Interview: Ken Ludwig of BASKERVILLE: A SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY at Alley Theatre

Legendary playwright Ken Ludwig has written notable shows, such as Lend Me a Tenor, which Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber produced in London's West End and then performed on Broadway. It was the very first show that he had written. He also penned Crazy for You and Moon Over Buffalo. The Alley Theater and Ken have a special relationship. The company did a world premiere for his script, Leading Ladies, back in 2004, and they've done other premiere productions such as Lend Me a Soprano over the years. Now, the Alley is running Baskerville: a Sherlock Holmes Mystery, which marks Todd Waite's final casting and portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. The show runs through May 4th. BROADWAY WORLD HOUSTON writer Brett Cullum was honored to talk to Ken about this production and his career.   

Brett Cullum: It's very interesting because I saw Baskerville by Ken Ludwig on the Alley’s marquee as I drove by. I immediately wondered what inspired you to write a Sherlock Holmes play. 

Ken Ludwig: Well, it was just one of those odd, serendipitous moments! I like to write all the time and generally write two plays a year, just because I take very seriously the notion of this being my profession. I would say playwright is spelled WRIGHT [write]. It's like a Cartwright or a wheelwright. It's somebody who rolls up their sleeves and does their work. And I love that part of being a professional writer. And so I had finished another play. I just wandered around my library, and this book was kind of sticking out a little bit, and it was Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles, and I thought to myself, “Gee, I haven't read that since I was probably a kid!” and I pulled it out and read it. It's such a remarkable story; I would say it's one of the greatest adventure stories ever written in English, and you can't put it down. I thought, “Wouldn't this be fun to put on stage? I've done a couple of adaptations over the years.” My very first one was done for The Alley Theater Treasure Island — Greg Boyd was then the artistic director. I had done some other shows with the alley, and he said, “Could you write something for the family? And I picked Treasure Island.” So I've done a couple of adaptations, and I thought, Oh, I want to do Baskerville, but I don't want to do it the same way that I did Treasure Island, which was full-cast. Everybody who's mentioned in the novels is on the stage. So you know, about fifteen people or so. I'd like to do something more original or interesting. And what if I do it with five actors, and they simply double a lot? Wouldn't that make the story more interesting? And what ultimately happened was it made the play itself less about a hound on the moors in Dartmoor than it did a play about the theater and what it's like putting actors on a stage and suspending our disbelief for those 2 hours because we've got people talking to us who we know are actors. And so that's ultimately what the play became about.

Brett Cullum: One of the things I love about Sherlock Holmes is he is one of the most played characters on stage. He runs neck and neck with Dracula. Believe it or not, those two are consistently put on stage and film adaptations. What about Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle's work makes this detective such a cultural touchstone for the entire world? 

Ken Ludwig: It is remarkable, isn't it? I think of that often. Conan Doyle, with a single stroke of the pen, the very first novel he wrote about Sherlock and Watson created a myth. Not many authors in the history of the world create myths, whether it be their first work or their second or third! One that comes to mind is Alexander Dumas's The Three Musketeers; as soon as he created that, for some reason, there was some kind of relationship between them, and we went, “Oh, my God! We want heroes!” These are such interesting people, and that's something they have in common with Sherlock Holmes. It wasn't just three swashbuckling people who were all perfect. It was Porthos and Athos and Aramis. They added D'Artagnan to it, and it's the same with Sherlock and Watson, who are so interesting and created by Conan Doyle. They're a myth, so that makes them extra fun to write about.

Brett Cullum: How did you make this myth into your own thing?  

Ken Ludwig: Well, as I say, I think the play itself is deeply about the theater because of the changes that sometimes occur in front of us, so we have to really put realism aside, which makes us delve into the truth of the story better. So, I think that's what this version does. The Hound of the Baskervilles has been adapted a lot. But this adaptation has been very popular. And I think it's because this play is special because it's about character. It's about acting, it's about myth, it's about the theater, it's about theater magic. And that adds a certain dimension to a story that we all know very well. 

