after Bach dies you're still playing the same Bach concerto the notes that he intended it's not going to be the exact same but musical notation works in such a way that you can get pretty close dance technically you can write it down but I don't know a single dancer who's going to tell you that like oh yeah I work off the lead sheet it's something that's taught dancer to dancer it's like almost an oral history that gets passed down even though it's not oral it's physical and it's taught from dance teacher to dancer on and on and on and Jerome Robbins had all these dances in his head but one of the big problems that they kept hitting with Jerome Robbins they're like okay we're like 15 minutes into this sequence and I can't remember what comes next and so they'd have to call and like they'd call like a dancer who retired 15 years ago and like do you remember what you did here because Jerry does not know and neither did any of his assistants and we don't have video footage so if you don't remember we're just gonna have to make something up and then it's not the recreation that Jerry wants to be doing he put so much pressure on himself more than anyone else did no one was expecting Jerome Robbins Broadway to be this like time capsule but Jerry did and he really pushed himself hard and he pushed his dancers hard as well but it's an interesting thing I talked to easily 80% of the cast of Jerome Robbins Broadway and even the people who got in like full-on screaming fights with him which is detailed in the book came out of it loving him and missing him and a lot of them were just like oh I just want to fight with him one more time that's a direct quote from one of the dancers where it's like I just want to fight with him one more time not I want to dance with him one more time not I want to work with him one more time it's like I want to be in a room and just fight with him because so many of them when they talked about they're just like yeah we were fighting but it was because we loved it so much and here was someone who loved me and my art so much that he was driving himself insane if I didn't expect the same of myself he demanded your 100% and Robert LaFosse likes to put it Paul gained their respect through sort of like love and tenderness and comfort and that's how he got your dedication and your drive to be the best Jerry got it through sort of intimidation but both worked one is more pleasant than the other but it is inarguable to say that the arts have never had taskmasters it's just not how it works and that's who Jerry was and Jerome Robbins Broadway it's an incredible show that really in my opinion was the turning point for the generations Jerome Robbins Broadway was a direct handing of the baton from Jerome Robbins to these dancers of saying this is my life's work this is my legacy it's up to you now it's in your hands I have done what I can and shall do it's your time now to quote Sondheim and I find that to be an incredibly sort of emotional thing and I completely understand why Jerry was so worked up and emotional throughout the entire process because I think he was fully aware of that in every single second and it's why he was constantly changing who was in what number and what numbers were even in the show they did six months of rehearsals that's 10 times the normal length basically normally it's six weeks six months is bananas and not only was it six months they then did their auto tantra and then came back and did another month because he was basically crafting like the perfect jewel of the best of himself to leave behind good evening the numbers you are about to hear are from musical shows produced between 1944 and 1964 created by a variety of writers and composers and all staged by one man welcome to Jerome Robbins Broadway.

[17:32] David Armstrong: Don't go away Broadway Nation will be back right after this quick break.

[17:38] David Armstrong: Hi this is David Armstrong and if you're enjoying this episode I strongly suspect that you will want to read my new book Broadway Nation How Immigrant Jewish Queer and Black Artist Invented the Broadway Musical on sale now wherever books are sold and I'm very happy to report that the early reviews have been terrific the esteemed author Jeffrey Block says that Broadway Nation is a fascinating comprehensive and timely gem of a book that more than lives up to its promise of delivering no less than five books in one kudos to David Armstrong and Tony award-winning lyricist David Zippel says that David Armstrong's insightful history of the evolution of the Broadway Musical and its creators is captivating and comprehensive as well as indispensable the book is of course available on Amazon but I recommend that you go to the publisher's website bloomsbury.com where you will currently receive a 10% discount again like the podcast that inspired it the book is titled Broadway Nation How Immigrant Jewish Queer and Black Artist Invented the Broadway Musical now back to the show and that's what Jerome Robbins Broadway is really at the end of the day it's him creating his own memorial which is kind of grim to think about in that context but I think he was very aware of it we're in the middle of the AIDS crisis when this show is coming out Jerome Robbins is a gay man and I think he was very aware that dance is this thing that is disappearing very quickly because all of these chorus boys are dying and all of these great choreographers are dying and every time another person dies that's another part of the dance family tree that's just cut off and it's part of why I think we are only just now starting to recover as an art form and start to establish dance as a real part of our storytelling I think it's why things like Phantom and Les Mis become so popular is because they're shows that don't rely on the dance because there were not the dancers and the choreographers that were needed well they filled a vacuum not that they weren't great popular shows but they definitely had even more impact because there was this vacuum that had been created for them the space that came available to them and I think it's also why revivals had a gigantic moment in the 90s because if the people aren't there to be creating this new work well let's look at the stuff that inspires us let's try and engender a new movement and that's kind of not to transition on your behalf but that's kind of what gets us to Crazy For You Jerome Robbins Broadway is this incredible exploration of where we've been and then Crazy For You is this exercise in reframing where we've been as where we are.

