Director Scott Ellis and Look of Love collaborator, David Thompson, discuss the intricacies of creating a musical from Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s greatest hits.

by Andrew Clevenger

Front & Center: Tell us about the genesis of The Look of Love.

DAVID THOMPSON: Many people have tried to get Burt Bacharach’s music onto the stage. The Roundabout Theatre Company approached Scott and me because we had done the Kander and Ebb revue, The World Goes ’Round. So we looked at the material and found that Bacharach and David had written 66 Top 40 hits, which is an enormous catalog.

But almost all of that music was written for the radio. It’s unlike working with a musical theatre composer, where you’re dealing with music that was inherently built for character, inherently built for the stage. The challenge was to figure out how to make their songbook theatrical.

We learned very quickly that Bacharach and David’s music is already incredibly theatrical. Each lyric’s narrative is usually a character singing about a situation from a point of view. Immediately we knew that we could get it onto the stage. With the Roundabout, we had the opportunity to do a couple of workshops, play with the music, get it on its feet, and find out what worked. We brought in musical director David Loud to give it its musical sensibility, and choreographer Ann Reinking to give it a style and a sexiness.

What’s it all About, David? The Look of Love’s music director, David Loud, answers the bell. Front & Center: What were some of the musical challenges in turning a collection of pop songs into a Broadway musical? David Loud: We had to find ways to turn Bacharach and David’s songs into theatrical moments that would live onstage as well as they did on the radio. In order to bring music like that into the theatre, you have a lot to figure out: Who’s singing each song? What does that character want? How are you going to end it, because you can’t "repeat and fade" onstage [laughs]. The other challenge is to create different ways to present these songs. You need to modify the arrangements in a small way, twist the songs in a new direction, or combine two songs that reflect interestingly off of each other. Can you give us an example? By weaving the melody of one song into the accompanying figure of another, you connect them in an almost subliminal way. We did that with "Whoever You Are" and "Alfie." At another place in the show we found three songs that had a similar point of view: "A House Is Not a Home," "Walk on By," and "One Less Bell to Answer." We weaved a trio out of those three songs. It becomes very powerful to combine them into a single moment. It sounds like you’ve pushed the music in some novel directions. My instinct is always to respect the music. At the same time, we are changing formats. There is a spectrum of styles that we want for the theatre. We had the idea, for instance, on "What’s New, Pussycat?" to try to do something completely unexpected. We found by slowing the tempo down and giving it a Germanic, Marlene Dietrich feel, we could give a whole new spin to some of the lyrics. Ann Reinking came up with a way to stage it—with these three sort of dominatrix women in chairs. [laughs] If we can make audiences listen to the music as if they’re hearing it for the first time, then we’ve succeeded.—A.C.

How did you go about choosing songs from the collected works of Bacharach and David?

SCOTT ELLIS: First, it had to be written by both of them. Both had successful songs outside their partnership, but we decided it must be a collaboration. We put that list together and tried to separate the songs depending on what kind of love they were talking about. We didn’t even have a title, but once we started exploring we realized that the majority of these songs deal with love, hence The Look of Love. That’s what we’re doing, we’re looking at love. What came next? How did you start to make the songs into a coherent show?

ELLIS: Whenever you’re putting a selection of songs together—because ultimately you can just go buy the records—it’s really about the lyrics, it’s about being able to listen to them in a different way. It becomes like a one-act play almost with each song.

THOMPSON: The underlying throughline in all the music is the concept of love: love denied, love imagined, love found, a humorous look at love, a painful look at love. That became a platform. Examining love immediately gave us a landscape for the show. What was most important was taking the concept of the show and turning it into a musical event as quirky and theatrical and sly and sexy as the music is.

Once you knew what you wanted in the show, how did you start to shape it for the stage?

ELLIS: You start with what you know that you don’t want: we knew we didn’t want "a stool revue"; we didn’t want tuxedos; we didn’t want a stagnant presentation. We wanted something hotter, sexier—something a little hipper.

THOMPSON: From the beginning, we knew that we were never going to make it a retro, 1960s look at Bacharach. A lot of people thought that that would be our first choice—certainly we’ve seen that in Austin Powers—but that would deny the fact that the music has gone beyond that. Cole Porter’s music certainly lives beyond the 1930s. Richard Rodgers’ music certainly lives beyond the 1950s.

Did you run into problems because the songs are such beautiful portraits in miniature? Was it hard to string them together?

THOMPSON: That’s actually the fun part, not the difficult part. It’s not necessarily the art of it, but rather the craft of an evening like this: making sure that you have an opening, a closing, and that your dance is used well.

ELLIS: Sometimes the song sits by itself, a little one-act. Other times there’s a connection. It’s not a story—A, B, C—but there is an emotional journey that one takes throughout the evening. You might not see it, but we know why each song is there.

THOMPSON: I would never want you to know about all the mechanics that are in place; I just want you to know that it feels right.

Does the Bacharach-David catalog lend itself well to dancing?

THOMPSON: Oh, yes, it gets very heated up. This is not dancing where you don’t break a sweat. But it’s also very stylish and sexy. That’s Ann’s take on it. She’s taken a number like "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" and turned it into an homage to Gene Kelly. I don’t want to say it quotes Singin’ in the Rain, but all of sudden there’s this soft-shoe....There’s a little bit of street dance that goes into "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" It begins with a Savion Glover–type rhythm, and it’s been given a close-harmony, guy-group groove, which is very hip. All of the departments have to work together to get you there, from the way it’s musically arranged to the way it opens up for dance.

David Loud, David Thompson, Scott Ellis, and Ann Reinking.

So the songs are constantly re-worked and re-imagined?

ELLIS: There has to be a reason to do it onstage; otherwise just drop a quarter into the jukebox or go back and listen to your CDs.

THOMPSON: There are great recordings. The music has been handled before by any number of artists, and various versions have been very successful. But that’s the mark of a good song: you can take it and rip it up and still come up with something that you’re going to be happy to hear.

ELLIS: American Idol, the most popular TV show in umpteen years, has an evening of nothing but Burt Bacharach and Hal David songs. Those kids weren’t singing them the way they’d been done before.

As you look at the show now, are there moments that surprise you?

ELLIS: All of Ann Reinking’s work surprises me. She’s just the perfect fit for this. She brought exactly what we wanted: sex and humor.

Aren’t there certain constraints working with previously written material? What if Ann says, "Can we add something? I need another four bars of music here...."

ELLIS: [laughs] We’ll put ’em in.

THOMPSON: When you do an evening like this, you always go into it with the utmost respect for the songwriting team—that’s a given. But you also know that you have the freedom as an artist to take it a step further. Otherwise you can’t risk anything. Working on The Look of Love, has your relationship with Bacharach and David songs changed?

THOMPSON: Whenever I hear one in an audition or as we’re working on the show, I’m reminded again of why I like the songs so much. Every single one of the songs that we’ve had on the list for the show are great. When I hear them, I’m happy to have them in the piece.

ELLIS: It’s like falling in love all over again.

Andrew Clevenger is a New York-based writer and musician.

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