'John Doe,' Unmasked
From a Capra Film, Team Writes a Musical in Tune With the Times

By Nelson Pressley
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, March 17, 2007

Composer Andrew Gerle knows precisely what it was about the Frank Capra movie "Meet John Doe" that spurred him to turn it into a new musical.

"Fraud in media, corporate handling of media, manipulating the electorate," recalls Gerle, who's sitting with lyricist Eddie Sugarman in a bright conference room just off the balcony at Ford's Theatre, where their "Meet John Doe" began previews yesterday.

"I liked it not because it's dark," continues Gerle, who adapted the show's book with Sugarman, "but because it's relevant."

The 1941 movie -- about a Depression-era reporter who fabricates a sensational column to keep her job -- is a peculiar mixture of American populism and paranoia, featuring crackling screwball dialogue, escalating religious overtones, unexpected power and a notoriously unbelievable ending. Gerle notes that the scandal involving Jayson Blair, the New York Times journalist who fabricated stories, was unfolding in 2003 as he and Sugarman worked on early drafts -- events that lined up tidily with the "John Doe" plot.

For Sugarman, though, the appeal was less serious. "I just thought it was neat," he says, in what seems to be a characteristically sunny style.

Meet two John Does, a pair of unheralded 34-year-old musical-theater journeymen enjoying their first really big break.

Sugarman's background teems with sweetness, starting with his teenage gig at Cleveland's Peanut Butter Players -- a lunchtime theater "by children and for children," he says. (He boasts that other future pros were in the group, including recent Tony nominee Hunter Foster and his Tony-winning sister, Sutton.) Sugarman's early ambition was to dance, and his open face and peppy demeanor all but blurt, "Let's put on a show!"

Gerle (pronounced "Girl-uh") is more laid-back, more conspicuously cerebral -- as Sugarman says, " biiig music geek." Born to classical musicians, Gerle acted a bit in high school but found that when he got to Yale University, "I was more valuable in the pit."

Confirming Sugarman's assertion, Gerle says that in Yale's generalized music program, "I took some theory and analysis, because I like that stuff."

They met as New York neophytes in 1994 and quickly became friends; four years later, Gerle wrote the march for Sugarman's wedding. Gerle has been music directing, orchestrating, performing and generally cobbling a theatrical living all along, while Sugarman's juggled day jobs with performing and writing.

In a story that sounds right out of Rodgers and Hart, Sugarman can pinpoint the day he gave up his dancing dream. On Oct. 20, 1996, he bought an expensive sport coat and auditioned for a songwriting workshop -- "Which I'm quite sure you played for," he says to a not-so-sure Gerle. Sugarman was accepted on the spot. Then he squired his girlfriend to the fountain outside Lincoln Center and proposed.

"Now I'm going to do something stable," he told her as she accepted. "Like write musicals."

At last making good on that promise, Sugarman's breakthrough with Gerle is founded on an unlikely source: the snappy yet sweeping movie from a filmmaker often derided for his sentimental "Capra-corn."

Like Capra's later "It's a Wonderful Life," the film "Meet John Doe" pits suicidal despair against a quest for communal hope. Barbara Stanwyck plays the wisecracking, cynical reporter who saves her job by inventing "John Doe," an ordinary man who becomes a nationally celebrated champion of the little guy. Gary Cooper plays John Willoughby, a beat-up pitcher whom Stanwyck recruits to be the public face of Doe. What begins as a prank blows up beyond their wildest dreams.

After a botched attempt to modernize the story, Gerle and Sugarman returned to its 1930s setting, with its hard times and sarcastic one-liners. But they've made other changes -- eliminating a major character, bulking up the love story, firmly deciding that the protagonist isn't Willoughby but rather Ann Mitchell, the reporter whose fraud starts it all.

Director Eric Schaeffer estimates that the show has changed by at least one-third since it closed in December at Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House, which is co-producing the show with Ford's.

"It's hard when you have source material," explains Schaeffer, the longtime artistic director of Arlington's Signature Theatre, which has premiered more than its share of new musicals. "You're trying to find out when to be true to that, and when to make it your own."

Part of what has been up for grabs from the beginning is the difficult ending, which Gerle says Capra never liked. Suffice to say that what's onstage at Ford's won't be exactly what you've seen on the screen.

Scale was also an issue. Could they find the nerve to write large, come up with that cast-of-thousands feel? Gerle says he's written a score with "big moments, and big ensemble singing. It's not pastiche: it sounds like it's set in 1931, not like it was written in 1931. I want this to have a real contemporary feel to it, but with flavor from that era."

Sugarman singles out "Thank You," a nine-part a cappella number that's also the first thing Schaeffer mentions when he talks about the score.

"Back to Music Geek," says Gerle to Sugarman. "You laugh, but I went right back to my counterpoint. It's just straight ahead counterpoint writing, and I wrote a nine-part motet, basically, with no lyrics. And you just filled it all in."

"I did the crossword puzzle," the lyricist agrees.

Jonathan Tunick, a veteran of most Stephen Sondheim musicals, has done the orchestrations, part of the velvety treatment at Ford's that clearly has the young writers awed. They speak in hushed tones as they describe the design, as if afraid to jinx their good luck.

"These are new costumes," Sugarman murmurs to Gerle. "They built the suits . . . and there's a fur!"

Ford's Producing Director Paul R. Tetreault says "Meet John Doe" fits in the realm of the big shows Ford's has done in the past. But at last week's technical rehearsal, even he seemed impressed by the floor-to-ceiling mass of Derek McLane's steel-framed set.

If the scale derives from Capra, so does Sugarman's evolving social outlook. He takes pains to point out that an arresting "Manchurian Candidate" political scheme in the story has always appealed to him, but adds that his social awareness has increased since starting this project back in the summer of 2001.

"It's changed because of this show," he declares.

"And because of world events," Gerle prods.

Sugarman allows as much. "But I've kind of grown through those world events while working on this show," he adds. "So there's a synergy there. And I really strongly believe that as cheesy as it may sound, Yes: one person can make a difference. "

Gerle's a John Doe, too, saying, "I'm so proud to have written a show that is about hope, and that is about everyday Americans being able to change the world -- if they put their minds to it."