[20:10] Margaret Hall: What do you mean by that?

[20:21] Margaret Hall: Crazy For You is loosely based on Girl Crazy the Gershwin show it's recontextualizing all of these songs that have become embedded in the American Zeitgeist they are the American Standards songbook and breathing life into them and sort of making these songs belong to the musical theater again belong to this art form where they had almost kind of become divorced in some ways and to a lot of people they would think of a song like Someone to Watch Over Me as belonging to the jazz world more than the musical theater world no matter where it originated Ella Fitzgerald version became so iconic and rightly so Ella Fitzgerald was one of the greatest singers to ever live but Crazy For You brought what was the musical theater into what is the musical theater and made it belong to us again and it was sort of like reclaiming that history as a way of then springboarding from it it's interesting I see Crazy For You as the late entry in the nostalgia craze of the 1970s I think that's also accurate which really starts off Broadway with Dames at Sea and things like that but No No Nanette is what makes it happen on Broadway and then we have 10 years of what had never happened on Broadway before people always talk about revivals but these were revivals of shows that were dead that had never been revived there's a difference between reviving Gypsy every 10 years and reviving No No Nanette exactly or On Your Toes or any of the shows that happened during that period My One and Only is part of it that's the first Gershwin revisal which goes so far that they change the name they change it so much that they have to change the name of the show too because it's no longer Funny Face the same thing sort of happens with Crazy For You although they do that intensely they never intended to be girl crazy right yeah it's absolutely a part of that tradition and I think both things can be true.

[22:08] Margaret Hall: Yeah and a big part of it I think is you've got Mike Ockrent at the helm with Crazy For You and you have Susan Stroman what was Paul's contribution to Crazy For You so he basically served what a composer would normally serve on a show like this because George Gershwin god bless him had been dead for about 70 years and so Paul's job was to think like a composer and like a music director at the same time because while they're technically adapting Girl Crazy into Crazy For You it's like the loosest adaptation in the world it's up to Paul to decide where songs are gonna go you can kind of argue that Crazy For You is a Gershwin jukebox musical where he had to decide okay so this is the emotional beat I have access to roughly the entire Gershwin song catalog what fits this the best and some of the songs he pulls out are like the ones that everyone knows like I've Got Rhythm Is Gonna Be in the show they knew that coming in but then you've got deeper pulls like Stiff Upper Lip which no one came in expecting to have like a full moment in act two but it does.

[23:34] Margaret Hall: It never was meant to be. A great comedic number that Paul sort of dug out of the trunk isn't like one of the most famous Gershwin songs. Again, it's not "Someone to Watch Over Me," it's not "But Not for Me," which are also in the score, but it's a song that perfectly fits the moment when he finds it.

[24:37] David Armstrong: So he has to basically become a Gershwin expert to do the show while also music directing it with his standard duties and casting it and also dealing with the fact that the show is under extreme flux. They completely scrap the second act on the train to out of town, which is just wild to me. They basically completely recreate a new second act in like three days or so before they do the Kennedy Center run. It's nuts, but it really works.

