Interview: Jeremiah James Talks IT HAPPENED IN KEY WEST

Jeremiah James is an actor, writer, and producer who has worked in New York, LA, London, and many other cities.

He's the lead producer of It Happened in Key West, as well as coming up with the original concept and writing the book for this quirky musical based on the true story of an eccentric scientist in 1930s Florida, who went to extreme lengths to keep the woman he loved.

How did you first become involved with theatre?

Actually, it was my older sister. She was a professional dancer, a Radio City Rockette. I was really big into sports and thought I was going to be a police officer or something, like most young guys. My sister tricked me into doing a musical and I fell in love with the world.

She said they needed guys for a community theatre production she was the associate choreographer on. I was like, "That's not my thing." She said, "I understand you're scared." I was like "Oh, I'm not scared of anything! I'll show you." So I showed up and the rest is history.

Did you study theatre?

I started at a place called Hampton Academy of Music in west Los Angeles, California. It was a four-year high school magnet programme. I graduated when I was 18 years old and became a professional performer. I've been doing it ever since and have been very lucky to have continuously worked throughout my career.

Can you tell us about the group Teatro that you were involved with?

We were put together by Sony BMG back in 2008. We were kind of like Il Divo, but we didn't sing pop opera. The idea was to bring together four musical theatre leading men-type guys to do four-part harmony, big orchestra versions of classical musical theatre songs that were known the world over.

Truthfully, musical theatre was popular music for a very long time back in the days of Frank Sinatra, in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. Even to this day, you can go to any country and name something from Les Mis or Phantom of the Opera and most people will know what you're talking about.

The idea was to capitalise on the idea that this music is known. I was lucky enough to be chosen to be a part of the group with three other British performers. We toured around, sold a lot of records, performed on the Royal Variety show, met the Queen of England. It was a wild ride and very humbling.

How did you switch from performing to being involved in the business side of theatre?

I've always been somebody who wanted to know how things operate, whether it was when I was part of Teatro to understand the record business or early in my career, when I was 19 and doing my first cruise ship as a singer, to learn about the cruise ship industry.

I started just wanting to know more and asking questions to friends who had produced or written things. As time went on, it continued to evolve to this place where I started to get a handle on the world of producing, writing, and directing. It became something I found I really enjoyed.

In the business, as an actor, there's very little you have control over. You have control over how you prep for your audition and what you can do in the room and how ready you are to deliver for that audition. But then after that, it very much is up to the theatre gods, so to speak. Or the television or film gods.

What I came to find was those things started to matter less, the stress of getting this audition or that, when I had things I was working on that I was in charge of and that I was passionate about and that were up to me. It became this wonderful balance where auditioning for something, whether it comes or not, it's OK because I still have these things over here that I'm working on as a writer, director, producer. It just kept evolving in that way and here I am today.

Have you ever been to Key West?

Many, many, many times. It's as quirky a place now as it was way back when our musical takes place. It's full of such wonderful warm and welcoming people. They're very proud of their history and the island itself and what it represents to them. It's an amazing place to go and visit.

How did you come across the story of Count Carl von Cosel?

I was on tour with Oklahoma at the time, playing Curly on the road. When you go on, doing the show, you start work at 7pm and get off at 11pm and you're back at your hotel and you're just wired. I'd gotten back and was just trying to unwind. I was watching HBO and there was a show Autopsy on. It's one of those re-enactment shows, like if you remember Unsolved Mysteries.

In the episode, there was this little vignette at the end about Carl's story and this silly re-enactment. I was really touched by it. To this day, I genuinely can't tell you why I was so touched by it. I thought it was strangely beautiful. I would look it up from time to time and couldn't find any information about it.

This was the early 2000s, before Wikipedia and YouTube had every single answer. I couldn't find anything about it, but it would come up in my mind, two or three times a year, up until I rediscovered it and all of the information popped up on the Interweb.

How would you describe the story of It Happened in Key West?

