‘Billy and Me’ by Terry Teachout to Premiere at Palm Beach Dramaworks

Tom Wahl and Nicholas Richberg

as William Inge and Tennessee Williams

Those fortunate enough to be in the West Palm Beach area will have a unique theatre opportunity beginning Dec. 8^th.  Palm Beach Dramaworks is mounting the world premiere of a play by Terry Teachout, Billy and Me, in which he has imagined a tempestuous friendship between two of our most renowned twentieth century playwrights, Tennessee Williams and William (Billy) Inge.  This is a major step in the maturation of PBD under the creative direction of its Producing Artistic Director, William Hayes.  His vision has been to supplement the company’s acclaimed classics by also producing completely original works from the very beginning through numerous rewrites, collaborations, rehearsals and eventually onto the PBD stage, and even beyond, to New York and as a staple of regional theaters throughout the U.S.

Billy and Me is a memory play narrated by Tennessee Williams.  Act I is set in a gay bar in Chicago on New Year’s Eve, 1944, immediately after a pre-Broadway tryout of Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.    Williams is on the ascent in Act I, but Inge is an unhappy theatre critic as well as miserable in his personal life.  Seeing The Glass Menagerie that night has inspired Inge to try his hand at play writing.  Act II takes place almost 15 years later at Inge's Sutton Place apartment, a few hours after the Broadway premiere of his first flop, A Loss of Roses.  Inge has had years of hits, is at the height of his career (and prosperity), while Williams’ decline was already underway.  Inge is having difficulty reconciling himself to his first flop as well as his closeted sexuality.

William Hayes

According to Hayes, who is directing Billy and Me and was the inspiration for the play, “the genesis of the idea was while I was directing Picnic, doing research, and was reminded that Inge met Tennessee Williams in 1944, and I began to imagine the intricacy of their relationship, about which little is really known. They must have influenced one another, I thought. They shared similar backgrounds, both being from small towns, had complicated relationships with their mothers, fathers who were frequently absent as they were salesmen, and both were gay, Williams acknowledging it, but Inge self loathing.”

So Hayes suggested the idea of a play about the two famous playwrights to Terry Teachout who was in town for pre-production meetings for his play Satchmo at the Waldorf, which was playing at the end of the same season as Picnic at PBD.  Teachout was intrigued.  After meeting with Hayes, he flew home when the idea for the structure of the play came to him in an epiphany.  “I even had the 2^nd’ act nailed, so I knew I was on solid ground. I called Bill and said ‘I have it!’ and went back to West Palm to meet with Bill and we both agreed that we saw the project in the same way and knew we would work together well. After making my directing debut at PBD last season, I know very well that it's a great place to work, a gorgeous theatre full of first-class people. I also know that Bill is a superb director.”

Terry Teachout

Then soon after the structure was established, Teachout wrote the play in a three day frenzy.  That was more than a year ago and since then it has been “workshopped” by PBD, undergoing revisions.  As Teachout explained, “workshopping is the modern day replacement for out of town tryouts which used to be the norm.”  These workshops have been tirelessly and inspirationally orchestrated by Hayes.

Teachout fills the threadbare historical record of the two playwrights’ personal relationship guided by his knowledge of the men and their plays.  Thus the play is "a work of fiction freely based on fact."  "It's a play about love, jealousy, and - not to put it too pompously - destiny," said Teachout. "An artist is a person who can't do anything else with his life. Art is his fate: it's that or nothing. But he can't become an artist until he accepts that fate and acknowledges his true nature. That's a big part of what this play is about: the struggle of two great American playwrights to come to terms with who they really were."

I asked him about the difficulties he had in writing the play and he responded “nothing excites an artist more than limitations that must be surmounted and the problem with depicting Inge is how do you warm up to him? How do you make him relatable? But having reviewed more than 1,000 theatrical performances in my career taught me much about how a play works, how you have to make difficult decisions about when action starts and stops.” 

There are three actors in the play.  Two of them have been with the play ever since the first workshop production, Nicholas Richberg who plays Tennessee Williams, and Tom Wahl as William Inge.  Joining those two about half way through the developmental process is veteran PBD actor Cliff Burgess, who plays three roles.

Nicholas Richberg has been involved in several developmental plays, mostly with Zoetic Stage, but he says this experience was “my longest development process, a huge gift to an actor. Terry is the writer, but it allows the actors to contribute and shape it and it’s incredible to see the changes over time.”