[25:01] Margaret Hall: I didn't realize the show had gone into that kind of revising right before they teched it, which is a risky thing to do. So the show that they had would have worked. If it hadn't worked in tech, they would have been like, OK, we're just going to do what we have. But Mike wanted to try for it because he knew the show could be better. And it's another case of like it's an artist who takes the art so seriously where this isn't just a check to him. There's a lot of people who do stuff like this where they're like, oh, we're just sort of recontextualizing. So long as people hear the songs they want to hear, who cares? Mike, Paul and Stroh took it very seriously. They're like, no, we are trying to create the new great Gershwin show and it needs to be on par with what that means. And so they took the risk and it paid off. The second act is very good and Crazy for You.

[25:44] David Armstrong: Absolutely. Paul doesn't do a lot of revivals in his career, but he does do Kiss Me, Kate, which you said earlier was possibly his favorite show.

[25:50] Margaret Hall: Yes. Neck and Neck with South Pacific. Depending on what he's eaten for breakfast that morning.

[25:54] David Armstrong: Did he turn down a lot of revivals or they just didn't come his way?

[25:58] Margaret Hall: Paul has turned down shows that would turn your hair white because, again, he doesn't do it if his heart's not in it. Yeah, it might make financial sense to do some of the shows he's turned down, but he's OK. He owns his house. He makes enough to feed him and his wife and their dogs. He put Alexander through college. He's got his necessities covered. And so he does the shows that speak to him as an artist. And Kiss Me, Kate, to directly quote him, is a show with a score so romantic it brings him to his knees. And it also is a show that now is like permanently tied to him and his wife because they got married during Kiss Me, Kate. But it's a show that the music speaks to him so much. And after working on Crazy for You, he was inspired in a lot of ways to figure out how do I save this score from this book?

Because Kiss Me, Kate had started to be thought of as unrevivable because the book was a mess. After learning how to work with the Gershwin estate, he and the team for Kiss Me, Kate worked with the Cole Porter estate to really rework it. People don't realize how much that 90s revival shifted things, but it made it producible again. And then he did it again 20 years down the line. From 1999, he then does it again in 2019, and they revise it even more because this music is worth the retooling. Specifically, the song "So In Love" is a real big thing with him. It's one of, in his opinion and frankly, mine as well, one of the best romantic songs written for the musical theater in the 20th century. And keeping it alive in some kind of a context outside of a jazz standard cabaret placement is valuable.

[28:03] ♪ Musical number: "So In Love" — performed by Unknown ♪

[29:52] Margaret Hall: And that's the kind of revivals he does. He feels like he's doing something in service of the music, not just to do the show to do it, but to do it because he's trying to do something with it.

[30:10] David Armstrong: Certainly that show, it needed a tremendous amount of streamlining. I did that show when I was in high school. So I remember how that version that they sent you was just filled with all kinds of stuff. You're like, what the hell is this? What did they even do? Obviously shows had a lot more time back then and could be looser, even though it's in the golden age. It still had a lot of extraneous things in it. There are still people who write like this, but there was very much a period where people considered more show to be better show. And it's very much was originally crafted with that in mind. And we're just going to give them all of the show.

[30:50] Margaret Hall: So we start to move into this wind down of Paul's career, but he certainly remains very, very active. Talk a little bit about his work at the Ravinia Festival, where two colleagues come back again and again into his life. Patti LuPone, of course, and Lonnie Price, who was one of those kids you talked about in Merrily We Roll Along.

[31:08] David Armstrong: Oh, that was a huge full circle moment. So Paul loves Lonnie. And now that Steve has passed away, Lonnie's probably Paul's best friend. They really have a loyalty and a trust and a love for each other. And getting to work with him as a director after having known him as an actor really was like a big full circle thing. So that was his initial draw to Ravinia is like working with Lonnie and getting to be with Lonnie. And then they created this dream team, which consisted of Patti LuPone, Michael Cerveris, and Audra McDonald, where they just go out to Ravinia outside of Chicago and do the shows they'd always wanted to do. And that was basically their criteria. Some of them were just sort of for fun, where it's like, I just feel like you should do this role.

And we're not going to have time to do a full revival. So let's just do this for a couple of weeks. And it'll be great. And that's something like Annie Get Your Gun, with Patti LuPone as Annie Oakley, which is perfect casting. And then you have things where it's the actors have always wanted to take on these roles, but it's never worked out for them schedule-wise. And then you get Sunday in the Park with George starring Michael Cerveris and Audra McDonald. And then you get things where it's just like, how has this not happened yet? And then they realize it's because of New York bureaucracy. And they're like, well, we're not in New York. And so we're going to do it. And that's how you get Patti LuPone in Gypsy, where it just was inconceivable that it hadn't happened yet.

