Stephen Schwartz Never Planned to Come Back to Broadway. Then a ‘Twister of Fate’ Descended
The legendary composer shares stories from his career, from Godspell to Baker’s Wife, Wicked, and beyond.
Stephen Schwartz
Ethan Treiman
Stephen Schwartz never planned to return to Broadway.
After early triumphs like Godspell and Pippin, and the heartbreak of shows like The Baker’s Wife and Rags, he had found a happy home in Hollywood, writing for beloved Disney and DreamWorks films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Prince of Egypt. “I was just fine never working on Broadway again,” he admits.
But as his latest musical, The Queen of Versailles, opens at the St. James Theatre November 9, Schwartz can’t help but fondly recall the moment in the late ‘90s that lured him back to Broadway: a snorkeling trip in Hawaii, when a friend casually mentioned a novel called Wicked. The story of Oz told through the eyes of the Wicked Witch made Schwartz sit up straight: “Every hair on my body stood up. I thought, that is the best idea I’ve ever heard, and it’s perfect for me.”
Convincing Universal Pictures to let him adapt Gregory Maguire’s novel for the stage wasn’t easy. The studio had already invested in a screenplay for a Wicked film, making a stage adaptation impossible. But Schwartz persisted. When he finally sat down with Universal’s then-chairman Marc Platt (who is also the father of Tony winner Ben Platt), fate intervened. “He sang ‘Corner of the Sky’ to me,” Schwartz recalls with a laugh. The producer had starred in a college production of Pippin and held Schwartz’s work close to his heart ever since. “I was just very lucky it happened to be Universal, and it happened to be Marc Platt.”
The resulting musical, Wicked, opened at the Gershwin Theatre in 2003. Against skeptical reviews, it struck a chord with audiences and has since become one of Broadway’s longest-running blockbusters. “It completely changed my life,” Schwartz reflects. “And thematically, it was about so many things I like to write about: taking a familiar story and seeing it from a different point of view, about outsiders and the price of becoming insiders, about personal responsibility, about how things we like to define simplistically—good, evil, heroes, villains—are actually pretty complicated.”
Now, more than two decades later, Schwartz has found himself back in Oz on yet another career resurgence, thanks to the two-part film adaptation directed by Jon M. Chu. “Since the show opened, Winnie [Holzman] and I had always talked about what we could do in a movie that we couldn’t do onstage,” he says. The second installment, Wicked: For Good, will unveil two fresh songs to the score. “To be able to write new material for voices like Cynthia Erivo’s and Ariana Grande’s couldn’t be more satisfying.”
Schwartz is also revisiting another piece of his past this year with The Baker’s Wife. That show’s journey was filled with potholes; it was supposed to come to Broadway in 1976 but closed out of town. “Somebody once said that what they would wish on their worst enemy is to be out of town with a musical in trouble,” Schwartz recalls. “And doing The Baker’s Wife, I understood why.”
Stephen Schwartz
Ethan Treiman
The show nevertheless produced the enduring ballad “Meadowlark,” which went on to become a cabaret standard. Though the show’s producer, David Merrick, famously despised it. At one point during the Washington, D.C. tryout, Merrick flew down, stormed into the orchestra pit, and physically removed every copy of the song from the players’ music stands before flying straight back to New York. “That night, Patti LuPone just had to leave the stage without singing it,” Schwartz says. “Of course, Merrick knew very well that was illegal according to my contract, and so the next day it was back in the show.” Time, however, has proven Merrick wrong: both about the song, and the show.
“After a lot of honing, I believe we have finally arrived at a version of the show that works,” Schwartz reflects, “and now we will finally have a high-level production in New York, coming up soon at Classic Stage Company.” Opening November 11 with Oscar winner Ariana DeBose in the title role, the long-awaited New York premiere of The Baker’s Wife will run through December 21.
But before Schwartz can celebrate the new triumphs of The Baker’s Wife and Wicked: For Good, he has to open The Queen of Versailles on Broadway. Directed by his Hunchback of Notre Dame leading man Michael Arden and starring his longtime friend (and original Glinda) Kristin Chenoweth, the musical adapts the 2012 documentary about the Siegels, who tried to build the largest private home in America until the 2008 financial crisis derailed their plans and their fortunes. The musical makes good on a multi-decade promise Schwartz made to Chenoweth. “The story seemed to be a microcosm of a lot of things going on in America right now,” Schwartz explains. “And after all these years of Kristin asking, ‘When are you going to write a new show for me, finally, 20-some-odd years after Wicked, it seemed this was the right one.”
Reflecting on a career that now spans seven decades, Schwartz is pragmatic yet grateful. “I know how tough and mean the commercial theatre can be,” he says. “But lately, since Wicked, I’ve been able to take a lot of joy in the process. And I just hope it continues that way.”