[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. For today's show, we're revisiting my conversations with some of the nominees from this year's Tony's. Let's press on with the Broadway musical that imagines what would've happened if one of Shakespeare's tragic heroines survived. What if Juliet went on to live her best life in Paris without you know who, it might sound something like this.

[MUSIC - Max Martin: Problem]

Baby even though I hate ya!

I wanna love ya

And even though I can't forgive you

I really want to

Tell me, tell me baby

Why can't you leave me?

Cause even though I shouldn't want it

I gotta have it

Head in the clouds

Got no weight on my shoulders

I should be wiser

And realize that I've got

One less problem without ya!

I got one less problem without ya!

One less problem without ya!

I've got one less problem without ya

One less problem without ya

I got one less, one less problem

I know you're never gonna wake up

I gotta give up

But it's you!

I know I shouldn't ever call back

Or let you come back

But it's you!

Every time you touch me

And say you love me

I get a little bit breathless

I shouldn't want it

But it's you!

Head in the clouds

Got no weight on my shoulders

I should be wiser

And realize that I've got

Yes. That is a reimagined version of one of Max Martin's hit songs. In the span of one act of the new musical and Juliet, you get versions of Kesha's Blow, Katy Perry's, I Kissed a Girl and Bon Jovi's, It's My life. The songs are all sung by an incredibly talented cast, including one cast member who is an opera singer and it all works. That's thanks to a really fun and smart book from Schitt's Creek writer and executive producer, David West Read, and his collaboration with songwriter and producer Max Martin, who's had more number-one hits than any other artist in the 21st century.

He's the mind behind so many of your favorite songs, from The Weekend to Kelly Clarkson and Juliet pulls from Martin's extensive catalog to help tell the story of Juliet if she survived her encounter with Romeo, with a little bit of help from Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway played by Betsy Wolfe. Anne has decided the original ending of her husband's new play, leave something to be desired. Anne takes his quill and starts writing a new story. It starts with Juliet grappling with the fallout from Romeo's death. She and her best friends, April and May, and her loyal nurse decide to head to Paris.

The trip feels like an escape at first and a way for Juliet to chart her own path, but soon she gets stuck in some old patterns. Thanks in part to Will Shakespeare himself, who keeps trying to take back the narrative and spoiler alert, brings Romeo back to life. I was joined in the show by David West Read, who wrote the book, and Betsy Wolfe, who stars as Anne Hathaway, the historical figure, not the actor. I started by asking David, who's best known for his work on TV Schitt's Creek, about his relationship with writing for the stage.

David West: Theater was definitely my first love. I had a Broadway play exactly 10 years ago that opened and closed in four days. It's been a long road to get back to Broadway and we're already past the four-day mark on this one, knock on wood. It's been really nice to return to theater after working in TV for a while.

Alison Stewart: What made you want to reinterrogate Juliet's story?

David West: I thought if we were going to reimagine Max Martin's pop song, it'd be nice to take them as far away from their original context as possible, and what could be further from modern pop music than Shakespeare, but at the same time, Shakespeare was really the pop artist of his day writing for the masses, which is what Max does, so there's a nice crossover between Shakespeare and Max Martin.

Alison Stewart: Betsy, this is also Anne's story too, very much so. It's a very smart parallel story being told between Anne Hathaway and Juliet. When we meet her, she tells us she's on her big night out, her mom's night out, gal's night out, and she is really ready to rewrite this story. She's not that psyched about what her husband has put on paper, has in mind. What is she feeling in her marriage at this point and in this moment that she is so determined to get in there and rewrite your life?

Betsy Wolfe: I think that's why this character just really resonates with so many people, in general, is we know so much about William Shakespeare, but we really know nothing about his wife at home. The idea that in the first five minutes of the show, his wife shows up in the theater and is like, "I'm just here to watch, Sweetie. You do your thing. I'm going to have a big glass of wine." Then has a couple of strong thoughts. I just think it's this beautiful exploration of a relationship at a different stage, obviously, than Romeo and Juliet are at.

We really get to see her take agency and through her own desires and wishes, for whatever reason, she maybe thinks she can't fix it at home, she decides to really help change the next generation. Then through that, while she's doing that, she actually learns that she actually does have the power to change. It's just this beautiful full-circle story with a lot of jokes in between. She writes herself in the narrative, which I think is just so freaking brilliant. I don't want to spoil it, but she decides to write herself in it. She's like, fine, you don't want to listen to me, I'm going to write myself in the show. It's one of the most joyous parts of the show for me.

Alison Stewart: You need to have compelling leads in this, David. You have it with Betsy and Lorna Courtney who plays Juliet. How did you know when you landed on the right fit?

David West: It's so obvious when you find--

Betsy Wolfe: Yes, David, how did you know how perfect I was?

[laughs]

David West: Everyone knows Betsy from all of her other work on Broadway, but I feel like, dare I say it, this is maybe the best she's ever been and she's so talented. It's crazy to have someone who's so funny and can sing the way that Betsy sings. It's not really fair. Humans shouldn't really have both of those gifts together.

