It took Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe about three years to create and produce "Paint Your Wagon," which opened on Broadway in November 1951 — their first major follow-up to 1947's "Brigadoon."
Now, 56 years later, Pioneer Theatre Company artistic director Charles Morey, and a team of collaborators from Las Vegas and Los Angeles, are revisiting the robust California Gold Rush musical with an all-new script, and some significant changes.
Morey, who is directing the show, said this project has evolved over the past six or seven years. The newly revised production having its world premier this week in Pioneer Memorial Theatre is considered a pre-Broadway tryout.
"The great old score is still there, with numbers like 'They Call the Wind Maria,' 'I Talk to the Trees,' 'Wanderin' Star' and 'Another Autumn,"' Morey said, "but it's very different and vastly improved, in my opinion.
"The (original) book was pretty clunky, and also had this sort of off-putting plot element of the Mormon and his two wives coming through, and selling one of his wives to Ben Rumson, one of the miners. Even for me, a non-Mormon, it was off-putting."
If you didn't know Lerner also wrote "My Fair Lady," he added, "You wouldn't know the same person wrote both books."
Morey said he started working on the project in the fall of 2001. "It evolved and then sort of faded away, and then we got very involved again."
The "we" he refers to include playwright-screenwriter Rambo, orchestrator Steve Orich, and co-producers Christopher Allen, D. Constantine Conti and Larry Spellman.
The setting is still a robust mining camp in California during the Gold Rush. Many of the familiar characters are still there, too — Ben Rumson, his headstrong daughter Jennifer, her handsome Mexican boyfriend, Julio, and the traveling dance-hall Fandango girls.
Currently a writer-producer for "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," Rambo said by phone from his Los Angeles office, "The Gold Rush itself was started, peaked and finished before Chuck (Morey) got this done. It's an entirely new book and new plot with the same characters."
Rambo said those involved in the early stages of the project spent quite a bit of time negotiating with both the Lerner and Loewe estates. "A lot of that was done in New York and Los Angeles by attorneys. I was out of that loop, but I did get permission to write an entirely different story."
Morey said that after a friend of his brought the idea to him sometime in 2000, with a revised workshop version — but not this particular one — he indicated he would like to be involved. "I poked around among some of the old librettos that Keith Engar (former PTC artistic director) had left for me and I found the original. After reading it, I knew why it had to be changed.
"I got that first new script, which also had a lot of problems, but there were some ways of approaching it to fix it."
So Morey got together with Las Vegas-based producer Allen, who owned the rights to the book, and it was decided that "Paint Your Wagon" did, indeed, need a whole new book.
"One writer left the project and we brought on somebody else, and that didn't work out, and the project just sort of faded away," said Morey. "Then I read that the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles was doing a new version that had been written by David Rambo, who didn't know I was also working on it, although we're represented by the same agent in New York City.
"This was maybe three or four years ago. I got a copy of Rambo's book and it was a major step forward, but I still thought it needed some more work. The three of us — Allen, Rambo and myself — met in L.A. and agreed to do a revised book."
They thought about producing it last season, Morey said, "But then we got 'Les Miserables,' and moving it into this season's September slot gave us a little more time."
Orich, who has done the new orchestrations for "Paint Your Wagon," was nominated for a Tony Award last year for his work on "Jersey Boys."
Choreographer Patti D'Beck is back for her 10th PTC production. She most recently worked here on PTC's 2006-07 season opener, "Chicago."
"Patti and I sat down with Steve, David and Chris, and we came up with a new shape for the dance orchestrations — and we were off and rolling," Morey said. "You have to conceptualize the dance before you do the orchestrations.
"From the minute 'Paint Your Wagon' was mentioned to me, I thought, here we are, sitting just a few blocks from the same route the miners took across the country. And mining was also a very big part of this area. But this new version has a whole other kind of romantic subplot."
He added that there is one scene where a Mormon and his wives pass through town but it's a very quick appearance. "That whole other thing about selling one of his wives to Rumson was always a little strange."
Rambo took some of the same character names and basic situations. "I've made it more in line with 'Romeo and Juliet."' But there were two things he sent out to do: reposition the best songs in the show in the best slots of the evening ("in the original show, 'They Call the Wind Maria' was almost a throwaway") and move the love story earlier in the plot ("In the original it takes forever to get to it").
He has added one new character to the mix — a traveling actress, Lily "Shakespeare" Smith. The role will be played by Anne Stewart Mark.
Rambo said one new song has been added to the score from the Lerner and Loewe trunk. "We've taken 'My Little Prince,' from their last collaboration, 'The Little Prince,' and worked it into a song that Rumson sings about 'My Little Girl.'
"There was never a song in the original for Ben to sing about how he feels about his daughter, and Dennis Parlato, who plays Ben, sings it beautifully." (Parlato was last seen on Broadway in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.")
Others in PTC's cast include Emily Rabon Hall as Jennifer and Enrique Acevedo as Julio. Mearle Marsh is musical supervisor and conductor with scenery by George Maxwell, costumes by David Kay Mickelsen, lighting by Phil Monat, sound by Joe Payne and hair/makeup by Amanda French.
If you go
What: "Paint Your Wagon," Pioneer Theatre Company
Where: Pioneer Memorial Theatre, University of Utah
When: Friday through Oct. 13
How much: $25-$49 (children's tickets half-price on Mondays and Tuesdays)
Phone: 581-6961
E-mail: ivan@desnews.com