The most eagerly anticipated of these shows is Paul Simon’s ““The Capeman,’’ a musical about Sal Agron, the Puerto Rican youth whose playground murder of two boys in 1959 became one of the most sensational cases in New York history. Elton John is about to hit Broadway with Disney’s ““The Lion King’’ and is developing a musical based on ““Aida.’’ Wildhorn, who has written for Whitney Houston and whose ““Jekyll and Hyde’’ was last season’s surprise success, is opening ““The Scarlet Pimpernel’’ in New York. He’s also planning a project modestly titled ““The Civil War.''
Barry Manilow’s show, ““Harmony,’’ about a group of Jewish and German street musicians in the Nazi era, opened on Oct. 19 at the La Jolla Playhouse in California, a spawning ground for Broadway (the show got very mixed reviews). Buffett’s ““Don’t Stop the Carnival,’’ about a PR man who flees the rat race to open a Caribbean hotel, played last spring in Miami and is being revised with a view to Broadway.
Meanwhile, Garth Brooks is talking with Broadway producers Jujamcyn Theaters and Dodger Productions about doing a musical version of the classic Western ““Shane.’’ Billy Joel is said to be working on a songbook show in the style of Lieber and Stoller’s ““Smokey Joe’s Cafe.’’ Pete Townshend, whose ““Tommy’’ ran two years on Broadway, is considering staging his other rock opus, ““Quadrophenia.''
Why are so many rich pop stars lusting after brutal old Broadway? Since the huge success of hip musicals like ““Rent’’ and ““Bring In ‘da Noise, Bring In ‘da Funk,’’ musicals offer a shot at a new kind of hit. For Simon, a natural storyteller in song, Broadway is providing the broadest canvas he’s ever attempted. For Manilow, who loved show albums as a kid, Broadway is a lifelong dream. ““I would make up my own stories–we were too poor to actually go to Broadway. I would make up what was happening on the “Fiddler on the Roof’ album and, frankly, when I finally got to see it, my version was better.’’
What producers hope is that pop composers can lure babyboom fans–and even younger audiences–to Broadway. ““We do shows that have the vocabulary of popular music of today,’’ says Wildhorn, whose ““Pimpernel’’ already has had a top 40 song, ““You Are My Home.’’ For the album that precedes ““Civil War,’’ Wildhorn says he’ll have 28 major acts, such as Trisha Yearwood and Patti LaBelle.
In two weeks Paul Simon will release his own concept album of songs from ““The Capeman,’’ far in advance of the musical’s January opening. (The early album release is a strategy that helped propel ““Cats’’ and ““Phantom’’ to instant success.) Though some pop stars are reluctant to surrender total control, Simon loves the collaborative necessity of Broadway. This is the area in which he exhibits possibly the sharpest intelligence among pop composers. Work such as his collaboration with African musicians on the album ““Graceland’’ has made him one of the most effective synthesizing forces in world music. For ““Capeman,’’ he has spent nine years reaching out to other musical cultures. Working with Simon on the book and lyrics is Derek Walcott, the West Indianpoet and dramatist who won the 1992 Nobel Prize. Mark Morris, the flamboyant choreographer, is also directing the show, and Bob Crowley, the brilliant Irish stage designer, has created the sets. The cast includes Ruben Blades as the older Agron, Puerto Rican salsa star Mark Anthony as the young Sal and Latin star Ednita Nazario as his mother.
To create his vision of the troubling, complex case of the illiterate 16-year-old, who went from a loathed killer to a poet in prison after his death sentence was commuted, Simon interviewed Agron’s prison chaplain and inmates on death row. He studied noted Latin musicians like Eddie Palmieri and Mongo Santamaria. He went to Puerto Rico to interview Agron’s mother. He attended ceremonies of SanterIa, the blend of Catholicism and African spirit worship. ““I wanted to put together a mixture of sounds, from the doo-wop of the ’50s to Latin rhythms like bomba and plena to the music of Pentecostal churches. John Lennon once told me that when he was a kid in Liverpool he’d listen to Radio Caroline coming from a ship offshore. It was so far away the music would come in veiled, like urr-urr-urr. “When I was with the Beatles I always tried to get that faraway sound,’ he said. I’m trying to reproduce that with that doo-wop sound that so moved me when I was a kid.''
Simon’s score has great emotional, lyric and rhythmic variety. Numbers like the teenage love song ““Bernadette,’’ the powerful trio for Sal’s mother and the mothers of the murdered boys, ““Can I Forgive Him,’’ and the anthem of initiation of Sal into the Vampires gang suggest an impact not unlike that of ““West Side Story.’’ Simon is well aware he is the theatrical novice on his team. ““My collaborators are all theater people,’’ he says. ““But I’m bringing to that group the energy and sound of the arenas and the recording studio.’’ In the end, to succeed, that energy has to be transformed into the ineffable energy of Broadway.
