(upbeat music)
- "Flying Over Sunset" is a new musical
about a trio of successful historical figures.
Diplomat Clare Boothe Luce,
writer Aldous Huxley, and movie star, Cary Grant,
coming together for a trip of a lifetime.
We headed to Lincoln Center Theater to talk
with the creators James Lapine, Tom Kitt, and Michael Korie
about why they wanted to tell the story
of three people at a personal crossroads
experimenting with LSD in the 1950s.
(gentle music)
You're developing this new musical.
- I am, hopefully it's pretty developed, Beth.
- Well yeah, because you're starting rehearsal.
- That's right.
- But it's got a fascinating premise.
Can you give me an overview of the premise
of the show? - Overview?
It takes place in the 1950s.
I wish I discovered that people
were taking LSD which I didn't know,
cause one thinks of LSD at the 1960s.
Well Aldous Huxley, who's the man who brought LSD
sort of into the zeitgeist,
but along with him that Cary Grant was a big LSD user,
which surprised me. - Things we did not know,
yeah (laughs).
- And a woman named Clare Boothe Luce,
who I knew of from her politics
cause she was a congresswoman and an ambassador
and also an arch conservative.
And I thought, well now that's interesting.
She took LSD too.
I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to do a musical
in which people only sing when they're on LSD?
- James, what sparked this idea?
- I had read the Vanity article on Cary Grant.
It's a 10-year-old article and I read it years later,
I don't know how I came across it
and I started to write a play about Cary Grant
and that didn't really click,
but as I was doing more research I discovered
that other people were doing it too
and I read Huxley right away.
I just thought they were such fascinating people
and they all were in each other's worlds.
- Tell me about the world of "Flying Over Sunset."
- Basically it starts in the early afternoon,
late morning, they take the drug,
they take different doses
and then it starts kicking in differently
for each of them, they get giddy,
they get crazy, then they start hallucinating,
then they start going down,
they get angry, argue, and then they sort of level off
and by then it's sunset and they're looking at the sunset
over the Pacific Ocean.
- So Tom, tell me how you figured out
what the sound would be for this era and then a trip.
- Well certainly it's a wonderful era to get to write
music for, the 1950s, and there were a number
of styles or there are a number of styles
you can draw from.
I never wanted to think that I was going to be trying
to work in a certain style or a pastiche,
but really to just make theatrical music
that would be appropriate for the period
but also could feel contemporary.
I don't wanna sort of be commenting on the fact
that they're taking LSD because once you do that,
I fear you'll lose the connective tissue
with the audience and whatever state they're in,
they're still feeling human emotions,
so at the end of the day I wanted to write music
that was serving that.
(gentle piano music)
♪ How I miss the shores of California ♪
♪ Strolling on the soft white sand ♪
♪ Sliding off my bra ♪
♪ Pantiless in la la land ♪
- As they get psychologically naked,
they get to confront some things from their past,
whatever's haunting them, some of their ghosts.
How did you come up with the lyrics
that would inform that dynamic?
(gentle music)
- Well, I read a lot of what they wrote or spoke.
I listened to their interviews
and I just like to channel those voices
and those speaking patterns.
Also they were influenced by their times.
Huxley was very literate, a brilliant author,
well-educated, knew classical music, knew art.
Cary Grant was self-invented
and spoke in this sort of glossy Hollywood parlance
and Clare Boothe Luce was another character
who was, I would say, self-invented,
but brilliant and political.
So I would say all of those rhythms and very probing
and questioning of everything.
All of that informed the rhythms of how they speak to me.
- And just to put this in context a little bit more.
As you said, in the 50s it was legal.
- Yes.
- And it was taken as a serious medical experience, correct?
So tell me a little bit about that journey
because really I think the audience
is walking in with the baggage of Timothy Leary
and the psychedelic era.
- Yeah, I mean it's so interesting that we've come
full circle with LSD being studied now
and used in medical situations, but in the 50s
it was usually administered by a psychiatrist.
What I like about these three very accomplished,
very brilliant people, was they felt unfulfilled
and they turned to the drug to find out more
about themselves and I think it was not taken frivolously.
♪ I see a dragonfly ♪
(gentle piano music)
♪ A sapphire dragonfly ♪
♪ A brilliant shimmering of iridescent wings ♪
♪ A flawless specimen ♪
♪ Of heaven's handiwork ♪
♪ If only heaven were as flawless ♪
♪ As its ♪
- This is not a musical about LSD,
this is a musical that feels very emotional
and very deep in a way
and I wonder if you can address that a little bit?
- The fact that they were in mid-life
and accomplished and still were trying to figure things out,
trying to understand themselves,
trying to understand the world they live in,
kinda spoke to me a little bit
and also, what are they gonna do next?
Each of them kind of were,
Cary Grant had quit the movies,
Clare Boothe Luce had resigned as ambassador to Brazil,
and Aldous Huxley who was joined at the hip
by his wife for 30 odd years, she passed away.
So each of them were at a juncture of their lives,
trying to figure out what their next chapter's gonna be
and that appealed to me.
- I think the drug is what unites them.
It's the vehicle, but you're right,
it's not about the drug, it's about sunset,
it's about reaching that time in your life
where you've had accomplishments,
where you've had disappointments and you're not complete.
- You knew it was going to be about deep human issues
and that LSD was going to a vehicle to probe
and to question and to look at hard truths.
The way "Into The Woods" takes those characters,
but it's not about fairytales.
- This is a cheeky question you don't have to answer.
In your research, did anyone drop acid?
- As they like to say,
I took enough for all of us, but (laughs).
- I've had a bad trip or two.
- I haven't experimented.
- Not recently.
You never told me you have a bad trip.
- I did.
- Oh, okay.
See, I had to get in front
of camera first. - You hear it here first.
- Go on, Michael,
no I'm just kidding. (laughing)
(upbeat music)