Celia Keenan-Bolger and Ryan Driscoll on 'Summer of '42'
By: Michael Gilboe Apr. 10, 2007
We interview Ryan Driscoll and Celia Keenan-Bolger about the release of the cast recording of "Summer of '42." They not only discuss the show, but also their careers. Plus, we play two songs from the cast recording: "Man Around the House" and "Someone to Dance with Me."In 2005 the York Theatre Company did a benefit concert of "Summer of '42" which is the story of a young boy who, during WWII, falls in love with the wife of a solider who is overseas based on the memoir by Herman Raucher. The memoir was also made into a popular movie in 1971.
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Broadway Bullet Interview: Celia Keenan-Bolger and Ryan Driscoll on Summer of '42
BROADWAY BULLET: The Summer of '42 opened Off-Broadway in December of 2001, and was indeed a first for many people. Not only was it a first for composer David Kirshenbaum's debut Off-Broadway; but two performers, Ryan Driscoll and Celia Keenan-Bolger made their stage debuts in the show, at least their New York stage debuts. And the soundtrack has just been recorded and released on Jay Records, it's in stores and on iTunes and as a special treat we have both of those original cast members in the studio with us today. How are you guys doing?
Celia Keenan-Bolger: Hello.
Ryan Driscoll: Pretty good.
BB: Well first, before we get into talking about your careers and such, maybe for our listeners who haven't heard about Summer of '42 yet you can let them know a little bit about what the story of the show is.
CELIA: Right. Ryan, the principle performer, can take that question.
RYAN: Summer of '42 is based on the 1971 movie of the same title, it's semi-autobiographical. It is basically the story of Hermie, who is a fifteen year old boy, who travels to the fictitious island of Mackinaw Island somewhere in New England on the Atlantic. And he befriends this early thirties, late twenties woman whose husband was just shipped off to Japan, I believe, in World War Two. And after a series of events, basically what happens at the end Dorothy, the woman, learns that her husband was just killed in action, and Hermie is basically the first one there who comforts her. They spend an evening together, no one really knows exactly what happened, Herman doesn't give exact clues, but we all have an idea – obviously – of what happened. And Hermie was changed for either the good or the bad of it afterwards. It's a beautiful, touching, heartwarming story.
CELIA: Well done, Ryan.
RYAN: Didn't even prepare that!
BB: Celia, you went to school in Michigan, and found yourself employed pretty much right away?
CELIA: Yeah, it was an amazing turn of events for me because I'd heard about David and Hunter, the book writer, who is primarily known as an actor, a really good actor and singer. Hunter and David were really close in college and moved to New York, and as Hunter pursued a career in acting and David pursued a career in writing, they decided to come together on this piece and see if they couldn't write a musical. I graduated in 2000, when you go to the University of Michigan you do a senior showcase at the end of your four years in New York. And David and Hunter happened to come and see the showcase I was performing in. and I think David must've called my agent at the time and said "We've written this musical and why doesn't she come in and audition." And I got the part. A couple of weeks after graduating, or maybe a month, I got to go to the Goodspeed Opera House with these two other Michigan graduates and get my first job right out of college, which was really lucky.
BB: How did you already have an agent in college?
CELIA: Well you know what happens is when you do these showcases, you get interests from agents and casting directors, and whoever wants to come shows up. And, actually, through that showcase I got an agent. That showcase was good for lots of things.
BB: And Ryan, you were still in high school when you started this project, correct?
RYAN: Yes, it was the summer in between my junior and senior years of high school. The famous story that everyone tells is I was an usher at the Goodspeed Opera House, and there was an open casting call at the rehearsal studio ten minutes away from East Haddam, and I grew up in East Haddam, Connecticut. And my voice teacher at the time saw the ad in the Hartford Current, the local paper, and told me to go down and audition for it. I had never really, I was interested in music theater but had always thought I was never going to do anything like that, I was never going to be a music teacher, I was going to be this and that, and never thought anything about it. And suddenly I went down and auditioned and suddenly they're asking me to go to callbacks in New York City and I have to go to Chelsea Studios where – that's a world of difference – and went down and got the part. It was quite the summer. And, obviously, it turned into a few years of it. I finished my senior year of high school, deferred for a year from New York University, where I was accepted, to do the Off-Broadway run and it was quite something just being a junior/senior in high school at the time.
