The Barn Players Present...

Dramaturgy by Ross Harmon
The Barn Players Present | Cast | Dirty Rotten Scoundrels | Dirty Rotten Creators Answer The Question, "Isn't It Romantic?" | Dirty Rotten Authors | Bedtime Story (1964): The Original Dirty, Rotten Movie | Scamming Scoundrels (1988): The Second Dirty, Rotten Movie | Paul Henning: The Dirty, Rotten Kansas City Connection | Dirty, Rotten Setting: The French Riviera | Dirty Rotten Real Life: Notable Con Artists |

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS is a Broadway musical, with music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Jeffrey Lane; it is based on the successful film of the same name. The musical ran on Broadway in 2005 and also had a US tour. The musical premiered in San Diego, California on September 22, 2004, before moving to Broadway in January 2005 and officially opening in March at the Imperial Theatre. The cast included John Lithgow, Norbert Leo Butz, and Sherie Rene Scott, with Joanna Gleason and Gregory Jbara. The show closed on Broadway on September 3, 2006 with a total of 626 performances. International productions have opened in Tokyo, Mexico City, Madrid, Stuttgart, Seoul, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Reykjavik, and London.

DIRTY ROTTEN CREATORS ANSWER THE QUESTION, "ISN'T IT ROMANTIC?"

By Kenneth Jones - January 13, 2005 © www.playbill.com

DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS, the musical comedy about two competing con men let loose in the French Riviera, isn't a love story in the traditional sense, but the men of the title do romance one another. Although this is the same French coast of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, where the central characters walk arm in arm into the sunset together, the bond formed by rough-edged swindler Freddy and smooth veteran Lawrence in DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS marks the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

About Freddy and Lawrence — isn't it romance? "Oh, absolutely," librettist Jeffrey Lane told Playbill On-Line. "They see in each other that they are like two halves. They each have something the other needs. Lawrence, when he first meets him, he just dismisses Freddy. But when he's talking to Andre in the next scene he says, 'He reminds me of me when I was just starting out: The danger, the fact that you are making it up as you go along.' Lawrence is the guy who has the class, who has done it all and is smart. Freddy is the guy raised by his bookie grandmother, been on his own since he was 15. You know what? They both could do fine on their own. But it's not as much fun."

Tony Award-winning director Jack O'Brien (HAIRSPRAY) agreed. "I don't think it's a sexual thing, and we never play that, but it is a romance," he said. "Them getting together is basically because Lawrence Jameson sees the naïveté he once demonstrated — there’s a kind of passing on of methodology there. That's a different kind of love between people: You know, a mentor-protégé type thing."

The musical came about after movie company MGM invited writers, directors and producers to consider its catalog of titles for musicalization. Lane, Yazbek and producer Marty Bell had all inquired about the 1988 Frank Oz directed "Dirty Rotten" film.

"Separately — we didn't know each other — we all wanted to do the same piece," Marty Bell explained. "So we all got together to talk about it. I didn't think it would work out, I thought I'd want to get my own people, but they had such a great take on it that we started together. As soon as Jeffrey wrote his first draft I felt like I'd found the musical comedy book writer I've been looking for for 20 years."

Lane (TV's "Mad About You") said he was attracted to "the whole idea of theatre being a con, the fantasy that a person creates. I've always been fascinated by con men because they have to be really smart about people and able to look right into a person's heart and see what that person wants, and yet never ever really reveal themselves."

Fans of composer-lyricist David Yazbek's score for his freshman Broadway effort, THE FULL MONTY, will be happy to know that with DIRTY ROTTEN he continues his knack for spinning playful, comic lyrics while drawing on many musical sources. "I tried to stay away from French music, I can't stand it, that accordion stuff," Yazbek told Playbill On-Line. "There's a continental flavor to the score, y'know, a string section, but there's also room for funk and that kind of stuff. When it was time for something festive and summery, I came up with this samba. There's a couple of really old fashioned ballads. When I say old-fashioned, I mean really old-fashioned, like, '40s and '50s."

Yazbek explained, "These characters, some of them, are ultra rich, ultra, in the Broadway way, witty, so I was able to have fun with trying to do Noel Coward-y kind of stuff. That's one of the reasons I wanted to do the show: Just the idea that I could do really craft-laden lyrics, but also have kind of a crass, low-brow thing going on."