Alison Stewart: There are a lot of amazing vocalist, you probably saw them all. I'm just really curious about was there a moment when the team looked and said, "These two women, this makes sense."

David West: I think we've been working on a show for about six and a half years doing workshops all over the world. Looking for who would be our Broadway cast, we already had such a strong idea of who these characters were, but then someone walks into the room and it's just the feeling you have. With both Betsy and Lauren, it was like, how do we lock them down as soon as possible, because when you see the dream person for a role, you just can't imagine anyone else.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to them doing what they do. This is, That's the Way It Is from Anne Juliet.

[MUSIC - Anne Juliet: That's the Way It Is]

When you want it the most

There's no easy way out

When you're ready to go

And your heart's left in doubt

Don't give up on your faith

Love comes to those who believe it

And that's the way it is

When life is empty with no tomorrow

And loneliness starts to call

Baby, don't worry, forget your sorrow

'Cause love's gonna conquer it all, all

When you want it the most

There's no easy way out

When you're ready to go

And your heart's left in doubt

Alison Stewart: That is you Betsy Wolfe singing. Someone is a trained singer and it's always also interesting listening to the cast member who's an opera singer sing these pop songs. As someone who's trained in music, what did you notice about a Max Martin song? It is so interesting to hear it song by trained and by Broadway and Opera Voices. What's something you noticed about the songwriting, the craft of his work?

Betsy Wolfe: I obviously had never analyzed Max Martin songs until this came along. Interestingly enough, when I was reading the lyrics, when I first got the script, almost exactly a little over a year ago, and I wasn't listening to the songs, I was reading the script. I was reading it like a monologue and the lyrics and I thought, "Oh my God, these are actually theater songs. These are story songs. These are story songs that happen to be pop songs." It's obviously David's genius of weaving them in and making them work so well.

They actually start somewhere and they finish somewhere, which actually makes us and the show is so different than many jukebox musicals because they actually do further the story and in the most beautiful way. The catalog is so insane. They're singers' songs though. Celine Dion, she is a singer. They're some real true singers. These aren't just pop artists who maybe people think aren't classically trained. They're true singers. Paulo and I actually did two operas together at the Met so I actually knew Paulo before this project. The world is so small. The world is so small.

Alison Stewart: Obviously, people know you from Schitt's Creek, the TV show. Yes, we had to ask the lawyer about that several times. It's a TV show. Do not drop it. The humor in that is so smart and so funny and so sophisticated. This show has a lot of humor in it. You go a long way for a couple of jokes that I'm not going to give anything away. What did you notice about the difference between writing humor for stage versus writing it for TV?

David West: I think one of the differences in writing for stage is that when people watch a TV show, they know that it exists in this moment in time, that it was graded once, and they watch it when it first airs, and anytime they watch it after that, they're like, "I'm watching a repeat of something." With theater, every night is the first time this audience has seen it, usually, except for our wonderful audience who come back. It feels like it's happening in this moment and so it has to be really timeless and feel fresh.

When you're working over the course of six years on something, you want to make sure that it will not feel like it's so specific to the moment that it won't be just as enjoyable for new audiences coming in. I love that challenge in theater and also trying to make it feel as universal as possible, that this is a show created by people from Sweden like Max Martin, I'm Canadian, which is why I worked on Schitt's Creek. There are Americans and Brits and people from all over working on this show, and we want to take the show all over and so trying to write really universally accessible humor that speaks to as many different audience members as possible was the challenge with this one.

Alison Stewart: Betsy, what kind of research did you do into Anne Hathaway? She's a real person.

Betsy Wolfe: I watched Devil Wears Prada. I watched, let's see.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I walked right into that one.

[laughter]

Betsy Wolfe: Yes, you totally did. Sorry.

Alison Stewart: Sorry, not sorry.

Betsy Wolfe: [laughs] To be honest, there isn't a ton that you can try and look up. We know some of the obvious facts, but I think that's why-- When I say to people and I'm doing this reimagined story, they're like, "Oh, I don't know much about Shakespeare." I'm like, "You're going to be fine. Just come. I promise you." I think that that's what's beautiful, is you actually don't really need to know other than Juliet is supposed to die and Shakespeare has a wife. We don't know anything about her. I think we don't know much anyway. I think that that's what's just so beautiful, is there is something for everyone. Not to piggyback on the last question, but-

Alison Stewart: That's okay.

Betsy Wolfe: -for David, when I read the script, I was just laughing genuinely out loud. It was so funny. I was a huge fan of Schitt's Creek. I did not put the two together when I first initially was reading the script and so obviously I was like, "This is my kind of humor. This is exactly the kind of humor that I get and, clearly, many other people get, not just myself." The idea that that can be infused in this story is just, I think, what makes it so uniquely unto its own.

