Interview by Brad Balfour
Meet Me in St. Louis: A Holiday Special in Song and on Screen
Runs December 11, 2020 – January 2, 2021
Book by Hugh Wheeler
Songs by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane
Based on The Kensington Stories by Sally Benson
and the MGM Motion Picture Meet Me in St. Louis
Adapted and Directed by Charlotte Moore
Music Direction by John Bell
Orchestrations by Josh Clayton
Produced by Ciarán O’Reilly
Cast: Shereen Ahmed, William Bellamy, Rufus Collins, Kerry Conte, Melissa Errico, Ali Ewoldt, Kathy Fitzgerald, Ian Holcomb, Jay Aubrey Jones, Austyn Johnson, Kylie Kuioka, Ashley Robinson, and Max von Essen.
Advance registration is required.
Tickets are pay-what-you-can with a suggested price of $25.
Hours:
Mon-Sat: noon-6pm
Sun: noon-5pm
Buy Tickets via Phone: 212.727.2737
Buy Tickets Online: irishrep.org
Irish Repertory Theatre’s artistic director and co-founder Charlotte Moore is a Tony-nominated actor who has racked up an impressive set of credits throughout her long career. And, with co-founder Ciarán O’Reilly — also an established actor — they showcase Irish and Irish-American works and performers through the Irish Rep in New York City.
Moore’s latest achievement for The Rep and her own resume is a new digital production of Meet Me in St. Louis — an abridged version of the 1989 Broadway musical, based on the 1944 film starring Judy Garland. The Irish Repertory Theatre last presented Meet Me in St. Louis in 2007. In this heartwarming holiday musical, the Smith family grapples with life changes and new love in a bustling St. Louis on the brink of the 1904 World’s Fair. This special digital adaptation by Moore (who played Anna Smith in the original Broadway cast) includes favorite tunes such as “The Trolley Song,” “The Boy Next Door,” and, of course, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (originally sung by Judy Garland in the film). Along with romantic suitors, comedic misunderstandings, and jovial pranks, this classic musical makes for a holiday treat for families of all ages, no matter where you’re celebrating this year.
Moore grew up in a Southern Illinois rural farming community, the granddaughter of Irish emigrants from County Wexford. After earning a master’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Moore moved to New York City to be an actress. Since then, she’s had a distinguished career acting in over 10 Broadway productions, including Private Lives, in which she co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
In 1988, the producing duo of Moore and O’Reilly founded the Irish Repertory Theatre, launching it with their production of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars. They had met when both were performing in an off-Broadway play called Summer, by Irish writer Hugh Leonard. Among her awards are two Tony nominations, the Irish American Writers and Artists Eugene O’Neill Lifetime Achievement Award, the Outer Critic’s Circle Award, Irish America Top 100, Irish America Top 50 Power Women, and she was named Director of the Year by the Wall Street Journal in 2011.
Recently Moore spoke by phone from the wilds of the Midwest, having just produced this show via Zoom and many calls — with it all staged remotely.
Q: What is the significance of this show? It went through a lot of changes over the years, starting as a series of short stories in the New Yorker by Sally Benson. Then it was a straight play that had a sort of Our Town-ish quality.
CM: Yes. I ordered that play after I’d been in the Broadway production, and after I had directed the Irish Rep production. I ordered it just out of curiosity and it’s a lovely play. But it had nothing to do with any musical or what I was doing. So I was both curious and after I read it I was relieved to know that I really hadn’t copied anything. It’s a lovely play, though.
Q: As a musical, it takes on a whole different quality. Do you find that there is something special to the setting of the 1904 World’s Fair in relation to the turn of the century, and then we have now a whole different world more than a hundred years later, a kind of millennial quality? What do you see is the significance of this show? Is it nostalgia, is it normalcy?
CM: I see it very much as a family show, as a sweet “remembrance of things past”, to quote Mr. Proust. And I see it as a valuable lesson and tool in today’s world as well, because I don’t think we want to forget those times. [We want to] value those times and reward those times with their good thoughts and good intentions and good families and the stuff that is rare today and becoming rarer.
Ciaran O’Reilly and I wanted to recall those days if we could in this very, very tough time of pandemic and all kinds of terrible things going on in the world. We wanted to do a production of hope in this time, and I think we have. I hope we’ve succeeded in lifting some hearts and some souls and some days and some times in tribulations along the way. It wasn’t easy for us — it was a tough one. But we persevered, and I hope we’ve lifted some hearts along the way.
Q: The song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is not the most uplifting song when you listen to it. There’s a melancholy quality to it. “White Christmas” is that way as well. Do you think so?
CM: I do, and I’ve always thought so. Although it is clearly my favorite of the piece and a special song for me. I’ve heard it maybe 5000 times, and I swear to you I tear up when I hear it and hear it sung. It was sung by Donna Kane a hundred thousand times to me in the Broadway production. I sat in my dressing room waiting to go on and it affected me then, long, long before any pandemic, long before the times that are upon us now. It affected me then so I think it’s a universal song of trouble yet hope.
