A blonde femme fatale with no possessions other than her slinky purple gown. A Chinese henchman named Tempura who complains that he has been battered by life. And a man with a past, in search of a stranger named Mr. McGuffin.
The characters and conventions of film noir get flamboyantly comical facelifts in Adrift in Macao, a new musical by Peter Melnick and Christopher Durang that, as presented by Primary Stages, is currently in previews and will open at 59E59 Theaters on February 13th. Melnick has previously written musicals and has scored many films and TV shows, and Adrift in Macao is his most high-profile project to date.
Starring Alan Campbell, Orville Mendoza, Will Swenson, and Barrymore Award-winners Rachel de Benedet and Michele Ragusa, with Elisa Van Duyne and Jonathan Rayson, Adrift in Macao is set amid the smoky nightclubs in 1952 Macao, in China. The show, which features music by Melnick and book and lyrics by Durang (Betty's Summer Vacation, Laughing Wild, The Marriage of Bette and Boo), zips merrily from Macao to Bangkok to New York as Mitch (played by Campbell) attempts to find the elusive McGuffin, who has framed him for a murder. Durang and Melnick (who is the son of a film producer) have penned a musical filled with the hard-boiled detectives and soft-hearted dames of classic '40s and '50s noir – and packed with considerably more laughs.
The show premiered at Vassar's New York Stage and Film in 2002 and received a critically acclaimed run at the Philadelphia Theatre Company last year prior to its current Off-Broadway engagement. Melnick finds that the evolution of the shows has provided him and Durang with "a great, ongoing lesson in the value of process. We have learned really important lessons about the show at every developmental stage. Among the biggest changes: we tossed out my favorite song from the NY Stage and Film production (which I'm told is the musical theater composer's equivalent of losing one's virginity), and replaced it with with a very torchy ballad that we all feel serves the show much better, 'So Long.'" One scene – involving the feud between the sultry nightclub singer Lureena (deBenedet) and her Carmen Miranda-esque opium-addicted rival Corinna (Ragusa)– was rewritten musically: "Lureena's nightclub song, 'Pretty Moon Over Macao,' and Corinna's 'Mambo Malaysian' turn into a highly competitive duet, in effect a musical catfight."
The writing process of Adrift in Macao's score was also an adaptable affair, with Melnick and Durang writing music first depending on the needs of the song. Melnick found that "the back-and-forth was a very satisfying process…Deciding which part should come first is akin to a carpenter selecting the right tool for the job. And then again, some songs happen in no particular order. I wouldn't want to give the impression that it's actually a rational, quantifiable process." Yet in writing the score, Melnick was equipped with "a very eclectic ear" and was able to shuffle through a mental deck of different idioms and periods; his choices were driven mostly by the needs of the story. The composer, who wrote everything from comic uptempo numbers to torch songs for the show, says, "The one place where I consciously did a little homework was in preparing to write 'So Long,' the torchy ballad. Apart from that, I tried to let the story line (and the specifics of Chris's lyrics when they came first) inform the music. Also, I would often ask Chris to tell me if he had any sense of what the music should feel like." He says that "When Loves Goes Wrong" from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - a song with an "easy, mid-tempo feel" recommended to him by Durang – helped set the right direction for Adrift in Macao's title song.