What was learned in the fall 2004 tryout at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego? "We learned the show worked, right away," said Tony Award nominee Norbert Leo Butz. "Audiences loved it, almost from the get-go. Then something really dangerous happened: We started enjoying it too much. We started feeling entitled to get laughs, and got a little too proud of ourselves. That's hard to learn because it's addictive. Restraint is hard to learn."

Was it "frozen" once its California run (Sept. 22-Nov. 7, 2004) began? Bell explained, “We didn't change any of the numbers, we just made book changes. I've gone through it in my head: Every scene in the show has some change, whether it's dialogue, music, dance. There are no new songs since San Diego, there are rewrites within songs."

Dirty Rotten Authors

DAVID YAZBEK (Music & Lyrics) is an Emmy-winning American writer, musician, composer, and lyricist. He has written the music and lyrics for the Broadway musicals THE FULL MONTY (2000) and DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (2005). After graduating from Brown University in 1982, he got a job writing for David Letterman's Late Night television show. He won an Emmy as part of Letterman's writing team in 1986, but quit to pursue his love of music. From 1987 to 1989 he was the co-owner of Manhattan Recording Company and wrote commercial jingles.

An accomplished musician, Yazbek has released four rock albums to date, highlighting his unique perspective and wry sense of humor. He has also written many songs and background music for children's television shows, especially those produced for Disney's cable television channel. He also co-wrote the theme song to the Emmy award winning PBS-TV series WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO?

In 2000, Yazbek took the job writing music and lyrics for a musical based on the hit movie THE FULL MONTY. The show was a success, though it was overshadowed by Mel Brooks' musical, THE PRODUCERS that year. THE FULL MONTY ran for two years before closing, and for his work Yazbek was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics, and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music. In 2002 he was a contributing lyricist for the musical BOMBAY DREAMS.

Yazbek also wrote the music and lyrics to the musical adaptation of DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS, which opened on Broadway in 2005. Yazbek was again nominated for the 2005 Tony Award for Best Original Score, and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics. In 2007, Yazbek began developing the music and lyrics for BRUCE LEE: JOURNEY TO THE WEST, a stage musical based on the life of martial artist Bruce Lee. Variety reported that the musical was aiming to open on Broadway during the 2010-2011 season. Yazbek is also working on a musical based on the life of magician HARRY HOUDINI; It was tentatively set to open on Broadway in Spring 2010, with Hugh Jackman starring, but the production was since been delayed.

JEFFREY LANE (Book) is best known for his work on such television programs as “Mad About You,” “Ryan’s Hope,” “Lou Grant,” “The AFI Lifetime Achievement Award,” “The Tony Awards,” “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” and the miniseries “The Murder of Mary Phagan.” He is the winner of five Emmys, three Writers Guild Awards, two Peabodys, a Golden Globe and the Christopher Award, and the relatively good-natured loser of many more.

Bedtime Story (1964): The Original Dirty, Rotten Movie

By Bosley Crowther, June 11, 1964, © The New York Times

Marlon Brando is full of surprises. That's part of his stock in trade. He loves to do the unexpected and then sit back and let his public gasp. That's what he's doing in BEDTIME STORY. He is departing from his style completely and playing a ring-a-ding comedy character. He is acting a low down conniver, a sweet talking, free wheeling fraud who will do anything to fool a woman and soften her resistance to him. And especially when he's up against a champion at fooling women on the international scene, a bogus prince played by David Niven, he's not above any dirty scheme.

The fraudulent character that Paul Henning has written for Brando, with a fine edge of Freudianhoned sarcasm to their familiarly facile pens, is just the sort of open end Pal Joey that Mr. Brando can thoroughly absorb and then ooze through his oily personality with roguish and mischievous glee. He's amusing as Cpl. Freddie Benson, the scourge of all the fair maids in Germany who fall for his line about just wanting to see the inside, and especially the bedroom, of the old house in which his grandmother lived.

But he is funnier still (and more incisive) as the ex-corporal trying to compete for exclusive poaching rights in the section of the French Riviera over which the bogus prince has control. And when he and Mr. Niven begin matching nasty looks and even nastier wits in their maneuvering to outdo each other, particularly to con the American "soap queen," Shirley Jones, who is selected to be the test of their prowess, Mr. Brando is in his liveliest form.

True, he does act a little too simian in those very low comedy scenes where he has to pretend to be the half-witted brother of the rival confidence man. But on the whole, Mr. Brando is dandy. And, most notably, he is sure in that delicate phase of the picture where he is pretending to be a psychosomatic paralytic in order to win the soap queen's sympathy. In the test of wits with Mr. Niven, pretending in this phase to be a noted Swiss psychiatrist attempting to cure the case, the film—and these two accomplished actors, hits a comedy peak.