Brett Cullum: You know it says that your 1st play was Lend Me a Tenor, and that one won a Tony. It established you in 1989. Were you always a playwright? How did you get into this part of the arts?

Ken Ludwig: Well, I always wanted to be in the theater ever since I was a little kid, and I was mesmerized. My parents bought me a recording of Richard Burton in Hamlet, and I just… I'd lie if I said I  memorized it all, but I sure did memorize all the soliloquies, and all I wanted to do was be in the theater, and when I got out of college, my parents said, “Well. What graduate school are you going to go to now?” And I said, “I'm not. I'm going to the theater.” And they said, “No, you're not because you can't make a living. You need to have something to fall back on.” That was good advice, as it turned out. So I went. I applied to some schools, went to Harvard Law School, and practiced law. I went, I finished. I also got a scholarship to Cambridge in England and studied there to be a big academic sort of guy. Then I wanted to go right into the theatre, but I couldn't make a living at it, as they so acutely observed, so I practiced law in the afternoons and wrote in the mornings. And I did that for about three years until I had my 1st hit on Broadway. 

Brett Cullum: Is that when you knew you made it? Is that when you said, “Hey, this is probably gonna work out for me as a job?”

Ken Ludwig: Yeah. Yes, it did. It did. Lend Me a Tenor, the first iteration, was on the West End. Andrew [Lloyd Weber] produced it on the West End. Then he produced it on Broadway, and I got a call and asked, “Would you like to do a musical for the Gershwins?” And Crazy for You came along. So I had 2 in a row! I thought, “Alright. I can assure my parents that at least I have a start in making a living at the theater.” 

Brett Cullum: And these were your first stabs or attempts at this? Right? It wasn't like you had this struggle through multiple iterations of plays and developing works. Did you just kind of come up with this? That is amazing.

Ken Ludwig: Well, I got lucky. I was very, very lucky. I hit on two good ideas for stories that were comic, and in both cases, they were serendipity, you know, serendipity. I got a call from a director who said, “Hey, I love your play. It got into my hands. I'd like to call my friend Andrew Lloyd Webber to produce it. And then the other time was a man named [Samuel] Roger Horchow, who was a businessman who had acquired the rights to all the Gershwin music and lyrics, and he called me out of the blue and said. “You have a hit on Broadway right now! A comedy. I'd like you to write a musical for me.”

Brett Cullum: Well, tell us all a secret. Is there something that makes a play good? Is there a formula or something that people could almost follow

Ken Ludwig: I don't think so. I wish there were, and then I could follow it all the time. I think every play has its own magic, and if it works in the end, it will be because you created really interesting characters. You came up with a really good story. The story is so important; something's wrong if you don't want to turn the page on a novel. They did something wrong in writing, and if you don't want to sit through the next minute of a show and you're not on the edge of your seat. Something's wrong. There's a very big importance on entertainment value that can easily get lost. I think it was a loss for a time in American theater during those periods when we were going to write existential plays that tell us a lot about the world but don't entertain us.

Brett Cullum: There has to be that element of entertainment in there. Is that the key to all of this? 

Ken Ludwig: Yeah, or story is a better way of putting it. There has to be a sense that this story is so interesting. Ultimately, it may tell me these lessons, but I don't think you ever learn anything by lessons. It makes me think about this. Shakespeare never tells you what to think. He makes you think! 

Brett Cullum: Where do you live now? Because you don't live in New York.  

Ken Ludwig: I don't. I live in Washington, DC. Ever since I got out of graduate school. I never wanted to live in New York. I love it. I'm dazzled by it. I think it's great, but I always had the sense that, gee whiz! I'd be constantly surrounded by professional theater and professional writers, and it would be intimidating to me; I'd think, “Oh, my God, they're so successful! I'll never be as successful.” And I had a sense I couldn't make it in that environment.

Brett Cullum: Well, you've had a couple of plays here at the Alley. It seems like you have a relationship with this company. How did you initially hook up with this theater in Houston? 

