Musicals are a staple in the world of theater. Singing and dancing tend to add some extra oomph to stage shows that might otherwise lack energy.
But musicals aren’t for everybody. Maybe you’re too macho to be seen at a musical theater show, or maybe you just prefer comedy to drama.
Well, there’s a two-man show coming to town Friday that’s sure to please everyone.
It’s called Gutenberg! The Musical!, but it doesn’t have anything to do with actor Steve Guttenberg, who many say owned the ’80s.
“It’s this ridiculous, quirky little show that’s got this bizarre sense of humor – just the kind of stuff we love,” said Doug Schwarz, one of the two stars of the show.
“The play is hilarious and the songs are fun,” said Dave Peck, the other star.
The plot involves Johannes Gutenberg, the 15th century inventor of movable type, but it’s more about two wannabe playwrights who have written a play about the inventor and must perform the whole show by themselves.
Very post-modern.
Anyway, the real story here is how this particular show – the one playing Friday at the Capitol Center for the Arts’s Spotlight Cafe – came about.
Schwarz and Peck have been friends for 40 years, and Schwarz – a longtime member of the Community Players of Concord – has always been active in the theater/performance scene.
Peck, on the other hand, had never really tried it until last summer. He started taking singing lessons once he partially retired from being a lawyer (he still works quarter-time) the year before, and after a year, his teacher felt he should put his skills to use.
“Initially, he said, ‘Why don’t you do a recital?’ But most people think of recitals as for kids, and I’m like 60 years old, so I said there’s gotta be another way,” Peck said.
A little while later, Peck was over Schwarz’s house for dinner when the topic of his singing came up. Schwarz’s wife, Colleen, suggested that the two friends – who had sung together for fun for ages – find something to perform together. “Find a show for two guys,” she said.
Peck was sure that no such show existed, but sure enough, thanks to the trusty Google machine, Colleen found the perfect one: Gutenberg! The Musical!
Nobody had ever heard of it before – it was an obscure little Off-Broadway show that just now is starting to pick up in popularity. (It actually began life as a skit by the improv group Upright Citizen’s Brigade.) But the guys looked it up and ordered a CD, and “Dave and I fell in love with it,” Schwarz said.
“First we thought we’d do three or four songs in my living room,” Schwarz said. “But the more we did, the more we wanted to do.”
Next thing you know, they’re putting on the entire show at the Players studio in front of 80 people.
“They loved it,” Schwarz said. “They practically never stopped laughing, and we had so much fun because they had so much fun.”
After that show last summer, they told themselves that they had to do it again. After looking around, they decided that they’d perform this upcoming show at the Spotlight Cafe as a fundraiser for the Players.
The first show was “just for fun,” Schwarz said, and the guys just did it all out of pocket. This time, there are a few more expenses involved because they’re renting space at the Cap Center and they’re paying the live pianist. They just hope to raise a little money for the Players.
And they very likely will. There have already been about 100 tickets sold, and that’s just with word-of-mouth advertising. Now that the media juggernaut that is the Insider is talking about it, they’ll probably end up having to move the thing to Gillette Stadium or something. Hope you guys are ready!
There’s more intrigue to the show than the way it came to be.
This is a show about two guys trying to put on an entire big-time show all on their own, meaning they’re doing the acting, writing, directing – the whole shebang. And the cast contains dozens of characters, male and female, meaning these guys have all kinds of crazy quick changes that need to be pulled off.
So the plot of the play is actually the real-life scenario Schwarz and Peck are in. The only difference is that within the play, the characters are trying to pitch the show to land on Broadway, whereas Schwarz and Peck are just doing it for laughs.
“Part of the whole fun is, how do two guys with nothing but themselves put on a Broadway show? How do they pull that off?” Schwarz said.
Well, they mostly do it with hats. Lots of hats.
“They have a bunch of baseball caps with names of characters on them. Sometimes they have to change really fast, and they have all kinds of tricks to do that,” Schwarz said.
The hats are so prominent that they really factor into the rehearsal of the show.
“In an ordinary show, you have to learn lines and music,” Schwarz said. “In this show, you need to know lines, music and the hats. A lot of our effort has to go into learning how to do the hat stuff.”
So it’s a pretty minimalist show – no set, no real props, no real costumes, no paid actors. You’re probably wondering how there are any costs at all in putting on this show.
Well, although you might not have heard of it, Gutenberg! is real, copyrighted show, and you can’t just go around performing licensed works for nothing.
“It’s just like as if it were a Broadway show,” Schwarz said. “We have to contact MTI, get the rights, pay the royalties, get the score and script through them. Not much different than if we were doing Sound of Music or something.”
But just because the show was not created by Schwarz and Peck, that doesn’t mean they can’t make it their own.
“There are places in the script where it’s encouraged to improvise and use imagination,” Schwarz said. “It reminds you that this was born out of an improv company. We feel a lot of freedom to experiment and do things our own way.”
All that’s left to do now is actually go out there this Friday and get down to business.
This is a one-night only show, so you really need to be there if you want to see it.
“We would love to keep doing it,” Schwarz said. “But I don’t know whether that will be possible, practically. We would have to come up with venues where it would work financially.
“If we find ways to keep going, we’ll keep going.”
Peck is also realistically optimistic about his future in theater.
“I certainly like it,” he said. “I joined the Players a year ago, and I try to just be involved with whatever I can. I’m not gonna be a star, but I was in the chorus of Sweeney Todd, I’ll try to be in chorus of Pirates of Penzance.”
So whether you make it to this Friday’s performance of Guternberg! or not, you should still get the chance to see Peck and Schwarz perform on local stages for the forseeable future.
The show is Friday at 8 p.m. at the Cap Center’s Spotlight Cafe. Tickets are $20 and can be bought at the box office or at ccanh.com/event/gutenberg-musical.
Pizza and a cash bar will be available at 7, so get there early!
February 19, 2016
When my wife and I heard that Peck and Schwarz were performing Gutenberg again, we flew up from Florida to see it. We’re really looking forward to tonight’s performane!