ROUNDABOUT BLOG

Education dramaturg Ted Sod spoke with Alex Timbers, director of The Robber Bridegroom about his research and process of working on it so far.

Ted Sod: Where were you born and educated? Did you have any teachers who had a profound influence on you?

Alex Timbers: I grew up in New York City and suburban Chicago and then went to Yale for college. Two teachers in particular had a big impact on me: my fifth grade teacher, Diane Hawes, who got me excited about history, a topic that has ultimately become a huge part of my focus in theatre. And Peter Ferry, my high school English teacher, who helped me find my own voice as a writer and helped me embrace the notion that humor and irreverence were a legitimate form of expression.

TS: Was there a specific moment when you decided to become a director?

AT: The extent of my theatre experience until college was really just the annual school play. In high school, I was always relegated to the one non-singing, non-dancing character in the musicals they chose: for example, the Hungarian diplomat Zoltan Karpathy in My Fair Lady and the gangster Big Jule in Guys and Dolls. It was humbling! But I’m not a great actor and knew it. So, in college, I wasn’t initially interested in doing more theatre. I auditioned for and joined an improv troupe and a sketch comedy group, which was much more my speed. We toured and performed. Over time, I became curious about the mechanics of comedy -- in other words, how comedy works. And, as a result, I started to grow curious about the construction of farces. I acted in a student production of one. And then, to learn more, I chose to direct Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy. It was a great experience, so then I directed Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor. I got bit by the directing bug at that point. And it soon led to me directing dramatic plays and musicals and then devised work, but it all began based on an interest in comedy.

TS: Why did you choose to direct a revival of The Robber Bridegroom?

AT: As a director, I’ve spent my post-college professional career devoted to new work. But I saw a production of The Robber Bridegroom many years ago, and it always stuck with me and inspired me. I remember when I saw it feeling a real kinship with the material. Even though it was written in the 1970s, it felt like it had a fresh, playful, and sexy irreverence. It was also raw, mischievous, and gritty—qualities at the time that I didn’t naturally associate with musicals. I also loved the actor/audience relationship in the show, which was fluid and charged. What’s more, the characters onstage appeared to be making up the show as they were doing it. I loved the improvisatory spirit -- that nothing felt premeditated.

So, a few years ago, when Todd Haimes, the Artistic Director at Roundabout, and I were talking about shows I’d like to direct, I brought up The Robber Bridegroom. New York hasn’t seen a professional production of the show in 40 years. Todd was intrigued. I reached out to the wonderful authors of the musical, Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman, and they were enthusiastic, so we did a workshop of the show in a rehearsal studio to experiment with how we might tackle the material in a potential revival.

TS: How have you researched the world of this play? Will you give us some insight into your process?

AT: I do a lot of work focused on historical figures and historical subject matter. But no matter what the show, I’ll begin with a research phase. Here, that started with the musical’s source material: Eudora Welty’s novella. Then I looked at research imagery from the period where the show takes place, as well as the Natchez Trace, indigo fields, basically everything name-checked in the musical. Then I researched what resources were available to people living back then in Mississippi and the larger historical-political context surrounding the area. For a revival, you also look at the environment in which the show was originally created: The Robber Bridegroom was born of a certain breed of musical in the 1970s that includes shows like Pippin and Godspell. In these musicals, the audience is repeatedly reminded of the fact that they’re watching performers play roles and telling you a story. The act of making theatre is part of the central event.

When my collaborators and I began thinking about staging the show at the Steinberg Center, we thought about how we could push that idea even further than the premiere production. How can we do the show with less: less scenery, fewer performers. How can we rely on the audience’s imagination as much as possible in the act of staging this play, so we can make it a real “lean in” theatregoing experience?

Alex Timbers working with Steven Pasquale and Leslie Kritzer on THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM

TS: What do you think the musical is about? Do you feel it has contemporary resonance?

