THE john & jen CHRONICLES, part one: Tim Fudge

Poor Tim Fudge! Could we all just join hands, figuratively speaking, and lift our voices in prayer (to whomever or whatever you feel like praying) for this multi-talented man who is faced with a most daunting task: He's the musical director for john & jen, the Andrew Lippa-Tom Greenwald musical being mounted by Johnny Peppers' 3Ps Productions and starring Martha Wilkinson and Patrick Waller, for a three week run at Backstage at the Barn.

Now, you'd think this assignment would be easy-breezy, right? After all, Martha Wilkinson and Patrick Waller have been anointed, crowned, designated - you name it, they've got the reviews to prove it - as the best actress and best actor in Nashville. And they are...probably. We (the editorial/royal "we"), interestingly enough, picked their performances as among the best in Nashville in 2009 and the Nashville Scene picked them as the best actor types in their annual "Best of Nashville" issue. So their casting in john & jen should be any director's or music director's dream, right? Oh, but of course!

However (and this really is a big "however," y'all), music directing the two of them - or even having lunch with them, as I did last week in order to "interview" them for THE john & jen CHRONICLES - is a lot like herding cats. You might be able to do it, but at what cost to your personal well-being?

"Martha had talked to me about music directing the show back in November, but I didn't know the show at all," Fudge explains, in an aside to me as Waller and Wilkinson slip into some madcap exchange between two "legendary" theatrical types they may someday aspire to be. "And as I listened to the music, I realized how challenging the music is and really how hard this was going to be."

Meanwhile, Waller and Wilkinson are getting louder and more boisterous - you know how actors are, always vying for the critic's attention - and Fudge, all world-weary and wise, nods knowingly: "You can see how hard it is to keep these two on task."

According to Fudge, every rehearsal starts the same way, with everyone focused on the task at hand, giving serious consideration to the script and the score as work gets under way.

"But if you give either of them even one second to be distracted, they're off on some comic tangent," he says. "And it's very fun and very funny, but I have to get them back to work - and it ain't easy."

While Fudge admits that Wilkinson and Waller are two of the funniest people he's ever known - and the easy give-and-take and constant hilarity among the trio is ever-apparent - he also thinks they may two of the most talented people he's ever had the pleasure of working with: "It's going to be a good show, we're right where we need to be ten days before opening. We did a stumble-through of act one this morning and while it was rough, we're still very much on-track for opening."

Fudge, who has music directed every musical that Wilkinson has directed (she pulls double-duty here, directing john & jen as well as starring in it), this production has presented a unique set of challenges.

"Usually, when I'm music directing for Martha, I'll keep quiet unless she asks me my opinion about something," he says. "Unless I see something that I just have to say something about."

Laughing, Wilkinson interjects: "I can always tell when Tim walks toward me, saying 'I know it's not my job...' I always say, 'yes, I know, I'll fix it in a minute...let me do this first.'"

"But with this show," Fudge continues. "I am the objective eye of the audience, so I don't feel bad about telling her what I think about something she's doing as a director."

Wilkinson takes up from there: "And because I trust Tim completely, I really appreciate what he thinks and although I've directed myself before, this is the first musical I've directed myself in and I have to think about things from all different angles."

This production is an artistic leap of faith for the trio of old and devoted friends and their producer who are mounting john & jen independent of an existing theatre company. Wilkinson, who first played "Jen" in 2003 at Tibbett's Opera House in Michigan, has been longing to re-visit the work since that time and when the theatrical gods gave her the opportunity to do so, she pitched the idea to producer Johnny Peppers.

"When I did it in 2003 at Tibbett's with Kevin Thornton as John, we only did a short run - about 10 performances - and I wanted to come back here and do a production immediately with the same cast and musicians," Wilkinson says.

But it wasn't in the cards to do the show until now. "When I looked at my calendar and saw no musicals on the horizon for me, I thought now would be a good time for this show," she says.

So when Wilkinson suggested it to Peppers, he jumped at the chance to produce the show, with the surefire boffo box-office combination of Wilkinson and Waller certain to appeal to theatre-goers in the Nashville area.

With music by Andrew Lippa, lyrics by Tom Greenwald and a book by both Lippa and Greenwald, john & jen focuses, in the first act, on brother and sister John and Jen, while the second act finds Jen all grown up and mother to a son, also named John, after her brother. First produced in New York City at Lamb's Theatre off-Broadway, featuring Carolee Carmello and James Ludwig, it has gone on to countless productions around the world.

- john & jen. Music by Andrew Lippa. Lyrics by Tom Greenwald. Book by Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald. Directed by Martha Wilkinson. Musical direction by Tim Fudge. Presented by 3Ps Productions, produced by Johnny Peppers. Starring Martha Wilkinson and Patrick Waller. February 4-20. At Backstage at the Barn at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, 8204 Highway 100, Nashville. For reservations, call (615) 646-9977. Tickets are $25; house opens at 7 p.m., with curtain at 8 p.m. No buffet is included, but dessert and bar service are offered.

 

 

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