But because Arthur Lawrence was who he was, it couldn't happen in New York. But they could do it in this little outdoor semi-staged production, which then, of course, proved that it could be done, I guess, for New York.

[32:35] Margaret Hall: Yes. Arthur Lawrence then decided he suddenly had the bright idea that it should happen. I won't spoil how that plays out, because I think it's a moment in the book that plays out best read. But it does not go the way everyone wanted it to go. And people will note if they look at the credits for the 2008 revival of Gypsy, there are two names notably missing from the credit list, Mr. Paul Gimignani and Mr. Lonnie Price. And there's a very specific reason for that. And that's within the book. It's good to give people incentive to read the book.

[33:09] David Armstrong: You start double things before I just recount the whole thing to you all.

[33:13] Margaret Hall: Exactly. You say in the book that Paul Gimignani, through his career between 1973 and 2013, he never had gone more than six months without a show. That's incredible. How many shows do you know? Have you counted them?

[33:20] David Armstrong: I haven't counted that section, but he had 43 credits on Broadway.

[33:26] Margaret Hall: 43 Broadway shows. That's really, really amazing.

[33:31] David Armstrong: It's wild. He was busy. And there's a reason I include the timeline at the end of the book like I do. So you can see it laid out starkly, how much everything is overlapping with everything and how he's just going from thing to thing to thing to thing. And I understand why people describe the period after Kiss Me, Kate as sort of being a pullback. But he's no less busy. He's just enjoying being married to the love of his life. And instead of throwing himself into his work, he's throwing himself into being happy.

[34:04] Margaret Hall: Right. But he moves out of New York.

[34:06] David Armstrong: So he moves out of New York in 2013.

[34:08] Margaret Hall: But he gets pulled back for at least one more show.

[34:12] David Armstrong: So the first time he gets pulled back for what he thinks is going to be the last time, and this is sort of, okay, I've steeled myself. This is me saying goodbye to this part of my life. And that's She Loves Me, which is another show he'd always really enjoyed. He loved Jerry Bach and Sheldon Harnick. He comes on to She Loves Me to do this production with the Roundabout, who he's created this really strong relationship with over the years. He'd known Scott Ellis since Scott Ellis was a dancer in The Rink.

[34:38] Margaret Hall: Right.

[34:38] David Armstrong: It's like he's built another sort of family within Roundabout. He comes to do She Loves Me. He has an amazing time making She Loves Me. They do the broadcast. It's one of the only ways that you can see Paul Gimignani truly conducting a show. Because the way that that filmed broadcast is shot, if you look to the far left of your screen, you can see where he's sitting. And you can watch him in the wide shots. And I really enjoy doing that because he's just having the time of his life up there. He's clearly pouring every ounce of his love for everything into this show. And he loves the company. He adores Laura Benanti. He basically has his perfect bow on it, send off. He has a beautiful final lunch with a bunch of his musician friends. That's in the book. I think of it as like Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.

[35:51] Margaret Hall: Another phone call from Scott Ellis going, hey, so we want to do Kiss Me Kate and we're not sure we can do it without you. And so as both a favor to Scott Ellis and because I don't think Paul can ever be entirely retired, the door will always be cracked because he loves what he does so much. It really is just these days a matter of he's an 83-year-old man and people don't realize how physical conducting is. It is a workout. It is like you're an athlete up there and it just takes a lot out of you. And so if he's got to do it, it's because it's either worth it to him or it's like a one-night concert. But Kiss Me Kate was worth it to him. He came up and he did the production with Kelly O'Hara and Will Chase.

In many ways, it was kind of like an echo. It's an echo of like this great moment for him, which was the 1999 production. Maren Mazzie had just passed away, who was someone he cared about very deeply and who was in the 1999. And to like literally watch the shadow of her walk across the stage in the intro when Maren's hat is literally on Kelly O'Hara's head and when Kelly's got her head down and all you can see is the hat and where she's sitting, it looks like Maren is on the stage. It's literally like being haunted by the memories of his career and by the people he loved. And then Hal Prince dies almost immediately after. And so in many ways, if She Loves Me was the perfect bow, Kiss Me Kate was the wax seal locking the bow in place.

