Interview: Joe DiPietro of AN OLD-FASHIONED FAMILY MURDER at New Theatre & Restaurant

Kansas City audiences do not often get the opportunity to see World Premiere productions of plays by Tony Award-winning playwrights.  This makes the current New Theatre & Restaurant production of Joe DiPietra’s new play “An Old-Fashioned Family Murder” starring “All In The Family’s” Sally Strothers exceptional.

When New Theater co-artistic director Richard Carrothers offered me the opportunity to sit down with Joe DiPietro and chew the fat, I jumped at the chance.  Joe is the author behind the 2010 Tony Winner for Best Musical, “Memphis” and a string of hits longer than Gumby’s Arm (and you know how long Gumby’s arm can get.)

It turns out that Joe has earned not only one Tony, but two, a Drama Desk Award, and three Outer Critics Circle Awards.  I was impressed.  His Off-Broadway “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” is the second-longest running Off-Broadway musical in history with just over 5000 performances.  

You can tell from the title of his long-running show above, this is a guy whose shows are designed to entertain his audiences more than anything else.    

It was interesting to meet Joe.  I told him that I had once met a Tony voter, but never expected to meet a Tony winner.  We met in the simple conference room on the second floor of New Theatre Restaurant.  Joe DiPietro turned out to be a very nice, friendly man with some very interesting ideas.

BWW: Please tell me about Joe.

Joe D: I grew up in New Jersey, OK? And my folks took us to see Broadway and local shows when we were young. They were Italian American. And I think one of the things about being Italian American was you expose your kids to culture, even though we're very middle class. They would always take us to museums and concerts and theater. I just fell in love with the theater.

BWW: It turned out that Joe and I shared the experience of seeing the same first original cast Broadway show.  I was on a weekend pass from Fort Dix in 1971.  Joe was there with family.

Joe D: The first show I can remember seeing was 1776 on Broadway, with the original cast. I remember, I remember super vividly, we're sitting in the mezzanine left and the lights came up on the Continental Congress. I had no idea what was happening to me, but I was like, I wanted, I don't know how, but I wanted to be a part of this.

So that's how literally how the theater thing started. And then I would always bug my parents to take me to see shows and when I was old enough, I would hop on the bus to New York and go to the half-price ticket line and see shows myself.

And then our library had a play section which had published hardcover plays, the classics and also the new plays. Very, uh, you know, I was this teenage boy who started trying to figure things out and that's how I really got exposed and got jazzed about theater.

BWW: Tell me about An Old-Fashioned American Murder?

Joe D: I got a call from Richard Carrothers and he asked me if I'd be interested in writing a show for Sally Struthers. And I had known Sally because she had done a role in my show “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”

When it played the Algonquin Playhouse, I was like, I gotta go see this. And she was fantastic at it. Really great. I knew she was great on television, but she was a real stage actor.

And I've known a lot of people had worked with her and loved her. She's grounded on-stage, she's great off stage. So when I met her after the show, we had a great chat.

And then when Richard called me up and said write something for Sally, I'm like, I have this idea for a mystery and Sally would be perfect for it.

And so that's how “An Old-Fashioned Family Murder” came to be. I basically wrote it with Sally in mind.  It’s a detective/puzzle mystery.

BWW: Soo, is Sally the Detective?

Joe D: She plays the mother of a detective, OK, but not, not to give away too much, she has a lot of opinions about things, about what, about who the murderer might be. OK.

And her character, Mrs. Peck, was married to a great detective who has since died. And their son is trying to follow in his father's footsteps and Sally, being protective and a Mom, is trying to help him out. OK. So, she's more or less the Columbo character.

She's very much at the center of what's happening in this old mansion on a rainy night.

BWW: How do you get started with something like this? Where do you find the nut of an idea? What do the structures look like when you're filling in the blanks, when you're working with something like an Agatha Christie?

Joe D: Yeah, well, you know, I know Agatha Christie wrote out not so much her characters or plots, but the mechanics of the mystery, and I sort of did that too.

Not just because I knew that, like you know, the mystery has to make sense and be new and delightful, right? Like you can't just be Oh, that guy did it because he was mad at her. You know, it's got to have some originality to it.

 OHH. With a couple of twists in mind is what I started with, and then I really thought about the character of Mrs. Peck and her son, Detective Pack, and what that could be.

