Interview: ONE FOR MY BABY Creators Fred Barton And Scott Thompson

All Roads Theatre Company’s ARTCO’s 2025 Season kicks off with the World Premiere musical One For My Baby, which features Broadway stars Lana Gordon (Hadestown, Chicago) and Luba Mason (Jekyll and Hyde, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying) leading a cast of 28 performers, supported by a 12-piece Big Band. I decided to speak with ARTCO’s Fred Barton and Scott Thompson who wrote the musical’s book, with conductor Barton also creating the music arrangements and Thompson directing and choreographing the production.

Thanks for speaking with me today, Scott and Fred. How long have the two of you been working together and what productions have you done?

Great to talk with you! Scott and I (Fred Barton, pictured) met in Los Angeles in 1991, when I was Associate-Conducting the Los Angeles sit-down company of City of Angels with James Naughton and Randy Graff. Scott was appearing as Tulsa in a production of Gypsy in town. So it was just fate that the two Musical Comedy Babies would meet in this huge sprawling town. Several years later, Scott founded Austin Musical Theater, in Austin, Texas, and he invited me to come down and music-direct its first production – Peter Pan with Jonathan Freeman.

After that triumph, we’ve since done maybe 35 musicals, concerts, and events together in New York, Los Angeles, and everywhere in between. We’ve done Sweet Charity twice, as well as al the staples of the repertoire like Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, Gypsy, West Side Story, Annie, and many more. We did a highly unusual national television show called “Cathouse: The Musical” for HBO. (I could write a book about that one – and probably will!).

In early 2020 here in LA, we did a giant production of Women Behind Bars, the 60s female-prison parody play at The Montalban - written by Tom Eyen (who later wrote Dreamgirls) – and our production starred Traci Lords, reunited with her John Waters co-star Mink Stole, as well as many talents from RuPaul’s show, and many other amazing individuals.

Shortly after forming the All Roads Theatre Company, we met with the El Portal Theatre management and staff, and it was a no-brainer that we had found the ideal home for us! We debuted our new company with an epic Mack and Mabel there a year ago, starring Dermot Mulroney, Jenna Lea Rosen, and the fabulous Caroline O’Connor, and followed it up with one of my Broadway Showstoppers concerts of Golden Age Broadway music, similar to the 10 we’ve done in New York City in recent years.

One For My Baby is quite an undertaking for the two of you to bring to the stage. What was the spark that ignited you to start writing it?

Scott Thompson (pictured) had the concept of a Harold Arlen musical for quite some time. Arlen is acclaimed as one of the best and most original songwriters in history both by his songwriting peers of his day (Gershwin, Berlin, et al.) and the stars who originated and have recorded his songs (Garland, Horne, Streisand, Sinatra). And yet he alone, among all the greatest songwriters of the 20th century, has not had a new show, revival, or tribute on Broadway in over 60 years (Gershwin, for instance, has had five since 1980). We felt strongly that we had to fix that.

We listened very carefully to his entire catalogue of epic songs to tell us what kind of musical this had to be. And while Arlen was a master of many styles, from his early honky-tonk revue material, to “The Wizard Of Oz,” to the mature songs of “A Star Is Born,” we felt that overall, he had a sophisticated urban sensibility that underlies all his work – and a social conscience ahead of its time. That led us to set the show in what I call our “mythological urban nightclub” where characters from all walks of life meet and affect each other in that dramatic, heightened, post-WWII period of great social change. Scott made his first draft of the story and its characters, and then we rolled up our sleeves to make them speak and sing – always working on it as if Harold Arlen and his lyricists were right there in the room with us, collaborating on bringing the story to life through the songs. 

Tell me about the storyline and characters

One For My Baby is a tale of lust, heartbreak, greed, and redemption. As the story unfolds, we are introduced to a colorful crowd of characters in the manner of old Hollywood all-star movies such as “Grand Hotel” or “Dinner at Eight.” Set in 1947, Panama Jones (Lana Gordon), a sophisticated African-American diva oversees one of the sexiest nightclubs in town, Dreamland. Tess Fleming (Luba Mason), a wealthy, glamorous socialite, relentlessly promotes her handsome new singing beau, Rick Anderson, to Dreamland’s owner, Duke Sullivan, never imagining that her chic best friend Meredith Allen has designs on Rick for her own shocking purposes.

