A Rocky Road To New World Songs

Newcastle Herald

Wednesday November 16, 2005

Ke Longworth

WHEN Jason Robert Brown was seven he wanted to be a rock star, so he begged his parents to get him a piano so that he could learn how to play music.

They found one in his grandfather's cellar, dusted if off and put it in their suburban New York home.

Aged 18, Brown was a good enough musician to be accepted into the Eastman School of Music in upstate New York and he believed his ambition was close to being realised.

While he was at Eastman, however, Brown's perceptions about rock songs altered and he found himself changing direction to write theatre songs.

He explained the change in a 2001 interview: "Pop songs by their very nature are about establishing a mood, sustaining it, and finishing with it," he said.

"Theatre songs are about the opposite. Good theatre songs go from one end of an idea to a different place.

"I wanted to write songs that had movement, that had journeys to them."

So aged 19 Brown was writing his first theatre song, She Cries, in which a man explains how difficult it is to break off with a woman if she resorts to tears.

The song was one of 16 in a musical revue by Brown, Songs for a New World, that played in a downtown New York theatre before his 25th birthday in 1995.

Four years later, he won a Tony Award for his music and lyrics for Parade, a musical based on a controversial early 20th century murder trial.

And in 2002, Brown generated his own controversy when lawyers for his first wife, a singer with an Irish name, forced him to change the name (Irish) and occupation (singer) of the wife in his musical The Last Five Years, the clearly personal story of the development and breakdown of a relationship.

While Brown's works have had little box-office success in New York he was unknown at the time of Songs for a New World, Parade was too grim for Broadway's mass audiences and The Last Five Years opened a few months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, a period when people were keeping away from New York theatre they have taken off like wildfire since.

For example, while the original cast recording of The Last Five Years came out after the show had closed, it continues to be a steady seller among music-theatre aficionados and the musical has had almost 200 productions in the US and dozens more in other countries.

The song Stars and the Moon, from Songs for a New World, has become popular in cabaret acts and has been recorded many times by artists including Betty Buckley and Audra McDonald.

Jason Robert Brown is now among a handful of young American song-writers hailed as the future kings of Broadway.

It is not surprising, then, that two Newcastle theatre groups are rehearsing productions of his musicals.

JJK Productions opens Songs for a New World at the Civic Playhouse on November 26, while performers Annabella Redman and Daniel Wilson have joined forces with director Carl Caulfield to stage The Last Five Years in the same venue from February 15.

Songs for a New World musical director David Fitzgerald said that while each of the show's songs told a different story, they were linked because the characters had fears, concerns or ambitions that anyone living in today's world could understand.

"What is impressive is that while Brown is dealing with often troubled emotions, the songs are all up-tempo.

"There's nothing slow or like a dirge," he said.

One of the funniest songs, yet also one of the most heart-breaking, is Just One Step, sung by a woman standing on a window ledge high above a busy street.

"She's just discovered that her husband is having an affair and that he has bought his mistress the coat that she herself wanted," said Lia Pati, who is the would-be jumper.

"The song is a cry for help but the things she says, as the words pour out, are funny."

In Surabaya Santa Wendy Ratcliffe gets to pour out the heartache of the world's loneliest woman at Christmas, Mrs Santa Claus, with her wish list headed by a desire to see her hubby staying at home with her for once in the festive season.

While Brown might have given up his popstar ambitions, his songs fuse pop-rock stylings with theatrical lyrics.

They aren't easy to sing, either, as the other cast members of Songs for a New World Jacquelyn Brown, Jason King, John Radvan, John Shearman and Tim Shearman join Pati and Ratcliffe in acknowledging.

The harmonics are complex and unconventional and the songs demand a wide vocal range.

But what singer can resist those kind of challenges?

Songs for a New World will run from November 26 to December 2, with performances on Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 8pm, and a 2pm matinee on Sunday, November 27.

Ticket prices range from $11.30 to $16.80.

Book through Civic Ticketek on 4929 1977.

© 2005 Newcastle Herald

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