THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Glory Ride, a new musical world-premiering in London and written by father and daughter team Todd Buchholz and Victoria Buchholz, is about an unknown story - Gino Bartali, Italian cyclist megastar, Tour de France winner, who secretly risked his life saving hundreds of Jews and other refugees from fascism during World War II. Peter Lawler met up with Todd and Victoria to find out all about the show – their first musical.
How did you find out about Bartali's story?
Victoria: I had a lifelong fascination with Tuscany and I was traveling in Italy about nine years ago when I stumbled on him in a Florence guidebook. I thought this is something that has to be told. So I make an international phone call to my Dad...
Todd, what was your first reaction?
Todd: You're kidding – why haven't I heard this before? Why would a bicycle be helpful in a war? I was picturing Panzers, Messerschmitts – how would a bicycle outmaneuver airplanes, tank and rifles?
Does that question come from the show?
Todd: Well, the answer is the bicycle - and the bicyclist - outsmarts the military as opposed to going head to head on the battlefield.
Victoria: I would say this isn't really a war story. It's a story about people who are not, for the most part, soldiers, but who are finding their own ways to fight evil.
Todd: It's more a heist story than a military story. It's a con, and an unlikely assortment coming together, who otherwise would have nothing in common. The Cardinal of Tuscany on a bicycle in his robes, that's hard to imagine! Hard to imagine a champion cyclist having much in common with a quiet accountant who doesn't get out much! So they're unlikely people that choose to come together to do something frightening and treacherous. And my goodness!
So had you played with narrative much before you stumbled across Bartali's story?
Victoria: Both of us love storytelling. He started publishing books when he was in his 20s. My first memories are watching musicals with him and our family, then talking about them afterwards. And I've written a play that had been produced in a regional context.
Todd: Neither of us had written a musical and neither of us had tackled something as epic as a World War Two Heist/Redemption story!
So this is…
Todd: Reckless and foolish!
And it's your first collaboration?
Todd: We've written articles together. We published an article in The New York Times, and we've written non-fiction together.
Victoria: It doesn't really feel like our first because we've been working on it for quite a while. For nine years. And yeah, we're still speaking.
The show started out in workshops in New York and LA and then a concert here in London. And now it's a full scale musical, how has it changed over time?
Victoria: It's difficult when you're trying to tell a story that is so sweeping, that involves so many different characters and so many different interesting points. We've been working on a script for making this a TV series because it feels like something that could have so many different chapters. It has evolved, and one of the challenges has been choosing the most important story to get in there, because we have so many different angles. Is this the Gino Bartali story and our other characters are just side characters? Is this a story about an unlikely group and Gino Bartali is one of those characters? Just trying to figure out the right balance between biopic versus an ensemble has been challenging and it's changed and evolved because of that.
Todd: Also, because it is a bit of an adventure and a heist it would be very easy to fall into the trap of spending too much time on logistics, which does not have an emotional pull. Over the course of nine years we learned how to tell a story in a way that affects the audience profoundly, as opposed to just engaging their rational mind and the mechanisms of making things happen.
One thing that's been consistent is that we felt that because people associate Italy with many good things – food, music, family, we thought we could tell this story with appropriate comic relief, which was difficult to imagine doing if it was set in, say, Nuremberg. From the first draft, we tried to find ways to convey the humanity and good humor of many characters, as opposed to focusing on the darkness that took place in that period. We hope that audiences will laugh and cry.Victoria: We have some characters whom we've known from day one and others have evolved as we've gotten deeper into the story. But it's always been about telling the stories of these individuals, how they found their own way of overcoming obstacles and resisting and fighting back and staying true to their beliefs, that's always been the North Star.
Todd: And each of the characters has to wrestle with their conscience, or their past, or his or her commanding officer. They've chosen not to take the easiest way. So you see Cardinal Dalla Costa wrestling with his conscience and the instructions of Pope Pius and Mussolini, and he's not entirely sure what he's supposed to do when those come into conflict.
