JFK back in Dublin

SOMEWHERE in downtown Malibu a song writer scratches his head, sucks his pen and mutters: "Grassy knoll, grassy knoll. What rhymes with grassy knoll ...?" This is the picture conjured by the words: JFK, A Musical Drama. You've seen the movie, worn the Jackie sunglasses, read the conspiracy theories. Now Boll up folks and buy the theatre tickets.

But the people behind the show insist that the story is the perfect epic for a serious musical. In showbiz terms Camelot's got lotsa heart. It's an all-singing, all-dancing rags-to-riches family saga, they say, and the shots in Dallas are the end rather than the starting point. No knolls or book depositories in sight.

This month Dublin will be a "try-out town" for the JFK musical chat its producers hope will transfer to the West End and then Broadway. It opens in the Olympia for what is hoped to be an eight-week run. If Irish audiences pack it out then Broadway here we come.

At their rehearsal in a Dublin dance studio Tom Sawyer, who cowrote the musical, says he was inspired by Evita 14 years ago. "My wife and I went to see it in LA and when the lights went up I said: `It's time to do this about JFK.'"

Others have tried and failed to turn the all-American story into an American musical. "I always knew that it had to be all-sung. It had to be, in essence, an opera," Sawyer says. Producer Stewart Lane also uses the O-word, but not without his fellow producer Max Weitzenhoffer wincing a little.

"Basically we feel it's a show about a family drama," Lane says.

`It's almost operatic in scope.'

"Don't say that," Weitzenhoffer interrupts. "We'll lose all the picket sales we've got. It's just a great story."

The rehearsal studio is dotted with tall cardboard tubes representing the columns of the White House to be created on-stage by Abbey set designer Joe Vanek.

The Irish Times arrives to hear the moment when JFK wins the election. Joe Senior wheeler-deals on the telephones to get his son into power.

"Can we count on Cook County?" the cast sings as the rehearsal piano thumps out the crescendo. A quick sung version of the Nixon/Kennedy television debate and then the win, followed a song with the lyrics: "Politics is arithmetic. Politics is a brawl."

The production of a Broadway show is also arithmetic and the producers insist this will be the first full musical production in Dublin, rather than a scaled-down touring version. "This is exactly the same show you'll get as the one you'll see in New York," Weitzenhoffer says.

The Dublin run is expected to cost around $1 million, they say. Asked why they chose Dublin, Lane gives three reasons: It's steeped in a tradition of theatregoing. You could open in some cities in the States and there could be no audience. Dublin has the talent pool that you need to do a full-scale musical. And then there is the respect and admiration for the Kennedys as an Irish-American family.

Having to prove itself in Dublin is going to be "no small feat," Lane says. And then he thinks of a fourth reason - "all those great movies coming out of here. It was only natural. It was the most natural thing in the world to do." Back in the rehearsal studio director Larry Fuller waspishly ticks off Maurice Clarke, the Scottish actor who plays JFK, for behaviour that some might see as being in-character.

"`By the way Maurice, when you were congratulating everyone ya gave Ethel a good feel." The two are theatrically embarrassed and Monica Ernesti, who plays Jackie, puts her hand on her hips.

According to Fuller's curriculum vitae he is Mr American-Musical. His Broadway Evita took seven Tonys (the Oscars of the theatre world) and he also directed the original London production.

The production was written by Sawyer with music by Will Holt. Sawyer's work has been mainly in TV, where he was producer and head writer for the long-running show Murder She Wrote.

He believes the "dramatic spine" of the drama is "that relationship between Jack (JFK) and his father". Asked what the big numbers of the show are he says one of most memorable is the duet between father and son when Joe Kennedy Snr asks his son to take the place of Joe killed in the war.

On the wall of the studio is pinned an extract on Kennedy from In Search Of His tory by Theodore H. White and a fuzzy faxed picture of the Kennedy clan from a magazine article.

Much of the wallspace is taken by the scene breakdown and costume list, with Jackie's costumes described in detail for each scene: "Blue Dior (ish) suit" for the presidential campaign scene.

Weitzenhoffer says the emphasis is on the family because "we don't wanna tell people a story that they already know". But does the underbelly of Camelot feature in the midst of the New England thanksgiving glow? "His womanising is not a secret," Weitzenhoffer says. "And we also touch on Joe Senior's mob connection and his pro-German sentiments." They are a little vague about the treatment of the Dallas scene. The publicity handout calls it that "astonishing moment when the assassination of John F. Kennedy shattered the hope of the entire world and changed our lives forever."

"It's very surreal," Lane says. "You'd have to see it."

"The show obviously has an unhappy ending. But what you'll leave the theatre with is the idea of what JFK stood for - that dream of a "better world."

In one scene Bobby Kennedy teases his brother as the nagging voice in his ear: "Jack what about Vietnam, what about Congress, what about Kruschev. Jack, what about Castro?" The audience will probably not need to know much about the 60 years in American history covered in the musical.

Sawyer insists that he did not want to write an historical pageant. And outside events are foils to family relationships. It will be up to Dublin audiences to decide if musical soap-opera is a runner.

"Everything we do here we're using expertise and experience but ultimately we need the audience to come in and tell us if it's working."