Present at the Creation, Leaping in the Dark, and Going Against the Grain: 1776, Pippin, M. Butterfly, La Bete, & Other Broadway Adventures [Hardcover]

Stuart Ostrow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2005

"The best way I know to resuscitate the theatre is to produce dangerous new works." - Stuart Ostrow. Producer Stuart Ostrow's manifesto of how intelligent life might be restored to the theatre is also a unique personal memoir of the producer-creator relationship and an evaluation of the essentials that can make a show fly, or remain earthbound. As a solo producer, Ostrow's many productions include M. Butterfly, which won the Tony Award for Best Play; Pippin; and 1776, which received both the New York and London Drama Critics Awards as well as the Tony Award for Best Musical. He produced the original Broadway production of the critically acclaimed La Bete, which won the Olivier Award in London for Best Comedy. Ostrow was brought in to fix the original production of Chicago, collaborated with Anthony Hopkins on a London production of M. Butterfly, that was not meant to be, and even had his own play, Stages, directed on Broadway by the avant-garde theatrical pioneer Richard Foreman. He riffs about the heroes and heels he's met along the way and that great cast includes Frank Loesser, Meredith Willson, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse, David Geffen, Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Henry Hwang, John Kander, Fred Ebb, and many more.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Memoirs, like Broadway shows, are hit or miss. Either the memoirist tactfully omits the inconvenient, embarrassing, and, yes, interesting details of the past and bores his readers. Or he provides the world with an honest, if highly subjective, remembrance of things past, as Broadway producer Ostrow does. Even if the world Ostrow recounts, that of the Great American Broadway Musical as practiced by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe, were not fast fading, Ostrow's reminiscences would be worth reading. He knows of what he writes, having produced many hit 1960s and 1970s musicals, including 1776, The Apple Tree, and Pippin, and his share of bombs. As he says more than once, he was just following the dictum of friend and mentor Frank Loesser: "A producer is someone who knows a writer." Ostrow got to know a lot of the top writers in the field, and he produced them. Now he shares his opinions of and insights into their work and that of their contemporaries. Which isn't to say he is a gossipmonger. He would rather dissect a show to reveal what makes it a hit than eviscerate a colleague. That will disappoint some, but true fans of the Broadway musical will find this book more intellectually satisfying and nutritious than many another on their passion. Jack Helbig
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Applause Books (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557836469
• ISBN-13: 978-1557836465
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #919,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stuart Ostrow was Frank Loesser's apprentice and became the Vice President and General Manager of Frank Music Corp., and Frank Productions, Inc., the Broadway co-producers of: The Most Happy Fella, The Music Man, Greenwillow, and How To Succeed In Business With Really Trying.

As a solo producer, his many original award-winning Broadway and West End productions include: M. Butterfly, which won the Tony Award for Best Play, Pippin, and 1776, which received both the New York and London Drama Critics Awards as well as the Tony Award for Best Musical. He also produced, The Apple Tree, produced and directed Here's Love, was the associate director of Chicago, and the author of Stages, on Broadway.

Mr. Ostrow established the Stuart Ostrow Foundation's Musical Theatre Lab in 1973; a non-profit, professional workshop for original musical theatre, the first of its kind. Since its inception the MTLab has presented 32 experimental new works, including The Robber Bridegroom, by Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman, Really Rosie, by Maurice Sendak and Carole King, Up From Paradise, by Arthur Miller and Stanley Silverman, and Medea by Robert Wilson.

Stuart Ostrow is a trained musician, choral conductor-arranger, and clarinetist. He has served on the Board of Governors of The League of New York Theatres, the Advisory Committee of The New York Public Library, and the Board of Directors of the American National Theatre and Academy. He has also served on The Overseer's Committee to visit Harvard's Loeb Drama Center, and was a founding panel member of the Opera-Musical Theatre Program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

He produced the original Broadway production of La Bete, which also won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy, and was honored as Producer of the Year, by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. He is the Distinguished University Professor of Theatre at the University of Houston, and the author of A Producer's Broadway Journey and Thank You Very Much (The Little Guide To Auditioning For The Musical Theatre.) His recent book Present At The Creation, Leaping In The Dark and Going Against The Grain: 1776, Pippin, M. Butterfly, La Bete & Other Broadway Adventures was voted one of the Top Ten Arts Books 2006 by Booklist. Mr. Ostrow has served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Drama Jury, and is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Institute for Advanced Study in Musical Theatre.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars He's been hiding in Houston too long, April 9, 2006

By 

krebsman (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Present at the Creation, Leaping in the Dark, and Going Against the Grain: 1776, Pippin, M. Butterfly, La Bete, & Other Broadway Adventures (Hardcover)

"The best way I know to resuscitate the theatre is to produce dangerous new works," says Stuart Ostrow in his very slim (154 pages, double spaced with wide margins) new memoir of his producing career. However he does not define "dangerous new works." From reading the book, it seems his definition of "dangerous new works" is whatever is being touted by the Village Voice. (Richard Foreman, homosexuality, multiculturalism, Tom Eyen, etc.) Stuart Ostrow has a story, but he is looking at it from the wrong point of view. The way he sees it, he was producing quality innovative stuff that the world conspired to make fail. Another way of looking at it would show a talented young producer who, after producing big hits with 1776 and PIPPIN, went pretentious and politically correct with his subsequent shows and understandably failed.

