Book Review by Samuel L. Leiter . . .
Casual notes on show-biz books, memoirs and studies, dust gatherers, and hot off the presses.
Douglas J. Cohen. How to Survive a Killer Musical: Agony and Ecstasy on the Road to Broadway. Lanham, MD: Applause Theater and Cinema Books, 2023. 255pp.
[Leiter Looks at Books returns after a hiatus of several months during which I completed my own latest book, now seeking a publisher. Meanwhile, a sizable shelf of theater-related tomes has accumulated, waiting to be covered. Last year 40 books were reviewed, a number I have doubts about repeating. As usual, however, if you have any interesting suggestions for something you wish to recommend, please contact me at slleiter@gmail.com.]
In How to Survive a Killer Musical, Douglas J. Cohen has penned a valuable theatrical memoir about his experiences in working on multiple stagings of his musical adaptation of William Goldman’s dark comic novel, No Way to Treat a Lady. As he recalls, he was doing laundry in his New York apartment building when he discovered its 1968 movie version on TV. Despite his book’s subtitle, Agony and Ecstasy on the Road to Broadway, the show never did reach that mecca of commercial theatre.
However, it not only enjoyed—apart from staged readings and concert versions—two significant Off-Broadway productions, and over 200 international and American regional showings. Audiences applauded it in such places as England, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Germany, and Australia, and it picked up a basketful of prestigious honors along the way. Its title sometimes changed in translation, Italy calling it Serial Killer per Signora, and, according to a poster Cohen provides, it was Koroshi no Seppun (which I’d render as The Kiss that Kills) in Japan. An appendix provides a well-credited list of over 40 notable productions.
I’m probably not the best choice to review Cohen’s book, as I know the story only from the movie, starring Rod Steiger, George Segal, and Lee Remick, which I haven’t seen in over half a century. In essence, the show, written for four actors, is about a love-hate relationship between a serial killer, Kit Gill, who adopts various disguises, and his pursuer, a schleppy Jewish detective named Morris “Moe” Brummell. Several characters, including both men’s mothers, are played by the same versatile actress, and another actress plays socialite Sarah Stone.
Never having seen a production, however, I can’t comment meaningfully on the countless revisions Cohen—who wrote the music, lyrics, and book—describes having made over the years to satisfy various directors and producers. Even now, he seems willing to make changes if a collaborator offers good ones.
After taking us back to his experiences developing the musical at the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop and the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, chapters that will prove valuable to aspiring creatives, Cohen gets ever weedier as he describes the work he did in preparation for the show’s 1987 and 1996 Off-Broadway productions. These were staged, respectively, by the late, wheelchair-bound Jack Hofsiss, and Scott Schwartz (son of composer Stephen).
Perhaps most compelling are the pages devoted to a 1989 production mounted in Leatherhead, UK, under the aegis of Broadway veteran, the late Vivian Matalon, with aspirations of moving the show to the West End. The give and take, sometimes scalding, among Matalon, Cohen, and Showpeople (the British producing team), recreated with delicious you-are-there veracity, depicts the kind of backstage tension familiar to theatre people everywhere.
So lifelike are Cohen’s dialogues with his coworkers, including—elsewhere in the book—charming encounters with Bill Goldman himself, you might think they were recorded. Their source, though, is a journal he kept assiduously, and from which he often quotes in italicized, extended passages.
To listen to Cohen’s score, you can go to his website for the show (and other Cohen creations), or do a YouTube search, but my job here is to talk about the memoir, not the songs. Still, while How to Survive . . . often mentions plot details, a more comprehensive plot summary of the show, perhaps as an appendix, might have proved useful, perhaps keyed to discussions in the text. Without a more thorough knowledge of the material, the uninformed reader can occasionally lose focus as new lyrics, plot points, and rationales float by.
Nevertheless, How to Survive . . . is a book every prospective musical theatre writer or composer should read, whether they know Cohen’s show or not. It takes you deep into the heart of musical theater collaboration, as Cohen engages with his different collaborators, each with their strengths, weaknesses, and personality traits.
Cohen himself comes off—even during the most frustrating, depressing situations—as an amiable soul dealing with often temperamental producers and artists whose never-ending requests for changes would probably have defeated a less well-grounded artist. A nice Jewish boy from Storrs, CT (his dad was a rabbi), he personalizes his account nicely, even introducing his late parents, his wife, Cathy, and his son, Jeremy. On the other hand, despite the sizable number of photos included, I would have preferred more production shots, and fewer personal ones.
No Way to Treat a Lady ran into some obstreperous obstacles over the years, including difficult casting decisions, untimely performers’ accidents, stinging personality clashes, belt-tightening financial crunches, excruciating tech problems, and all the rest of the craziness anyone working in theater is likely to meet. Cohen paints it all with such apparent honesty and bonhomie that you marvel at how, despite the peaks and valleys, the work somehow got done.
A host of distinguished names—even if not widely known outside the business—sparkle on Cohen’s pages, many tied to delightful anecdotes. You’ll meet, for example, Stephen Sondheim, Randie Levine-Miller, Frank Rich, Steven Bogardus, Liz Callaway, Jason Alexander, Douglas Carter Beane, Craig Carmella, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Lynn Ahrens, Steve Flaherty, Frank Gilroy, Jim Morgan, Ed Kleban, Jonathan Larson, Ron Moody, Lonny Price, Susan Schulman, David Shire, Martin Smith, and so on, not to mention the ubiquitous Peter Filichia. However, I’m obligated to note that at least one famous name gets a raw deal—playwright Robert Anderson, author of Tea and Sympathy—who somehow (like every Tom, Dick, and Harry) gets labeled “John.”
Douglas J. Cohen has written other shows than No Way to Treat a Lady, of course, and he continues to be active in the field, including his work as a highly regarded vocal coach. He may not yet have gotten there but, based on How to Survive a Killer Musical, and with his other projects in the oven, I suspect he remains ready to undergo the agony and the ecstasy on the road to Broadway. Here’s hoping he gets there.
Next Up: Al Pacino, Sonny Boy: A Memoir