Q: Do you think it’s a good thing that you have this connection to the Broadway production? You’re in a different role: as the director and the adapter and you are looking at it from a very different point of view from having been in the classic production. Do you need to separate yourself from that, or is it an asset?
CM: Oh, it’s definitely an asset. When I do any production, whether it’s a musical or a straight play or Off-Off-Off Broadway play, I pressure myself very highly and I read, I must read everything I do a hundred times, and line by line by line, and idea by idea, and picture in my mind everything that I’m going to do.
Well, I didn’t have to do that this time. I was extremely familiar with both the music and the text, having done those productions in different times, years ago. The Broadway production [was] a bigger production, of course, with 40 people in it. But our own precious production that we did at the Irish Rep, that I was so very proud of. Ciaran and I talked about it.
We didn’t get the rights to A Child’s Christmas in Wales for some reason, which we had planned on doing. All at once, separately, we thought of “Meet Me in St. Louis.” Now mind you, we thought “Can we do that? Are we able to do that?” I mean, we have to do that separating everybody, remotely, and my goodness, our technical staff has to be up to it. There were many many obstacles to this production along the way. But we tried it, to hell with it, we’re going to do it, and — thank God! we did it.
Q: Were people really separated in different places as they sang their parts and performed this?
CM: Oh my goodness, yes!
Q: There’s never been — at least with this version — a point at which it’s all been done all at one time with everybody there in one place?
CM: We had nobody together on the stage, absolutely nobody. Every actor was shot remotely in their bedroom, in their kitchen, in their living room, in front of a green screen which Ciaran had personally delivered. He was really something during this production. No, each of them was in a different place.
There was no one in the theater, except for the orchestra. For three days, John Bell had his orchestra masked, up on the real stage with a grand piano, and recorded the score. But nobody else was in the theater.
Q: What a weird way to do a show [laughs].
CM: Oh, weird indeed! And hard! But look at those actors, what they did. Look at what they did! I mean, they took on that task and followed the rules, which were tough rules. They didn’t know which way to turn or where to look, or whether you were up or down or whether you were inside or outside. They overcame all that and did that work on a green screen, in front of a green screen, with their [smart]phones propped up on a stand in front of them. I could not be more respectful and more proud of what they did.
Ciaran and I spent eight hours a day for 10 days online over Zoom with each of the cast in turn, and brought them together remotely as best we could. And you never knew they weren’t in a room together. Now admit it.
Q: Really, it’s amazing. You’ve had to go from basically 20th century technology to 21st century technology. You had to learn a whole new technological way of making a play — on top of it all, a musical. Not just a play, a musical!
CM: That’s right. I’m so glad you said that. because that double and tripled and quadrupled the tough parts of how the heck to do this. But we started out and we learned as we went along. Everyone now is catching up and doing that, or learning as they go along.
Lots of people call and ask us how we did things, how we did a certain thing and how we achieved this or how we achieved that. and we’re delighted to tell them. Now everybody is doing it, It’s wonderful. Everybody is successfully doing it. I believe we really started it in the beginning, eight and a half to nine months ago.
Q: You must want to take this show and re-stage it in the real world at some point.
CM: Oh, nothing would give me more pleasure than to bring it back to its reality and have a great big cast, and a great big band, and people singing out at you, and laughing and carrying on during rehearsal. I would love the rehearsals as much as I would love watching the performance because that’s when actors really live and get together and laugh and have secrets and carry on and have their fun.
Q: One thing you have always accomplished is that you’ve built an ensemble of people you can rely on. Not like a house team, but you have your people like Melissa Errico. I’ve seen her in several different things. It’s great that you can rely on people that you can almost instinctually know what they’re capable of doing and what they will do.
CM: Melissa is capable of almost anything. She was introduced to me and to the Irish Rep and to everybody there by Tony Walton, who is a favorite participant in events and doings at the Irish Repertory Theater. The brilliant, brilliant Tony [Award] and Oscar-winning Tony Walton, who we worship and adore. Melissa was brought in to do a short play when Tony directed it at the Irish Rep. And he’s been a stalwart of the Irish Rep — not only a supporter but a star for us since the day we met, and rightly so. Because who is better than Melissa Errico at singing a song or doing a scene. He just opened up a brilliant addition to our family and company.
Melissa is too brilliant to even talk about. She has been a wonderful and close, close friend of mine and of the Irish Rep ever since then. I went to her wedding to Patrick McEnroe — Ciaran and I were invited — and now she has three children, a pair of twins and a gorgeous daughter who plays tennis.
Q: You have a lot of stalwarts in your show.
CM: We didn’t know some of the cast [before this]. Max Von Essen, whom I’ve had a crush on for the last 10 years, and nobody can be better than him. But we wanted to diversify in this time of diversification. I wanted to get some people of different races, different colors, that I thought would bring a kind of a new color to our production and the full Irish Rep family. We expanded our family to Shereen Ahmed, to William Bellamy and Jay Aubrey Jones, and Kylie Kuioka, who is Korean.