The musical is about love and loss and understanding and acceptance. There are many homages to other musicals that we put together into one show. We like to say, if you take the sweetness and hilarity of Gershwin's Crazy for You and mix it with a little bit of Man of La Mancha. Like was La Mancha crazy or was it all in his mind? Then you take the movie Weekend at Bernie's or Mannequin and you mash it all together and it kind of gives you an idea of what the musical is all about.

For us, it's really a love story. It's easy to say people are crazy and just dismiss them. We usually do that for ourselves because it's easier for us to make sense of things that way that seem so far-fetched or crazy. But is somebody really that crazy if we look a little closer? The musical is a really fun, hysterical piece with hopefully deeply touching moments.

What about this story made you think it would be a good musical?

It was the grandeur of it. Back in 2010, I was reading a magazine about a famous mummy in Italy and it made me think of the Key West thing again and I looked it up. The more that I read, things I didn't know about the story, it just kept getting more and more grand. He believed that he was going to save this woman's life and the amount of money that he spent. The more research I did, the more unbelievable the story became.

There's a part in the story where he actually blew up her mausoleum with dynamite when they wouldn't give her back to him; we just couldn't fit it into the show. The story is just so unbelievably grand in its scope that it begged to be told in a musical format. It literally hit me, just like you hear in VH1's Behind the Music, "this was the moment I knew", it was like this has to be a musical. It begs to be a musical! I called Jill [Santoriello] who was just an acquaintance of mine, thinking she would blast me off the telephone, but luckily for me she didn't.

How much creative liberty have you taken with the truth of the story?

Actually not very much, to be perfectly honest - just a little bit for comedic purposes. But I would say it's 80-90% true to the actual events that took place based on the things he said and the court documents and things we could find in research. Parts that we took for dramatic license were really that we believed Elena loved him back.

One of the most incredible moments for us as writers was to go and sit down and talk to this woman who was a child and knew Elena and Carl. She's in her late 80s now. We played some of the original demos for her and she started to cry and said this is what we've always believed it to be.

She said: "I wish you had come a couple of years ago when my mother was alive, because she would have told you that Elena really did love him. We've always been very heartbroken as Key Westerners of what people have written about this story." We wrote what we know to be fact, that she did care and this wasn't some gross, horrible thing. She was constrained by the times and couldn't be with him after all the things he had done for her and taken such great care of her.

We were very excited that the dramatic license that we took was actually what we were told by first- and second-hand accounts actually took place.

Can you tell us a bit about the musical style of the show?

It's a classic 1930s-40s musical, but it has just a little bit of its foot into modern musical theatre, without it going into any kind of pop or New Age sound. It really is a throwback to classic book musicals, shows like the Oklahoma's of the world or what we love about the stage production of Beauty and the Beast. It's a classic musical in a sense.

We're very proud of the fact that we were able to stay in that genre and also bring something to life that, though it is a throwback to a classic sound, is original enough to be new.

It's a bit of a gruesome story, but is it a dark show or witty? What's the tone?

A lot of people, when they hear about what the story is, they instantly think something like Sweeney Todd or Phantom of the Opera. Dark and dreary. But this takes place in Key West, which is colourful and sunny and bright and beautiful. There's houses that are painted pink and teal. It's a very bright and beautiful upbeat funny musical.

It's a romantic comedy like the world has never seen because of the subject matter, but nothing about the show is gruesome. There is nothing gross. It's built to be a show for all ages. There's something in it for young primary school children all the way to older folks in their 70s and 80s who truly understand what it is to lose somebody. There's nothing scary or spooky. It's made to be beautiful.

The exciting thing is everybody always wants to know how we took this seemingly macabre story and made it something that is light and beautiful and we just say you have come to and see it.

What was it like working with composer Jill Santoriello and other writer Jason Huza? What that an easy collaboration to arrange? Have you worked together before?

Jill had actually contacted me when I lived here in England and came to work with my band Teatro. She was doing A Tale of Two Cities at the time. The incredible thing about Jill is that she's one of two female composers that ever got their show to Broadway who had done the book, music, and lyrics. She's immensely talented in so many ways.

I loved the way she wrote music which is why I wanted it to be her. My dream composer was her for this. I never imagined that she would say yes, and then she did. But we still floundered for a little while.