Richberg is also an experienced musical performer, appearing in Palm Beach Dramaworks’ 1776 last year, and in several Sondheim productions in the past and thinks of both Sondheim and Williams as geniuses in their genres.  He has no preference playing musical or drama as long as he is “interpreting the words /music of the author.”

He sees his biggest challenge in this play is to capture the characteristics of Tennessee Williams – usually well known to the audience because Williams was clearly gay, and granted numerous interviews, some while he was obviously drunk.  Both he and Wahl worked with a dialogue coach to get their speech patterns right and even so,” these are not impersonations” both opined.  But the real challenge goes beyond that Richberg said: “playing a real person, having the audience truly care about him, and what motivated him.”

His favorite line from the play is “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – start with the truth and then make it beautiful.”  And that sort of captures the essence of Teachout’s writing he says, “Making the language beautiful, almost like music, poetic.”

“My one wish as an actor was to play Tom in The Glass Menagerie, and, finally, with Billy and Me, I am in a memory play about Tennessee Williams: it’s as rewarding for an actor as playing Tom.”

Inge is played by Tom Wahl, making his PBD debut. He said “I like the challenge of playing the lesser known (as a public persona) Inge, as I have a free hand in interpreting. I see Inge in a constant struggle, finding himself, starting his career as an actor, turning to teaching, then becoming a critic, and then a playwright, always seeming to being either in the wrong place or in the wrong skin. And when finally he is true to himself, he is disgusted by it.”

Wahl also loved being involved in the workshop experience since the beginning, allowing him to make contributions and growing into his character, the shy, repressed William Inge.  Wahl said “although perhaps better known for his other plays and movies, my favorite is Dark at the Top of the Stairs, his last major play.”  In addition to his extensive acting experience, Wahl is a versatile voiceover artist and voice actor.

Cliff Burgess

Cliff Burgess has appeared in many PBD productions and although he stepped into the developmental process later than the other two actors, he was able to provide some valuable input “through fresh eyes.”  Also as a fledgling playwright himself “the process allowed me to see the director and the playwright in action.”

He plays three characters in the play, the waiter in Act I, the doctor in Act II, and the stage manager in both acts. What he finds fascinating about each is that they are not tangential “as each character has a purpose and each has an impact on Williams and Inge.  I play characters ‘of the more mundane world, and supply some comic relief too.’”

Interestingly, Burgess has played Tom in The Glass Menagerie twice in his career and in Inge’s Bus Stop, so he is intimately familiar with their works, and “I recognize the suffering of each and their humanity.”

Billy and Me “inspired by the friendship between playwrights Tennessee Williams and William Inge,” is Directed by William Hayes, PBD’s Producing Artistic Director.

The playwright, Terry Teachout, is drama critic for The Wall Street Journal, has had an uncommonly diverse career.  He was a professional jazz bassist for eight years, and has also been a dance and music critic, an editorial writer, and a member of the National Council on the Arts.  He has written the libretti for three operas and is the author of numerous books, including Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.  His play Satchmo at the Waldorf was written after the Armstrong biography.

Scenic Design is by Victor Becker, Lighting Design by Paul Black, and Costume Design by Brian O'Keefe.  Billy and Me will grace the stage at Palm Beach Dramaworks on Clematis Street, West Palm Beach, from December 8 to the 31^st with previews on December 6 and 7.  

UPDATE:  My Review of the play now posted

Satchmo at the Waldorf – An Intensely Moving Experience at Dramaworks

Terry Teachout, the esteemed theatre critic of the Wall Street Journal has gone full circle, from Louis Armstrong’s biographer, Pops; A Life of Louis Armstrong, to playwright, Satchmo at the Waldorf, and now director of his own play on the Dramaworks stage. His biography is a work of prodigious scholarship and intellect while the play is clearly written straight from the heart.  His professional directorial debut is the confluence of his intimate knowledge and love of Louis Armstrong and years as a working critic.  How can such erudition not result in a work of art to stir even the most casual theater-goer? 

The play not only moves, but informs.  Louis Armstrong, for many in the audience, was a figure from popular culture, holding a horn more than blowing it, usually singing a song in his gravelly voice, his handkerchief in hand, an overall good guy in movies and on TV.  Teachout’s work reclaims not only his jazz genius but documents his rise from lowly beginnings, so improbable for a poor illegitimate child born to a part-time prostitute in New Orleans (his baptismal card described him as "niger, illegitimus"), how he was used by his manager, Joe Glaser, and then reviled by the black community, as represented by Miles Davis in the play, into the public persona we all fondly remember.  This is a testimony to his indomitable spirit.

