‘Big River’ rolls along to a new sound
Jeff Calhoun thought his career couldn’t go much lower when he was asked to direct a musical with deaf performers.
“I remember thinking, ‘So this is what my career has come to, to go to Studio City (in California) and direct a musical where half the cast is deaf.’ Now I’m ashamed that is what went through my mind,” Calhoun said.
The musical ended up changing the course of his career — and his attitude.
At the time of his call from the Deaf West Theatre company, Calhoun was coming off the demise of Tommy Tune’s musical “Busker Alley,” which closed in Tampa on its way to Broadway after Tune broke his foot. (Calhoun had already directed and choreographed a hit Broadway revival of “Grease.”)
So he agreed to direct the musical “Oliver!,” which combined hearing and deaf performers who would either speak and sing or use American sign language.
“It was a freak thing, and I felt like we had gotten away with something,” Calhoun said in a phone interview from San Diego, where he is directing “Himself and Nora,” a new musical about James Joyce and his lover, Nora Barnacle.
Although he was initially hesitant, he agreed to try it again with the 1987 Tony Award-winning musical “Big River,” based on Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The score is by Roger Miller, best known for the hit “King of the Road.”
After a well-received production in Los Angeles, the new version of “Big River” opened on Broadway in July 2003 and was greeted with a special Tony Award for Excellence in the Theatre and critical praise for combining deaf and hearing performers.
The New York Times said, “This adaptation of Twain’s epochal account of an American odyssey makes the crucial point that there’s more than one way to tell a story and to sing a song. Though the coordination and integration of signed, spoken and sung language are surely a matter of great complexity, you’re never allowed to sense the effort.”