CELIA: I thought, you know, being fresh out of college I was this spring chicken so young and ready to take over the New York scene, and I got cast in Summer of '42 and I was the oldest kid. Looks like I'm not really so young actually. It was such an amazing group of people, especially because everyone was so young, the sort of enthusiasm. In a new musical you are sort of constantly rewriting and adding new material, and everyone was just so game, including myself. I think now, I wonder if I would have been so resilient, and everyone was just really excited to be a part of this piece and willing to basically put anything out there, which is very lucky situation to find yourself in when you are working on a new musical.
RYAN: I think what's interesting about it now is after listening to the recording a few times now, while it's not that long ago, it was almost seven years ago and you look back, and I was sixteen years old at the time. I didn't know what the heck was happening and going on around me. I think what was so great, and a tangent on what Celia said, it was more this idea of instinctual acting as opposed to, and I'm not saying that neither Celia nor I are very old or have these enormous careers, but at the same time we've also been through some more things now, and now it's more "I don't want to learn this" and "Oh, we've got to learn another song". At the time we were just like "Let's do it, let's do it! Let's learn another song!" and David and Hunter were constantly pumping out new things. And I think because of the age and, like Celia said, the enthusiasm that was going on at the time, we were all so excited to be doing something. And like Celia said, it was a wonderful experience at the time.
BB: Before we go much further, let's maybe let the listeners have a taste of one of the songs from the soundtrack. Celia, you lead this song so do you want to set this one up?
CELIA: It's funny, just when we were talking about all of this new material, I actually think that this song was Kate Grant's idea.
RYAN: It was?
CELIA: There was a scene with boxes and Hermie comes over to Dorothy's house to help her put away boxes for the summer. And it was a scene that was always funny and enjoyable, but it needed this extra bump. And I think it was Kate's idea, who played Dorothy in the Off-Broadway version, and she said "you should musicalize this". And throughout the show, there are these three girls that sort of serve dual purposes, as friends of Hermie and his two best friends, but also sort of are the voice of the time period. And they come in as sort of a fantasy sequence in this particular song. And we're all sort of dressed like Dorothy and Hermie's idea of what this whole moving of the boxes around. And it's called "Man Around the House"
BB: Alright, let's take a listen.
Click to listen to "Man Around the House" in Broadway Bullet volume 109
BB: Now we're going to talk a little about both of your post careers. Let's start with you, Ryan, how difficult of a choice was it for you to go back to school after doing Off-Broadway?
RYAN: To be completely honest it was extremely hard. I'm glad about the decision I made, obviously, but at the time Summer of '42 closed I was a lead in an Off-Broadway show, it was great. I was eighteen and I was like "I have a world at my fingertips, why would I want to go to school let's just keep going." And god bless my parents and all my friends they told me "You are going to school whether you like it or not" and obviously, like I said, it was the best decision to go to school and to keep learning about the craft and grow up basically. But it was rough at the time, it was rough to know that this thing I had worked two years on and had so much fun on had to end and I'd have to finally move onto another chapter of my life. It was rough.
BB: Well NYU also, they don't like you doing projects outside of the school while you are going to school do they?
RYAN: I wouldn't necessarily say that's true. I think, the program that I graduated from, I didn't go to the Tisch school, I got a voice degree from the Steinhart school.
BB: I've actually seen a couple of things there, I think the program is very underrated.
RYAN: We do very good things. I wouldn't necessarily say they discourage it, but they do want you to work on your college career at the moment. And I think, a lot of the time, they also know that if you leave you may never come back because other things might start happening. So basically their advice is try to stay in school, because if you leave you may never come back and it's always good to have a degree. I wouldn't say they discourage it, but they try to keep you around.
BB: And you've graduated now, right?
RYAN: I graduated last May, yes.
BB: Now did you find, taking that time off after doing a lead Off-Broadway, were the agents still receptive to you coming back in and ready to look for some more work?
RYAN: Yeah, I was lucky. When I finally made the decision to go and start college, I decided I wanted to take a few years and just focus on school, and not do anything else. I actually made a conscious decision to not worry about anything else, and I was lucky enough to be cast in quite a few roles at NYU at the Steinhart school, and my junior year I played Leo Frank in Parade. And I actually signed with an agency through that show, they saw me there. So, luckily, agents were fairly receptive and studying in New York City you have the benefit of having the industry right at your fingertips the entire time. So I was lucky enough to still, kind of, keep my foot in the door a little bit.
