‘An American in Paris’ 2.0 packs double the Jewiness of the original

NEW YORK — When the Broadway hit, “An American in Paris,” launches its national tour in a few weeks, it will reveal a surprising plot twist to audiences in the US and abroad.

The stage production is a companion piece to the 1951 Oscar-winning film classic of the same name, which landed six Oscars, including Best Picture. Rather than a nuanced narrative, however, the movie is more a vehicle for dazzling dance scenes featuring the legendary Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron — who plays a 19-year-old ingenue who lives under the care of an older man. Her back story is never fully revealed.

For Broadway managing producer Stuart Oken, a veteran of Disney’s “Lion King,” the story had to be more believable to succeed as a musical.

“Putting a movie on stage can be one of the most difficult things to achieve,” Oken says.

The current Broadway version is billed as “a story about an American soldier, a mysterious French girl and an indomitable European city, each yearning for a new beginning in the aftermath of war.” In the musical retelling, the femme fatale is an enchanting ballerina who warms the hearts of three male leads.

The reason she is sheltered by a family not her own is only revealed as the musical nears its end. In an unexpected turn of events, the musical’s Jewish narrator, Adam Hochberg, suddenly divulges that his love interest, Lise Dassin, had been housed by a wealthy family involved in the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation, because her life was at risk.

‘My connection was very real and personal’

Naturally, she is Jewish.

“We are talking about World War II, the occupation of Paris, a city that had gone dark, and we could dramatize returning to the light,” says Oken, whose own ancestors were immigrants from Poland and Russia to the US. “My connection was very real and personal.”

Directed and choreographed by the renowned Christopher Wheeldon, who won the Tony for his work on the show, the musical flushes out the storyline with a full Gershwin score, including “‘S Wonderful,” “I Got Rhythm,” and more. It also introduces new content about Lise and other characters.

A quintessential Broadway musical, the program’s relatively light treatment of the shadows of the Holocaust weaves together fact and fiction. Unlike the film, the production opens with an injured Jewish American G.I. who has chosen to remain in Paris after the war’s end, attempting to make a living as a composer.

A more subtle Jewish reference is represented by the character Milo Davenport. Her character was inspired by Peggy Guggenheim, who saved many Jewish artists–and their work–from Nazi Europe. Artistic motifs from that period and from some of the pieces Guggenheim saved, are woven into the show’s sets, which also landed famed designer Bob Crowley a Tony.

From its beginning at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris to its final Broadway performance at Broadway’s Palace Theatre approaching on October 9, the show has won a bevy of other honors. It scored four 2015 Tony Awards out of 12 nominations, as well as four Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Drama League Award for Best Musical, three Fred and Adele Astaire Awards and two Theatre World Awards. The musical is slated to be produced in London in March, 2017.

In an exclusive interview with The Times of Israel before the show leaves Broadway on tour, Oken openly discussed the story behind the story.

How did you become involved with the show?

An agent who knew the Gershwins reached out to me in 2009 to ask if I would be interested in sitting down with the family. I knew “An American in Paris” had a few false starts on Broadway. There have been some pretty prominent people over the years who had taken a shot at it. So I never really thought this would be a piece of material I would get.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpF7a0NFWNY

And I was skeptical. The idea of making a movie into a Broadway show didn’t resonate with me so much. It would be hard to live up to the reputation. It’s 65 years old, a Leslie Caron-Gene Kelly MGM musical. How do you top it? And how do you turn it into something that in its own right is authentically artistic and ambitious and not just trying to recreate something for commercial purposes?

‘It’s 65 years old, a Leslie Caron-Gene Kelly MGM musical. How do you top it?’

What was your process in deciding to move the project forward?

I went to look at the movie again because I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I watched it a second time. I thought about it for a while… Does Gene Kelly seem like he just fought in a war? Or does it seem like Paris just after a war? There is no setting the film in Paris. It was set in the time it was made. There was nothing at all that made you say this was real. Why did this woman, Lise, live with this very successful performer Henri Baurel, who was in his late 30s or 40s at the time? He was a big star in Paris.

Nothing said she was Jewish in the movie. There is one line that her parents worked for the Resistance and that he looked after her, but not that her parents were Jews. So I thought, what would be the difference if we did this in a more realistic way?

What prompted the decision to re-envision Lise Dassin as a Jewish war orphan?

We owe a debt to the history of this material. We asked ourselves, what would happen if we moved this story to the moments after WWII and made the characters closer to how we think of soldiers today? And then the big thing was something that was discovered… [My co-producer] Van Kaplan and I decided we wanted to meet with the writer Craig Lucas. We set it right after the war because that’s much more realistic, with three younger men. And Craig was the one who said, “Wouldn’t she be Jewish? Wouldn’t that be the way everything makes sense?”

And then the back story started to unfold. With those new ideas, I could move forward… Director and choreographer Chris Wheeldon likes to say, “Art and love are so much poignant when they come from a place of real darkness.”

He is the other half of the answer to the questions, “Why did you chose to produce the show?” There was only one really famous artistic expression and that is the ballet at the end of the film. And there was the music.

