Another great interview

[mendelstyx]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/art...0,6211123.story

 

Dennis DeYoung, 'Hunchback' at Bailiwick Repertory Theatre

Dennis DeYoung's 'Hunchback' was 15 years in the making

 

By Chris Jones Tribune critic

May 18, 2008

 

 

Dennis DeYoung was once the frontman of the most popular band in America. In 1980, when Styx had multiple albums high on the Billboard charts and played live for more than 1.2 million fans, a Gallup poll made it official.

 

But for the last several weeks, a fan driving down Belmont Avenue on Chicago's North Side could easily have spotted DeYoung's silver-haired head amid the well-worn furnishings of the cramped lobby of the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre, a long-lived but perennially impecunious off-Loop theater company.

 

DeYoung working at the Bailiwick? Talk about a weird clash of cultures.

 

The bar bills alone in the Styx glory days were more than Bailiwick can spend on an entire season of shows. But the current production at the Bailiwick is a musical version of Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," penned by DeYoung and opening officially on Monday night.

 

New musicals frequently follow tortuous paths, but the story of DeYoung and his theatrical baby, which he has been working on for a jaw-dropping 15 years, is especially bizarre.

 

"The thing that appealed to me about this is the low expectations," DeYoung said earlier this week. "At the Bailiwick, it won't be about the set or the lighting. My interest is to get the book, music and lyrics to tell the story. ... I just want to see if this piece is what I believe it is. ... And I am the kind of guy who will vacuum the lobby, if necessary."

 

DeYoung was always a theatrical kind of rocker. You can hear that in the 1981 Styx concept album, "Paradise Theater." And the 1984 Styx tour in support of the album "Kilroy Was Here" featured band members donning costumes and even speaking lines of dialogue from the stage. To some extent, DeYoung's theatrical Jones exacerbated the well-documented subsequent riff between DeYoung and his fellow band members, who preferred straight, mainstream rock to their lead singer's love of dramatics.

 

In 1993, with Styx past its peak, DeYoung joined the touring revival cast of "Jesus Christ Superstar." He eventually did the role of Pilate more than 200 times, including a stint on Broadway.

 

"I'd always had this secret desire to try my hand at acting," DeYoung said. "But then I went, 'Let me think, actors do eight shows a week, writers write and stay at home. Maybe I should try my hand at writing one of those musicals.' "

 

So, in Fresno, Calif., in 1993, that's what DeYoung started to do. "I had this really tiny Casio keyboard in my luggage," he said. "And I'd gotten a couple of translations of the Hugo novel. I read the scene where the priest adopts the deformed child. Now for me, songwriting is a long, involved process. It doesn't come to me in 10 minutes like it does for some people. But the words 'Who will love this child?' really seemed to lift off the page. Then I wrote the song 'With Every Heartbeat' in about two hours. And I thought maybe I should just do it."

 

Chicago influence

At the time, there was much interest from Broadway producers in attracting rock composers to the theater world (offers were made to the likes of Jimmy Buffett, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen). DeYoung fielded a lot of offers of interest in "Hunchback," including one from the Chicago producer Michael Leavitt, then of Fox Theatricals. DeYoung liked Leavitt, in part because he was based in Chicago, which DeYoung regards as the "most exciting theater town in the nation."

 

In 1997, Leavitt helped arrange a tryout production for "Hunchback" at the Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Nashville. In general, the reviews hailed the score, especially the power ballads therein, but said the book and staging needed a lot more work. Thus plans were made to take the show to a second regional theater, and then on to Broadway. A well-regarded young director, Eric Schaeffer, was newly attached to the show.

 

Out of it

Then DeYoung's world collapsed.

 

The story of that collapse has been told before in this newspaper—the rift with his former band members who went on tour without him, the deaths of a family member and a close friend, the onset of an unusual illness that left DeYoung hyper-sensitive to light and an overall state of exhaustion.

 

"I told Eric he should just go home," DeYoung said. "I was physically and emotionally out of gas."