One person plays are difficult.  They’re usually retrospective accounts of a life, with little or no interaction and in this case, a play about a musician who doesn’t get to perform (other than hearing some brief recordings and a few bars of a song by the actor).  But the absence of live music doesn’t detract from the story of this great musical icon, as you will easily suspend disbelief and find that one actor, Barry Shabaka Henley, successfully captures the essence of these three people, each with a distinctive “take” on Louis Armstrong.  His is a bravura performance which will leave you a good deal wiser and more emotionally connected to the great Satchmo.

Barry Shabaka Henley as Satchmo

There is of course Louis himself who tells his story in his own unique vernacular, expletives and all, told directly to the audience or into his tape recorder in an attempt to capture the story of his life.  This is delivered in the dressing room at the Waldorf, his last gig in 1971, only months before his death.  A lighting change announces the arrival of another character, Joe Glaser, his manager who Armstrong dutifully (and gratefully) obeyed (to keep him out of harm’s way with the mob) and who made him the performer we most remember, the happy-go-lucky entertainer.  But that is the very personality most despised by the third character (another change of lights), Miles Davis, who despised what he viewed as Satchmo’s Uncle Tom demeanor.  Armstrong was comfortable in his own skin, but besieged by these two opposing elements. It is a testimony to Barry Shabaka Henley that he pulls off this personality trifecta with such ease, allowing the audience to believe the unbelievable.  This internal tension is why the drama excels.

 

There is so much revealed in the play about Armstrong, much of it contrary to his public image, lovingly written by Teachout, encapsulating his accepting, optimistic personality on the one hand, and his bewilderment as to how he was used by his manager, one who had ties and debts to the mob who upon his death left nothing to the very person who made him rich.  As such the play is as much social commentary about race (Armstrong wore a Star of David to honor a Jewish couple who were exceedingly kind to him as a child) as it is about the world of a black jazz-man’s life during those early years and what it was like to work hundreds of gigs a year while mobsters controlled many of the clubs. Imagine playing at hotel venues, not being allowed to stay there or even eat at its restaurant, having to grab food in the kitchen.  Imagine the hours they endured and the drugs that were ubiquitous (Armstrong himself was a regular user of marijuana). 

Nonetheless, it was a two way street, Glaser transforming him from a jazz figure to a world class entertainer.  Perhaps no one song symbolized that transition more than Hello Dolly.  As Armstrong laments in the play, Now just between you and me, “Dolly” ain’t much of a song.  Tell you the truth, it’s a piece of shit. Tune kinda go round in circles, words ain’t so hot.  But Mr. Glaser, he say, “Louie, you go make the song,” and I say, “Yes, sir, Mr. Glaser” just like I always do.  Got to do what the boss man say.  So I cut the record, hit the road, forget about it.  Here the lights change as Glaser’s character remerges, explaining that Louis was doing a gig somewhere in East Jesus, Wyoming, or some shithole like that, and the audience was yelling, “Hey, Pops, do that ‘Hello, Dolly!’”… Louis looks over at the piano player and says “What the fuck are they talking about?”  So the piano player tells him they want him to sing this song he cut in New York a couple of months ago.  And get this:  Louie can’t remember it!  Can you believe it?  Man cuts a fucking record, they’re playing it on the radio a hundred times a day, and he still can’t remember the goddamn thing.  But that ain’t the good part.  He asks the guys in the band if they know how it goes…and none of them can remember it, either!  Musicians.  Whatta bunch of knuckleheads.  This wonderful dialog faithfully imagines their relationship and does so throughout the play.

But, then, there is the admonition of Miles Davis.  If Armstrong was the black jazz innovator of the first half of the 20^th century, Davis was the leading black jazz musician of the second half.  Although both were trumpeters, they were as different in their styles of jazz as they were in their attitudes, Davis being an outspoken social critic.  He was partially schooled in classical music at Juilliard, not on the streets of New Orleans like his predecessor.  Armstrong was always sensitive – especially later in life – as to his standing in the black community.  DAVIS: Ain’t nothing wrong being in business with no white man, long as you the boss.  But it’s different when the man own everything and tell you where to go and what to do.  That’s bullshit.  Plantation bullshit.  And that’s the way Joe Glaser treated Louis.  Mobbed-up cocksucker struts around and says, “Don’t give me no lip or I’ll tell the boys in Chicago to shoot off your kneecap.” Fuck that.  And that yes-massa shit Louis talks about Mister Glaser this and Mister Glaser that?  Fuck that, too.  He say, “Oh that Mister Glaser, he just like my daddy, he’s my best friend in the whole wide world.” Shit.  My manager ain’t my friend – he works for me.  He does what I want.

