Pop singer and Broadway actress Deborah Cox plays legendary entertainer Josephine Baker in the world premiere of "Josephine" at Asolo Repertory Theatre. MIKE RUIZ PHOTO/PROVIDED BY ASOLO REP
Musicals are not created overnight. Just ask producer Ken Waissman, who has been developing a new show about legendary entertainer and humanitarian Josephine Baker for more than a dozen years.
Waissman, the producer who helped turn “Grease” into a record-breaking hit, is putting the new show together the old-fashioned way. He had an idea, found writers for the book and then selected a songwriting team, hired director and choreographer Joey McKneely and chose Grammy-nominated singer and Broadway actress Deborah Cox for the title role.
From left, Composer Steve Dorff, choreographer Joey McKneely, choreographer Deborah Cox, and producer Ken Waissman announce the world premiere of "Josephine" at Asolo Repertory Theatre at an event in Sarasota in March 2015. (Herald-Tribune staff photo by Nick Adams)
A dream that began developing more than 20 years ago comes to fruition with Friday’s opening of the world premiere of “Josephine” at the Asolo Repertory Theatre. Waissman is determined that the musical will debut on Broadway within a year.
It would be the third musical, after “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Bonnie & Clyde,” to go from Asolo Rep to Broadway. Waissman and his creative team have high hopes that “Josephine” has the ingredients to enjoy a warmer reception than the month-long runs of the previous two musicals.
Waissman, who also had success with the plays “Torch Song Trilogy” and “Agnes of God,” got his start in the theater with legendary producer and director George Abbott, with a $125-a-week job working on several shows that flopped, including “Fig Leaves are Falling” and “The Education of Hyman Kaplan.”
“I probably learned more working on those shows that didn’t succeed than I would have if they had been hits. It was a great break,” he said. And despite a few flops in his own career, the lessons have stayed with him.
Performer Josephine Baker strikes a pose during her Ziegfeld Follies performance of "The Conga" on the Winter Garden Theater stage in New York, Feb. 11, 1936. (AP Photo)
His fascination with Baker began in 1974 when he saw her perform at the Palace Theatre in New York, about a year before she died. “She was 67, 68 at the time. She wasn’t much of a singer and not much of a dancer, but none of it mattered,” he said. “She opened the second half of the show zooming out of the wings, dressed completely in leather on a motorcycle and screeching to a stop at the footlights. Her aura was amazing.”
It turned out that her aura was only part of a story that writers Ellen Weston and Mark Hampton said could fill several shows. After trying to cram too much into one musical, they focused on Baker’s life between 1939 and 1945, beginning with the reopening of the legendary Folies Bergère after the end of World War II. At the time, Baker was both a major star and a hero for her efforts in the French resistance movement.
“You have such a rich treasure trove of entertainment to pull from,” said McKneely, who directed and choreographed Asolo Rep’s hit production of “West Side Story” last fall. “The big glamour costumes, the showgirls, the jazz dancing, the rhythmic stuff, the sexiness. I’m surprised there’s never been a Broadway musical before this because it has everything you want from a Broadway show — gorgeous sets, costumes, major productions numbers, people really singing songs, not just pitter pattering.”
In fact, Baker's life has been the subject of other theatrical productions and tribute biographies. In 2012, Sarasota’s Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe produced another musical, “Blackbird: The Josephine Baker Story” created by Tony nominee Sherman Yellen, who had been working on getting the show together after the death of composer Wally Harper in 2004.
Joey McKneely, who staged Asolo Repertory Theatre's hit production of "West Side Story" in the fall of 2015, is directing and choreographing the world premiere musical "Josephine" at the Sarasota theater. (Herald-Tribune staff photo by Nick Adams)
The creative team of “Josephine” say they are inspired and fascinated with Baker, who was born in St. Louis in 1906 to a mother who worked as a laundress and a father who abandoned her. She cleaned homes in East St. Louis as a child and was treated harshly, but she always longed to perform.
As a young black woman she faced prejudice at home, but when she moved to France, she found fame as a unique talent. She was married four times, had an affair with Crown Prince Gustav IV of Sweden and adopted a dozen children over the years. Later in her life, she was active in the Civil Rights movement in the United States.
“In Paris, she found her place. She wasn’t seen as an African-American woman, but a woman and talent first, and in America she was not. Paris was more open at that time to women who looked and behaved as Josephine Baker did,” said Weston, who was one of the first people Waissman brought onto the project. A former actress, Weston is the writer and producer of more than 20 television films.
She worked solo for a while until Waissman brought in Mark Hampton, the author of the off-Broadway hit play “Full Gallop” and other works. They hit it off almost immediately.
Deborah Cox as Josephine Baker and Mark Campbell as Prince Gustav VI of Sweden in Asolo Rep's production of "Josephine." John Revisky Photo/Asolo Rep, taken at The Ringling
“I had gotten bogged down with the Nazis and I thought, somebody rescue me from these Nazis,” Weston said. “And Mark was able to see it in a different way. It was a real renaissance.”
