It’s not often that a song takes control of its composers, wending its way through the musical charts, to television, Las Vegas, London and finally a nationwide Technicolor tour of the continent.
But that’s just what happened with Barry Manilow’s Grammy Award winning song, “Copacabana.”
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What began as a song has evolved into a full-blown, 17-song musical that may not be immediately destined for Broadway, but is on a successful nationwide tour. It opens at the Providence Performing Arts Center tomorrow night and runs through Sunday.
Usually it takes a musical to create a hit song, but with this production it was a song that has created a successful musical.
“It’s very, very odd,” said Bruce Sussman, who co-authored the song and show with Manilow and Jack Feldman. “I’ve never had a project take me along. This one keeps coming back to us.”
And while he’s content that the national tour is what was intended in this latest incarnation of “Copacabana,” he also hesitates, understanding that the song and show has had so many lives there may yet be another twist ahead.
Sussman and Manilow have been working together for some 25 years, collaborating on scores of songs and productions, while maintaining their separate careers. Sussman has written more than 150 published and recorded songs (including the theme to American Bandstand), television and stage musicals, including “Harmony,” which he wrote with Manilow and which he expects will open soon on Broadway, after a selective three-city tour. They also wrote “Coming Attractions,” winner of an Obie Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He has won a Grammy and had numerous Gold and Platinum records.
But in 25 years, Sussman said there’s little that compares to the bizarre growth of “Copacabana” from its beginnings as a single song, written in 1977 as a story song in a certain style that wasn’t being written anymore.”
A year after its release, Sussman said that Dick Clark asked “about turning it into a made-for- television musical.” The result was not only a made-for-television musical, but a couple of Emmies as well.
Then Caesar’s Palace called wanting a one-act, 70-minute Las Vegas stage production, long enough to entertain but not so long that it would keep the audience away from the slot machines and gaming tables for any extended period.
Sussman said a few years later British producers “approached us and asked if we could expand it to two acts.” Sussman, Manilow and Feldman rewrote the casino version into a two-act production that went to London and played in a West End theater for two years.
Then they were asked to consider an American tour. What Sussman said intrigued them was that in London the focus was the story “not on how we tell the story.” In America it would shift, Sussman said, and “everything we did was informed by this Technicolor concept.”
The result is a 17-song version with a “big orchestra an array of sets brilliantly colored site. It’s not a set heavy show the way ‘Sunset Boulevard’ or ‘Phantom’ is, but there’s a lot going on on that stage,” Sussman said.
“The whole piece is framed by a character in the present day who is recalling this period,” Sussman said. “The new millennium meets the movie scores of the 1940s an old fashioned story of love, jealousy and murder presented as a Technicolor movie musical.”
“Copacabana” is an original production, touring successfully, Sussman said, in an era of revivals both on the road and on Broadway. But like the revivals, there seemed to be little risk with Copacabana. It had proven itself as a song, on television, in Las Vegas and London, and its authors enjoyed a certain status.
It’s not that way for every author.
High costs to produce plays have resulted in the demise of the independent producer, who Sussman suggests, was more concerned about the production. To replace the independent producer have come the corporate producers, who are “tied to the bottom line.” And then there are spiraling ticket prices on Broadway, which some have suggested, and Sussman agrees, could reach $150 a ticket.
“I’m a middle-aged fellow,” he said, “who remembers when tickets were $27.50, $15. The cost has escalated exponentially over the last two decades. It’s a very expensive night on the town. However, that’s Broadway. Off-Broadway is booming and the regional scene is very healthy and alive.”
But for talented writers the road to actually getting produced may be difficult. “There’s lots of talent,” Sussman said. “I’m sure many of the writers that would have been writing for the stage have gone to other places. Getting the work produced is extremely difficult, largely because of the expenses of Broadway and the costs of putting on a musical.”
He gets concerned about the health of the theater, but said “there’s always something new that sets it on its ear again. The theater has been dying for 3,000 years. We tend to think fondly of that golden age, particularly in regard to musicals, in the ’50’s and ’60’s. The music of the theater is not the same as that of radio and records. If shows like “Rent” don’t deliver a hit record, I don’t think any show can.”
So a show like “Copacabana” turns it around. It takes a hit song and builds it into a two-act musical extravaganza. And it’s all meant to be fun.
“We did it for all the right reasons and it came out great, and we liked it.” Sussman said. “If you’re struggling there’s something wrong. If you’re having fun, there’s something very right going on.”
