Some 13 years ago, Philadelphia-born director/actor Randy Brenner moved to Los Angeles, ending his 10-year career tenure in New York. In a recent interview at Solley's Restaurant in Sherman Oaks, Brenner told Back Stage West: "In New York, I often went up against Nathan Lane and Jason Alexander for the same type of roles. So I decided there might be more acting opportunities for me on the West Coast."
Brenner, a gracious man with a diminutive stature but an imposing, self-assured demeanor, spoke of his long list of professional endeavors. Though he remains continually busy, Brenner indicated that he is extremely picky about his gigs. "I can't take a job if I don't feel a connection with the material," he said. This led to a discussion of a current show that he agreed to direct without a second's hesitation-the Celebration Theatre's critically acclaimed reinvention of Stephen Sondheim's 1981 revue, Marry Me a Little.
With the blessing of Sondheim, the Celebration production is a gender-bender in a very different sense from the way we usually think of that term. The compilation of unused songs from other Sondheim shows was conceived-and has always been presented-as a heterosexual love affair that sadly never comes to fruition. Two characters, both hungry for love, reside only a floor apart in a New York apartment building, inhabiting the same set but never meeting, remaining lonely at the end. Brenner's production not only changes the orientation of the story to two gay males, but also rethinks the original ending by supplying an optimistic chance for romance.
Music Theatre International, the agency controlling the rights to Marry Me, made strict stipulations as to exactly what Brenner could and could not change. One song was cut because it would have made no sense in this context. Added Brenner: "We wanted to add a few songs from other shows-not really to expand the show, but because they would have fit beautifully in the new concept. I believe if we could have worked directly with Sondheim, he might have agreed to it. But by the time we asked, he was fully absorbed in his upcoming new Broadway show, Wise Guys, and MTI took a very by-the-book approach. I'm hoping that sometime in the future we can add the numbers."
The show currently runs just barely over an hour, but is nonetheless a classy and fully satisfying experience. As many critics have pointed out, Sondheim's leftovers are akin to many composers' masterworks. In his review, Back Stage West managing editor Scott Proudfit wrote, "Midway though this fabulous two-man revue, I found myself missing Manhattan. It wasn't only the setting... thanks to the talents of actors Craig Curtis and Steve Gideon and the polished feel of this delightful piece, I felt like I was sitting in an Off-Broadway theatre again."
Gideon came up with the idea about a year ago and approached Brenner with it. When Richard Israel took over as the new artistic director at the Celebration last August, announcing his intention to explore new avenues for the theatre, the serendipitous melding of the right show and the right talents with the right theatre at the right time occurred. Brenner indicated that the show is attracting diverse crowds of both gay and straight spectators, which is exactly the crossover audience that Israel hopes to build.
Said Brenner, "I've directed many musicals, but I've also done a variety of other types of shows. When I complete a non-musical project and proceed to do a musical, people express surprise that I do musicals as well, and vice versa."
He recently closed another critically acclaimed show, Doug Budin and Randall Rapstine's Common Knowledge, at the Met and Lillian Theatres in Hollywood. Brenner hopes to reopen this show-a vaudeville-styled variation on a Six Degrees of Separation-type theme-in a different venue at some point. Back Stage West critic Madeleine Shaner called it "a warm and honestly funny comedy, as intermittently bizarre as it is well conceived and beautifully executed."
Brenner also recently directed Alice!, a musical version of Alice in Wonderland for the Nine O'Clock players in Beverly Hills, and has helmed such Civic Light Opera shows as The Pirates of Penzance in La Mirada and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in Thousand Oaks, as well as such Musical Theatre Guild concert productions as Nine and I Remember Mama in Pasadena. Other career highlights include both the East and West Coast productions of the Drama-Logue and GLAAD-winning The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me, starring first Dan Butler then Greg Louganis. He also scored a huge hit several years ago with the musical show The Ten Percent Revue at the now-defunct Melrose Theatre.
Upping the Annie
In the late '80s, Brenner conceived and helmed Charity Parody Productions, an organization that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for AIDS charities by staging humorous, gay-oriented parodies of popular musicals. The group thrived with the shows Oliver Twisted, West Hollywood Gypsy, West Hollywood Story, and Fiddler on the West Hollywood Roof.
"Sondheim was very helpful to us, not only in gaining approval for us to parody his shows Gypsy and West Side Story, but also in using his influence to help us get rights to the other shows," Brenner said. "We planned a fifth show (Guys and Guys and Dolls and Dolls), but the organization ran into problems securing advance production funding, and unfortunately was aborted."
Brenner is directing the upcoming (Jan. 13) opening of Frank Strausser's The Powder Room at the Court Theatre in West Hollywood, and has another red-hot iron in the fire-as founder and producing director for a new company, Cardboard Belt Productions. Brenner teased us by offering the following: "Our first production, to open in 2000, will be a new musical by a very well-known composer. Believe me, this will be a biggie, but I can't announce it yet."
He also acts and directs in television, expressing enthusiasm about the upcoming Disney live-action TV musical, Geppetto (based on Pinocchio), set for the May, 2000, sweeps. Brenner appears in the movie, and feels that it will bowl people over with its "lavish production values, a wonderful Stephen Schwartz score, and overall quality." Like this critic, Brenner has reservations about Disney's recent TV-musical ratings blockbuster, the butchered two-hour (minus commercials) bowdlerization of the Broadway hit Annie.
"The production numbers never broke out into the kind of showstoppers that I expected," he said. "Geppetto will be a much more satisfying effort."
Stick to the Plan
Getting back to Marry Me, Brenner explained that he is busy rehearsing understudies for the show, who are guaranteed to appear in a few performances. He told us, "They are both going to be great, and are giving me some new ideas that I will probably try out with the two regular actors."
Brenner is not opposed to doing some fine-tuning during the run of a show, but subscribes adamantly to the directorial edict of setting shows precisely prior to opening and not encouraging actors to experiment during a performance. He explained, "I am very much the type of director who gives specific business to actors. It's their challenge to make it look fresh and spontaneous each night. I'm not saying the actors do not contribute and share suggestions. Of course they do. But I always have very specific directions to give to them during the rehearsals."
In relating his disdain for onstage improvisation, Brenner commented on two shows that he disliked intensely for their lack of actor discipline. In the recent Broadway revival of Little Me, he felt Faith Prince "walked through her part," but he was more unsettled by Martin Short's performance. "That's a very funny script. It doesn't need self-indulgence on the part of the actors to impose their shtick on the material. The night I saw the show, Short seemed to be straying from the material to milk the audience in a way that was inappropriate and offensive."
In the same vein, Brenner also spoke of a show that has long been this critic's nomination for the most obnoxious acting travesty of all time-Mickey Rooney in the late-'80s tour of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. In that show, when Rooney was not whining to the audience incessantly (before, during, and after the show) about the disastrous reviews that the show had quite justifiably received, he was indulging in an endless barrage of unfunny and stupid anachronistic ad-libs, wreaking havoc on Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart's hilarious script and Sondheim's charming score.
Brenner indicated that at the performance that he attended, Rooney came to the edge of the stage at one point, standing right in front of Brenner, and remarked to the audience, "I didn't write this shit." Brenner said that he looked Rooney right in the eye and responded loudly, "Yes, you did!" No wonder Brenner's shows are filled with wit, class, chutzpah-and guts. BSW