The door is not closed. Putting this out there to anyone. Paul needs to do A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He has done every single other Sondheim show. That is the only one he's never done a full production of that he is coming out of retirement for. But beyond that, it has to be what speaks to him. And thankfully, he's been very lucky to do almost all of the shows that really speak to him in a deep way. For a long time, Carousel was one of the ones he would have wanted to do. But after the most recent revival starring his son, Alexander, he's sort of like, I got what I needed from that. I got to see Alex do it. And that fulfilled me in that way.

[37:47] Margaret Hall: We're into his legacy now. And obviously, one of the biggest parts of his legacy will be his son, who grew up there in rehearsals for Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods and has become a major Broadway performer.

[38:00] David Armstrong: He has, yes. And also followed in Dad's footsteps in a lot of ways. He's music directed quite a bit. He music directed the most recent revival of West Side Story. He did a fantastic production of Merrily We Roll Along. And he's also become a composer in his own right. He's been working on a show called Diamond Alice for a long time now.

[38:19] Margaret Hall: It's fascinating with Alex because Paul never thought this was what he was going to do. There was no like showbiz parent pressure whatsoever. For a long time, Alex thought he was going to be a professional baseball player. He loved sports and he really connected with his grandfather about that, actually. Paul has never really cared for sports, but Ezio loved them and then Alexander loved them with his grandpa. And so he loved baseball. But then he ended up transitioning from baseball in high school to theater and to music specifically. He was a trumpet player. And so he went to college to be a trumpet player at the University of Michigan. And then while he was there, he realized, I can be a pretty good trumpet player, but I know just enough about music and I've been in this world long enough that I know that I'm not going to be the best trumpet player.

And I don't think I want to just be good. If I do this, I think I want to be Wynton Marsalis. And I'm not. So what can I do where I'm not going to be frustrated with my own capabilities? And he ended up sidestepping into the University of Michigan musical theater program, which is of course legendary these days. He's one of the first classes to come out of that program. Immediately after, he gets into Assassins. Not because of Paul. Paul literally leaves the room when Alexander auditions because he's like, I can't do it. It's too weird. And so Joe Mandello auditions him alone, but he's an incredible Hinckley. And then off of that, he goes into Avenue Q. He goes into the Sweeney Todd revival, which Paul was not involved in that revival whatsoever.

And he's gone on to have just this incredible career. He was at one point, the youngest Jean Valjean in Broadway history. He was Tony nominated in 2018 for his turn in Carousel as Enoch Snow. And he's just this incredibly empathetic performer. And I believe it's because of Paul. And it's because he's so aware of the music and of the pit that he is to the orchestra, what Paul is to the actors. Where Paul connects these performers to the void, so to speak, the black void that Lapine talks about. Alexander looks out into the void and he sees his friends and he sees his family and he sees the music and he's never alone up there in the same way that Paul's never alone in the pit. And it's a very interesting thing.

And I love watching Alexander conduct because he conducts just like his dad, but in a different syncopation. The way Bernadette Peters describes it, because she's been conducted by the both of them. If you close your eyes, it's the same. But if you open them, Paul goes side to side and Alexander's up and down. That's how they keep their beat. But they feel a beat in the same way. They're their own men. Alexander is not a clone of his father. He's his own incredible artist who does his own incredible work. But he holds that same magic within him that Paul has.

[40:53] David Armstrong: Most people will not know who Paul Gemignani is before they read your book. One of the questions I'm sure has come to you is why would you spend all this time and all this energy talking about someone who is so unknown to the average person? What made that worthwhile?

[41:10] Margaret Hall: This is my purpose in life. And the way Paul's purpose is to breathe life into music, mine is to breathe life into other people's lives. And I believe every single person is worthy of this kind of treatment. I am one person and therefore not capable of writing 8 billion biographies of every person currently on the planet. Wish I could, just don't have that capability. Don't underestimate yourself. Just nose to the grindstone, let's go. But for sort of the question underlining that, which is why Paul, my rebuttal is why not Paul? He's the glue of all of these shows that we care about so much. Sondheim's work has touched so many people as we all saw on November 27th, the day after he passed, the tributes pouring in from every which way.

