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Sunday, May 26, 2002

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Editor

Asked what excites him most about the upcoming CLO season, his fifth in charge, Van Kaplan beams with pleasure: "'Guys and Dolls'! The show to see is 'Guys and Dolls'!"

That's partly a joke. A producer who has spent a year on a six-show, nine-week season can't afford to have a favorite.

Kaplan is also enthusiastic about CLO's first show, "Singin' in the Rain," opening June 4. Morgan Fairchild leads that cast in name recognition ("a sheer stroke of genius," Kap-lan calls the casting, enjoying his producer's hyperbole). Co-starring are John MacInnis, Christina Saffran Ashford ("a dream") and Randy Rogal ("the funniest man alive"), who played the same role at the CLO in 1995.

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Kaplan also waxes enthusiastic about "Jekyll & Hyde" (July 23-28), to be directed by Robert Cuccioli, who made his name performing it on tour and on Broadway. "It'll be better than on Broadway. Bob's take on it is quicker and more cinematic. I think people are going to love it."

But "Guys and Dolls" (July 9-21) is special because it will be Kaplan's own CLO directorial debut. Talking about it, Kaplan, 45, makes it clear something has been missing from his professional life.

"It's a great job," he says, praising the size, scope and stability of the CLO as it was passed on to him five years ago by Charlie Gray. "The CLO will be around for a long time. Charlie built an incredible base."

But asked what most appeals to him about producing, he specifies "the artistic side of the business." So far, the job has kept him too busy to direct or perform. Although in his life Kaplan has directed more than 30 musicals and 10 or so plays, mainly at his previous long-time home, Casa Manana Musicals in Fort Worth, Texas, at his Pittsburgh company he's been chained to his role as producer.

He was producer at Casa Manana, too. But at CLO there have been three national tours. First was "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" starring David Osmond in Kaplan's first full year. That kept him traveling, putting together the package that stayed on the road for 2 1/2 years. Then came "Barry Manilow's Copacabana," which by itself "took 2 1/2 years of my life."

Finally, he scheduled himself to direct "South Pacific" last summer -- until "we started having 'Casper' issues." The revisions for that musical's American debut weren't going as Kaplan had hoped. So he gave up "South Pacific" to focus on "Casper." Without that sacrifice, he laughs, "God bless us, it wouldn't have been as good as it was!" -- recognizing it was far from as good as he had hoped.

So it is with a sense of pleasure deferred that Kaplan anticipates "Guys and Dolls," the season's fourth show: "When you're the boss, you can pick the best people!" As leads, he has Cuccioli, charismatic leading man the past two seasons of "The Pajama Game" and "Bells Are Ringing"; Victoria Clark, co-star of "Bells"; Justin Deas, an experienced musical comedy performer best known for his six Emmys; and CMU grad Kate Suber.

Assigning himself to direct also involved his producer side. Kaplan prides himself on improving CLO productions, partly by expanding the legendary one-week CLO rehearsal period to 10 days, partly by assigning different directors to all six shows. Gone is the traditional CLO staff director who would helm several shows in succession.

"The shows are bigger than they were in Heinz Hall," Kaplan says. "We're competing with 'Phantom' and 'Miss Saigon,' so producing is on a grander scale. We have to compete on the Broadway Series level. One night the audience sees the $3 million tour of 'Kiss Me, Kate,' and a few weeks later, CLO. That raises the bar." With increased technical demands, it's "too much to ask even the best directors" to split their attention, doing shows back to back.

A key to the bar has been alternating one-week and two-week shows to allow maximum rehearsal time. But this summer, there was a scheduling bottleneck because Kaplan was determined to stage the one-week Yankee Doodle Dandy musical, "George M!," over Fourth of July. That leaves "Guys and Dolls" just one tight rehearsal week. Kaplan figures that was another reason to direct it himself.

A lot of Kaplan's time has gone to CLO's investment of time and energy in new shows. As he talked, he was looking forward to a meeting with a producer interested in cutting "Casper" down to a children's show and touring it. So CLO's loss on "Casper" is far from a closed book. Ditto "Copacabana": Though it lost money, CLO retains the rights for 18 years, and this year alone, Kaplan says there are 78 amateur and professional productions licensed worldwide, with a major production set for Copenhagen in 2004. "So the jury is still out on whether we make back our money."

"You have to do 10 new shows in order for one to hit," says Kaplan. In 1997, its 50th anniversary year, CLO raised a $1 million for its new works fund. Losses to date on "Casper" and "Copacabana" have to be set against profits from the "Joseph" tour. Among other CLO investments were "Jolson," a revival of "Finian's Rainbow" that never made it and "Doctor Dolittle." But there's also "Thoroughly Modern Millie," a contender for this year's Tony Award.

And CLO has money in a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Flower Drum Song" with a new book by D.H. Hwang, a big success in LA and due on Broadway in October.

When CLO invests in a show, it -- instead of the Broadway Series -- gets the rights when it comes to Pittsburgh. Investing also gives CLO leverage in bidding to build the national tour set at its construction center. And they hope for "a trickle-back effect," replenishing the new works fund and creating an annuity for CLO.

Money, schedules, tradeoffs: That's the world a producer inhabits. Kaplan admits he has a taste for all that, thanks to business savvy inherited from his mother, who owned a market research company he worked for when he was young.

But mainly, he says, "I love theater. Musicals or plays, it's all theater."

Which brings him back to "Guys and Dolls," the first musical he ever acted in. As an undergraduate at Southern Methodist University who imagined himself a "serious" actor, he was cast as Rusty Charlie (one of the trio singing the show's opening "Fugue for Tinhorns"), and the love affair began.

"I'd never sung on stage before. ... But I grew up in a household where we played show tunes. I loved musicals." His parents were from New York, and they'd brought that love with them to Texas.

Fresh out of SMU in 1978, Kaplan helped found a successful comedy group, Random Scam, doing sketch comedy in a warehouse in Dallas. From there he was hired by Casa Manana, which produced up to 20 musicals a year, where he learned the business from the ground up as stage manager, actor, director and eventually producer. He even wrote children's musicals.

Eventually, he directed one or two shows a season -- among them a "Guys and Dolls" starring Georgia Engel.

Kaplan has missed the creative side so much he'll make his directorial debut with another Pittsburgh company this year. In November, he'll direct "Speaking in Tongues" for Quantum Theatre, which is about as far from CLO as you can get in Pittsburgh. He also serves on Quantum's board. Karla Boos has been after him for some time to direct, but he figured he'd better do that at his own company, first.

He laughs: "Did I mention 'Guys and Dolls'?"