Camille Claudel (Linda Eder) with her father (Milo O’Shea)
in Goodspeed Musicals’ production of Camille Claudel
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First of all, lose the “T word.” Granted, non-art aficionados
who have heard the name Camille Claudel probably only know her from
the Oscar-nominated 1988 movie starring French actress Isabelle Adjani.
That film, by no means a pep-fest, recounted the story of Claudel,
the protégé and mistress of the far more celebrated
sculptor Auguste Rodin, who spent the last 30 years of her life in
an asylum.
Ain’t we got fun!
“The first reaction is always: ‘Oh, it’s so sad.
Oh, it’s so tragic,’” says author/lyricist Nan Knighton.
“I refer to it as the ‘T word’ and I won’t
let anybody use it. I don’t view this story as a tragedy.”
The movie Camille Claudel may have been dark and depressing,
but the new musical bearing the same title developed by Knighton and
composer Frank Wildhorn (The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Civil War)
for Wildhorn’s wife, singer/actress Linda Eder, is anything
but. Had Claudel been too much of a tragic figure, Knighton probably
would not have been interested in her.
“She was a feisty creature, very funny, brave and abrasive,”
says Knighton, a frequent Wildhorn collaborator. “The story
that we’re telling is about this girl, this woman and her ferocious
need to sculpt.”
Claudel and her work may not be semi-obscure much longer. Successful
musicals have been known to enhance a historical
profile, says Wildhorn, who pointed out that Eva Peron was hardly
a household name before she became Andrew Lloyd Weber-ized.
Camille Claudel recently completed a sold-out run at Goodspeed
Musicals’ Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, Connecticut. Both
the single-night reading and the four-week Goodspeed run last summer
were sponsored by Clear Channel Entertainment, which also produces
Eder’s concerts.
Critics weren’t invited to the Goodspeed run, which also featured
former Flashdance star Michael Nouri as Rodin. But reviewer
feedback is not considered vital for productions at the company’s
200-seat Terris Theatre, Goodspeed’s venue for experimental
projects.
Especially not this project. Available tickets were snapped up by
Goodspeed subscribers and by a flock of “Jekies,” a term
referring to the passionate fans of Wildhorn and Eder’s earlier
collaboration, Jekyll & Hyde. Many of that tuner’s
devotees bought season subscriptions to secure a spot at Camille
Claudel, only to return the seats for the remaining Goodspeed
shows they knew they wouldn’t be attending.
“I don’t think we were quite prepared for the onslaught,”
says Goodspeed Associate Producer Sue Frost. “Chester isn’t
a big town, and this project generated a lot of buzz.”
Linda Eder in the title role of Camille
Claudel |
A new show by Wildhorn can have that effect, particularly one that
brings the red-hot Eder back to the musical stage for the first
time since Jekyll & Hyde. The singer has been performing
the climactic number “Gold” (also an Olympics anthem)
in concerts and the song appears on her CD, Broadway My Way.
“Musicals are so tough and they take so much out of you. You
really bleed for them,” says Wildhorn. “I’m one
who strongly believes that you have to have the music out there
working for you. With the support of Atlantic Records, we’re
using ‘Gold’ as a sort of calling card for the show,
which has been invaluable to me.”
Musical theater buffs who want to look beyond the “Gold”
might be interested to know that Camille Claudel contains
21 songs, ranging from soft, meditative numbers like “Snowfall”
to belt numbers—angry and triumphant pieces designed to showcase
Eder’s formidable pipes. In creating the score, Wildhorn cites
the influence of composers such as Debussy, Ravel and the French
Impressionists.
“You try to reinvent yourself with every new score you write,”
Wildhorn says. “Jonathan Tunick is doing the orchestrations
and he’s working and weaving the French Impressionist influence
throughout the score. That alone gives it a different feel than
anything we’ve done before.”
In developing the project, Wildhorn says he was looking for a vehicle
for Eder as well as a story told from a strong female character’s
point of view. His point of departure was the 1988 film but, like
Knighton, Wildhorn came to agree that Camille Claudel should
moderate its doom and gloom.
Elements of the musical’s first incarnation, which was set
in an asylum and featured a pair of doctors as characters, were
scrapped. Audiences will still find out what happened to Claudel,
but her fate won’t be the story’s emphasis.
“We decided early on that we were going to represent the events
that happened, but we were going to do it from the point of view
of celebrating her life rather than telling a tragedy,” says
Wildhorn. “The best operas are all tragedies and life ends
in death, but the fact is, there is so much to celebrate about her
life.”
Such as? “I think she did exactly what she wanted with her
life, which is an extremely liberating and exhilarating thing,”
says Knighton. “The critics at the time said that she was
so male in her conception. She was not a ‘feminist,’
but she was absolutely determined to not let her [gender] be a factor.
She expected the world to disregard [the fact that she was] female.”
Knighton also maintains that the show’s numerous innovations
won’t come merely from the music. Claudel and Rodin’s
statues will come to life and interact with their creators via some
jazz-influenced choreography by Mark Dendy.
Dendy had choreographed the Manhattan Theatre Club’s production
of The Wild Party for Gabriel Barre, a frequent Goodspeed
director who was tapped for Camille Claudel. Wildhorn and
Knighton had been fans of The Wild Party and brought the
director on board.
“One of the first challenges in bringing a show like this
to life is finding and developing a theatrical vocabulary to take
advantage of the medium we’re in,” says Barre. “One
of the ways that Mark and I were able to do that was to use the
ensemble and the cast as a whole as the artwork. It’s more
in the audience’s imagination and it should be quite interesting
and unique in some ways.”
Evan Henerson is a lifestyle/features writer who covers theater
for the Los Angeles Daily News.
Photography by Diane Sobolewski
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