And his work would not be the same without Paul. Steve himself as a person would not be the same without Paul the person. On that level, he's important, but he's also important as his own human being. He is an example of, in my opinion, the best of artists, which is an artist who makes art for themselves, but not in a selfish way. They make it because their soul demands it. They communicate the stories they communicate because to not do so would be the death of their spirit. The way that he follows his heart, his commitment to goodness and honesty and lifting others up with him is, I believe, the best of us. We need more music directors like Paul. And one of the big reasons why Paul agreed to do this book when Lonnie finally got him to do it was because so many music directors don't realize the power they have.

They've started to believe the lie that's been told to them by penny pinchers and things like that, where it's like, oh, well, you're not that important. You're just that person down in the hole with a stick. So you'll make minimum wage and you'll nod your head politely and you'll do what we tell you to do. There's so much more power to it than that. And there's so much more power to every one of us. There are so many reasons why this book, but at the end of the day, that's not even the question because I didn't choose the book. The book chose me. I woke up on May 5th and had been given sort of a call to action. And I rose to the occasion, I'm pleased to say, and I wouldn't change it for a second because this book needed to exist and I am just lucky enough to be the vessel for it.

But if I hadn't done it, A, I worry it would have been no one. And that's part of why I had to do it, even when I felt like I was in over my head. But even when I felt sort of my most confident, I had to do it because it had to exist. And I think it's part of one of the benefits of my approaching it from the beginning of being like, here's why I want to read it is because there's a value there and there's a value in every one of these stories. And I would love to like turn around and just write a book like this about every single profession in the musical.

[43:47] Margaret Hall: There's a big section in the book that readers can see where I go through over a hundred different professions that are needed to just do one performance of a musical over a hundred people. And again, if I had my druthers and I happened to be an immortal being, I would write a book like this for every single one of them because every single one of them is important to the puzzle. Just as you can put together a 1000 piece puzzle and if you're missing one piece in the middle, you're going to be pretty upset. Sure, like your odds are pretty high. I'm like, oh, 99% of the pieces are there. Yeah, but I'm missing the piece. Paul's the piece. Everyone's the piece. And that's why I love what I do. And I truly do believe even if I had not written it, if I had just found this book in a bookstore and it just existed external for me, this book is important because it not only examines one person who's a piece of the puzzle, but it was also a really salient reminder that we're all a piece of the puzzle and climbing over each other and sort of all the stuff that happens is not important compared to seeing the humanity in each other and making an active choice to choose to elevate your own humanity every single day. And that was a very long answer to a very simple question.

[45:16] David Armstrong: It was a very good answer, though. Thank you, Margaret Hall, for joining us today on Broadway Nation to talk about your new book, Gemignani. It's been a great pleasure to have you.

[45:26] Margaret Hall: Thank you. This has been lovely, David. Thank you.

[45:31] David Armstrong: Margaret's book is titled Gemignani, Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond. And if you're interested in purchasing a copy signed by both Paul Gemignani and Margaret Hall, you can order it exclusively through the website of Buxton Books, an independent bookstore in Charleston, South Carolina, that Paul and Margaret have designated for this purpose. That's Buxton Books, B-U-X-T-O-N, on their website. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to follow, rate, and review it wherever you listen. I'm happy to say that Broadway Nation has received more than 75 five-star reviews. One of the most recent is from listener Debbie Klein, who writes, The best of podcast is here. I think this podcast is unbelievable, and I have tears in my eyes just writing about it.

I have a deep love for Broadway shows and music, and I finally found someone who shares that with me. Thank you, David, for bringing my love alive. Well, thank you, Debbie Klein, for your very kind words. I'm so happy that you enjoy listening to Broadway Nation. My sincere hope is that many of you will help me achieve the goal of 100 five-star reviews before the end of the summer. Thank you in advance, and I look forward to hearing from you. Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help in editing this episode, to KVSH 101.9, the voice of beautiful Vashon, Washington, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.