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Stage Preview: Composer Frank Wildhorn's 'Civil War' loses pomposity, spectacle for tour
Sunday, April 16, 2000 By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Of all the people who saw "The Civil War" during its three-month Broadway run last year, at least one thought it was overblown with gaudy slow-motion battle sequences, overly orchestrated music and flashy period costumes.
That person was the writer.
"I created this as a minimalist concert that relied on musicians and their performances to tell the story of the Civil War," says composer Frank Wildhorn from his New York office. "It was never envisioned as a big spectacle Broadway type of show. I saw it as this sort of quiet tour that told the story of mothers waiting to see who comes home, young wives taking care of the farm alone, young men writing home to their mothers and wives, brothers dying in each other's arms. It would be told through the music with the band on stage."
Last summer, Wildhorn's two previous shows, "Jekyll and Hyde" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel," were each several years into their Midtown Manhattan runs. The marketing possibilities of a third Wildhorn musical overwhelmed his Broadway producers. Wildhorn became the only American composer of the past 20 years to have three shows running simultaneously on Broadway. They persuaded him to make concessions to compete on the spectacle-laden Broadway market.
"In New York, people think the world exists between New Jersey and the East River," he says. "We all got swept up in having three shows on Broadway. By the time it got [there], a different creative team took it in a very different Broadway direction. The band was taken off stage, which was a huge thing for me to deal with, realistic costumes were put on, slow-motion battle sequences and a whole series of creative decisions [were made].
"'The Civil War' was created for communities to come and honor those who came before. It was never intended as a Broadway show. I could have never asked for more from our audiences, but it closed after three months. No question it would have lasted without the changes. Just the economics of it would have made it possible to run longer."
Wildhorn thought "The Civil War" was over until he was approached by a presenter who had seen the show.
"He said, 'If you put your vision back in it, we'll book this show on the road,'" says Wildhorn. Tony Award-winning director Jerry Zaks was hired to recapture the original vision.
"So now there are no guns, no knives, no swords, no slow-motion battlefields," says Wildhorn. "Just the band, actors and set. It's in a Virginia hotel that was destroyed during the war, and the story is told through the songs. I think of it as sort of like Martin Scorsese's 'The Last Waltz.'"
With songs based on actual Civil War-era letters, diaries and documents and projections of photos from the war, Wildhorn says he hopes to tell an authentic story about the people, not the events of the War Between the States.
But even in its present form, says Wildhorn, the show has one big problem in reaching out to an audience.
"Women buy or have bought for them 70 percent of the tickets that are sold," he says. "We're marketing a show to women with 'war' in the title. That's not generally the kind of thing they go for."
To combat the "war" issue, Wildhorn says he's fighting back with something that female ticket buyers do go for.
"Star power," he says. "We are star casting it on the road. When you have John Schneider and BeBe Winans on the bill, it closes the gap that exists between the title and its intended audience. Next year when we take it back on the road we're going to put more country stars in it."
By taking no sides and focusing on the human cost of the war, Wildhorn says he's getting calls from teachers and community activists who praise him for his vision.
"They're telling me that if I can get a black and white audience to sit together and share this experience, it would create a tool of healing," he says. "It combines the words of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman and common people based on the research that we've done. It's a different kind of thing -- certainly not a Broadway-style show.
"Thank God the people across the country speak louder than the people in New York."
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Where: Heinz Hall, Downtown.