30 Days of NYMF on BroadwayWorld Day 4: How I Came to Write RICHARD CORY by Ed Dixon

I was developing CATHER COUNTY, my musical adaptation of the early short stories of Willa Cather at Playwright's Horizons when I came home from a matinee and my phone rang. I heard a voice say, "Hi, this is Pete Gurney. Want to do a musical with me?" I would have tried to adapt the phone book with him, but thankfully it was his idea for us to take on an early play of his, RICHARD CORY.

I vividly remembered reading the poem by E. A,. Robinson on which he based his play when I was still in high school. No one could forget that last line, "AND RICHARD CORY ONE CALM SUMMER NIGHT WENT HOME AND PUT A BULLET THROUGH HIS HEAD." CATHER COUNTY had been through-composed, that is to say, it was all sung. And this is where Mr. Gurney had what I always regarded as a brilliant idea. He thought RICHARD CORY should be a through-composed musical but that the leading character, poor Richard, should have NO music.

He proposed this to me and I was stunned. It's such a wonderful idea I thought, but how on earth could you do it? I imagined the other characters spinning out a musical idea and while it was still hanging in the air, Richard would speak and then the music would continue when the next character "spoke." I sat down to see if I could accomplish this feat. I did the first scene, then the second and then the third just poured out. I called Mr. Gurney, Pete now, and he came over to hear what I'd done. When I showed him my take on it he said, "That's exactly it. I give you carte blanche." Well, that's all I needed to hear. I was on my way to Baltimore to play Sammy in HAPPY END at Centre Stage. I took my keyboard and computer with me and finished the first draft while performing Kurt Weill, which was VERY inspiring. In Baltimore I got the idea that when the "eleven o'clock number" comes up between Richard and his son Chip, the son would also have no music.

So there you are at the penultimate moment in the musical and there is NO music. I thought it was then and still do find it chilling. And finally I got the idea that when Richard realizes what he must do, in the final moment of the play, he sings the last line and the lights go out. As the development went on I put each scene in a differenct musical style, or rather, my homage to a different musical style. So you see Richard trying to fit in with all different kinds of music representing all different kinds of people and never being able. The alienation is stunning, complete and in the end, fatal.

As soon as I finished RICHARD CORY Playwright's Horizons did a reading with an all star cast and it won a Steinberg Grant. Then it was selected for the twenty-fifth anniversary season of the O'Neill Festival. It had its first full production at Lyric Stage in Dallas where it recieved a Leon Rabin Nomination for best new work. Lincoln Center presented it in their Premiere series at the Rose Theater. Each reading and production engendered massive rewrites and corrections, always with the help and guidance of Mr. Gurney. This production in the New York Musical Theater Festival is RICHARD CORY's first fully staged version in New York.

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