A Director's Director: Broadway Stars Share Their Favorite James Lapine Stories

Not many people can claim to be a Tony-nominated theater director and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, but James Lapine achieved both of those honors with his Broadway debut, Sunday in the Park With George (music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim). He went on to collaborate with Sondheim on Into the Woods and Passion, with William Finn on Falsettos and Spelling Bee, and to write plays and musicals including Act One, Amour, and Twelve Dreams. 

Orchestrator Michael Starobin collaborated with Lapine on Lapine’s first musical in New York City, William Finn’s In Trousers. He recalled that Lapine was initially trained in graphic arts, not in theater direction. “He tells a story of a festival they had at Yale where they did shows, and everyone had to do something they’d never done before. So he wrote and directed a piece which went on to go to New York and win an Obie Award–and he suddenly found himself doing theater.” Starobin had a similar path: “I had only done a few musicals. I was trained as a classical composer. So, for both of us, there was a lot of discovery of how musical theater works.” He added: “I was quite lucky that when he wanted to do Sunday in the Park, he wanted a familiar face around, and convinced Sondheim to use me as an orchestrator on that show.”

Lapine’s willingness to take a chance on his collaborators is a recurring theme in his career. Costume Designer Jen Caprio shared that “When I was just 26, James Lapine gave me the opportunity of a lifetime: designing the costumes for the original production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. He took a chance on a very green Costume Designer, and that leap of faith changed the course of my career.” Kevin Chamberlin, who was one of the leads in Lapine and Claudia Shear’s play Dirty Blonde, about Hollywood legend Mae West, shared a similar debt of gratitude: “I credit James with literally ‘plucking me out of the chorus.’ He saw something in me - a romantic leading man. I had always been the ‘second banana’ and he saw something more.”

David Henry Hwang is one of many legendary writers whose work Lapine has brought to the Broadway stage. He recalled: “When James and I worked together on my play Golden Child, I had never collaborated with a theatremaker who was equally brilliant as a writer and director. We found a direct and easy shorthand for script notes: he would simply rewrite a passage, not intending for me to literally incorporate his pass but as an efficient way of pointing me in the right direction. I found the clarity of this method really effective!”

Writer and humorist Jenny Allen received a cold call from Lapine after he saw an early presentation of her solo show, I Got Sick and Then I Got Better, in Martha’s Vineyard. To her “shock,” Lapine offered to help her develop the piece, which eventually premiered at New York Theater Workshop. She recounted a memorable note during the late stages of the rehearsal process: “He said, ‘it’s all fine, but you haven’t given me a reason to have left my house to come and watch you do this.’ I really took that to heart, and I use it all the time.”

Lapine’s advice has stayed with many of his collaborators. Stage and screen favorite Derrick Baskin, who worked with Lapine on The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee shared that “underneath all the comedy, [Lapine] was very serious about truth. These characters were eccentric, heightened, and sometimes quirky, but James always made sure that their eccentricities came from somewhere real.” Carolee Carmello, who was one of the stars of Falsettos on Broadway, added: “The biggest lesson I learned from him was about emotional scenes. He expressed many times that he wanted the audience to cry, not the actors on stage. If we cried, it took the emotion away from them. That was the first time someone had said that to me. It's easier said than done, but I think he's right.”

Director/choreographer Josh Prince recalled an important lesson he learned from Lapine: “The first time I worked with James, we were doing a revival of A New Brain. I'd brought in some young dancers for pre-production and spent the day staging one of the numbers to show him. James came in at the end of the day, sat down, watched it once, and said, ‘Great job. That's not it.’  So I scrapped it and we started over. I still tell that story when I'm teaching or mentoring younger choreographers. It's stuck with me because good work doesn't always mean the right work — for the piece, or for the person you're making it with. James was blunt about that in a way that never felt like a blow. In fact, I always found his directness to be a refreshing form of kindness.”

Kathleen Chalfant, who worked with Lapine on Twelve Dreams, shared a personal memory: “James cast my friend Bill Duff-Griffin as the Doctor in the Broadway run of Passion, but in previews it became clear that, no matter what he did, Bill's inner clown always came out and the Doctor kept getting laughs. James replaced Bill during previews. But the story doesn't end there: Bill lost his battle with cancer while Passion was still running. Some of us planned a gala wake and send-off for Bill at our apartment on the Upper West Side. Not long after the party started the doorbell rang and there was James to pay his respects. James is not a great lover of crowds, and he never got far from the door, but he was there for Bill. James is an enormously generous man but this particular act of generosity is especially dear to me.”

Melissa Errico was Tony nominated for her performance in Lapine and Michel Legrand’s musical Amour (“At one point James gathered the American cast and said, ‘What are we even going to call this show? Americans only know three French words: bonjour, amour, and croissant.’”). As she recalled, Lapine and Legrand “could hardly have been more different. James was rigorous, narrative, always asking how and why; Michel delighted in the inexplicable. Somehow, in Amour, James used me to stitch together those two impulses. He understood that I could honor the architecture of the building and still suddenly fly out of its windows.” 

Errico candidly discussed a difficult moment in her long collaboration with Lapine, when she was passed over for the role of a ballerina in his Freud-inspired piece Twelve Dreams. “Some part of me is still pained by the memory, because he had brought me so close to a dream I had worked desperately to reach, only to show me the precise distance between wanting something and being able to become it.” Still, she has fond memories of working with him: “once he’s cast the piece, he treats each performer as if they’re the only possible choice for the part. You as a performer are expected to find new beats and meanings for your role, growing naturally out of yourself. Your character becomes your character.”

Another of Lapine’s leading ladies is Kerry O’Malley, who played the Baker’s Wife in the 2002 revival of Into the Woods. O’Malley recalled: “Bruce Springsteen says that we can be either ancestors or ghosts to our children. James (and Stephen Sondheim) always allowed the casts of revivals of their work to feel that the originals were loving ancestors who wanted to see us thrive, not ghosts competing on what was the ‘right’ way to do it. He always said that if he gave us a note that we hated, we could simply throw it away–but I don’t think I ever did. His notes were always incisive and helpful.”

Broadway star Betsy Wolfe remembered being intimidated by Lapine at first: “Into the Woods is really the reason I got into theater, so no matter how many times James has asked me to work with him, there’s still a part of me that walks into the room wanting to prove myself to him. So many of James’s notes to me over the years have essentially been: ‘try less, trust yourself, you’re doing fine.’ There’s something wonderfully ironic about the person you most want to impress being the person telling you to stop trying so hard to impress him.”

Like any great creative partnership, Wolfe’s relationship with Lapine has evolved over the years. “Now I get to have this completely unexpected new relationship with James’s work—as a producer. I’m still a little floored by how cool that is. And, of course, after all these years, I still want James Lapine to think I’m doing a good job. Apparently some things don’t change.”