 

If that weren't enough strikes against poor Quasimodo, a further problem cropped up. Disney released a cartoon treatment of "Hunchback" and its theatrical division began work on a live musical version. Leavitt, who had a relationship with Disney through his Cadillac Palace Theatre, was persuaded to back off.

 

And there "Hunchback" languished until 2000.

 

That year, DeYoung fielded a call from Tim Orchard, who was then running the new Rosemont Theatre near O'Hare Airport. Orchard, a savvy independent promoter who'd made the Rosemont venue a potent force, had just done well promoting the Moody Blues backed by a symphony orchestra. He thought DeYoung should be the next rock artist to do a symphonic concert. Without the rest of Styx.

 

"I thought Dennis was too talented not to be performing and creating music," Orchard said.

 

"Tim came out of nowhere," DeYoung said. "He dragged me into this kicking and screaming. I told him nobody would care about me outside of Styx. And he said they would."

 

 

 

Demonstrably, they did. The weekend of Rosemont concerts sold out. And DeYoung took the opportunity to include four numbers from "Hunchback," which were now given huge symphonic arrangements. He even brought in the actor Mike Eldred, who'd played Quasimodo in Nashville. "The fans who came to that first concert were stunned," said Orchard. "Dennis realized this was the best format to showcase his full range of music ... and the 'Hunchback' songs were greeted with standing ovations."

 

Bailiwick artistic director David Zak was at that first Rosemont concert. So was Randy King of WTTW-Ch. 11, which led to DeYoung getting a gig reviving WTTW's legendary "Soundstage" series shortly thereafter. So, for the record, was this reporter.

 

Open invitation

The "Hunchback" songs got the most attention. "This music represents a creative peak for DeYoung," wrote music critic Howard Reich in the Tribune, arguing that DeYoung had moved on from the relative simplicity of the Styx hits and praising "the soaring melodicism appropriate to music theater." Reich described the ballad "With Every Heartbeat" as "a seamless mix of Puccini-like ensemble writing and post-Styx lyricism."

 

DeYoung kept doing his "Hunchback" segment in his concerts. He recorded a couple of the ballads on his live symphonic album. But still, nothing happened. Thousands of people had cheered "Who Will Love This Child?" "Ave Maria" and "Esmerelda," but getting a full production was another matter. The bloom was off the rose. The show's moment may have passed.

 

But Zak was working on DeYoung, a Burr Ridge resident who has taken an interest in Chicago theater for years. He was rebuffed but kept at it.

 

"We kept inviting him to see the stuff we were doing," Zak said. "We told him we can't do something on the scale of 'Wicked' at the Bailiwick, but we can make the score the center of attention."

 

Zak, of course, was and is hardly oblivious of the commercial appeal of a new musical penned by DeYoung, who has a huge fan base in Chicago. Potentially, this is an audience that this theater badly needs. "Hunchback" could be a savior of the Bailiwick, but what would the Bailiwick do for DeYoung?

 

DeYoung batted the idea around in his head for a couple of years or more, asking numerous people what they thought about Bailiwick and worrying about the match, especially because Bailiwick is a non-Equity company without access to the top tier of Chicago singers.

 

Still, Zak pounded away.

 

The turning point was Bailiwick's production of "Jerry Springer: The Opera," last season. The show featured the best singing ever heard at the theater. And after seeing the production, DeYoung finally decided to let Bailiwick have the rights to "Hunchback."

 

Negotiations ensured—Zak, who has had a contentious relationship with the Actors' Equity union, even agreed to do "Hunchback" with union actors in several of the key roles. A one-off deal between theater, union and rock star was struck.

 

That rock star has been at every important rehearsal. "I am as involved," DeYoung said, "as any human being could possibly be, short of actually putting Esmerelda in her bustier."

 

Zak and DeYoung make an odd couple, and their creative relationship, both say, has had contentious moments. But late last week, they both sounded happy with their Quasimodo and were cautiously awaiting his melodic resurrection on Monday and beyond.

 

"I have not invited anybody and I have no expectations," said DeYoung of this latest unconventional moment in his ever-morphing career. "I just wanted to finally have the chance to bring this vision to fruition."

 

cjones5@tribune.com