Broadway favorites come together to celebrate First You Dream - The Music of Kander & Ebb tonight on PBS. The musical songwriting duo that brought us Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Act, Curtains, The Scottsboro Boys, and last season's The Visit, will be honored in a new landmark television event featuring their theatrical songbook. Part of PBS Art Fall Festival hosted by Gloria Estefan, First You Dream celebrates the great American songwriting team whose songs are recognized worldwide.
The songwriting team has become one of the America's musical treasures. After half a century of music, their work remains just as profound as it was in 1965. This year alone we have seen three Kander & Ebb musicals playing simultaneously on Broadway. In March of this year, a Revival of Cabaret & Chicago were playing on Broadway when their new musical, The Visit, premiered at the Lyceum Theatre. A landmark only a handful of other writers have reached.
Produced by HMS Media, First You Dream features a stellar Broadway cast that includes Kate Baldwin (Songbird, Finian's Rainbow, Big Fish), Heidi Blickenstaff (Something Rotten!, The Addams Family, [title of show]), James Clow (Peter Pan, Company), Norm Lewis (The Phantom of the Opera, Porgy & Bess), Julia Murney (Wicked, Crimes of the Heart, Evita) and Matthew Scott (Jersey Boys, Sondheim on Sondheim). First You Dream premieres today at 9pm on PBS and is now available for DVD pre-order.
I had the great pleasure of interviewing Julia Murney & Heidi Blickenstaff about First You Dream. My interview with Heidi can be heard on my podcast, The Set List, subscribe for free now on iTunes.
Here is Julia Murney taking about the great songwriting team.
VL: As a successful working actress, I'm sure the works of John Kander & Fred Ebb has influenced you as an artist. What was the first of their musicals that took you by storm?
JM: I was at summer camp, Stage Door Manor, a theatre camp. The first part that I ever got, where I got to speak lines was in the musical Chicago. It's completely inappropriate for a 15 year old girl to be doing that show but there I was playing Hunyak the Hungarian cell-block girl. The very first show where I got to do more than sing and dance in the back was a Kander & Ebb show and it was Chicago - at camp!
VL: Funny enough I did Chicago at my camp French Woods Festival, and I played Fred Casely!
Along with some of your cast mates of First You Dream, you have been with the project since 2009. How has that journey been? And will there be another live performance?
JM: There is more to the show than what we filmed. I think it will be so delightful and delicious to get to do this show to honor John & Fred the way that it does. Certainly, when we did the first production of it, the notation of maybe becoming a Broadway show was in our brains but we never thought we'd get to film it for PBS. The filming was not even part of the equation so it was really surprising and special when it came up. We really enjoyed each others company a great deal. So frankly, if we get to do a run of the show and get paid to have each others company all that time- that'd be swell.
VL: That's so sweet. It's always great to work with people you like.
JM: It is. And Frankly, Fred Ebb is no longer with us but John Kander is. The pleasure of his company is something I wish for everyone. He is a tremendous man and he is kind and funny and he's a "hugger". To think backwards and say "oh my gosh, I'm eating pizza with John Kander who wrote Chicago. Who wrote the very first lines I said on a stage", and now I'm eating pizza with him, is remarkable.
VL: Kander & Ebb have written a collection of very interesting women in their musicals? Do you have a favorite or one you wish to play on Broadway.
JM: I would love to play Aurora in Kiss of The Spider Woman. Chita Rivera can probably sing this catalogue that's sitting next to me. It would be so wonderful if she performed it, I'd want to see that catalogue be performed like that all the time. She makes it so riveting. I got to play Velma [in Chicago] in college. The Rink would be fascinating to do. Sally Bowles [from Cabaret] would be fascinating to do. They are the champions of strong female roles. Any of the above, I would gladly attempt to bite me teeth into.
VL: Did you get to see Chita Rivera's PBS special?
JM: I did! I was crying. This is a "John Kander" thing- John Kander's theatrical family if you will. Everyone should be so lucky to get to work with any of those people. And I had the opportunity to do that with a few of them. He is such a kind good man, he attracts kind good people. Chita is everything! Chita is the lesson of how to be classy and how to lead a company. She comes from being a gypsy and not being the star. She never turned her back on how she began, to this day. She is so inspiring.
VL: I saw a trailer for First You Dream featuring you and Heidi Blickenstaff performing "The Apple Doesn't Fall (Very Far From the Tree)" from The Rink! What else can we expect from the broadcast?
JM: A bunch of my stuff in on the DVD. We filmed more than we aired. One of my absolutely favorite parts of the show-that is not going to be on air, is a mashup we created, (Heidi, myself and David Loud who is our arranger - brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!); I sing "The Money Tree" [from The Act] and [Heidi] sings "Maybe This Time" [from Cabaret]. It turns into, what we affectionately call the belt-off, where the two of us are just sort of screaming and dramatizing our brains off!
VL: For any one new to musical theater-a ten year old girl, a ten year old boy- and the works of Kander & Ebb, what would you like those audiences to take away from First You Dream?
JM: We were talking about this a bit when we were making this special. When we were kids, we watched Great Performances. I had VHS tapes of certain shows from Great Performances & Live from The Kennedy Center. And I played those tapes over and over. I would still watch them if I had them.
The thing about Kander & Ebb's music is, it doesn't get the credit it deserves for the depth of where it goes musically and lyrically. It is some dark deep stuff. Incredibly visually rendered. There is a song that we didn't do in the taping but we did in the show called "Colored Lights" from The Rink. There's a lyric, "I was leaning, chewing cashews off the starboard bow", Fred writes those lyrics and I know exactly where I am. I know exactly what it tastes like. It's very evocative that way. I hope people that think they know that music see it from another side. My hopes for those ten-year-old kids are they go "Who is that?" and then go and find all their other music. They write about lives that are lived! Lives that are glorious, beautiful, loving, ugly, depressing, and nasty because that is what it is.
Along with First You Dream, Julia Murney will be playing a series of solo concerts at Feinstein's/54 Below this weekend through November 21st. Click here for tickets and information.
To listen to my interview with Broadway's Heidi Blickenstaff, subscribe to my podcast THE SET LIST here on iTunes or listen below. Do not forget to watch First You Dream tonight at 9PM EST. on PBS. I will be live tweeting #FirstYouDream at @VictorLegra and @SetListPod