And having a mother and a son on a case at the same time, what kind of the comic fun we could have with that. How she could help solve the murder? So those two elements really gave me the structure of the piece.

And then I knew I wanted to set it in the 1940s because I just feel like that's such a noir period. And I populated it with characters.

BWW: You love old detective movies?

Joe D: I'm a huge old, movie fan. I love all the 1949 noise. So I sort of put it in this thing and the characters are the femme fatales in it and the Mystery writer and Victoria, the woman who still dresses like she's in the Victorian era.

All these sort of characters from these movies that I love and I put them in this melting pot of stuff. So that's sort of where it came from. But then, you know, you really have to keep going back and making sure the mystery is fun.

The first thing that happened when I was here for the first week of rehearsal with this wonderful cast and I kept saying, you know, ask me all the questions you want because you're viewing this from six different characters' points of view. I said sometimes I am gonna tell you, I don't know. OK, let me go home and think about that. It always makes the show better.

BWW: How many murders do we have In this show?

Joe D: OK, yeah, yeah. You usually need more than one in a show, so this one has two. Yeah. And in the second act.

 

BWW: We have the classic scene where the detective is accusing everybody.

Joe D: Yes. OK. I think the detective is certainly going through all the possibilities, and everyone's gathered in one room.

BWW: OK. Well, sounds like fun. It really does. Very much looking forward to the show. When I go through your list of shows, they all seem like they're mainly designed to be fun.

Joe D: This really is show business.  I'm a big believer that theater has to work for a living. You have to entertain people first. And if you entertain them, you can tell them anything.

If you entertain, you can make a point, but without being at all preachy. We make it very clear in the show about what it's like to be a woman in the 1940s.  There are limitations on what roles you could have in society and how men treated you.

Like the Sally Struthers/Mrs. Peck character who at that time couldn't be a detective if she wanted to. So it's very, you know, that's very much an undercurrent here.

And you hear women react to certain lines in the show and the audience. And I was like, oh, yeah. So it's not just all fluff.

I hate being preached at and I hate, you know, being hit over the head with ideas I like, I like a story. And then, you know, you can tell me anything you want and I'm interested.

BWW: You're happy with the reaction so far from the audience?

Joe D: Yes, I only saw it last night and they've had two shows before that. And it was a great reaction last night. I was told it was just as good, if not better the other two shows. So I was very pleased. Yeah.

BWW: How do you think this show will be received?

Joe D: I'm saying I'm very confident. This is the type of show that a lot of theatres will want to do as well. But you know, it's the first time. So you never know. But it really seemed to play.

The show is not only very much a puzzle mystery with the detective, but it's a play with characters. And even after the mysteries are solved, there's still 10 minutes of character resolution that the audience really seems to appreciate. It's not, you know, silly or anything. It's, it's really supposed to be about people.

I like, you know, I was there last night. It was, you know, first Thursday night and it was filled. So I, you know, I, think it's really exciting, vibrant theater and I essentially grew up as a theater kid.

BWW: You’ve worked with Richard Carrothers and Dennis Hennesey before?

Joe D: Richard always calls me and says “What do you got?” They've done several of my shows over the years.

This place (New Theatre) is just a crown jewel. These guys do such a nice job. I couldn't believe it when I first came here. I don't know if there's anybody else in the country that has one like this.

You know when you say dinner theater, I think people get an impression of this cheesy old school thing, but this place is just beautiful.

They put money on the stage. They spend money on sets and costumes and talent. This place is really amazing. It's first-rate.

I mean, not just Sally. This whole cast is, you know, excellent. There's another Tony nominee in it. I mean, just wonderful folks.

They commissioned me in maybe 2008 for a “show called The Last Romance,” which I wrote for Marion Ross and her partner Paul Michael. And then that played other theaters. And they revived it right before the pandemic with Michael Lerner and Charlie Robinson, who died so young shortly afterward. 

Generally, when you do even big regional theaters, they run a show three or four weeks. New Theatre runs a show 13 weeks. And it's sold out.

Tom DiPietro has an impressive catalog of plays. An upcoming Premiere is his musical “Three Summers of Lincoln.”

The World Premiere production of “An Old Fashioned Family Murder” continues at New Theatre Restaurant through November 17.  Tickets can be purchased at www.newtheatre.com or by telephone at 913-649-7469.

Photos Courtesy of Savage Media and New Theatre Restaurant.

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