But if anyone got Louis right, it was his mother on her death bed, her last words recalled by Armstrong: You a good boy. You treat everybody right.  Everybody loves you, white and colored, they all love you ‘cause you gotta good heart.

Terry Teachout Opening Night

This was Teachout’s professional directorial debut.  He achieves an impressionistic sensibility, one that is felt as pure poetry, particularly given the wonderful script and the heart and soul of a great actor. It was especially revealing to see the hand of the director through Teachout’s transparent Twitter feeds.  As this was a learning experience for him, he kept his followers informed.  One tweet in particular sums up his approach as a director, “Much of directing is observing. You search out found objects in the actor's improvisations, then make the accidental intentional.”

The last production of the show in Chicago starred the same actor, Barry Shabaka Henley, so he came to his PBD debut well prepared with his lines, awaiting Teachout’s take on his own play.  He had some of his own interpretations, ones that appealed to Teachout, so he went with the flow.

Indeed, the play broadly succeeds on the astounding performance of Barry Shabaka Henley, a consummate professional who WILL have you believe he is Armstrong, Glaser, or Davis.  It’s an incredible accomplishment for one person on stage for about 90 minutes, having to deliver a 13,000 word monologue, convincingly playing three different characters.  He doesn’t have the advantage of having other actors to feed off (or even to rescue him if he loses his way).  The pauses are as important as the words and their emphasis, and this is where the director and actor worked in close collaboration.

It takes a team to make a successful play as Teachout himself acknowledged in his blog article, Putting on the Frosting  We long-subscribing and loyal Dramaworks followers know that this has been the key to making this theatre company one of the best in the country.  It is the constant, meticulous attention to detail, subtle to the audience as everything on stage seems to be a moving representation of life itself.  Dramaworks’ technical team takes a great play and helps to make it even better. 

Lighting designer Kirk Bookman handles the delicate lighting changes as Henley segues from one character to another, but making these changes subtle (other than Davis who has his own unique muted red palette with a purple backlight), creating a lighting design which helps the audience feel, not only who’s who or where to look. There are about one hundred lighting cues in this one person play – it is that important to the production. There is one point in the play where Armstrong is remembering when the love of his life, his fourth wife, Lucille, had erected a Christmas tree in their home in Queens.  Armstrong was always on the road and of course there was no such tree in his childhood.  This was his first and he recalls sitting up all night looking at the lights, Henley bathed in dappled yellow, green, and red lights, in a heartfelt scene.

Matt Corey’s sound design includes parts of Armstrong’s beloved songs, either hummed by Henley or heard over Armstrong’s tape recorder, something he invested in midway through his career at the suggestion of Bing Crosby (with whom he was friends for many years but was never invited to his home – a sad commentary).  There is one extended recording of Armstrong’s classic West End Blues, probably the song that established his standing as one of the great jazz innovators of “swinging and singing.”  The music warms the environment and is evocative of Armstrong’s wide range of musical gifts.

Scenic designer Michael Amico has built a perfect set, creating multiple focal points – his dressing table, his oxygen tank, the tape recorder station, a couple of places to sit, so there is always action.  The dressing table doubles as Glaser’s office.  Miles Davis appears only stage left, always in the same spot, kind of a Greek chorus of criticism.

Stage manager James Danford has all the interlocking wheels of these production elements in sync, while Erin Amico’s costume design places us squarely in the early 1970’s, the time of this imaginary, but so very real moment near the end of Armstrong’s incredible career and life.

Teachout said that he approached his first directorial job as if he was not the playwright.  This objectivity, with the remarkable performance of Barry Shabaka Henley, freed his inner voice, his passionate hymn to Louis Armstrong, allowing it to soar.  Don’t miss the opportunity to witness this achievement now at Dramaworks and join in the standing ovation at the conclusion of the play. 

From Schleman’s Rhythm on Record (1936)