Meanwhile, a knockout newcomer showgirl, Kitty McVey, and her smitten boyfriend, hoofer Eddie Parsons, vie for performing jobs at Dreamland, while Ethel, the club’s cigarette girl, is smitten with Eddie herself. Current club headliners, Jackie James (niece of Panama Jones) and her husband Keith, struggle to maintain their marriage and professional foothold against underworld skullduggery. Drama and intrigue lurk at every turn for this kaleidoscope of characters in this glittering, film-noir, jazz-drenched world.

Fred, describe the process of creating music arrangements of well-known hits, and how you updated them from their original versions.

I can give you two good examples of how I approached the Harold Arlen songs we included in the show. Among Arlen’s most celebrated trademarks were the harmonic underpinnings that drove his melodies; he was more adventurous and sophisticated than many of his famous peers – something they all acknowledged.

In the instance of the title song of our show, “One For My Baby,” we had a song that has been made famous a million times over by the various star recordings – but I went back to the original source, a Fred Astaire movie of the 1940s for which Arlen originally wrote the song. I was surprised to find that it was not originally the long, slow torch song as it’s frequently been performed and recorded. Arlen wrote it with a different feel and beat entirely, what I call a “subversive boogie” – not a ballad at all, but with a deep bluesy drive of unrest and frustration, which is how we use the song in the plot of our show.

So, I both restored Arlen’s original feel and adapted it forward into the sounds of today, since I didn’t want the show to sound like a big-band documentary fit for the Smithsonian – and the imagery in Mercer’s lyric has some real edginess when it paints the character as someone who “soon might explode.” So that emotional explosion lies in wait from the first “subversive boogie” notes of the introduction to the song’s climax.

A second example (among many) is the famous song “That Old Black Magic.” Here’s another Harold Arlen (pictured in 1960) song known primarily in two versions – as a moderate ballad, and in the cheerfully hip version recorded by Louis Prima and his wife Keely Smith (who could forget his reading of the lyric “Put out the fire!”). But in our setting, it’s a song of seduction between our villainess and our hero who is on the verge of a huge mistake. I thought about the lyric and its references, very typical of the period, to love being an illusion, a form of the dark arts (“witchcraft,” “black magic”) and, frankly, love as a painful experience (“icy tingles down my spine,” a scary, uncontrollable, free-fall “elevator ride,” and being set on fire).

I developed a whole musical setting for the song to reflect what the two characters are doing to each other (and it’s not all love and kisses!). I have 7ths and 6ths chords moving and churning from major to minor and back to convey the helplessness of the character (“like a leaf caught in a tide”), a big-band blast when he tries to fight back (“I should stay away but what can I do?”) – and most importantly, throughout, I punctuated the very familiar tune with muted-brass “stings” all over the map, subliminally indicating the jumpiness and pain the characters who sing it are experiencing. It will be fully recognizable, of course (I do not approve of mangling songs from their composer’s overall original intent) – but I’ve teased out the references in the lyrics and incorporated them into the orchestration and musical setting.

Fred, do you work with the cast on learning the music first or while Scott is working with them on choreography?

I teach the cast the music first. That way they have a thorough grounding and familiarity with all their musical responsibilities and each number’s routines from beginning to end before Scott puts them on their feet. That makes it much easier for them to learn all of Scott's advanced choreography and musical staging.

One of the greatest challenges for our very superior and hardworking cast members is that it’s simply a large quantity of music. And while my vocal arrangements for the show are not the most difficult in the world, there’s still a lot of period harmony and style for them to absorb, and Arlen’s own distinctive sound demands extra attention. Then, once Scott has staged the number, with the cast knowing where they’re going and all the choreography, I come swooping in again to restore my original vocal direction, drilling the cast until they can put the moves with the words with the notes and perform it all organically as one.

Let’s talk about casting. Have you worked with Lana Gordon or Luba Mason before? And how did you go about casting them?

