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Home , Carolyn Leigh, City of Angels (musical), Cy Coleman, David Zippel, Dee Hoty, I Love My Wife

STUDY GUIDE & DRAMATURGY About the Show

City of Angels opened on Broadway at the Virginia Theatre on December 11, 1989. It ran for 879 performances before closing on January 19, 1992. It also enjoyed a run in West End at in 1993.

Michael Blakemore was the director and was the scenic designer. The opening night cast included as Stine, as Stone, René Auberjonois as both Irwin S. Irving and Buddy Fidler, as Donna and Oolie, as Carla Haywood and Alaura Kingsley, and

Kay McClelland as Gabby and Bobbi. Because the show features two stories happening at the same time, every actor, except for the ones playing Stine and Stone, doubled as another role.

City of Angels was nominated for and won many awards. Most notably, it won the 1990 for Actor in a Musical (James Naughton), Book of a Musical (), Featured Actress in a Musical (Randy Graff), Best Musical, Original Score ( and ), and Scenic Design for a play or a musical (Robin Wagner). It was nominated for many other awards as well, such as Actor in a Musical (Gregg Edelman), Direction of a Musical (), Costume Design for a play or musical (), and Lighting Design for a play or a musical ().

City of Angels features two stories that are occurring at the same time. On one hand, there is Stine, a crime writer, who is attempting to adapt a novel of his for the big screen while facing problems both at work and at home, and on the other, there is Stone, the protagonist of Stine’s novel, attempting to solve a missing person’s case that quickly turns into an even more complicated mystery. As situations develop and become more complex, Stine and Stone come to realize that they’re going to need each other’s help if they want to see the end of this one.

Synopsis Courtesy of Tams-Witmark

CITY OF ANGELS is the rarest of musical comedies; one that is not only loaded with music and written in the contemporary idiom, but also filled with sidesplitting comedy. Set in the glamorous, seductive Hollywood of the 40’s, the world of film studios and flimsy negligees, the show chronicles the misadventures of Stine, a young novelist, attempting a screenplay for movie producer/director, Buddy Fidler. While Fidler professes to be a fan of Stine’s work: “I’ve read a synopsis of every book you’ve ever written,” he assures the author, his gargantuan ego forces Stine to make endless compromises in the script he’s writing. The script is an adaptation of one of Stine’s novels which features his Raymond Chandleresque hero, a private investigator named Stone. Every movie scene that Stine writes is acted out onstage by a group of characters whose costumes are limited to various shades of black and white. The same is true of the sets in which they appear and the props that they use. With music scored in the genre, we are, in fact, treated to a live version of a 1940’s private eye film. It is a tale of decadence and homicide with a liberal sprinkling of femmes fatale. The story begins when Stone’s Girl Friday ushers a striking socialite, Alaura Kingsley, into Stone’s office. The alluring Alaura is there to hire Stone to track down the mysterious disappearance of her step- daughter, Mallory Kingsley. Mallory is a beautiful, “bad” young woman, who will later turn up in her birthday suit in Stone’s own bed. But it’s not all fun and games for the private eye. In the course of the “movie,” Stone receives a brutal beating from two vicious hoodlums hired to get him off the Kingsley case, and is also framed for a murder that could land him in the gas chamber. All of this goes on in the black and white “reel” life of CITY OF ANGELS. At the same time, in the “real” life scenes, all played out in glorious Technicolor, Stine has his hands full as well. He must fight off the increasingly demanding Buddy Fidler, and is left to do this alone after his wife Gabby returns to because she disapproves of Stine’s tactics. To make matters worse, Stine is then confronted by his alter ego, Stone, who is totally disgusted by Stine’s willingness to sacrifice his principles. Finally stepping over the line that separates fantasy from reality, Stone challenges his creator, Stine. The confrontation results in the rousing duet-You’re Nothing Without Me, which closes the first act. In “reel” life the second act finds Stone more and more ensnared by the treacherous web spun by Alaura. In “real” life Stine has to negotiate his way through the creative landmine laid down by Buddy, while somehow earning back his wife’s respect, Stone’s acceptance as well as his own self-respect. Stine appears on the studio sound stage for the first day of the filming of his script. It is here that, with the surprise appearance of Stone at his side to encourage him, and visible, of course, only to Stine, that the author finds the gumption to stand up to Buddy and reclaim his self-respect. Acquitting himself nobly, Stine is reunited with and more in the good graces of his wife and with his alter ego, Stone. Together, with the entire joining in, they perform a robust musical reprise of You’re Nothing Without Me, a switch in the lyrics turning it into the far more positive I’m Nothing Without You. The result is that best of all Hollywood conventions; a happy ending. About the Composer and Lyricist

Cy Coleman and David Zippel

Cy Coleman was an American composer, songwriter and jazz pianist who began his musical career by giving piano recitals at the age of 6 in venues such as Steinway Hall and . He decided to focus on making popular music, despite his classical and jazz background. His career on Broadway as a composer began in 1960 with , which was one of many collaborations with . Other works include , , , a collaboration with Michael Stewart, and The Will Rogers . His background in jazz is evident in City of Angels’ score. His decision to return to his jazz background in writing the score for City of Angels was based on the hard-boiled detective film noir movies of the 1940s.

David Zippel is an American musical theater lyricist. His work on Broadway includes City of Angels, with music by , Princesses with music by , and The Woman in White with music by Andrew Lloyd Weber, which was nominated for a Tony for Best Original Score. He has also written the lyrics for the Disney films and .

