In March 2020, the pandemic closure in New York City eclipsed Broadway and sidelined many performers, including Robert and Steven Morris, pit musicians and identical twins.
But there was a benefit to the Morris brothers, 53, and their writing partner, Joe Shane, 49, whose musical performances also dried up.
The songwriting trio, who have a handful of Off Broadway and other shows to their credit, refocused on a long-term project: a musical about Elaine’s, the Upper East Side nightspot that has hosted famous writers and others for nearly half a century. attracted celebrities.
The musicians played with Elaine’s tunes dating back to the 1990s when they became regulars and befriended the restaurant’s temperamental owner, Elaine Kaufman, whose death in 2010 led to Elaine closing a year later.
But early in the pandemic, they began fleshing out the “Everyone Comes to Elaine’s” show via Zoom, adding new songs, tweaking existing songs, and teaming up with the show’s book writer Asa Somers, who serves as actor in “Dear Evan Hansen” was also sidelined by the lockdown.
“As terrible as it was, the pandemic gave us an opportunity to think – we just zoomed in for four hours every day to write songs,” said Mr Shane.
In a suddenly quiet city succumbing to thousands of virus-related deaths, they sought solace by evoking a time of vibrant nightlife for masks and social distancing.
“It has cheered us up in a dark time,” said Mr. Shane.
With many other Broadway actors similarly sidelined, the writers easily recruited a working cast for online readings. The Morris brothers also arranged recordings of the songs while they were separated by emailing audio files back and forth.
“It was a distraction-free time that allowed us to focus our energies on this project and go deep into this story that we really believed in,” said Robert Morris.
A personal reading scheduled for December last year was disrupted by the Omicron outbreak, which infected Mary Testa, an award-winning Broadway actor who read the role of Ms. Kaufman.
When the talk was finally delivered last month, she was back, along with a cast of ringtones from the best Broadway shows overseen by a Tony-nominated director, Jeff Calhoun, whose resume includes “Newsies” and “Big River.”
Among the 150 in attendance, the show writers said, were potential investors and producers, some of whom expressed an interest in trying to help the show become a Broadway production.
Anita Waxman, a three Tony Award-winning producer, attended the talk and said of the show’s Broadway potential, “I think it has a really good chance, but it needs to keep evolving because it’s really good. “
Ms. Waxman, herself a regular at Elaine’s, said she was too busy with other projects to participate in the show, but might join in the future.
The show opens with a patron of Elaine being ejected through the front window, a nod to Ms. Kaufman’s famously prickly attitude towards some customers, and an exaggerated version of a real-life altercation for which Ms. Kaufman was arrested in 1998.
The opening track, “Everyone Comes to Elaine’s,” mentions the restaurant’s infamous “crappy appetizers” and Mrs. Kaufman’s strict “Don’t bother Woody” rule regarding Woody Allen, a regular who had his own table and a scene filmed for his 1979 movie “Manhattan” at Elaine.
Elaine’s other celebrities, such as Frank Sinatra and Truman Capote, are referenced in the song “My House, My Rules,” Ms. Kaufman’s musical claim of her dominance over her restaurant world.
The show makes reference to legendary Elaine’s episodes, such as when the New York Rangers retired on the night they won the Stanley Cup in 1994.
It also features personal memories of the songwriters, such as Steven Morris’s story of standing at a urinal next to James Earl Jones, who looked back and uttered the words “sweet relief” into his inimitable baritone.
The musical’s plot revolves around a period in the early 1980s – not long after the Billy Joel hit “Big Shot” came out, mentioning “the people you knew at Elaine’s.”
Long single and a sort of cave mother to a cabal of mostly male writers, Mrs. Kaufman was in the midst of a short-lived, tumultuous marriage that jeopardized her business.
“It was a hole she fell into that threatened everything,” said Steven Morris.
Her troubles led to a moment of depth and eventually a newfound bond with her “restaurant family,” as one song goes.
At last month’s lecture, Ms Testa received a rousing ovation from the audience, including many of Elaine’s regulars. One of them, the writer Gay Talese, then approached Ms. Testa.
“He said, ‘I gotta tell you, you really screwed her,'” recalls Ms. Testa, a three-time Tony Award nominee who recently played Aunt Eller in “Oklahoma!” on Broadway, as well as other Broadway productions of “On the Town” in 1998 and “42nd Street” in 2001.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a musical based on a restaurant,” Mr. Talese, 90, later said in an interview. On the other hand, he added, the real Elaine’s itself was quite an evening show.
“It was a revue, with characters coming in and out,” recalls Mr. Talese, a longtime friend of Mrs. Kaufman’s, whom he called “an American Gertrude Stein” for her role as a writer’s host, albeit in a saloon. instead of a lounge.
The show has its earliest traces in the 1990s, when the three musicians happened to start visiting Elaine’s.
Mr Shane, 49, of Queens, lived in an apartment above Elaine’s in a building owned by Mrs Kaufman. The Morris Twins – natives of Staten Island who have played in the pit orchestras for Broadway shows such as “Hamilton,” “Hairspray” and “Mamma Mia!” – lived nearby.
They started visiting Elaine’s and “for some strange reason she scolded us,” Mr. Shane said, letting them drink beer at the bar and then inviting them to set tables usually reserved for famous and expensive regulars.
She rubbed elbows with regulars, including actors Alec Baldwin and James Gandolfini and director Robert Altman. They knew enough to leave the Joe DiMaggios and Woody Allens alone, but enjoyed meeting more approachable celebrities, such as Don Rickles and Keith Richards.
“As New Yorkers, we came to the end of a New York that no longer exists,” said Mr. Shane, “and it allowed us to write a love letter to Elaine.”
Five years ago, the three creators brought their songs and concept to prominent playwright Tom Meehan, who wrote the books for Broadway productions including “Annie,” “Hairspray” and “The Producers.”
Mr. Meehan was enthusiastic about the show, and before his death in 2017, he advised them to choose the rights to the 2004 book “Everyone Comes to Elaine’s,” a portrait of Ms. Kaufman, and the restaurant by author A.E. Hotchner, an Elaine’s regular who passed away in 2020.
The musicians did, and also took the creative and business partner of the author’s son, Timothy Hotchner, 50, who said in an interview of the songwriters, “They are among the last bastion of people she took under her wing before she left.” died .”
This isn’t the first attempt at taking Elaine’s to the stage or screen. A memoir, “Last Call at Elaine’s,” by Brian McDonald, a former bartender of Elaine’s, was chosen as a possible TV series that was described as “Mad Men” meets “Cheers,” but was never produced.
mr. Hotchner wrote a musical with the late songwriter Cy Coleman, also a regular of Elaine, starring actress Lainie Kazan as Elaine.
Ms. Kaufman attended a lecture from that show, “Elaine’s Domain,” in 2005, and promptly hired a lawyer to have the project halted. She’s banishing AE Hotchner from the restaurant, Mr. Talese recalled.
“Elaine didn’t like the way she was portrayed,” Mr. Talese recalled, “and I think she ran away before it was over.”