BEDTIME STORY is a very funny picture, and Mr. Brando is first-class farceur. To be sure, the film is lightweight and vapid—just a clever succession of japes and jokes, nothing to cherish in the memory. Mark this one down as good, crisp fun.

Scamming Scoundrels (1988): The Second Dirty, Rotten Movie

By Vincent Canby, December 14, 1988 © The New York Times

Lawrence Jamieson (Michael Caine) is a haberdasher's dream, the sort of man who could make Oleg Cassini look like a panhandler. Lawrence wears clothes well, has a gourmet's palate, impeccable manners and lives in splendor on the French Riviera in a magnificent villa overlooking the sea. He's also a superior con artist. Most of the time he passes himself off as a prince in mufti, a deposed royal in need of money to liberate his homeland from the yoke of Communism. Rich women of a certain age find Lawrence irresistible.

Freddy Benson (Steve Martin) wears baggy gray trousers, a green T-shirt and a Panama hat. He's a self-satisfied klutz who aspires to be a con artist. His ploy is to tell rich women that his grandmother needs an operation. Sometimes Freddy receives a ''loan.'' More often it's the price of a meal, which, on the French Riviera, isn't modest. Compared with Lawrence, Freddy is small change.

At the beginning of DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS, one of the seasons most cheerful, most satisfying new comedies, Freddy is on a train en route to the South of France, trying to psych himself up to the task at hand. Freddy's mistake is to settle in the fictitious Riviera town of Beaumont-sur-Mer, which is Lawrence's exclusive turf. After some initial sparring, Freddy blackmails the elegant Lawrence into teaching him the tricks of the trade. They make a bet: the first man to swindle a woman out of $50,000 can keep the money and the territory.

All of this may sound familiar. DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS is a remake of the 1964 comedy BEDTIME STORY. Except for its title, the earlier film has receded from memory, but I can't imagine that it could have been anywhere near as entertaining as the blithe, seemingly all-new, laugh-out-loud escapade opening today.

Their comic methods are different, but from their first unequal encounter until the very last in a series of twist endings, Mr. Caine and Mr. Martin work together with an exuberant ease that's a joy to watch . Playing to (and for) his co-star, Mr. Martin gives a performance of inspired goofiness. As an American innocent who sets out to bag big game with a BB gun, he is the last hilariously enfeebled embodiment of 19th-century frontier optimism. No matter how often his Freddy Benson fails, he's ever ready to get up, brush himself off and start all over again.

In this season of lazy, fat, mistimed and misdirected comedies, DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS is an enchanted featherweight folly.

Paul Henning: The Dirty, Rotten Kansas City Connection

PAUL HENNING (September 16, 1911 – March 25, 2005) was an American producer and writer. He is most famous for the successful sitcom THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, he was crucial in the development of several "rural" comedies for CBS-TV in the 1960s.

Henning was born on a farm and grew up in Independence, Missouri. His early ambition was to be a singer on the radio. When the local radio station KMBC had no money for writers to create the "filler" between songs, he became a writer as well as a singer. Writing proved the more lucrative of the two and he abandoned singing, eventually writing for such series as FIBBER MCGEE & MOLLY and the THE BURNS & ALLEN SHOW, and later such television series as THE REAL MCCOYS and THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. Henning was also the creator, writer and producer of THE BOB CUMMINGS SHOW, where he first met many of the actors who were subsequently to appear in his later series.

In 1962 Henning created THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, a sitcom based on his past experiences while camping in the Ozarks. He also wrote the music and lyrics for the theme song, THE BALLAD OF JED CLAMPETT, which became as popular as the show. THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES was one of the highestrated series of all time, even becoming a feature film about three decades later. Henning had a hand in developing GREEN ACRES and created PETTICOAT JUNCTION. The latter two shows were set in the small town of Hooterville and both show had frequent crossovers with the Hillbillies.

All three programs were popular, but changing times led their parent network, CBS to look down on the so-called rural-coms and move in a more "adult", sophisticated direction with series such as ALL IN THE FAMILY and THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW. In 1971, in spite of continued high ratings, all three rural-coms were canceled, sending them into immediate perpetual syndicated reruns worldwide.