His damnation of Mel Brooks is unjustified since Ostrow himself says that he has not seen THE PRODUCERS. Well, Stu, I have news for you. THE PRODUCERS was a dangerous new work. It was a slap in the face at political correctness and pretentiousness. It single-handedly killed the bloated Euro Musical that had dominated Broadway for twenty years and paved the way for outrageous, unpretentious shows like HAIRSPRAY and THE WEDDING SINGER. THE PRODUCERS resuscitated the American musical and Ostrow missed it.

Ostrow also badmouths WICKED claiming it was dependent upon special effects and spectacle. If that were true, DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES would still be running. The spectacle of WICKED enhances its compelling story, unlike the all the additional sets and extra players gratuitously inserted into the boring LA BETE.

Ostrow seems to think that problems can be solved by creating yet another bureaucracy to choose the artists who shall be anointed. Evidence has show that the bureaucratic method produces pretentious work like that of Michael John LaChiusa and Jason Robert Brown, which the public doggedly refuses to embrace.

Ostrow tells some good anecdotes, but I wish there had been more of them. There's the germ of a fascinating book in this volume and in Ostrow's previous memoir (also extremely brief and shares some material with this volume). But at this point, there's still not a real book between the two of them.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Written on the Wind, June 8, 2006

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Present at the Creation, Leaping in the Dark, and Going Against the Grain: 1776, Pippin, M. Butterfly, La Bete, & Other Broadway Adventures (Hardcover)

I was reading along with great fascination, for here was a man who had been to go-to boy for the great Frank Loesser, author of GUYS AND DOLLS and GREENWILLOW.

Then I realized, a good two thirds of these anecdotes were yawningly familiar to me from having read them before--somewhere--but where? I was experiencing deja vu--my friend Tim called it my "Fugue for Tinhorns," but only a real show queen could tell you what he was referring to.

Turned out beloved Ostrow was double dipping and he had printed all these same stories in his first memoir the first time around! The book was THEN called "A Producer's Broadway Journey." I felt cheated, as though I had been lied to or ripped off. Tim, my showbiz friend, mocked my discomfort, asking me how many tomes I had to buy and read by Stuart Ostrow to get the point, that a producer who has long running shows doesn't believe in the concept that you have to give them something different every night. No! You just put on the same show 8 times a week and nobody complains. Indeed I wouldn't have complained if he has just kept the same title for his book, but instead because he updated the earlier memoir a tad (to include some recent flops, boo hoo) he feels justified in giving the old mutton a new title of lamb. That would be great if you were just paying a few cents more for the new info, instead you're paying the full price for merchandise already received.

Nevertheless, the book is great. I advise everyone with an interest in theater to buy several copies and distribute it yourself if need be. He has the inside scoop on all the backstage devisions which changed our lives, including the bizarre $80,000 set that Tony Walton designed for THE APPLE TREE which sank the production. Speaking of bizarre, what ever happened to Barbara Harris? Poor Barbara, claims Ostrow, was having a nervous breakdown due to Warren Beatty the very night she won the Tony Award for the spirited playing in APPLE. They had to shove her on stage every night. I hope she's okay! Ostrow also tells us all we need to know, and more, about the inexplicable casting of Ron Silver in LA BETE. What he doesn't explain is why he and Jennifer Tipton ever thought LA BETE would be a success in the first place. He gives excerpts, and it's terrible.

It's a great chance for Ostrow to vent on all the people who gave him grief over the years. He really carves up John Dexter. The trouble is, most of these people are faded figures and who cares. However, if you are curious about the day to day struggles that attended the birth of 1776 (the musical) you might like this tepid rehash.

1.0 out of 5 stars Pretentious Nutcase, August 17, 2010

By 

Mamet Fan (Manhattan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Present at the Creation, Leaping in the Dark, and Going Against the Grain: 1776, Pippin, M. Butterfly, La Bete, & Other Broadway Adventures (Hardcover)

Is this guy a pretentious nutcase, or what? After a successful career as a Broadway producer, which is to say, of middling entertainments, he derailed and decided he was Jesus of Broadway, out to save the world with such deathless "dangerous" art as the flaccid M Butterfly. He was finally dragged to where all go who have lost their way but are in need of a nice safe place with rubber walls, the academy. There, he can host all sorts of "dangerous" readings and workshops while congratulating himself on their failure out in the crass commercial world where what's truly dangerous is what's good, not what makes Stuart Ostrow feel good about himself. Skip this book; it is, like his other one, boring.