We had some book writers that we were going to work with that didn't work out. There really was a very specific tone that this show required. I didn't have the confidence to write the book myself and neither did Jill. We needed somebody who was going to fit the bill from the standpoint of the tone of the show.

I happened to do this reading for this play and I had the flu and I was a mess. I still went to the rehearsal and I'm so lucky I did because I met this gentleman, Jason Huza, and went up to him and pitched this idea. I was like "We're doing this musical and I'm telling you, you're my guy". And he said, "I don't write musicals". And I was like, "I know, but you're still the guy." I told him to look at the material and if he didn't like it, he didn't have to do it. Four hours later, he sent me a text: "I'm on board; I'll figure out how to do it".

Once Jason was added to the mix, then it started rolling like gangbusters. Within a week and a half, we had a working version of the script. Then the songs really started to flow out of Jill from there. Within two years from that point, we were already doing table readings with actors.

Really, the show hasn't changed very much. A lot of shows go through massive rewrites with songs being chopped out and things being moved around. The one thing that was so strange for us was that once it was a whole piece, it has pretty much maintained that same shape. It's been amazing even to us that we haven't had to do all of that. Sometimes, things just work and it is what it is.

You did a developmental lab of the show in Pennsylvania last year. What did you learn from that?

For me, it's really great to be able to get feedback from your peers in the industry. But it's like the old adage of how many actors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Only one but there are thousands that could watch it and go, "I could do that better". It's great that we can have that kind of feedback but they're not necessarily the ones that are going to buy tickets.

For the lab, we gave the tickets away to the city. Whoever wanted to come could come. We did talkbacks and online polls. I wanted feedback from real theatregoers, people who would buy tickets. Because really that was most important: would this show appeal to a mass audience?

What was so amazing was the reaction the show got in the end. We ended up having to open up sections of the theatre we hadn't intended to and it was sold out. We had these four performances and talkbacks after each one. People were genuinely moved and excited. We had people taking microphones in the talkback and crying and saying "I lost my wife and this truly encompasses what it is to lose somebody".

It was really shocking to us. You want to believe you're on the right track, but you never want to be so arrogant to think you can't take criticism or be ready to make fixes. This was a very Christian conservative audience and for them to be as excited as they were and going to the head of the theatre saying, "This is the best thing we've ever seen you do" was exciting.

For us, it was really a wonderful way to know that we were on the right track and ready to take it to a place and truly do a premiere of a full version of the show.

What was the thought behind producing the show here in London versus in the US, and how have you found the theatrical environment here?

For me, having worked here and lived here for a few years, there was just a sensibility that theatre is built into the culture here differently. In the United States, theatre is something that you don'tdo very often. There's certain parts of the country where it's like, "Oh yeah, I've been to the theatre before". Here, it really is built into the culture. People can go and spend the same amount of money to see a show as at the cinema.

There's also a sensibility that British theatregoers have comedically that I really thought that our show was right for. They embrace quirkiness here in a way the United States doesn't in the theatre world as much. When you take things like the pantomimes, it's a very uniquely British experience and I really loved that sense of goofiness and how they didn't take themselves seriously. Something like Matilda where you have the man playing the schoolmistress, it's very British pantomime.

There's this quirkiness that they embrace here and I thought that our show was perfect for that. If we could get over with an audience that has theatre built into their DNA in the way that they do, then I thought we would be in great shape to take this show back to the United States. Hopefully, in the dream world, having a show running here and then there. If a show does have that kind of popularity in England, a lot of the time New York will go, "Well come on, we're ready".

It had always been my intention to come here first. I just felt this was the perfect environment for us and what our show is all about. And if the British people are with us, then we'll be in great shape.

You open in a couple of weeks - how's it going so far?

It's going so well that you kind of sit there waiting for the sky to fall at times. You never want to take anything for granted. I feel so lucky every day that I've been able to make this happen.

And for all the help we've been given through past relationships, and people that I've known and worked with here, who have been amazing guides in helping me as a first-time producer in London. From our casting director, who put together such an amazing cast, to my associate director, who works here and lives here.