(Fred) I have never worked with Lana Gordon (pictured by Eagle Photography) before, but I can tell you one thing – I never want to do a show WITHOUT her ever in my life! It’s one thing that she’s a consummate actress (which one cannot take for granted in the musical theatre, where style and high kicks frequently take precedence over profound acting ability). Add to that her magnificent voice, both in timbre and stylings, and her terrific physicality and dance ability, and we are blessed with a major old-fashioned triple-threat on our hands. But most importantly, she has a formidable work ethic, and I admire that in a performer more than anything. She showed up at my house for the first rehearsal with the entire script and score committed to memory.

Luba Mason played the same role of our leading lady, the rich socialite with a self-destructive pathology, in our first workshop production of One For My Baby. I was so thrilled to find that Luba is still the best, brightest, and ultimately most heartbreaking in the part, and was available to participate in the world premiere of our musical.

Luba Mason. Photo by Dario Moreno

How did you find the other cast members? Virtual and/or in-person auditions or casting agents?

In short: YES! Scott has historically cast all his projects from both Los Angeles and New York; and since this is a Los-Angeles-based theatre company, we had extensive auditions here – but the unexpected challenge in this instance was that our casting calls were impacted, as were so many aspects of life here, by the tragic Santa Ana wind-driven fires. However, once we were able to resume Equity casting calls, we were able to see many excellent actors in person the old-fashioned way, which is the preferable way to do it by a factor of a million.

Several performers auditioned virtually, including some whom we eventually cast. But a virtual audition is worth little more than a résumé photo, in general; as with YouTube and any electronic means, one can’t gauge the actual dimensions of a person’s voice and dramatic impact on a device. Theatre is a live medium and can’t be cast by screen test. But we used every method available to us.

As always, we held auditions in New York City as well, for those who work in both cities. Stephen DeAngelis Casting helped tremendously with our NYC auditions, since I’ve known him for 35 years and his familiarity with both the project and our needs was formidable. But most of the cast is Los Angeles-based, as one of the main missions of the All Roads Theatre Company is to provide opportunities for the Los Angeles theatre community in all departments.

Fred, how did you find the musicians for the show’s 12-piece Big Band? Have you worked with any of them before? And what’s your rehearsal schedule with them before working with the cast?

I work with an outstanding Musical Coordinator, Carlos Rivera, who has assembled the terrific orchestras for our previous productions: Mack and Mabel, with its 18-piece orchestra, and our concert Broadway Showstoppers with its 16-piece orchestra. The Big Band for One For My Baby is a formidable group of killer-dillers, and I’ve worked with all of them before. It’s a very tight schedule, as is true of the entire production. I will have a single rehearsal with the band alone by ourselves, to get up to speed on the large number of new arrangements I’ve created for the show – then we join the cast at the theatre for the last tech and dress rehearsals.

Do you rehearse at the El Portal or elsewhere?

We rehearse the show at various rehearsal studios around town; then the week of the first performances (next week, already!) we move to the theatre to acclimate to the stage dimensions and the set, and to add the band and technical elements of the show.

Tell me about how you selected the 24 legendary Harold Arlen songs, including “Get Happy,” “Stormy Weather,” “The Man That Got Away,” “Blues In The Night,” “That Old Black Magic,” “Come Rain or Come Shine” and the title song, “One For My Baby” to be included in the musical and how they reflect elements of the story.

It’s almost as if the songs selected themselves. While Arlen was prolific, with a wide range of work, he has the classic, urban, melting-pot early-century sound to his music that dictated our setting the show in a mythological post-war nightclub. While we clearly felt the imperative to include his most famous songs, that wasn’t the only consideration; we felt the songs had to sound and speak “with one voice,” both musically and lyrically, and serve our story and our characters.

While we “reverse-engineered” the show to include the songs we really wanted to use, if any song didn’t pass the believability test, we didn’t include it. In fact, we cut a couple of songs after the workshop production because we realized that as great as they were, they stuck out like beautifully painted sore thumbs in an otherwise cohesive fabric. We always did our script-writing sessions imagining Arlen and his lyricists were in the same room with us, “writing” the songs in real time that we needed.

Why do you think now is a good time to premiere a new large-scale musical?

Large-scale musicals are our mission and embedded in the DNA of our company. So for us, it’s always a good time to premiere a new large-scale musical, and there will always be an audience hungry for such an item! All musicals, large and small, these days, require years of development, as it did One For My Baby – each “ripens” in its own time, reaching its maturity and public readiness. And between our triumph with Mack and Mabel in 2024, and our production of Sondheim’s Anyone Can Whistle in Fall 2025, the time was definitely right for our new world premiere!

