By Kerry Clawson
Beacon Journal staff writer
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Contrary to what the title sounds like, the musical comedy 3 Guys Naked From the Waist Down isn’t a show about male strippers, in the style of The Full Monty. And, sorry, there isn’t any full frontal nudity.
That seems to be the first question people ask when they hear the provocative title.
Performers Connor Simpson (left) Patrick Ciamacco and Rob Dougherty during a rehearsal of "Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down" at Weathervane Playhouse Sunday Sept. 4, 2011, in Akron, Ohio. (Karen Schiely/Akron Beacon Journal)
From riffing to ranting, it’s all about these entertainers being vulnerable. The musical, set in the Reagan era, is a period piece that’s ’80s specific — from the comics’ political messages to the pop culture references.
The Akron premiere kicks off Weathervane’s 77th season. The theater has a personal connection to the show’s composer, Michael Rupert, a friend of Weathervane Executive Director John Hedges. Hedges brought Rupert, a Tony Award-winning Broadway actor, in last fall to direct the tragic biographical drama Breaking the Code at Weathervane.
Hedges remembers walking around the East Village with Rupert in the early ’80s and listening to him talk about creating the music for 3 Guys.
“I just fell in love with the show when I saw it off-Broadway” in 1985, Hedges said.
Rupert sang one of the show’s most touching ballads, I Don’t Believe in Heroes Anymore, for Weathervane’s gala last October. 3 Guys, which ran 11 months in its original New York production, was a collaboration between Rupert and book writer/lyricist Jerry Colker, who won a Drama Desk Award for the musical’s book.
As an actor, Hedges always wanted to do the show but never got the chance.
“It was on my short list of shows to produce’’ at Weathervane, Hedges said.
He said the musical’s a great vehicle for the three actors who play the comics – Connor Simpson, Patrick Ciamacco and Rob Dougherty. Hedges also appreciated the poignant story as well as the mix of musical styles, which include jazz, rap, ballads and a Gilbert and Sullivan-style patter song.
Rupert, speaking in a phone interview from Maine, where he’s reprising his Broadway role as Professor Callahan in Legally Blonde at Ogunquit Playhouse, said the idea for 3 Guys Naked From the Waist Down came about by accident. In 1980, he and Colker had been acting in a mess of a show called Swing (no relation to the newer Broadway Swing! Musical) at the Kennedy Center. They were so bored, they started doing comedy routines backstage based on the show.
With the deaths of comedians Freddie Prinze in 1977 and John Belushi in 1982, comedy was shrouded by quite a bit of tragedy before and during the period when Rupert and Colker were writing their show.
“We started to get fascinated by, how crazy are these people really?” Rupert said.
He and Colker spent several years hanging out with comics at New York comedy clubs, “trying to find out what drives them, what makes them tick in their craving for success and excess.”
Rupert and Colker discovered that comedic material often came from the comics’ painful need to prove themselves. They based the angry character Phil on Colker himself, as well as the controversial comic Lenny Bruce from the ’60s. The conceptual, out-there comic Kenny was inspired by entertainer Andy Kaufman. Ted, the emcee, was a compilation of several comics the co-creators saw in New York clubs.
“We could do anything because we were in this world of comedy, and in the comedy clubs, anything goes,” Rupert said.
At Weathervane, popular Cleveland actor Marc Moritz was chosen to direct the show for two primary reasons: his background in improv and the fact that he had played Ted in an independent 3 Guys production at Dobama Theatre in 1986. Moritz, who taught and performed with ImprovOlympic and Second City in Chicago and New York, also founded Cleveland’s Giant Portions Improv Co. in the ’80s.
The Lyndhurst native, who has been back in Ohio for seven years, knew how important it was to find the right mix of three actors who were creative and highly collaborative, and could make the material seem spontaneous. Each has a very different style of stand-up, including Phil’s angry-guy routine, Kenny’s tormented, bizarre act and Ted’s more mainstream style. In this tale, the three comics get a big break and achieve fame on TV, in the movies and on a world tour. But success has its pitfalls.
“I think it’s more about relationships and friendship and sticking together and personal journeys,” Moritz said of the story.
Weathervane’s music director, Brad Wyner, is having fun accentuating the musical’s “glittery” ’80s pop sound, characterized by the Van Halen Jump sound.
“It’s over-the-top and so glammy,” Wyner said. “The score for this is a little bipolar ’cause there’s the ’80s polish and the jazzy musical theater stuff.”
Wyner also said the score’s rap was ground-breaking for 1985, when rap hadn’t yet hit the mainstream and certainly wasn’t performed by three white guys.
