A Little Less Big

When composer David Shire and his co-authors were asked if they wanted to rework their 1996 musical “Big” for a touring production, he recalls, “We had two impulses: Yes, we’d like to change a great deal. And second, we’d rather have root canals for a straight week.”

After all, he, lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. and librettist John Weidman had spent considerable time and emotion turning the hit movie “Big” into a musical, only to see it close on Broadway after six months with a potential loss of $10.3 million. It became a legend not as a classic but as one of the biggest financial disasters in Broadway history.

What finally swayed the authors was not just potential income but the notion of one last shot at something they’d been working on since Shire’s wife, actress Didi Conn, first suggested it in 1989. “We felt we can’t let them send out a scaled-down version of a show that none of the creators were happy with when $10 million was spent on it,” says Shire. “What we learned on Broadway propelled us to do yet another version.”

That version opens Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. After an unprecedented post-Broadway overhaul, the Pace Theatrical Group production is midway into a national tour of 33 cities over 31 weeks.

With its cast scaled back from 31 to 19 and a budget scaled down to $1.8 million from Broadway’s $10.3 million, “Big” is back as the smaller, gentler “big.” (Lower budget, lower case.) The simple story of a 12-year-old boy who wants to be grown up, gets his wish, then wants to be small again has become the story of the musical as well.

Few musicals start life with the promise of “Big.” Based on the hugely popular 1988 movie starring Tom Hanks, “Big” spins the tale of 12-year-old Josh, a New Jersey boy who makes an idle wish to be big. Waking up the next morning in an adult body, Josh bonds with a toy company owner when they dance together on a giant-sized piano keyboard. He becomes a hot-shot toy executive, acquires a fabulous apartment, charms female colleague Susan, and has his first sexual experience before realizing he has to go home again.

Josh’s journey to adulthood and back--a story that won Oscar nominations for screenwriting partners Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg--attracted some of Broadway’s top talents. Among them were the songwriting team of Maltby and Shire, creators of the Broadway musical “Baby” and off-Broadway revue “Starting Here, Starting Now,” and librettist Weidman, collaborator with Stephen Sondheim on “Pacific Overtures” and “Assassins.” Mike Ockrent of “Crazy for You” directed, and the choreographer was Susan Stroman, a Tony winner for both “Crazy for You” and “Show Boat.”

As a reporter, I was also drawn to the story of this venture. The American musical, once the glory of our popular culture, had become an endangered species and a tradition that even Sondheim couldn’t keep alive all by himself. “Big” seemed like the perfect subject for a detailed study of how a Broadway musical comes into being, and, in 1995, I began following the show to research my book, “Making It Big: The Diary of a Broadway Musical.”

Yet after a rocky tryout in Detroit, where the show received a cool reception from both critics and audiences, “Big” headed into equally unfriendly territory on Broadway. Originally conceived to compete with mega-musicals like “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Miss Saigon,” it instead wound up competing against the 1995-’96 season’s smaller “Rent” and “Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk.” In part due to that, it looked old-fashioned and was considered over-produced by many critics. What had been charming and winsome on-screen was often awkward onstage.

Then came the Tony nominations. “Big” received five nominations, but it did not receive the all-important best musical nod. In the end, “Big” could boast of neither a star, like Julie Andrews of “Victor/Victoria,” nor Tony awards like “Rent” and “Noise/Funk.” With mixed reviews, high running costs, considerable competition and, worst of all, the Tony snub, the beleaguered show closed on October 13, 1996, after 23 previews and 193 regular performances.

“Big” did not disappear, however. Pace, which is involved in about 40% of the nation’s road shows, had invested $500,000 in the Broadway production and was “always attracted to the property,” Pace President Scott Zeiger says. “We thought it was a terrific motion picture, and that all the instincts to produce it on Broadway were right.”

Enter Music Theatre International, a company that licenses shows for stock and amateur rights. Aware that greater exposure for “Big” outside New York could mean greater future sales, MTI Chairman Freddie Gershon put up funds for new musical arrangements and offered Pace “a very special deal to take it out and prove to the theatrical community that ‘Big’ was a viable property and entertainment.”

Pace’s Zeiger, who felt that on Broadway “the physical production encumbered the art,” was convinced. Most big musicals cost local presenters “well in excess” of $300,000 a week, says Zeiger, while the new “big” would cost them just $285,000.

“By the time we were pulled into a room to talk about it, businessmen had already decided it was a good idea,” says librettist Weidman, who is now finishing “Wise Guys” with Sondheim for an anticipated opening at Washington’s Kennedy Center early next year. “So all there was to do was go back in a room and start to work.”

