Many musicals are based upon movies, with "Hairspray" being the most recent member of the genre on Broadway. A little closer to home, Matt Fontaine decided to base his latest musical on a movie title. As he worked on his creation, he learned that developing a musical requires an appreciation for the history of the genre, the need for a plot and the occasional use of 'sepulcher' in a lyric.
"I had heard of a film called 'Three on a Meathook.' I thought it was a fantastic title. I didn't actually see the film, but started to write a musical based on the trailer that I saw," said Fontaine about the start of his four-year journey towards creating his own musical. "It's a strange film, basically a rip-off of 'Psycho' and sort of follows the same basic plot of someone committing murders and we are not sure who it is."
Eventually, Fontaine did catch up with the movie and found it a fairly amateur production.
"But what it turns out to be is the archetypical slasher movie, made before 'Halloween' or 'Friday the 13th.' It was pretty bad and pretty strange, but it contains within it the seeds of all those films that followed," he said.
So Fontaine borrowed part of the title, abandoned the majority of the movie's plot and created his own archetypical slasher musical. The final result opened last weekend at the Open Circle following several major rewrites and the addition of several collaborators.
Set in 1973 (as any good slasher story should be), the musical follows the adventures of Professor Harlan Handsome (Sam Read), an aging but untenured Professor of Abnormal Psychology, who pursues his escaped patient Mama's Boy (Aaron Allshouse) into the darkening wilderness of High Sky State Park to save Handsome's student Debbie Desroches (Rachel Hynes).
The current musical pulls as much from Fontaine's love of Sondheim's famous Victorian melodrama musical as it does from the horror movies that he watched growing up.
"What originally spurred me to work in theater was a remounted production of 'Sweeney Todd' in New York. I saw it when I was 11, and I'd always enjoyed horror films. When I saw 'Sweeney Todd,' it was this incredible marriage of horror, music, plot and black humor, " said Fontaine, whose other work in Seattle includes "Herbert West: Re-Animator," the U.S. premiere of Sarah Kane's "Blasted," and numerous other productions at Open Circle, where he is now a company member.
Getting his script to be the right blend of horror and musical was the first challenge.
"Some of the incarnations were radically experimental and very long," he said of the early versions. "But getting married in the interim, between the first version and now, changed some of it. We decided that we wanted to make this an entertainment piece, to incorporate all the earlier ideas-including some that were very hyper-intellectual-but tread lightly upon them," Fontaine said. His wife and writing partner, Tamara Paris, co-authored the final version of the 'book' of the show.
As the book developed, Fontaine continued writing and often discarding songs for the characters. In the final version, he included such typical numbers as the love ballad and the "wish" song that sets up the ambitions of the various characters:
"The 'what I want' song is called "Tick, Tock Destiny" and all the characters get a chance to say what they are looking for. For example, Harlan says he wants to use his ideas for the betterment of mankind, Debbie explains how she loves Harlan, etc., etc."
After a workshop version was produced, Fontaine contacted musical director Tom Prince.
"I'm a good pop-song writer, but he is deeply immersed in Broadway musicals. He composed some of the music and arranged some of the songs that I had already worked out melodies for. He loves Broadway musicals. He knows all the rules and all the styles, but employs those in these exceptional ways. It was a really interesting collaboration," Fontaine said.
"What I've learned over the last few years is that music is like an oil tanker. It's huge and unwieldy and hard to steer, so you have to be careful in what you say and let the music speak for you," Fontaine said. The current version of 'Meathook' is radically different from the workshop that was produced just a year ago.
Fontaine found that his cast was quick to point out connections to other musicals. "I thought this was the only musical to use the word 'sepulcher' in a lyric, but Ron Sandahl pointed out that Gilbert and Sullivan used it in the 'Mikado,'" he said.
After the run closes at Open Circle, Fontaine and Paris would like to take the show to New York. There is a fringe festival for musicals that occurs there each year and Fontaine sees "Meathook" as being the good bet for any theater looking for an off-Broadway type show.
For now, "Meathook: the Melodrama" is playing at Open Circle Theater, 429 Boren Ave. Thursdays through Sundays, through May 21. For times and tickets, call 382-4250.
Rosemary Jones write about arts and entertainment for the Capitol Hill Times. She can be reached at editor@capitolhill times.com.
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