We just absolutely had the best time with them, and they did indeed bring new life to this production. I’m so proud of them and of having worked with them, and my goodness, we certainly will again. [We’ll] continue our diversification because it so works. It adds interest and variety and wonderful stuff to what we do.
Q: It’s an interesting decision to make in light of the play — the show and the movie — then and how the world has changed now and you can still make it appropriate given that St. Louis and what has gone on there with Black Lives Matter and all, has a different relevance now than it did then. Then it was traditional American; now it’s the hot spot.
CM: Yes, it is. I read about it every day, about the high crime rate in the Midwest and it breaks my heart. But of course all these things will get better. The pandemic will end, and crime will go down, and people won’t be locked in homes, with the arrival of the vaccine.
Q: It’s an interesting time of the year to have all this happening. This play touches on that because it’s the turn of the century, a century ago.
CM: I do too, and we took notice of that. It’s a turn of the century play, and it’s a turn of a time of really, deep troubles here in our country.
Q: Now in a way, you’re just at the same level that any big Broadway show is at. In a way, you’ve changed the formula. I can easily see you taking a show from the Rep to Broadway now because they are going to be wondering what to do when it reopens.
CM: We’re about an inch ahead of Broadway just at the moment, because we have been in production for the last nine months and they have been completely shut down. But they are catching up and going to surpass us in technology, as they always will. They have billions of dollars and much more space. We operate of necessity on a smaller scale budget. That does not mean that we operate of necessity on the smaller scale of talent or accomplishment.
Q: You don’t have a chance to take a break now that you’ve taken on this challenge of finding a way to create an alternative.
CM: Ciaran and I never took a break anyway. We just kept at it. We have very few on our staff and we’ve always been busy twelve months of the year. We have excellent staff now, an excellent staff. We could not have lifted a finger without our excellent staff, working together like they have.
We all went home on the same day and we haven’t seen each other for nine months. And we are close friends. I love every one of our members. I know what their houses or their rooms look like, I know what their families look like. When we’re together in a room, I don’t know what we’re going to do — hit the ceiling, get drunk, I don’t know. But it’s going to be something spectacular and memorable, let me assure you.
Q: When you look at Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien, do you think about that, or how does that inform you?
CM: I usually don’t think about who has done productions I’ve done, previously or before [me], or anybody else’s productions because I have tunnel vision when I’m directing a production. But this time, yes. With this movie out and Ms, Garland singing, like everybody in the USA and in the world, I was very, very familiar with that wonderful movie.
Also, I saw Ms. Garland when I was a child. My mother actually brought me to St. Louis and I saw her sing. Margaret O’Brien came to our Broadway opening and I met her. I don’t remember much about her, but she was there and all dressed up, and applauding, and talking to everybody. I was stunned and amazed to actually meet Margaret O’Brien in the flesh.
And then, having done the production in our own theater, it’s very, very close to me. I didn’t have to read the book and look at the music for two weeks ahead of time or six months ahead of time. I knew that music by heart. I knew the lines that I wanted to use. I knew the turning points and what meant what in the script. So it was a coming home to me.
Q: When the movie came out, do you think it had a different resonance from now? It seemed to have a different resonance at different times.
CM: I agree wholeheartedly. I think nostalgia is worshipped in the United States of America. And then [it’s] certainly one of the best pieces of American nostalgia that’s ever come across the board. I mean a family, an Irish family, in the middle of the country during a celebration of life in our own country and of the expansion by Thomas Jefferson — a real celebration of ourselves and our country and our way of life. It was very valuable, it took a look at ourselves and what a good place to be we were in. It was a general feeling of joy, family, happiness, and where we came from.
I think it still is. It’s still has that resonance and that nostalgia. That’s why we were so pleased when we decided to do it in this very very tough time for our country.
Q: When the movie came out, it was the middle of World War II — 1944. They didn’t know how the war was going to end, although it was looking good.
CM: That’s right. It was looking good, everybody was patriotic about it, but nobody knew that we were going to win that war. Nobody.
Q: So the exalted idea of America, the idea that we were fighting for, and now theoretically what the show represents is something similar to that.
CM: I met [songwriters] Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin when we were doing the Broadway production. That echoes what they said about their work at that time. They said, “Not only did we want to picture and portray before this (expletive) war, we wanted to bring back the hope and positive feeling about our country that we knew was coming.”
Q: So this is a good time to see this show and to talk about what it’s about.
CM: Yes, and to talk about what’s coming. Not only that, I’m sitting in St. Louis right now, talking to you.
Q: Right now??
CM: Yes, right now. I’m in Forest Park, where the World’s Fair took place. It’s two blocks away. It’s lovely, and part of the buildings of the 1904 World’s Fair are standing there. I pass them, literally, to go to the grocery store.
Q: That is amazing. It shows you how the world has changed. So when do you come back to New York?
CM: I’m hoping to come back soon after the new year, possibly February or March.