Also, it's been amazing from a storytelling standpoint, to have cast members here. We brought our star over from America to play Carl, but other than that, it's a brand-new cast. It was very important to us to make sure we were casting people of the correct ethnicities and wanting to get genuine Latin people, and people who have that kind of a background, because it takes place in Key West with Cubans and Latinos and a very diverse world.

It was important to us to have that feeling of diversity in the show. Neil, our casting director, was brilliant at finding a really wonderful group of performers. It's been amazing to watch it come to life with a new type of storytelling and a new cast.

Do you think this is a good creative time for new musicals here in London and in the US? Or is it hard to stand out amongst shows based on movies, like Mean Girls and Frozen?

I don't think it's hard for our show to stand out. First of all, because it's a true story. It isn't based on any movies or television shows; it's something that really took place. It's a completely original piece and I think that's something that should make us stand out.

It's not based off a Disney film or this or that. It's this true story that happened all these years ago that was lived by real people with a completely original score. It should help us stand out from the crowd. It's not to say that it's a bad thing per se to do something off a movie and turn it into a musical.

It's not easy to sell tickets and get people excited about things they don't know. I understand why the decisions are made to turn these movies into musicals; it's a known commodity. On one hand, it's a challenge, because people have no idea what this is and many people don't know the story. It works in our favour, because it can be the show to be discovered. People can go, "Oh my gosh, this wild story is true and they turned it into something where I left the theatre feeling uplifted and moved".

Why should people come see this show?

I believe people should come see this show because it will bring them joy. This is the type of show that to me is everything that you love about musical theatre - when you have a story that is so grand and so emotionally high that you can't do anything else but tell it through music.

That in essence is what is so exciting about musical theatre: this ability to tell these incredible stories in a way that is stepping between two worlds of fantasy and reality. Very much, that's what this story is in its essence.

There's nothing in this show that's heavy-handed or meant to bring you down or make you sad. It's not this heartbreaking thing. It's built to just make people happy and have us look a little further than we normally would and take a little bit more time to be more understanding with kindness and empathy and all the things I think the world needs right now.

I remember, I was working with Julie Andrews on a show, and I asked her if she ever got really annoyed when people brought up Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music, and she said, "You know, Jeremiah, why would I ever be upset about that? Those movies and musicals have brought joy to millions of people all over the world. Why would I ever be annoyed by that?"

She paused, then looked me straight in the eye and said, "Isn't that what we all got into this business for in the first place?" And yes, yes it is. I adore her as this incredible star of our industry and this legend.

But that's why I got into this business: to make people happy. I love the joy it brings to people, and I feel like this is the type of show that does that. I would be very excited to have the show be successful for that very reason: that people would come to be uplifted, touched, moved, and walk out humming the songs and happy.

Do you have any advice for people who might want to work in the industry?

Learn as much as you can. Never think that you know everything. If you think you do, you're fooling yourself. There's always more to be learned. The more you learn, the more you work.

You might be the greatest actor ever but if you don't know how to stay connected to your body, someone who's also a great actor as well and knows how to connect to their body might get the job. Take on as much as you can classes wise. Learn to dance if that's not your strongest suit. If singing isn't your strongest suit, focus on that.

As a writer, take time to listen and observe. When you're in these shows or readings as an actor, for instance, ask yourself why you think or don't think the show will be successful.

It takes years to build confidence and only moments to destroy it. That's really all you have as an actor or a writer. You have to learn if somebody says something that's just outrageously negative, not to take it to heart. They might be saying it because....you look like their ex-boyfriend or who knows why. Build a good filter, because then you can filter those things away and take on good true criticism.

More than anything, treat everybody that you work with respect and the way you want to be treated. This is a very small industry. I always give a speech to anybody who works with me: I don't deal with bad behaviour or people who scream at actors or storm out of the room or throw temper tantrums. There's no excuse. Eventually, you'll run out of runway if you act like that.

And then, vote for Jeremiah for President.

It Happened in Key West is at Charing Cross Theatre 11 July to 22 September

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