Proving that he could do more than create successful hayseed comedies, Henning also wrote such sparkling, sophisticated comedic feature films as Doris Day and Rock Hudson’s LOVER COME BACK in (1961, Screenplay nominated for an Academy Award) and BEDTIME STORY / DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS in (1964 / 1988).

Later in life Henning and his wife Ruth donated land to a conservation area near Branson, Missouri. Henning retired to Toluca Lake, California, dying in a Burbank hospital in 2005.

Dirty, Rotten Setting: The French Riviera

The Côte d'Azur, often known in English as the French Riviera, is the Mediterranean coastline of the south eastern corner of France, extending from Menton near the Italian border in the east to either Hyères or Cassis in the west.

This coastline was one of the first modern resort areas. It began as a winter health resort for the British upper class at the end of the 18th century. With the arrival of the railway in the mid-19th century, it became the playground and vacation spot of British, Russian, and other aristocrats, such as Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, when he was Prince of Wales. In the summer, it also played home to many members of the Rothschild family. In the first half of the 20th century it was frequented by artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Edith Wharton, Somerset Maugham and Aldous Huxley, as well as wealthy Americans and Europeans. After World War II it became a popular tourist destination and convention site. Many celebrities, such as Elton John and Brigitte Bardot, have homes in the region.

Officially, the Côte d'Azur is home to 163 nationalities with 83,962 foreign residents, although estimates of the number of non-French nationals living in the area are often much higher.

Its largest city is Nice, which has a population of 350,000. The city is the center of a communauté urbaine - Nice-Côte d'Azur - bringing together 24 communes and over 500,000 inhabitants.

The French Riviera also contains the seaside resorts of Cannes, Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, Saint-Jean- Cap-Ferrat, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Cap-d'Ail, Fréjus, Saint-Raphaël, and Saint-Tropez, and surrounds the principality of Monaco, with a total population of over two million.

The French Riviera is a major yachting centre, with marinas along its coast. According to the Côte d'Azur Economic Development Agency, each year the Riviera hosts 50% of the world's super yacht fleet, with 90% of all super yachts visiting the region's coast at least once in their lifetime.

As a tourist center it benefits from 300 days of sunshine per year, 115 km of coastline and beaches, 18 golf courses, 14 ski resorts and 3,000 restaurants.

Dirty Rotten Real Life: Notable Con Artists

19TH CENTURY SCOUNDRELS

• VICTOR LUSTIG (1890-1947) Clever con, born in the Czech Rep-ublic and known as "the man who sold the Eiffel Tower” to gullible dupes, again and again.
• GEORGE C. PARKER (1870–1936) U.S. con who sold New York monuments (Grant’s Tomb, The Brooklyn Bridge) to clueless tourists.
• CHARLES PONZI (1882–1949) A "Ponzi Scheme" is a multi-leveled pyramid "get rich fast" fraud named after him.
• DEATH VALLEY SCOTTY (1872–1954) Prospector and con man, famous for gold mining scams and mansion in Death Valley known as Scotty's Castle.
• CASSIE CHADWICK (1857–1907) Defrauded several U.S. banks out of millions of dollars by claiming to be an illegitimate daughter and heiress of Andrew Carnegie.

20th CENTURY SCOUNDRELS

• BERNIE CORNFELD (1927–1995) Ran the Investors Overseas Service, a Ponzi scheme.
• DAVID HAMPTON (1964–2003) Inspiration for the play and film SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION.
• FRANK ABAGNALE (1948) Check forger and impostor; his autobiography, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, was made into a movie.
• CHRISTIAN KARL GERHARTSREITER (1961) Bavarian-born con artist who, for nearly two decades, claimed to be a member of the wealthy Rockefeller family.
• CLIFFORD IRVING (1930) U.S. writer, best known for forging a "authorized autobiography" of Howard Hughes.
• BARRY MINKOW (1967) American entrepreneur. His company, ZZZZ Best, cost investors an estimated $100 million before he served seven years in prison for fraud and other offenses.
• MICHAEL SABO (1945) A check, stocks and bonds forger. He became notorious in the 1960s and throughout the 1990s as a "Great Impostor," and was featured on national TV, had over 100 aliases, and earned millions.
• BERNARD LAWRENCE MADOFF (1938) American former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market who admitted running a world-record $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Headed the hedge fund Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC until his arrest in 2008. In March 2009 he pled guilty to 11 federal crimes.

Barn Players Dirty Rotten Scoundrels Dramaturgy © 2010
Edited by Ross Harmon