Sometimes a Broadway show must die before another can be born. It's a kind of philosophizing not usually invoked in the commercial musical theater, where that world is usually divided into the hits and flops columns. But after his musical The Wild Party failed to transfer to Broadway in 2000, and his mental and physical well-being took a hit, Andrew Lippa needed to find new ways to define success.
"It was a very big blow to me because I thought that was the end, and I didn't know that it was actually the beginning of something," Lippa said recently. "I have learned in my spiritual life that those kinds of deaths are the most necessary things in our lives. The great part of getting older is the letting go, because you're aware time is more valuable. I think I'm working on more things now than I was 10 years ago."
Since The Wild Party, Lippa, 51, has written songs for Broadway musicals based on The Addams Family and the movie Big Fish, as well as the oratorio I Am Harvey Milk, which had its debut with the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus in 2013 with Lippa as the title character. A new musical based on Jules Feiffer's illustrated book The Man in the Ceiling, which will officially debut next year in Sag Harbor, N.Y., was seen last year at TheatreWorks in its New Works Festival.
"And now here we are back at TheatreWorks in Mountain View, and I get to be celebrated for a month for my creations," Lippa said. "I can't think of a more positive or uplifting way to spend my life."
Lippa was talking about The Life of the Party, having its U.S. debut at TheatreWorks in Mountain View. It's made up of songs from all the Lippa musicals mentioned above, but it's not done in Side by Side by Lippa style. "We don't do the songs randomly," he said. "We do segments from the shows in characters and costumes, sort of like the Reader's Digest versions of them. There's just something about the way the songs connect to each other and the way the actors get to do them that you don't need context."
The Life of the Party was first staged in London in 2014, opening to a slew of positive reviews despite the fact that none of Lippa's shows has yet been produced there. It was presented by the esteemed Menier Chocolate Factory, from where the most recent Broadway revivals of A Little Night Music and La Cage aux Folles originated, and its artistic director, David Babani, is also directing the production at TheatreWorks.
And as he was in London, Lippa will be part of the four-member cast that includes Broadway veterans Sally Ann Triplett and Teal Wicks in addition to London holdover Damian Humbley. Lippa was also in the workshop of The Man in the Ceiling and will be performing again in the musical's first full production next year in Sag Harbor.
"Our director, David, had seen me do a concert in London a year before, and we had a what-if discussion over dinner," Lippa said of the initial ideas for The Life of the Party. "I said I wanted to be in it, playing the parts I would be shooting for at an audition. And I wanted to dance. That's long been something I wanted to do, and I needed a good excuse for it, frankly."
While Lippa has performed on and off over the years, he always chose writing over acting when decisions had to be made. But by playing Harvey Milk in his oratorio first in San Francisco and then in many other cities with gay men's choruses, the urge to perform in his own works began to deepen. "It felt like a really good way to get started and to get known as an actor," he said. "But I have the luxury problem of being committed to my own work so much that I can't commit to a long run of someone else's show."
His fellow performers in The Life of the Party all have considerable stage experience, and Lippa did have some anxiety about sharing the stage with them. "But then my husband said the most wonderful thing. He said, 'There's no reason for you to be nervous. Who's the biggest expert on Andrew Lippa? It's actually a bigger challenge for the other actors playing scenes with the guy who put the words in their mouths.' But I just want to be treated as a member of the company without any other status than that."
Lippa also brushes away any questions about what the future may hold for The Life of the Party. "I want it to sell as many tickets and be as joyfully received as possible in Mountain View," he said. "I have learned not to live in the future tense, but enjoy the things I make in the present."
Lippa has queried Jules Feiffer, his 87-year-old collaborator on The Man in the Ceiling, how he has managed to keep going amid the brickbats that have often enough arrived along with the accolades. "Jules looked right at me, and he said, 'It's very simple. Outlive the bastards.'"
The Life of the Party will run through Sept. 18 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $19-$80. Call (650) 463-1960 or go to theatreworks.org.