“I think it’s great. I think it’s all part of the humor,” he said.
So where exactly does the play’s title come from? Other than the symbolic baring of emotions, the words come from an old vaudeville saying, Rupert said: “If the audience is hating you, drop your pants and you’ll get a laugh.”
3 Guys runs through Sept. 25. For tickets, call 330-836-2626.
The musical is part of a 2011-12 season that includes a six-play mainstage series, two Akron-area premieres in the black box John L. Dietz Theater, a special holiday show and two Young Actor productions.
Here’s the rest of the season lineup:
• Ken Ludwig’s Shakespeare in Hollywood, Oct. 6-23, directed by Nancy Cates. Shakespeare’s most famous fairies, Oberon and Puck, have materialized on the 1934 Warner Brothers set of famed director Max Reinhardt’s film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In this comic romp, the fairies are enlisted to play themselves, with raucous results.
Cates is directing her third Ludwig comedy at Weathervane, following Lend Me a Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo. “It’s hard to find good comedy,” said Hedges, who is looking forward to Cates’ continued work with Ludwig’s material.
• Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, Oct. 27-Nov. 12, Dietz Theater. Directed by Bill Morgan. The drama, which earned Albee his third Pulitzer Prize, navigates the emotional terrain of three women, ages 90, 52 and 26.
• Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Nov. 22-Dec. 18, directed by Sarah Bailey. The 12th annual youth production, with musical direction by Sharon Dobbins Alberson, has become an Akron holiday-season tradition.
• It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, Dec. 1-22. The drama will be directed by Bob Belfance, former managing director at Weathervane who will be at the helm of his 193rd production there. The reimagining of Frank Capra’s film will come to life on stage in the form of a 1946 radio broadcast. The play premiered in 1996 in Stamford, Conn.
• Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman, Jan. 12-28, directed by Jennifer Jeter, Dietz Theater. The drama, featuring one man and one woman playing multiple characters, explores internalized racism and prejudice among black males.
Hedges said Weathervane is trying to represent as much diversity of the human experience as it can onstage. He said he hired Jeter, a black director, for her interesting artistic sensibility: “I’m trying to cultivate more minority participation in the theater” among black theater artists.
• Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Feb. 2-19, directed by John Davis, Young Actor Series. Kate and Petruchio duke it out in this comic battle of wits. Weathervane first presented the comedic classic in 1992.
• Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, March 1-18, directed by Katherine Burke. The five unmarried Mundy sisters live in a small village in rural Ireland in 1936, as Europe is on the brink of war. Two men come into their lives who threaten to disrupt their delicate family balance. The play won a 1992 Tony Award for best play, and a 1998 film version starred Meryl Streep. In October, the Irish Repertory Theater in New York will revive the play.
• Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, March 29 to April 15, directed by Eric van Baars. The provocative drama explores the nature of genius vs. mediocrity through the eyes of composer Salieri, the envious contemporary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Amadeus won the 1981 Tony for best play. Hedges said he strives not to typecast directors such as van Baars, known for his musical theater work, by offering them different opportunities.
• Philip King’s See How They Run, May 3-20, directed by Eileen Moushey. The slamming-door British farce has a former actress, her husband the vicar, a Cockney maid and a teetotaler creating blissful hilarity. The show’s title comes from the children’s nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice. Weathervane first presented the show in 1952.
• The musical comedy The Drowsy Chaperone, June 14-July 8, directed by Gwen Arment. Book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. The five-time Tony-winning musical from 2006 creates a show-within-a-show as an agoraphobic musical theater fan listens to the original cast recording from his favorite Broadway show from the 1920s and the Jazz Age-era show comes to life in his apartment. In the 1920s, “drowsy” was the slang term for drunk or tipsy.
Weathervane subscriptions range from $23 to $174, including two-play, six-play or 12-play packages. Coupon books with eight prepaid vouchers also are available. Call 330-836-2626.
DETAILS
Musical Comedy: 3 Guys Naked From the Waist Down
When: Previews 7:30 tonight, opens 8 p.m. Friday, continuing through Sept. 25, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays
Where: Weathervane Community Playhouse,1301 Weathervane Lane, Akron
Onstage: Connor Simpson, Patrick Ciamacco, Rob Dougherty
Offstage: Jerry Colker, book and lyrics; Michael Rupert, music; Marc Moritz, director; Brad Wyner, musical director; Monica Olejko, choreographer
Cost: $24; senior citizens and college students, $21 Thursdays and Sundays; $19.50 children 17 and younger (recommended for audiences 13 and older)
Information: 330-836-2626 or www.weathervaneplayhouse.com
Arts writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.
