STAGE TO SCREENS: Chats with Osment, Lindsay-Abaire, Ashley and Gaynor
By Michael Buckley
17 Nov 2008
David Lindsay-Abaire, a 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner (Rabbit Hole), is in an enviable position. Not only has he penned book and lyrics for Shrek the Musical (now in previews prior to a Dec. 14 opening at the Broadway Theatre), but also he's been signed to write the "Spider-Man 4" screenplay ("a boy's dream come true") and to adapt his Pulitzer play as a film (for Nicole Kidman's production company, to star Kidman). He says, "I feel very lucky."
He's fond of Hollywood mogul Sam Goldwyn's quote: "The harder I work, the luckier I get." Admits the playwright, "Yes, it's a lot of pressure but 'Hooray!'" I thank him for doing the interview on short notice. "I'm happy to not spend another minute in that theatre." (Welcoming a break from the pressure, answering questions must be preferable to creating dialogue and/or lyrics.)
Of course, he's heard the Larry Gelbart line about Hitler that, if the dictator's still alive, "He should be sent out of town with a musical in trouble." The writer laughs. "It's more than accurate [although the buzz on Shrek does not indicate trouble]."
Signed as book writer, "It was [composer] Jeanine Tesori who suggested I write the lyrics. Dreamworks was willing to give it a try. I wrote a couple of songs with Jeanine, and they liked them. That's how I became a lyricist."
Which lyricists does he admire? "Of course, Stephen Sondheim, who's astounding, but I learned a great deal from watching Amanda Green write lyrics for High Fidelity [his short-lived debut as librettist]."
Shrek challenges included "being loyal to the source material, but figuring out how to make it our own, and having Shrek sing. He's closed off to the world, unwilling to share emotions. Musicals crack open a character's heart. Emotionally and psychologically, Shrek has a lot going on, but how to show that truthfully, without being corny, took awhile. When Brian d'Arcy James came aboard, we figured it out. Brian reads a line and things fall into place."
Boston born-and-bred, Lindsay-Abaire comes from "a blue-collar family. My mother worked in a factory; my father in the Chelsea fruit market." How did he become interested in writing? "I did a lot of plays in high school, primarily as an actor. In the school I went to, every ninth-grade class did a musical. We did The History of the American Film [on Broadway for 21 performances in 1978], by Christopher Durang, who became my teacher at Juilliard.
"In the next grade, someone said, 'We should do a tenth-grade musical.' A friend said that it should be an original and that I should write it, because I was the funny one. That's how I became a playwright."
He wrote musicals the next three grades. "I kept writing plays, not knowing I was going to be a playwright. I went to Sarah Lawrence, primarily as an actor, but I kept taking [writing] classes. When I got into Juilliard [studying writing under Chris Durang and Marsha Norman], I thought, 'Maybe this is going to work out.'"
Writing influences include John Guare, Edward Albee, Georges Feydeau, Eugene Ionesco, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. "Their work mixes a lot of tones." Among movies he admires are "My Man Godfrey" and "Twentieth Century," Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers, [Frank] Capra, "and anything by Preston Sturges. Their tones are what I try to achieve in my work.
"Rabbit Hole is a serious drama, with comedy in it. I think it works because of the humor. Even Shrek has something deep at its heart. Yes, there's a funny donkey and scary dragon, but it's about an ogre and a princess [played by Sutton Foster, "who's astounding"]. Both have been told they are one thing when inside they feel they're something else. The characters are searching for friendship, for love. Nothing's goofy about that."
During his years at Sarah Lawrence, he met his wife, Chris Lindsay-Abaire, who's "an actress and also a post-partum doula, someone who goes into the home and helps parents adjust to their newborn. My wife and I took each other's names. She was Christine Lindsay, I was David Abaire." Both use the hyphenated name Lindsay-Abaire.
Manhattan Theatre Club presented four of his plays Fuddy Meers, Wonder of the World, Kimberly Akimbo, and (on Broadway) Rabbit Hole. "Sam Raimi ["Spider-Man" director] told me that Rabbit Hole was the reason I got 'Spider-Man 4.' Who knew?
"Spider-Man's like many of my characters an outsider in search of clarity. That's a theme running through my work." Lindsay-Abaire happily reports that "following the musical and the movie, I've been commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club to write a new play. I have to get back to that."