AT: The Robber Bridegroom is a tribute to the con men, riverboat hucksters, and charlatans that colonized and created our great nation at its founding. America doesn’t have the rich set of myths that Europe does, filled with princesses, magical swords, and trolls under bridges, so Eudora Welty made up her own fitting menagerie of gentleman bandits, talking heads, and Southern stepmothers. Welty, and now Uhry and Waldman, here suggest these were the people that created our nation and in a way so many of our leaders and politicians are born from their rib. Businessmen and bandits, all rolled into one. The show is trying to define a uniquely American spirit, locate a strange part of our psyche, and point at our attraction to these figures. So as we see the great salesmen of today stump across America and as they try to wrangle a vote from us, not every one of them seems so different from Jamie Lockhart.

TS: How do you understand the role of Jamie Lockhart?

AT: Jamie Lockhart is a rogue. He’s a charmer. He’s clever, funny, and he has the privilege of speaking directly with the audience. And we’re putty in his hands. The character is an update of Robin Hood. He’s a gentleman by day and a bandit by night and he follows his own code of ethics in justice. It’s meeting the character of Rosamund that turns his worldview upside down. He’s hardhearted and cynical and pragmatic, yet meeting this girl transforms him, which is a beautiful and moving idea.

TS: Rosamund and Jamie fall in love with each other’s alter egos first. Did I understand that correctly?

AT: There’s a duality throughout the entire show. That’s one of the big themes in this piece -- everyone has two sides to them. There’s big suspension of disbelief for the audience in that Jamie Lockhart doesn’t realize that Rosamund is Rosamund when she’s dressed up in her mop cap and acting like a crazy person. And Rosamund doesn’t know that the Bandit of the Woods is also Jamie Lockhart when he has berry juice stains on his face. We need to remember that the show is sub-titled “A Mississippi Fairytale” and these sort of dramatic devices, while far-fetched, exist confidently within the language of this story.

TS: Are there substantial differences between the version you are directing and the original version of the script and score?

AT: Alfred Uhry has taken a fresh look at the book and trimmed and re-written a half dozen scenes throughout. There have been efforts to add more musical material for Jamie Lockhart and Rosamund to share. There’s been a big re-think of the first 15 minutes of the show, and a great deal of tightening throughout. I think the piece is going to end up being 85 minutes straight through.

Alex Timbers directing THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM

TS: Are you anticipating having the actors be the band or are they separate entities?

AT: There’s going to be a lot of fluidity. The actors will be playing instruments, but the band will be on stage as well and participating in many of the numbers. My hope is that there is a seamless energy between the band and the performers. All the people onstage need to be invested in the communal aspect of telling this story.

TS: Why did you choose to work with Connor Gallagher and Justin Levine?

AT: Justin Levine, who is musical director, is one of the most gifted young composers and music directors working today. We worked together on Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Here Lies Love, and one of his own writing projects as well. I consider him one of my closest collaborators. Beyond being a brilliant writer of pop music and musical theatre, he plays a dozen instruments and has a deep love and appreciation, specifically, for bluegrass. I thought he would be the perfect person to be in charge of the band and re-investigating this score, along with the genius musical mind of Martin Lowe. Robert Waldman, the show’s composer, wisely wants the score to feel as alive today as it did to audiences back in 1975. I think what comes with that is a responsibility to put the score in dialogue with what’s going on in music today with bands like Grizzly Bear and Mumford and Sons. Justin and Martin are the perfect people to do that.

I first worked with Connor Gallagher about six years ago. We were paired together on a project and, while it was a forced marriage, we felt it was serendipitous as we had an immediate connection. Connor is an enormously clever and talented young choreographer with a huge imagination and a great wit. He also has the unlikely benefit of having acted in The Robber Bridegroom! He played the character of Goat in high school. He knows the show incredibly well, has the same love of it that I do, and understands the spirit of what I want our production to be.

TS: Talk about casting the show -- what traits did you need?

AT: The actors we cast needed to be true proteans, playing multiple roles and willing to step forward and take the lead in a scene or song, and then in the next one hold up a board or a rope and recede into the scenographic world. These hard-working actors never even leave the stage. We’ve got an exciting cast that I couldn’t be more delighted about, led by the remarkable Steven Pasquale.

The Robber Bridegroom begins performances at the Laura Pels Theatre on February 18. For tickets and information, please visit us on our website.