Alison Stewart: They have many of the songs were not originally duets, but when you turn them in duets, they still work. I want to play a clip. This is a couple, Frankie and May, in a bit of an argument, trading lyrics back and forth from a song that people know that Adam Lambert sang, Whataya Want from Me? Let's take a listen and we can talk about it on the other side.

[MUSIC - Adam Lambert: Whataya Want from Me]

Oh, once upon a time I didn't give a damn

But now, here we are

So whataya want from me

Whataya want from me

Just don't give up, I'm workin' it out

Please don't give in, I won't let you down

It messed me up, need a second to breathe

Just keep coming around

Hey, whataya want from me

Whataya want from me

Alison Stewart: David, what was the process of deciding when to dive into the songs and how to assign them in terms of how they could help best tell the story and suit the story?

David West: Well, I really tried to let the story drive the music as opposed to trying to retrofit a story to Max's songs. Max Martin has written hundreds of great pop songs, and you could do 10 musicals with his catalog, but he was really supportive of whichever songs I wanted to pick that would best serve the story that I was coming up with and so I tried to find characters who were maybe unexpected to sing the song so that we hear them in a new way and hear the lyrics in a new way.

One of my favorite tricks is the conversation song or the argument song, whether it's this or I Want It That Way, which is a Backstreet Boys song that really doesn't make any lyrical sense in the original version but when Sung by Betsy and Stark, Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, in this musical becomes a conversation that I think you can actually follow.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting when you look at the song list for this show, Betsy, you've got Katie Perry's Roar, Demi Lovato's Confident, Pink's F'n Perfect, Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone. Does the show feel feminist to you?

Betsy Wolfe: Sure. Why not? Absolutely. I could also tell you exactly where I was. When you just listed all of those songs, I can tell you where I was when I first heard them. These were anthems of summers. Some of the maybe younger, I don't want to say kids, [laughs] my younger castmates in the cast perhaps didn't necessarily grow up with them, but I was right there when Kelly Clarkson was recording this for the very first time. These are so many anthems of my life and anthems of my time. I remember so vividly what I was doing, what I was going through.

I think that's also why people in the audience just go crazy too because they know exactly where they were and what these songs mean to them, and then to hear them, as David was saying, in such a different light. I don't want to spoil it, but when we hear Teenage Dream song by yet again another exploration of a different relationship, you can almost never hear them the same way again. I think that's what's so, so, so cool about these songs and how they almost work even more perfectly than how they even originally were, dare I say it.

Alison Stewart: At the end of the cast album, there's a duet version of Since U Been Gone between Lorna Courtney and Kelly Clarkson herself. Let's take a listen to that.

[MUSIC - Lorna Courtney and Kelly Clarkson: Since U Been Gone]

Since you been gone

You had your chance, you blew it

Out of sight, out of mind

Shut your mouth, I just can't take it

Again and again and again and again

Alison Stewart: How did this come about?

David West: [chuckles] I wasn't really involved in this. This is more a music side. [laughs] I think Max Martin has such great relationships with all of the artists that he's helped build their careers over the years, and Kelly is just one of those amazing artists featured in the show. The fact that she was willing to do this for us and duet with Lorna I know was a huge thrill for Lorna. Just an amazing thing to have on a Broadway cast album is a song with Kelly Clarkson so it was pretty cool.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask a question, David, about the joyousness of it because it is very joyful and it's really big. The show is big and I mean in the best sense. As I was sitting there, I was thinking it almost felt like a release after COVID and how we were all so separate and apart from each other, the idea of just like, "Oh my gosh, could we just have fun for a minute?" I wonder what would this show have been before COVID. Would it have had this extra, I don't know, boost of excitement about it?

David West: Yes. Having opened the show in London before COVID and then reopened it in London after COVID, I can speak to the difference. It feels like audiences are embracing it even more than ever because it is so unabashedly joyous and joyful. It's a show that's meant to be uplifting and heartwarming. There is some more dramatic moments and there's some depth to it, hopefully, but in the end, what we want is for the audiences to feel like, "I spent two and a half hours in a space with other people breathing the same air and going through something together and to really celebrate the communal aspect of theater." That's been so much fun to watch. Sitting in the audience on Broadway, seeing the way that people are responding to this show now, it feels like the perfect time.

Alison Stewart: It's really smart. It's really modern.

Betsy Wolfe: One of the resonating themes is about second chances and so I think after COVID too and while we're hopefully finishing all this up, it's this idea that there is so much joy in the thought that things might not go the way you planned, whether it's for Juliet or whether it's for Anne or Shakespeare, but there's so much joy in the fact that we are just alive and that we can figure this out and we will figure it out. I think that that is that extra joy that we're seeing in the audience.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with the creator of the musical & Juliet, which is up for nine Tonys, and with Tony nominee, Betsy Wolfe, who stars as Anne Hathaway in the show. Stick around for more All Of It. Next hour we'll continue our chats with Tony nominees, including cast members from Fat Ham and Some Like It Hot. That's after the news.

 

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