[Becky]

Broadway by way of Bon Jovi

By Dinah Cardin
Friday, October 3, 2003

Rock stars aren't used to day jobs. Their lifestyle is really more big-picture than that, absent of mundane details. That could be why Bon Jovi's David Bryan has discovered his 'round-the-clock efforts to ready the rock 'n' roll musical "Memphis" for its world premiere at the North Shore Music Theatre feels an awful lot like work.

"It's probably been the most creative, long ... It's like a job," he told reporters of his musical theater debut during a sneak peak at day nine of rehearsals, one week before opening night.

"I called my wife and said there are like 100 people here, wow!" he says, referring to the masses working behind the scenes designing sets and costumes for the numbers he has composed.

It wasn't difficult to pick Bryan and his L.A. looks out of a crowd earlier this month as the show's hard-working performers triple-threat their hearts out before the creators, directors, producers and a slew of press.

The crowd leaned in as the kinky-haired Bryan relayed stories of band tours in Capri, Italy and the usual thought process behind his prolific rock song writing craft.

As a founding member and keyboard player of the band named for lead singer-turned-actor Jon Bon Jovi, Bryan brings his star power and rock roots not only to the show, but to the entire room.

"I love to perform. I love to create," says the rocker, his silky shirt buttoned low to reveal a tattooed chest.

Though there are many seats to fill during the show's three-week run, Bryan says he can take the heat. People once said his band was a "smudgy third generation copy of Quiet Riot," he says. Not bad for a group that has sold 95 million albums and played to millions in more than 50 countries for almost 20 years.

"We're the band critics love to hate," he laughs.

Regardless of how much love the North Shore showers on the collaboration, written by Joe DiPietro - creator of the perennially popular "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" - Bryan, DiPietro, the theater's people and others feel they have a feel-good show "with legs."

"This show will live on beyond this theater," says its director, Gabriel Barre, even if not on Broadway, where the cost of producing shows is getting prohibitive.

"The stakes are so high at this point that everyone is at the top of their game," says associate producer John La Rock.

But it's not all labor worthy of the salt mines. When not working on their game, it's rumored the entire production has been blowing off some dramatic steam at the Wild Horse on Route 1A.



The rising

DiPietro recalls Bryan's initial involvement with the production when he told him to pick one of the songs and try to write the tune. Two days later a CD arrived in the mail with the powerful final number, the essential soul of the whole show.

"I heard every song in my head," says Bryan. "I knew the whole show. I had never written a song to poetry before."

In working with a "bona fide" rock star, DiPietro says, the show is true to the roots of rock 'n' roll, and to what audiences are into today.

NSMT Artistic Director and Executive Producer Jon Kimbell and La Rock first saw "Memphis" work-shopped in California. The story, tracing the thread of rock 'n' roll music beginning at its African American roots, focuses on a white Memphis disc jockey's discovery of black music in the 1940s and his rise to local fame, only to be left in Dick Clark's star dust as the musical revolution beats on. It seemed to appeal to the theater's mission of diversity, says Kimbell, and to today's sensibilities.

"It seemed to me what theaters are all about," says Kimbell, "rising above intellect and appealing to the emotions. It's a joy, an energy that just rises and rises."

Feelin' the love is what it's all about when black and white kids wind up finding the common musical bond and literally dancing together in West Memphis.

"I'm finding more and more that this music gives me a place to live," says Montego Glover, the powerhouse voice who plays a rising star based on Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross.

During these long hours of rehearsal, the story is evolving and characters that may live on are being lifted from the page and created for the first time.

"Every time I step up to one of these numbers or scenes in between it's opening and opening and opening," says Glover.

The love could also be felt watching Kimbell and the creators bop in the corner, quite pleased with the young, talented New York-based cast during their unplugged rehearsal, after which Glover and her white co-star, Chad Kimball, sit listening to the director's instructions, playfully entwined.

The show is part of an effort to premier new works so that the North Shore Music Theatre is focused on tomorrow and not yesterday, says Kimbell. Though it's more expensive and more difficult to produce new works, it's absolutely necessary, he says, so the place is not perceived as a local museum.

"We want to reach out to the X, Y, and Z generation of individuals," La Rock agrees.

Re-working lines and lyrics on the spot with just days to go, the excitement of a brand new show reverberates through the production, becoming infectious to all generations.

And if that doesn't work, there is always the spreading mania of a rock star influence.

[davefan]

think the article is already postet somewhere thx anyway especially cause I didn`t know the pic!