Victoria: One of the things that first drew me to the story is that while he was doing these missions, helping to transport documents and get Jews and other oppressed people out of Italy, he did not tell his wife what he was doing. Because it would be dangerous to her if she was caught by the black shirts, she would be tortured. And so he was leaving her home, pregnant, with their newborn son. I thought, if I was his wife in those moments, not knowing if he was going to come home at night, I don't know that I'd be calling him a hero. I might be saying what about me? What about our child? How could you do this? How could you lie to me? That's always been a compelling element.
We're not trying to say, this is what evil is. We're actually trying to ask, what do you do when there are only difficult choices, and perhaps there may not be a right choice. I think that's interesting for an audience, to be able to decide for themselves.To what extent do you feel like an obligation to be faithful to history, and where did you have to make sacrifices for the sake of the story?
Victoria: I wouldn't call it a sacrifice, but our timeline is a bit condensed, without jumping around too much. Our costume designer has been painstakingly focused on making sure every single thing is authentic.
Todd: They're handmade to what it would have been around back then. The winner's jersey of the Tour de France is handmade to look exactly like the winner's shirt from 1938, so nothing off the rack, nothing from Amazon. We've gone to great lengths to educate ourselves. Neither of us spoke Italian when we began, we're not particularly proficient but...
Victoria: We can read like a kindergartener now. We take Italian lessons together. The only thing that's obviously not of the era is the music and that's a creative choice. The goal here is, this is a story that isn't just about 1940s or about Italy or war, it's something that is relevant now in a lot of ways, so I've never been interested in constraining the music to one era...
Todd: We didn't feel prohibited from having an electric guitar in the band, if it's used appropriately to convey the emotions of the scene.
Victoria: The inspiration is really the emotions that we believe the characters are feeling at different story beats. With a couple exceptions, I try not to write music until we've decided what needs to happen in a scene or what needs to happen with the character.
Todd: The songs help tell the story, they're not there to interrupt, to entertain the audience with something catchy or something romantic. They each have their purpose that otherwise can be used in dialogue. For example we made a conscious decision that the way a character should persuade the bishops to provide money would be more effective if told through song.
Victoria: Also I have in certain songs tried to channel the feeling of being on a bicycle and trying to climb hills and that intensity and energy.
Did you do much cycling in preparation?
Victoria: Honestly, no - I have a stationary cycle! But in imagining that and reading and channeling our characters again, I think that in the music we have, at least musically, captured what we imagined Gino and other people went through.
You wanted the audiences to feel a resonance and relevance to something contemporary. What resonates with you about today's world?
Victoria: There are parallels with the notion that certain evils are going on, but we're not going to call it evil. Obviously there's the Russian current situation. But to me, there are still bad people, bad entities, bad governments, etc. One of our characters says, there's always evil, there are always people who are going to be bad and make, you know, make the world worse than then there are people who are going to make the world better and I think that's always going to be true, so stories like this are hopefully always going to feel relevant.
Todd: The story also raises the question, who belongs here? Who is entitled to be here - by birth? By legal construct? By blood? The rise of fascist nationalism in Italy is not so different from what we see in the world in certain places today. The parallels between Mussolini and Vladimir Putin are startling. Even just on a superficial level, if you Google, 'Mussolini and Putin shirtless', you'll see both of them fishing, skiing... It's the same story of trying to demonstrate the virility of this nationalist leader, and using propaganda, and poisoning those who don't follow you.
Victoria: Another theme that we explore about what happens when having a different opinion, or voicing that opinion, makes you an enemy. Even if the opinion is having a tolerance for different ideas and perspectives. That's obviously important, but not always given to everybody. You can look back on 1940s Italy and other places and ask, how could you have done this? You knew these people were evil, so why didn't you stand up to them? But you could easily ask the same question of many different people around the world today. We're looking at it with hindsight, but when people look at us and our world in the future, are they going to ask the same questions?
We've interviewed husband and wife teams before, but I'm curious how the collaborative dynamic works between a father and a daughter?
Todd: Victoria writes the music and the lyrics. Every once in a while I chime in with a lyrical suggestion.