CELIA: The other thing Ryan isn't telling you is that he has a lot of abilities outside of being a musical theater performer. I remember, when we first met doing Summer of '42, he said "No, I think I'm going to be a conductor". And I was like "remember when you were staring in an Off-Broadway show, and you really wanted to be a conductor?" But then I think going to school is so good, as far as when you have all of these other interests and figuring out where your strengths lie, and how you compartmentalize all of these different things. And when I look at David, who was a musical theater major to start at Michigan, went to school, realized he didn't want to be a performer, sort of dabbled in composing, sort of dabbled in theory, it's so good to go to college and get a better idea of what you want to do
RYAN: Yeah, exactly. And that's a plug, not a plug for the department I graduated from, but that's exactly what I had the opportunity to do, getting a bachelors in music. I knew I wanted to try acting for awhile and do this, but like Celia said, I had higher aspirations of going into higher education and having the bachelors of music degree is going to help me do that in the long run. And while I was at school I was able to orchestrate a couple of projects, I got to conduct a few projects that we were working on, and meet a lot of people along the way which was really great. So I'm very lucky for that program, so thank you Steinhart.
BB: We're going to talk a little more with Celia, but before we do that, let's play one more song from the show. This is one of your big duets; do you want to set this one up, Ryan?
RYAN: This is "Someone to Dance With Me", the Act 1 finale, this is right after "Man Around the House" happens, after poor Hermie is exhausted over what could happen with Dorothy and him helping move the boxes, he notices a picture on her table of her and Pete – her husband. They start talking about it and he realizes that, Dorothy tells him that that picture was the night that he proposed. They start talking, Dorothy starts singing about what it was like to finally find someone and asks Hermie "Do you have someone like that?" and of course he's so enraptured with Dorothy that he doesn't know what to say and he runs out. And the two of them end up singing, in opposite worlds onstage about finding their someone to dance with them. So, "Someone to Dance With Me".
Listen to "Someone to Dance With Me" on Broadway Bullet volume 109
BB: Now Celia, where have you been since?
RYAN: Where hasn't she been?
CELIA: Oh, no.
BB: We've had listeners request you to come on the show, does that have anything to do with Spelling Bee?
CELIA: I think, maybe, yes. But you know, I say this to David all the time, Summer of '42 was absolutely a launching pad, at least in my own mind, of what I wanted, what kind of career I wanted to have in New York. And I think having my first experience, out of college, be a new musical, I sort of decided that that was the route, if I could, to follow. So I was so fortunate, I think I was saying to you before, Les Miz is the first revival I've ever done. I guess in New York it's the first revival I ever did, Sweeney Todd in Washington, D.C. But besides that, I've worked, exclusively, on new musicals. And I'm so grateful to have that as my career path. So right after Summer of '42 I sort of felt like what's the next new; there are so many great composers, new composers, out in New York right now and I've been really fortunate to work with a lot of them. So after Summer of '42 that's sort of how it followed. So often you go out of town with new musicals because New York can be a tricky place to put new musicals up on their feet. So just the whole run of Summer of '42 of going out of town first and traveling around and doing the rewrites and then coming to New York, I had this sort of template of what it's like to work on a new show. And it's sort of how it followed for years after Summer of '42.
BB: To me, the definitive moment for you in Spelling Bee is, because your song is near the end of the show, the mama.
CELIA: Yeah.
BB: I've got to tell you right now, it broke my heart. We're in the middle of this comedy, and it's touching and it's emotional all the way through, but you hit that note and it just broke my freaking heart!
CELIA: That song, it's so special. We started Spelling Bee out of town, in a cafeteria – for real – in the Berkshires, and I remember Bill Finn brought that song in and it was written specifically for Lisa Howard, Derrick Baskin, and myself. And it was just, there's something; Bill is so amazing in his abilities too, because it is this sort of broad, comedic, very sort of character based writing for all of the musical numbers. Then you get this one number that is extremely, it starts really quiet and introverted and just so moving. All of us, I remember, I had this moment where I was thinking "I cannot believe I'm in a new Bill Finn show, and I'm getting to sing a song like this" it's just, it's a good one.
BB: And I understand that you're going to be leaving Les Miz shortly and heading back to LA.
CELIA: Yes, it seems that, I'm worried I'm going to jinx it, I think it looks like all of us are going to get together, the original cast, is going to do The Spelling Bee in Los Angeles for one month. So that should be really exciting. It's always so crazy, it's similar with what happened with Summer of '42, that you do a project, you go away from it for a long time, and we all came back into the studio and recorded it. And it's amazing, sort of, what perspective does when you do that, when you have time away from the piece and you sort of think, "Oh my god, why did I do that the first time around?" I am really excited because I haven't done The Spelling Bee for almost a year, and just to go back with all of those people who I have such really strong feelings about and get to do the show again, it just seems really exciting.