How did one song inspire both a film and a musical?

The origin of the film is that the producers went to Ira Gershwin. George died in 1937 and “An American in Paris” was this famous orchestral piece that George had written. The film producer Arthur Fried had a relationship with Ira and asked if they could develop a movie that would use the music and concept of Gershwin’s orchestral-tone poem.

‘Art and love are so much poignant when they come from a place of real darkness’

This was a juke box film musical as they say, as many of the MGM films were. At the end of the stage production, a new ballet has been created by Christopher Wheeldon to the Gershwin music. It’s slightly different than the ballet at the end of the film. It is a retelling of the romantic ideas between [the lead male character] Jerry Mulligan and Lise that becomes a fantasy sequence. Eventually, it leads to Jerry saying goodbye to Lise as she goes off with Henri. In the film, he lets her run off. It sequences into a fantasy ballet. It is very long, very famous, the most famous ballet sequence ever in a movie at one time. The 14-minute ballet became the thing the film was known for. It became the thing the studio was very worried about. It became a big risk that paid off. She comes back to him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kNDhOFrCew

My point was that you can’t do the musical “An American in Paris” without being authentic and committed to ballet. That’s not a very commercial idea.

I said to the Gerwshin family, “I found the two keys that I could say ‘yes’ to you, if you could say ‘yes’ to me. I’m going to make the ballet central to the project.”

‘I’m going to make the ballet central to the project’

…It was the ability to think of the show coming from the ashes of war and, as a ballet driven musical with an artist, and Christopher Wheeldon especially, that gave us “permission” in my mind to put it on stage.

How did you decide to make the narrator Jewish?

The narrator is meant to be an embodiment of George Gershwin, a Jew who went to Paris. He wrote “An American in Paris” in 1917. In our story, it happens in the context of the story, in 1945. So of course, he’s a Jew and Lise turns out to be a Jew. I often wondered why the movie didn’t make this explicit.

In 1950, it wasn’t possible to go there.

I asked Leslie Caron and she said it was never there. I couldn’t find the original drafts through the studio. But she would have known as an actress if there was talk about it. Maybe it was there in the earliest days of the screenplay.

How do you identify Jewishly?

I was bar mitzvahed. I identify culturally… The Jewish narratives are important to me. I support Israel. I am a definitely a Jew… I’ve been to Israel twice. I spent eight weeks there when I was very young. I would love to go back.

What do you love about the show?

There are not many musicals that feel like “Fiddler” or “Gypsy” or “West Side Story” or “Oklahoma.” These are the things that shaped many of us, including me. I never thought I’d ever have the opportunity to work on something like that because the era has passed. So we got to make a new version of something that had its DNA in that era and it feels like a show that was made today. It was a very rare and special opportunity to do that today and nothing could be closer to me than this type of show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBOqLRX4xNs

And to use any George and Ira material… We have added half a dozen songs that weren’t in the movie because we wanted it to feel like a book musical.

All the songs are Gershwin songs. And all the orchestral music is George Gershwin music. It’s music and lyrics by George and Ira — two Jewish writers from the turn of the century.

What impact does the show have on audiences?

Older people feel like they have come home and they are seeing something they don’t get to see anymore. You come in expecting to see something old fashioned and you get something very contemporary, and also, let’s be frank, classical ballet.

You know, if you’re playing to those audiences, you could probably run six weeks. So the point really is, this allows people who have come in the door going, “Oh, I’m not sure what I think of ballet,” end up saying, “The high point of this show for me is the ballet.’”

People of all ages are deeply inspired by what they see and are very surprised. It is one of the most beautiful and most sophisticated musicals in history. There could be 30, 40 or 50 of those shows. I think it lives in that world and it has its place historically. And I’m sorry it hasn’t run longer. It will run in London, Japan and other places. And it will have a very long life.

I recognized motifs echoing Kandinsky, Miro, Picasso, Calder and Mondrian in your sets. How did that evolve?

You got all the references. This is courtesy of the greatest designer working in the theater today. Bob Crowley is the ranking genius. He won the Tony award [for Best Scenic Design of a Musical]. He is just incredible.

The show has been running since it opened March 2015. It got 12 Tony nominations and won four awards. There is a lot of love for the show. I think it needed the Tony [for Best Musical]. Obviously, we were unsuccessful in that.

What do you consider the musical’s strengths and weaknesses compared to the original film?

‘Robbie Fairchild made everyone forget about Gene Kelly’

How many Gene Kellys are there in the world? For me, Robbie Fairchild* made everyone forget about Gene Kelly. Gene Kelly was Robbie’s inspiration to be a dancer.

[*Fairchild portrayed the original Jerry Mulligan. He opened the show in Paris and New York, won the Tony for Best Actor and is slated to open the show in London.]

How does it feel to be part of the unfolding Jewish history on Broadway?

There is so much Jewish influence on Broadway… That’s why our show is in some ways a throw back. Contemporary Broadway is different. Broadway was shaped by Jews, Jewish culture and Jewish sensibility, Oscar Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, Richard Rogers, George Gershwin, Frank Lesser… Jewish subject matter and Jewish influence is all over show biz.