IT TAKES A 150% TO BE GREAT

on Sunday, August 26, 2012 ·

I saw a musical comedy last night: THE PEOPLE VS FRIAR LAURENCE – The Man Who Killed Romeo and Juliet – at the Whitefire Theater in Sherman Oaks, California. There was piano player and a cast of twelve. It ran two and half hours, had close to thirty original songs. Everyone sang. Everyone danced. The theater was small. The audience was smaller …maybe twenty-five or thirty.

And from the first second the lights went up, those performers burst out on to the small stage with the wonderfully cheesy cardboard cut-out stage setting and gave it their all – plus. It was thrilling, the level of commitment, the time and effort it took to put this on, the hours of practice, of singing, of dancing. And they put it all out there. They weren’t leaving anything in the locker room. Total commitment. And it’s not an easy piece. It’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge comedy. Hard. It’s singing and dancing. Hard. And they were giving their all for twenty-five people.

You would think they might be disheartened at the less than full house, that they might let down, for just a split second, let the reality come through to shade their performance, that one moment they wouldn’t give it their all. But, there wasn’t a breath of that. Not in the slightest. That’s what made it so thrilling.

I recently saw the Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s FOLLIES when it came to the Ahmanson here in L.A.. I saw it twice as a matter of fact. Learned a lot from it. One of the performances I paid special attention to the bit players, the ones dancing in the background of the dance scenes, the ones having whispered conversations in the background of party scenes. This was the big leagues and those actors were giving a hundred and fifty percent, just like the wonderful actors in THE PEOPLE VS. FRIAR LAURENCE.

THE PEOPLE could lose thirty minutes – easily. Some of the performers sing really terrific, others could have better voices; there were wonderful actors, and some not so much. But it didn’t make any difference. It was mesmerizing because they were giving a hundred and fifty percent.

I gave script notes to one of my consultations this week: “Why don’t we hear the dialogue of the two characters talking?” She wrote me back that she was “Just being lazy?” Yikes!

“Lazy” doesn’t cut it. You have to give 150% for your work to excel. That’s the deal.

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SEE: THE PEOPLE VS FRIAR LAURENCE – THE MAN WHO KILLED ROMEO AND JULIET

BOOK BY RON WEST MUSIC AND LYRICS BY PHIL SWANN & RON WEST

THE WHITEFIRE THEATER, SHERMAN OAKS, CA.,

Categories: Lazarus Rising · Tags: Follies, SCRIPT CONSULTATION, Stephen Sondheim, THE LAST WORD, The People Vs. Friar Laurence, TOM LAZARUS, Whitefire Theatre, wink wink nudge nudge

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