Ken Ludwig: Well, I love the Alley. I think the Alley is just the tippy top of the American regional theater movement. There are five great American regional theaters, and it's one of them, and there are 450 of them in total. So that's pretty good standing, and I don't recall what it was. You know I have an agent in New York, William Morris. Whatever play I had finished. I always send them to him, and then he'll contact a theater here or there that he has ties with, and he must have sent the 1st play I did with the Alley, and I don't recall if the first one was Treasure Island. I don't think so, but I did like four world premieres in a row at the Alley. I had another one recently, Lend Me a Soprano, directed by Eleanor Holdridge. She did such a great job.

I've always had a wonderful relationship with the Alley, and I love it. Rob Melrose is just a genius artistic director and a great director in his own right. I love working there. You don't want to go somewhere where you're not either confident in the artists around you or comfortable in the sense that “Gee! I fit in there! These are people who think like me!” I've always felt tremendously comfortable at the Alley and have enormous respect for their work. 

Brett Cullum: It's definitely one of the Houston treasures. I love being so close to it [living in Montrose] and being able to see their work. Rob Melrose really does design a season that hits all the touchpoints. You were talking about how a play has to be entertaining. He certainly offers that. 

Ken Ludwig: He does. He does it consistently. One of my plays that was done in the Alley was called Be My Baby, and it was with Hal Holbrook and Dixie Carter. Hal and Dixie had not worked at the alley before, and they thought, “Where are we going?” I called them to do it first. I said, “I think we should do it at the Alley Theater.” And they said, “We never worked there. How is it? What's it like? We're going to be living there for ten weeks or twelve weeks.” I said, “Just trust me. It's theater heaven.” They got there, and they got involved working there. And they said, “Boy, were you right! This is where we want to work the rest of our lives.”

Brett Cullum: You've written over thirty plays and musicals. You even have an opera under your belt. They say that a Ken Ludwig show is running somewhere in the world every night. Is there one work that you're the most proud of that you look at and say, That's that just defines my work?

Ken Ludwig: It's very nice of you to say all that, and I've been very lucky. I'm so thrilled that my work is done. No, the answer to that is no, there is not one work in one play that defines my work or one musical. Not at all. I'm always most enthusiastic about the play I'm writing next, and I know that sounds sort of like a cliche or a sweet little thing to say, but it's not. It's the truth. I'm always working. I work too much, always working on new plays, and I love what I do. Aren't I lucky! When I speak to kids at graduations, I say, “The trick is to do what you love.” My dad said, “If you don't wake up in the morning and look forward to going to work, you've made a mistake. Go fix it!” It’s so true, and I can't wait to wake up and work on my next play. I just love it. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't, but it doesn't matter. I write by hand. I use a pen or pencil, and I sit and I write for about eight hours a day.

Brett Cullum: What advice would you give a new playwright? Somebody who's sitting down there saying, “Alright, I'm going to write a play!” What do you think is the best advice for those people?

Ken Ludwig: The absolute best advice, and I've thought about this before, is there are three secrets to being a good writer, and the first one is read. The second one is read, and the 3rd one is read! How in the world would you know what a good play is, how it works, how it's created, what its shape should look like, and what its form should look like? Unless you've read plays. I've read thousands of plays, and of course, you should go see plays when you have a chance. Actually reading them is even better because you understand how they're constructed. Plays are blueprints. Then, a directory gets a hold of them. You add actors, and things get richer and deeper, and then you rewrite, and so on. But it's a blueprint. So, if you're going to start building a house, you need the blueprint to know how. How are you going to know that in playwriting if you don't read?

Brett Cullum: That's an amazing answer. I want to thank you so much, Ken Ludwig. Of course, we've got your play, Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. It's going to run at the alley through May 4. It is such an honor just to get to sit down and talk with you about your writing. This one sounds just amazing. I can't wait to see Baskerville!

Ken Ludwig: Thank you. Thank you very much. So kind of you! I enjoyed every second of this, and it is an honor for me.