Leading that work was director Eric Schaeffer, artistic director and founder of Signature Theatre of Arlington, Va. The 35-year-old Schaeffer, well-known as a show doctor, says he was initially concerned that the authors wouldn’t want to rework something they’d spent so many years on already. But, he says, “they were wonderful about it.”

Shire, in turn, says the authors “seemed to have a kindred spirit in Eric. We wanted to go back to a production that was more character-and-writing-driven than set-and-dance-driven. And our inclinations were confirmed by Eric, who asked to read all previous drafts and hear all the songs that had been cut--a stack of paper that reached halfway to the moon. He asked, “Why did you change this? And this? Why was this cut? That?”

The songwriters, who had written 58 songs for the show at one time or another (of which 16 were in the original show), lost a few from the original production, resuscitated five others, revised two Broadway songs and wrote one entirely new song. The more contemporary sounds that opened the show’s two acts are gone now, while the show’s pivotal piano keyboard dance has been scaled back from a huge production number to the simple duet it is in the film.

Schaeffer didn’t just scrap the idea of the half-ton, $100,000 piano with multicolored lights keyed to musical notes. Also gone is the kids’ chorus and sets so complicated that they could be stopped dead in their tracks by something as small as a ballpoint pen. What Schaeffer wanted is a show centered on Josh: “Josh has to be driving the bus rather than be a passenger.”

Ironically, the show’s Broadway director Ockrent had long wanted much the same thing. At meeting after meeting, he raised similar issues, bemoaning “that damn piano” himself. But the simplicity and sweetness of the story that had been apparent early on in the rehearsal hall was eventually overwhelmed by the extensive production values considered necessary by the show’s backers to compete then on Broadway.

Now comes this second chance. Weidman’s revised book puts more emphasis on Josh’s romance with toy company colleague Susan, and is, Weidman feels, “cleaner and clearer.” Lyricist Maltby estimates that about 60% of the show has been altered.

To change a show after its Broadway premiere isn’t itself uncommon, says Maltby, who tells of rewriting the last scene of “Miss Saigon” more than four years after it opened. Other shows have been extensively rewritten on the road before coming to New York, but it is certainly rare for a show to get such extensive rewrites for a tour.

“The ‘Big’ phenomenon is an example of the importance of ‘touring Broadway,’ ” says Jed Bernstein, executive director of the League of American Theatres and Producers. “This is something we never would have seen 20 or 25 years ago. When a show was not a big Broadway success, it wouldn’t have had a post-New York life. But now with two-thirds of Broadway’s business not in New York, both in terms of attendance and grosses, you have a very sophisticated, enthusiastic and avid audience that wants to see Broadway material.”

So, how is the new “big” doing? Critical response has been mixed. Some critics feel it still doesn’t have the movie’s magic, some prefer the Broadway version and others have come back saying the show is now too small--the sets are “skimpy,” the orchestra “slim.”

But many have been welcoming. Chris Jones, the same Variety reviewer whose Detroit pan preceded the show to Broadway, wrote that “banished from Broadway, ‘Big’ gets the warm and accessible outing such a strong idea always deserved.”

Reading the touring show’s extensive press coverage, much of which trashes the original, the show’s authors stress that theirs was no overnight failure.

“This was a show that ran for six months at grosses around $350,000 or $400,000 a week and got some wonderful reviews, including in the New York Times,” says Shire. “It isn’t like we took this show that ran one night and suddenly turned it into something effective. There was a lot that worked very well on Broadway and is still in the show.”

There are plans to publish the show’s revised text in SHOWmusic Magazine this spring, inaugurating that magazine’s publication of show librettos. Expected in July is a Japanese tour that would combine some of the new material with the Broadway show’s physical production.

Although some recent presenters--who must contend with much larger houses than Broadway--have found ticket sales disappointing, “big” is expected to head into another tour when this one ends. Gaithersburg, Md.-based Networks will send a non-equity production to 108 cities in 28 weeks starting this fall, playing split weeks and one-night stands in such places as Palm Desert, Fresno and Kalamazoo, Mich. Executive producer Ken Gentry says the production will cost under $700,000 to mount and will use many of the sets, costumes and other elements of the ongoing Pace tour.

After that comes MTI’s stock and amateur productions, and they, too, will use the touring version. “From this point on, ‘big’ is an eminently licensable property,” says Gershon, who reports he’s already had more than 100 licensing requests.

“There’s great charm to this show, and they captured it. I wrote out checks, but they delivered the goods.”

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* “big,” Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; next Sunday, 7 p.m.; Saturday and next Sunday, 2 p.m. $21-$52.50. (213) 365-3500 or (714) 740-7878.