SMASH: Episode 7

7: THE WORKSHOP

Featuring Guest Star Bernadette Peters!

I was excited to have Bernadette Peters on the show but I wasn’t expecting her to play Ivy’s mom. It was an awesome character addition because she added insight to Ivy’s person & past. Casting her as Ivy’s mom was also great because it allowed an open-ended opportunity to have her re-appear. She was great in the part; she & Ivy had no familial resemblance but did interact well together. There is something cute & funny about an actual Broadway legend playing a Broadway legend on TV. I’m sure it was difficult to figure out to have Bernadette Peters guest star & perform a number without it seeming awkward & forced. Her rendition of Everything’s Coming Up Roses was vibrant & perfect. It was also very thematically clever to incorporate a song from Gypsy, considering the mother/daughter/starlet dynamic (plus, it was a plus that Bernadette Peters did recently play Mama Rose on Broadway).

Some Thoughts From Playbill’s Kenneth Jones

on the facts surrounding actual Broadway workshops

versus the show’s fictionalized workshop:  

FICKLE FRIENDS: Those chorus kids Jessica, Dennis, Bobby, and the rest, are changeable as weather. First, they're on the side of rising-star Ivy, then they take pity and side with Karen (Katharine McPhee) and advise her on how to succeed in the workshop world. When Karen gets an appointment with powerful record producer Bobby Raskin (yet to be seen), who has arranged studio time and an engineer for her to cut a demo ("Brighter Than the Sun," the Colbie Caillat pop song), the workshop gang tells her that she should quit the workshop and take the pop meeting. Look, they say, you're only getting $200 a week for the workshop and this musical isn't a sure thing. "No one will hold it against you," they say. This glib statement is some of the worst advice in theatre history, and seems inconsistent with what has been (or should be) in the heart of every artist working on Marilyn the Musical (or any other piece of art, commercial or otherwise): the unstoppable hope that their artistry will find the light of day and reward their souls, feed their bank accounts and fuel a future. In the real world, who would hold it against you for quitting a $200,000, four-week workshop the day before potential backers come see it? Everyone would hold it against you: the producer, the writers, the casting director, the director, the choreographer and, perhaps especially, the very ensemble members who said she should quit. The burden would be on the chorus to fill in the gaps of an already lean experience. That Karen rejects their advice and sticks with the workshop proves her class and loyalty. We've decided that bad karma will keep Jessica, Bobby, et al, in the chorus for a long time to come.


WORKSHOPS: In the world of commercial theatre, workshops like the one seen on "Smash" are union-approved multi-week rehearsals in which the creative team tests and sharpens a work in progress toward several presentations attended by investors and theatre owners. They are barebones, book-in-hand affairs in which movement is allowed in order give the less imaginative investors some visual punch. Workshops have replaced what used to be called backers' auditions, at which, in the Golden Age, stars gathered in living rooms around a piano and sang songs from a composer's new show and checks were written on the spot. (Or was that only in the movies?) You could say that workshops are about process and discovery, but, really, they are about gauging the future and getting dough. That future looks bleak at the end of Episode 7, when the 40 or so people in attendance (including Nick the bartender) respond with a shrug. Yes, the steam heat was working overtime (that boiler never got fixed), but did this crowd not see how much better this score (by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman) is compared to 90 percent of what surfaces in real workshops? Maybe Shaiman and Wittman should have dumbed down their workshop score (or rather Tom and Julia's score) for the series. It's hard to believe that the internet chatter from spies at the workshop is negative. Marilyn is a mess, they say. For now. By the way, for major workshops like what Marilyn seems to be, presentation audiences usually number more than 40 people, and actors usually get paid more than $200 a week for their efforts (plus a tiny piece of future profits, too).

P.S. SMASH has been renewed for a Second Season!