Should the Final Scene Involve Tap Dancing in the Oval Office?
For more than a decade, Mossman and Garriques, the elder statesmen of Broadway musicals, have struggled to bring Wiretapped — J. Edgar Hoover’s Glory to the stage. Despite a clever libretto and soaring music, the appetite for a musical comedy that both parodies and celebrates the late FBI director has been tepid.
But Bobby Mossman and Lenny Garrigues are pragmatists, not dreamers. So they are hard at work retooling Wiretapped for a modern musical theater audience. Their narrative vehicle? Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
“It’s amazing how easily the libretto accommodates a move from Hoover to Gonzales,” said Mossman. “The lyrics for ‘Lies, Lies and More Lies’ needs just the tiniest tweaking here and there to make a seamless move from ‘Hoover’ to ‘Gonzales’.”
Garrigues delights in recounting how they came up with new choreography for the big second act dance number.
“In ‘Hoover’ we had rows and rows of FBI agents sitting at tables wearing earphones listening to phone calls and then they jump up and dance on the tabletops,” Garrigues said. “Adapting that baffled us for a while. Then one day it came to me while I was sitting on a park bench throwing popcorn to the pigeons.
“I said to myself, ‘Let’s have the fired prosecutors whirling around a congressional hearing room witness table while Gonzales sits at the table and sings ‘I Don’t Remember, I Don’t Remember’. I rushed back to the studio to tell Bobby my idea. His mouth fell open in surprise and then he said, ‘Perfect!’”
It took the duo less than two hours to rewrite the lyrics of “I’m not a Crook” from ‘Hoover’ and come up with “I Don’t Remember, I Don’t Remember” for ‘Gonzales’.
Most who read the ‘Hoover’ libretto and listen to the music speak rapturously about the comedic third act when Hoover visits President Nixon in the Oval Office and the two, arm-in-arm, do a tap dance routine reminiscent of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers.
Mossman and Garrigues are determined to keep the Oval Office as the third act setting and send theater-goers home both laughing and humming the closing song.
“That’s where we are at the moment,” Mossman said. “It’s not that we’re stuck. It’s more, which of our various ideas are the funniest.”
Garrigues has his eye on market research about what musical comedy audiences like best.
“There’s no question that tap dancing is passe for today’s audiences.,” he said. “They’re more prone to favor manic chases or perhaps a kung-fu kind of ritualized ballet approach. Our challenge is to combine some kind of breakthrough dance number with a closing song that leaves everyone screaming with laughter.”
After that, the duo concedes, comes the real challenge: What to name their musical comedy.
Mossman: Obviously, the first word of the title is still “Wiretapped.”
Garrigues: And then, obviously again, it’s “Al Gonzales something or other.”
Mossman: It’s the something or other that’s the hard part.
Stay tuned, Broadway musical fans.