Hampton somewhat minimizes his work, saying that “they had done so much already. It was as if the family picked out the tree and I came in to help decorate it.”
A version of the libretto was ready by the time Waissman asked composer Stephen Dorff and lyricist John Bettis to join the team. Waissman had heard their score for the musical “Lunch,” which was produced in San Diego and was familiar with a number of the songs they had written together or with others. Dorff was a co-writer of “I Just Fall in Love Again,” a hit for Anne Murray, and composed Kenny Rogers’ “Through the Years’ and “Eddie Rabbitt’s “Every Which Way But Loose.” Bettis wrote the lyrics for Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature,” Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time,” and the Carpenters’ hits “Top of the World” and “Yesterday Once More.” Bettis also worked at Asolo Rep in 1992 with composer Frank Wildhorn on the musical “Svengali.”
Dorff said the score includes more than 25 songs, though they wrote more than 60 over the years.
“We wrote some songs that didn’t work. The book would change or the plot would change or the character would change and the song didn’t work anymore,” he said.
The creators and McKneely worked off and on over the years through a series of readings and workshops, using feedback to make more changes.
“You keep working until you freeze the show before the opening,” Waissman said. During an unusually long nine days of previews at Asolo Rep, changes can be made until a few days before Friday’s opening. (The first public preview performance on April 27 was canceled because of technical issues and concerns about cast safety.)
Cox, who was has had numerous R&B and dance hits on the Billboard charts and was seen on Broadway in the title role of “Aida” and as Lucy in a revival of “Jekyll & Hyde,” is eager to finally bring the show to an audience, and share Baker’s story.
Kevin Earley as Jo Bouillon and Deborah Cox as Josephine Baker in "Josephine," a world premiere musical at Asolo Repertory Theatre. JOHN REVISKY PHOTO/ASOLO REP, taken at The Ringling
“I knew of her from my mother, who had these big Ebony magazines with iconic black women who changed the game, and Josephine Baker was one of them,” Cox recalled. She also watched Lynn Whitfield play Baker in the 1991 HBO film “The Josephine Baker Story” and got to tour with Celine Dion which allowed her to “immerse myself in all things Josephine. Her legacy lived on, and when the opportunity came to be in this musical and originate the role, I knew I was in.”
She stars with Kevin Earley as Baker’s last husband, Jo Bouillon (Earley was seen at Florida Studio Theatre in “Daddy Long Legs” two years ago); Mark Campbell as Prince Gustav VI, Tampa Bay actor Matthew McGee as Josephine’s confident, Joujou, and Lynette DuPree as Josephine’s friend and nightclub owner Bricktop. Tori Bates, a young performer from Sarasota, has been winning over the cast and creators as Young Josephine. “She steals the show,” Dorff said.
By focusing on just a few years of Baker’s life “you learn so much more about the depth of her humanity, her joining the French resistance,” Cox said. “You learn about what her hunger was. Why she would adopt so many children. You understand what the root of her pain was and her compassion. There were so many facets to her.”
McKneely said the last 10 years of working on the show was a process of constant discovery and focusing.
“What a lot of people do is they rush the musical onto Broadway before it’s ready. A lot of musicals get to Broadway, they’re not bad ideas, but they’re either executed poorly or haven’t had the time to develop,” he said. “Because of Ken, we’ve had the time to really work through everything. He’s been great saying we’re not going forward until we’re ready. Time has helped us be objective.”
The show is opening at Asolo Rep, in part because of the relationship McKneely developed with producing artistic director Michael Donald Edwards during preparations for “West Side Story.”
Pop singer and Broadway actress Deborah Cox plays legendary entertainer Josephine Baker in the world premiere of "Josephine" at Asolo Repertory Theatre. MIKE RUIZ PHOTO/PROVIDED BY ASOLO REP
Waissman expects a number of theater owners, potential investors and others to travel to Sarasota to see the show, which he is enhancing with funds to create a more elaborate production than Asolo Rep could do on its own.
He said he has commitments for about half of the roughly $10 million he believes it will cost to move to Broadway, “and that’s not a lot when you’re talking about a musical.” Working at Asolo Rep, he found ways to shrink the budget from the original estimate of $13.5 million. “We have a slightly smaller cast and we adjusted how we use the scenery and we realize we won’t need as many stagehands.”
McKneely said he’s confident that everyone behind the scenes and on stage “has been learning their lessons. We’ve done all our homework and now we’re ready to show off what we’ve put together.”
THEATER PREVIEW
“JOSEPHINE”
In previews now. Opening night at 8 p.m. May 5. Through May 29 at the Asolo Repertory Theatre, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. 941-351-8000; asolorep.org
