Open Book: SOMETHING ROTTEN!'s Karey Kirkpatrick and John O'Farrell On Mixing Broadway and The Bard

OPEN BOOK is BroadwayWorld's new series placing a well-deserved spotlight on some of the least appreciated of theatre artists, those who write the books for musicals.

SOMETHING ROTTEN! marks the Broadway debut for its co-bookwriters, Karey Kirkpatrick, who collaborated on the score with his brother Wayne Kirkpatrick, and John O'Farrell.

After beginning his career as an actor, including a gig as one of Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center's improvisational, audience participation street performers, Karey Kirkpatrick shifted his ambitions to writing and attended USC School of Cinema-Television's Filmic Writing Program. He scored a big job right out of college.

"I wrote an animated spec musical and got hired by Disney to be a staff writer, so my first three years writing in Hollywood was a screen and songwriting deal writing animated musicals. Script and music and lyrics. I've always wanted to write a musical and I think I'm just arrogant enough to think I can do it all."

He and his brother, in fact, wrote their first musical right out of high school.

"It was pretty bad. And we also wrote a couple of screenplays together early. He and I since childhood had been big idea people. We actually started a mailbox-building business together for about 2 weeks. We designed these intricate post boxes to put out in front. We sold to three people and thought, 'This is a lot of work for no money.' Just like theatre."

Both being history buffs, the brothers' idea of writing a musical set in Shakespeare's time is something they've been kicking around since 1995.

"We can't remember who came up with the idea. But we were thinking about what it would be like to be a writer in Shakespeare's England and trying to work in his shadow. And we thought it would be funny if the theatre back then was similar to what it's like now, with writers having agents and lawyers. Then we thought of Shakespeare as a rock star."

With a bit of a wink, Kirkpatrick spots a coincidental parallel between the brothers in his musical, Nick and Nigel Bottom, and he and his own sibling.

"It's like being two brothers who wrote a musical and there's another guy who wrote a hip-hop musical named HAMILTON. And what it's like to be in that shadow and trying to get a break. Exactly what is going on with us is what would have been going on for the Bottom Brothers back then. Everybody wants innovation so it's, 'How do I get ahead of the curve? How do I get a leg up?'"

Eventually Nick Bottom, on the advice of a soothsayer, tries getting a leg up by creating the world's first musical. The Brothers Kirkpatrick got a leg up by recruiting English best-selling author and comedy writer John O'Farrell.

"When Karey talked to me about this," says O'Farrell, "I mentioned various Shakespearean tropes he could include within the Shakespeare canon. I had a better knowledge of that and Karey and Wayne had the better knowledge of the great American musicals. I would mention a wonderful character in CYMBELINE and they would look blankly at me and then they would mention a Sondheim song and I'd look at them blankly."

"We always knew we wanted to have some nods to Shakespearean plots," says Kirkpatrick. "To to have a woman show up at the end dressed as a lawyer saving the day, that's from THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. When you have a show about theatre that's set in a time when women weren't allowed on stage, that's very limiting for your female cast members and ensemble, so we spent a lot of time making sure the women we did have in our show were strong."

Kirkpatrick says one thing he's very proud of is that it's a musical with an original story.

"It made it a little bit harder,' he admits, "staring into the blank nothingness and trying to come up with what happens next. We always joke about a great episode of 'Seinfeld' where they're trying to write a sitcom and they write two lines and then go 'We need something here.' We thought of naming our production company We Need Something Here Productions."

"I've taken books and turned them into movies," he continues, "but that's a completely different process. It's particularly daunting, especially for the bookwriter, to do something completely original. Just making up a story is the hardest thing, but also you're not tapping into any existing audience when your show opens."

O'Farrell notes, "The top shows now are THE LION KING and WICKED and ALADDIN. Families go to Times Square and they're wondering what to see and they think 'Well, the kids love ALADDIN.' And then they see Something Rotten! and they're wondering what it is. 'Shakespeare or something?' So the families go to something they're familiar with where they know they're going to have a good time. Producers are more nervous about taking a chance on an original show."

"For me, as an audience member," says Kirkpatrick, "I prefer seeing an original because I like not knowing what happens next. To go into something where I already know the story, even though there are many adaptations that I thoroughly enjoy, you're watching it with a different eye. You're thinking 'What did they do with this? How did they make it a musical?' Not 'I'm lost in this story and I wonder what happens next.'"

"It was hard to create room for two love stories," says O'Farrell, "but we were determined to have more than one interesting female in our story. That meant other things had to get tweaked out but I'm glad we worked harder to make room for both of them."

"We also wanted to show two different kinds of relationships," adds Kirkpatrick. "We wanted old love - a couple that had been together for a while - and new love. People falling in love for the first time, so we could show the brothers in two different phases of life and provide different types of songs for the women to sing."

Unlike many musicals that transfer from Off-Broadway or come to New York after regional productions, Something Rotten! came directly to Broadway, with previews providing the first chance to see the show in front of an audience. The two writers say they paid a lot of attention to the reactions of audiences.

"It was a new experience for me," says O'Farrell, "being in that room and sensing when the energy was dipping and sensing when the tension might have been dropping off slightly. It's a tough thing for writers to say we think we have to lose a song or to say that a scene we loved when we came up with it and was working so well in the read-throughs will have to go. But there's no substitute for seeing it in front of an audience."

"The challenge with anything you write is that you're hoping at the end that the whole is the sum of its parts," explains Kirkpatrick. "So many times you start with parts - little theme ideas, little character ideas - and you start trying to put them together and you fall in love with the parts. When you get into previews it's the first time you're allowed to stand in the back of the house every night and see how the audience responds to it as a whole piece. How it moves and how it flows and which pieces are not helping and serving the whole thing. We were told by our director (Casey Nicholaw) that when we get into previews the show will tell you what it needs."

"I had no idea the show was going to be that brutal, though," O'Farrell jokes.

"The easiest example is the joke," Kirkpatrick continues. "We're writing a comedy and there's either laughter or there isn't."

O'Farrell adds, "Karey and I would be standing in the back and if there wasn't a laugh we'd look at each other and do that across the throat gesture and then try again the next day with a new joke and there'd be rolls of laughter so we'd look at each other and smile and nod. It's a great feeling when you get it right."

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The completely original new musical Something Rotten!, directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon, Aladdin), with music and lyrics by Grammy Award winner and Tony Award nominee Wayne Kirkpatrick and Golden Globe Award and Tony Award nominee Karey Kirkpatrick and a book by Tony Award nominees Karey Kirkpatrick and best-selling author John O'Farrell, is playing on Broadway at the St. James Theatre (246 West 44 Street).

Something Rotten! currently stars three-time Tony Award nominee Brian d'Arcy James (Shrek, Spotlight), two-time Tony Award winner Christian Borle (Peter and the Starcatcher), Tony Award nominee John Cariani (Fiddler on the Roof), Heidi Blickenstaff ([title of show]), two-time Tony Award nominee Brad Oscar (The Producers), Kate Reinders (Wicked), David Beach (It's Only a Play, Fish in the Dark, Mamma Mia!), Edward Hibbert (It Shoulda Been You, The Drowsy Chaperone, "Frasier"), Gerry Vichi (The Drowsy Chaperone) and André Ward (Rock of Ages, Xanadu).