Coleman and Zippel won a Tony for Best Original Score for their collaboration on City of Angels in 1990. About the Librettist

Larry Gelbart

Larry Gelbart was an American television writer, a playwright, an author, and a screenwriter. He began to write comedy for radio shows at the age of 16. He later went on to write for tv, Broadway, and film. He’s most famous for creating and producing the hit tv show, M*A*S*H. He produced, wrote, and sometimes directed episodes of M*A*S*H for its first four seasons. He would win a Peabody Award and an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series for his work on M*A*S*H. He wrote many shows for Broadway, including City of Angels and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which he co-wrote with Burt Shevelove and . His book for City of Angels won him many awards, including a Tony Award for Book of a Musical in 1990 and a for Outstanding Book of a Musical. His work for film includes co-writing with Murray Schisgal and writing Oh, God!, both of which were nominated for the Academy Award of Best Original Screenplay. An Introduction to Film Noir

From “Notes on Film Noir” By Paul Schrader

City of Angels is influenced greatly by film noir. It pervades the worlds of both Stine as writer and Stone as his noir antihero. In his “Notes on Film Noir”, screenwriter-director-critic Paul Schrader, former editor of Cinema (Los Angeles), and the author of Transcendental Style on Film, details what aspects define film noir and what distinguishes film noir from other genres.

According to Schrader, film noir, most frequently set it the 1940’s and 50’s, is defined by the dark, pessimistic tone and mood of the movie, and therefore film noir is not quite a genre but more a focus on style. It is difficult to categorize what constitutes film noir. However, Schrader identifies four conditions in 1940’s Hollywood that brought about film noir, the first three being post-war disillusionment, post-war realism, and German expressionism in film, which was brought to Hollywood through German and Eastern European immigration. German expressionism, known for its artificial studio lighting, lent film noir much of its tone and visual style. The fourth element Schrader identifies as a precondition of film noir is the hard-boiled tradition, a style of fiction seen in the works of authors such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The hard-boiled tradition featured protagonists that often had a very cynical and pessimistic outlook of the world. Because of this, they often had narcissistic values. The hard-boiled tradition was especially influential in film noir movies that featured protagonists like the lone wolf detective.

Film noir has a very distinctive style in terms of cinematography and other filmmaking techniques. Many scenes are set at night, so lighting techniques that would produce this stark effects were required. Directors preferred oblique and vertical lines as opposed to horizontal lines so as to impart a sense of restlessness and instability on viewers. The actors were given no more, and often less, lighting emphasis than the settings so as to create a fatalistic, hopeless mood. Having an actor speak from the shadows emphasizes that there is nothing the protagonist can do; the city will outlast and negate even his best efforts. The action in a film noir was commonly driven by the cinematography and not by the physical actions of the actor. Romantic narration was used a lot to create a sense of a doomed past which the narrator yearns to return to because it is still better than whatever future lies ahead. Another common element was that the story was often told in a convoluted chronological order to reinforce the lack of control and feelings of hopelessness and lost time. Flashbacks were thus a common tool in film noir. The Theme of Reality and Fiction

City of Angels begins with a flashback and a voiceover, as we are first introduced to Stone’s reality. As the musical begins, there comes the realization that Stone and his world are just characters created by a crime novelist, Stine, who has complete control over his characters. This can be seen in the second scene, where Stine rewrites a few times the dialogue between Stone and Oolie, trying to get it just right. There is a clear divide between what is real and what is the supposed fiction, and which has control over the other.

However, as the musical progresses, there begin to appear subtle hints that this divide between reality and fiction isn’t as rigid as it first seemed. As Stine is leaving Donna’s bedroom after spending the night there, she asks him about a certain line that he had written for Oolie, to which Stine replies that it’s Oolie’s line not his, and that he just writes “what my characters tell me”. As Stine becomes more and more frustrated with Buddy’s suffocating demands for more and more rewrites and changes, this divide begins to completely vanish as Stone addresses Stine directly, incredulous that Stine has caved in so much to Buddy’s demands. The divide vanishes entirely when Stine responds directly to Stone, leading to a clash between reality and fiction in the song, “You’re Nothing Without Me”, where both sides try to establish dominance over the other. Eventually, reality wins out as Stine resumes typing, ending the first act.

But this dominance isn’t permanent when Stine experiences problems with his wife, Gabby. After she has figured out that he has been cheating on her with Donna, instead of owning up to his actions, Stine tries to lie his way out of the problem. He claims that his alibi is true, that it’s real, to which Gabby responds that he wasn’t fooling anyone. In a sense, it could be said then that Stine willingly allows the already thin divide between reality and fiction to disappear. This allows reality to be distorted as he attempts to deal with issues that he is facing, such as feeling guilty about his affair with Donna and the frustration brought about by Buddy’s overbearing presence. Sometimes this distortion of reality produces unfavorable results, as in the confrontation scene between Stine and Gabby. However, there are times when it resolves tensions, particularly at the climax when Stone helps Stine fight the cop by using the typewriter and when Stone writes a happy ending for Stine.

In the end, despite their differences, it seems reality needs fiction just as much as fiction needs reality, as evidenced in the final song, “I’m Nothing Without You”; the two worlds cannot be strictly divided from one other and the true reality lies somewhere in between.

Study Guide Questions

 How do you think that Cy Coleman’s decision to use jazz in this score influenced the overall tone of City of Angels?

 What stylistic influences of film noir are present in both the script and the Live Arts production of City of Angels?

 How might a production team go about producing these stylistic techniques for the theater?

 Have you ever had an experience that challenged your perception of reality? What was it? How did this experience change you?

 Why do you think film noir was so popular during the 1940s and early 1950s? What did film noir’s popularity reflect on American society at that time?

 Why do you think that all of the actors, except those playing Stine and Stone, were double cast? What challenges does this present for the actors and what effects does this produce to the viewers?