Big musicals are very entertaining visually. But what message do you hope rings true with audience members? Or what do you hope they will be talking about on their way home?

When we first began to write One For My Baby, one of our main themes was the longing for community, the human necessity of getting together and being together – the underpinnings of exciting city life in general and the driving force behind nightlife in specific, in a day before gadgetry replaced social interaction. After all, the two of us came up in the age before the personal computer, phones, and Apps, where, if you didn’t want to stay home alone for life, you had to go out!

And the mythological nightclub where all our characters meet and burst into song and dance was not just their entertainment, but their compulsion. The theatre itself today serves the same function – and little did we know that the loss of the fragile, pre-television social era we depict in the play would be so dramatically demonstrated during the recent pandemic era when, once again, it was temporarily all taken away. There is nothing more important – and more fun, exciting, and essential – than the opportunity to be with other people, and the most talented, best people one can find out there – and that’s what One For My Baby is all about. And the relationship between the show and its real-life theatre audience is a perfect example of its own theme!

As Co-Founders of All Roads Theatre Company, what’s your vision for this show and your future productions?

We’re so thrilled to be able to bring to Los Angeles the incredible talent represented by the cast of One For My Baby – it’s above all a talent-based show with formidable opportunities for all of our best performers to come down to the footlights and lay it on the line. It’s old-school that way. Judy Garland used to say “I want to go out there and give them two hours of POW!” and we feel the same. It’s a show bursting with great songs, great dances, and drenched in film-noir and the snappy style of hard-driving studio-era comedy and drama, a style somewhat overlooked lately but one we’re all sorely in need of. As such, we believe the show will always have an audience, both here in Los Angeles, and in theatres around the country for years to come.

Our future productions will continue our pattern of finding the best under-produced masterpieces and bringing them to life on the LA stage, in the large-scale format we love and feel our audiences deserve.

Thanks so much for your in-depth and very informative answers!

One For My Baby performances take place on Friday, March 14, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. (Preview), Saturday, March 15, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. (Preview), Saturday, March 15, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. (a Special Gala performance with tickets for $175, which includes a party and champagne with the cast), Sunday, March 16, 2025 at 3:00 p.m., Thursday, March 20, 2025 at 8:00 p.m., Friday, March 21, 2025 at 8:00 p.m., Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. and Sunday March 23, 2025 at 3:00 p.m.  
 
Tickets range from $42 – $135 available by calling the El Portal Theatre Box Office at 818-508-4200 where operators are available by phone from 9:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. In-person Box Office Hours are 3:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. on weekdays, and from 12 Noon until show time on matinee days. Tickets are also available online at https://ci.ovationtix.com/371/production/1210611 or www.elportaltheatre.com.

Along with featured players Lana Gordon and Luba Mason, other principal roles will be played by C.J. Eldred, Lianne Marie Dobbs, Sean McGibbon, Jess Val Ortiz, Amber Wright, Harris M. Turner, Phil Pritchard, Natalie Holt McDonald, and Luke Steinborn. Ensemble cast members include Todd Andrew Ball, Keaton Brandt, Ryan Cody, Barb Erfurt, Emma Featherstone, Sylvie Gosse, Brittany Rose Hammond, Shira Jackman, Danielle LaRauf, Max Larsen, Mark Marchillo, Kitrell “Kit Kat” Poe, Camal Pugh, Charlotte Scally, Olivia Schuh, Krystle Simmons, Alec Talbott, Jeremy Ward and Kelsee Woods.

Tech credits include Paul Black (Set and Lighting Design), Shon LeBlanc (Costume Design), Julie Ferin (Sound Designer), Carter Thomas (Wig and Hair Design), Bouket Fingerhut (Prop Design), Joel Daavid (Technical Direction), Thomas Garcia, Sylvie Gosse (Associate Choreographer), Mark Marchillo (Associate Choreographer), Joy Bodin Pacifici (Production Assistant), and Derek Hecker (Set Construction).

Here is a One For My Baby sizzle reel about what to expect: https://youtu.be/8k2h2GOrJrM?si=iqhwREfNwxQuX1WQ  

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