BB: This is one of David Kirshenbaum's first things, and he's given us some great news, his show Party Come Here, which we featured in the New York Musical Theater Festival series on the show, is getting performed at Williamstown.
CELIA: And he has The Vanities.
RYAN: Just won an award, right?
CELIA: Yes! Actually it just won two awards. I think he won for the best score, and the show won the San Francisco critics award for best musical. It looks like that show is going to have legs beyond San Francisco.
BB: There are big rumors that it's Broadway bound for next season.
CELIA: It seems, yeah.
BB: And I hear, Ryan, he's asking you how you look in a mini skirt.
CELIA: Ryan would be wonderful in that show.
RYAN: I think yeah….no.
CELIA: It's amazing though because David was, Summer of '42 was sort of the main project for the beginning of his career. He had, you know, other shows produced, but when you get a producer and you know a show is New York bound, you sort of put a lot of energy into that one show. But now, talking to David, he has seven different things going on and all of these different writing partners and all of these different pots on the kettle. And it makes me so excited just to see what his next projects are going to be. And for, you know New York audiences to see.
RYAN: Just as a tangent on that, back in, I think it was, the end of November, David did a concert at Joe's Pub which I was lucky enough to participate in and to see, like Celia said Summer of '42 was one of his first full scores that he did. And to see the progression of shows, and to see the progression of his writing and talent over the past seven years, since Summer of '42 and to see sort of what it started at and what it's become and the way it's morphed into all of these different styles and different genres, it's really exciting to see what's going to become of him because he'll be around for awhile I think personally.
CELIA: Also, just as a side note, David Kirshenbaum is one of the nicest men in show business.
RYAN: He's amazing.
CELIA: He is such an incredibly great guy, and I've been lucky enough to work with a lot of really wonderful people, but he's just someone who inspires really great behavior, I think, because he himself is such a wonderful person.
BB: This project was recorded, finally, like six years after the fact, so what was it like coming back to the show? How much work did you have to do to catch up on for recording the soundtrack here?
RYAN: I met with Lynn Shenkl, the orchestrater and musical director, I met with Lynn only twice I think before we went to New York that day to do the concert, and then the recording was the day after. But, while in a certain way it was kind of like riding a bike and just all of the sudden all of these things just started coming back to you and it's second nature, like Celia said before, there were times where I was like "my god, why did I do it that way the first time around? What is wrong with you?" and perspective is a very interesting thing. When I was doing it the first time around, I had no acting training whatsoever and I was being myself up there. And the second time around I had, while some people – and me included – may think that the acting training may get in the way at times, it was very interesting to have a certain amount of years of training behind you to look at a piece and learn how to think of it in a different way and figure out the best way to do it. It was interesting having a few years behind you to revisit the piece; it was a lot of fun.
CELIA: There was also the way, I remember being in the recording studio and thinking, you know you're sort of revisiting the piece, and so you're remembering all of the changes we went through and how the whole piece sort of evolved. And then you're also viewing it through the lense of your personal life during that time and rarely do we get to look back on our life and, because there are these sounds and these melodies and all of these artistic elements that kind of are very evocative. I remember having, just going back in time for seven hours that day, and just revisiting a whole time of my life that seems like a really long time ago.
RYAN: It's very strange.
CELIA: Yeah, but it's so nice to get everyone back together and I think it's just so important. Especially, you know, growing up in Michigan when I was younger and not having all of the resources certainly that you have if you're growing up in New York, that recordings are a huge part of your education into musical theater. And that was, sort of, how I learned about musicals was going to the library and getting CDs and tapes, and I just hope that this reaches some of those people that don't have access to come to New York, that this recording can sort of serve as a little educational piece into the world of new musical theater.
BB: And it's quite a lavish recording, it's a double disc set, all the music.
CELIA: All of the dialogue.
RYAN: It was exhausting.
BB: There's a sixty four page booklet with everything in it. It's a lot of great pictures, basically the entire script.
RYAN: The whole libretto is right there.
BB: So it's definitely a good, education for people who haven't seen the show because they're basically getting to experience the whole thing here.
RYAN: Absolutely.
BB: And I definitely thank the tow of you so much for coming down here to discuss the project with our listeners.
RYAN: Thanks for having us.
CELIA: Yes, thank you.
BB: And best of luck in your future endeavors.
RYAN: Thanks!
CELIA: Thanks!
BB: Again, Summer of '42 was just issued by Jay Records and is available at Amazon.com, many shops, and iTunes.
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You can listen to this interview and many other great features for free on Broadway Bullet vol. 109. Subscribe for free so you don't miss an episode.
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