Victoria: Yeah, or he'll say 'you can do better' - and honestly I know, and I appreciate it. Many of the songs have derived from his titles - he's good at song titles.
Todd: We wrote the book together and that's, that's fully 50/50. Sometimes we're in a room, writing a scene and, line by line, proposing it. Other times we'll go off by ourselves, come back with something and share it and see whether it's worth discussing. It hasn't been a consistent process, we haven't found one way to do it.
There was an American sportswriter in New York, Fred Smith, who was talking about writing and someone said, how do you find it? Fred said 'Oh, writing is easy. All you do is take out a razor blade and slit your wrists every day.' We had an easier time than that!Todd, you have an extraordinary 'portfolio career' - law and economics degrees from Harvard and Cambridge, best-selling author, inventor and senior White House economic adviser. How many aspects of your skills come in handy in musical theater?
Todd: That's a very good question. Well, certainly my knowledge of history and politics, but even in my nonfiction work there is storytelling involved. My first book, which I wrote as a graduate student at Cambridge, is called New Ideas for Dead Economists. It's now in its fourth revised edition, it's been out for decades and it is used all around the world - I convey the principles of economics by telling stories about Adam Smith, and John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman. I do a lot of corporate lecturing around the world on the economy and finance, but I don't just spout out a bunch of numbers. I have learned in doing that how to engage the audience. Early in my career I taught economics at Harvard and before going into the classroom, planning the lesson, I would think about how I was going to keep the attention of these 19 year olds while discussing some mathematical or economic curve. Storytelling again. And when I worked at the White House, if I was trying to persuade the President of United States to adopt a certain policy, I had to have a cogent way of explaining it. And moreover, I had to give him a cogent way that he could explain the policy to the press, to the public, to Congress. So storytelling is actually a thread throughout what I've done.
How much do politics and musical theater overlap?
Victoria: On a personal note, as someone who's somewhat introverted, I consider myself a relatively good strategist, but have never had an interest in politics. But if politics is the art of helping people do whatever it is one wants them to do, maybe that's in theater. It is really hard to get a musical produced. Maybe not politics as in political issues, but in terms of trying to get a coalition or a group of the right people to believe in the story, or to act in the way that you want, or to do some small element and convince them that moment will make a difference to the overall show... So I think Todd's experience in trying to get disparate groups of people together would be relevant in theater.
Todd: The community of actors, producers directors, like any other institution, is a bit of a neighborhood, and people are very comfortable with the people they already know. A father and daughter showing up can be difficult for some people. But it's difficult for anyone wanting to create art.
I have to be honest with you, I used to laugh at Stephen Sondheim's song, 'Putting It Together' which has a line “Art Isn't Easy”. Laying bricks is not easy. Putting down asphalt in the heat of the Jersey summer is not easy! But I can tell you that after nine years of trying to get Glory right on stage, he was right!Victoria: And that's how much we believe in the story. That's really what it comes down to, what we have been doing this for. It's because we believe in a story, we think this is worth fighting for.
You guys have been incredibly generous with your time. We usually end with this question which I'll ask Victoria first. What is the best thing about being Victoria Buchholz?
Victoria: One of my earliest memories is dancing around our living room with The King and I and these other musicals, that was formative in my mind thanks to my father. Coming across a story, and being able to transform these things that I've thought and felt and experienced into characters on stage, it's hard to imagine how anything could be better than that.
And what's the best thing about being Todd Buchholz?
Todd: My parents were different sorts of people. My dad was a World War II veteran who instilled a sense of duty and honesty and patriotism. And my mother is probably the best storyteller I've ever met, with one of the finest senses of humor and quick wits. So that's given me the advantage of knowing the importance of hard work, but also being able to turn things upside down and laugh at them at the same time.
Victoria: And he's helped create another household like that. I can attest to that!
The world premiere of Todd and Victoria Buchholz's Glory Ride is at Charing Cross Theatre, London, April 22 to July 29. www.gloryridemusical.com
