Passage Theatre Company revisits ‘Move It and It’s Yours!’ for its 20th anniversary season.
By: Susan Van Dongen
So you have a piano that you just can’t keep anymore. Perhaps you’re moving to a smaller place up a few flights of stairs, or you replaced the acoustic instrument with an electronic keyboard, or maybe the person who once played the piano so lovingly has passed on.
And you come to realize that, except for urban areas and musical meccas, a certain species seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth piano movers. How do you get this behemoth out of your space once and for all?
That was partly the premise for Move It and It’s Yours! The musical comedy by Bill Weeden, David Finkle and Sally Fay opens Passage Theatre Company’s 20th anniversary season Oct. 27 in Trenton.
It’s a story about Charlie, a man about to leave for his wedding and honeymoon, trying to get rid of his prized baby grand. Rather than pay movers to cart it off, he posts signs around his New York neighborhood that advertise "move it and it’s yours!" The signs attract an array of wacky, musically inclined characters who come to tickle the ivories, ponder piano ownership and try Charlie’s patience.
Meanwhile, Charlie isn’t totally convinced that he should let his baby grand go after all, it represents his lifelong dream of being a successful songwriter.
Mr. Finkle, a Trenton native living in Manhattan, recalls going through a similar ordeal with a piano that had been in the family for years. He was relocating to a place that simply didn’t have the space for the instrument and he was forced to sell it.
In his case, however, he took the idea to his co-writers and imagined a perfect opportunity to showcase a number of original songs in a variety of styles.
"People came in to see the piano I was selling and quite a few of them wanted to play it, of course," he says. "I remember hearing a lot of different music, standards, country and western, even some opera. I don’t remember hearing a lot of classical music. Some played beautifully and others plunked or hunted and pecked. Others knew they wanted to play but didn’t know anything about the piano, didn’t know how to play yet.
"When Bill and Sally and I thought about it, we figured we’d put in all kinds of music rock, gospel, country and western, ballads," he continues. "So it’s kind of a pastiche. We have a total of eight actors in the show who play something like 14 or 16 parts. Some of them will play the piano. It’s all original music, which was really challenging to write, but we’ve done a lot of things (throughout our careers)."
They playwriting partners had been creating humorous revues for off-Broadway, but also to amuse business clients all over the country. In fact, they’re probably some of the best-known entertainers in the corporate world.
"We’ve written and performed almost everything you can imagine," Mr. Finkle says. "And although we say the book, lyrics and music are all by us, Bill does most of the composing. Sally and I do most of the writing."
Passage Theatre produced the world premiere of Move It and It’s Yours! in 1998, and the show received critical acclaim, including the "Best Musical New to New Jersey" award from the Newark Star-Ledger. It’s being directed by Jeff Cohen, founder of New York’s Worth Street Theater. Mr. Finkle speculates that the play might be under preparations to be staged in New York.
"This is a pre-New York try out," he says. "We don’t know for sure, but Jeff Cohen is directing it with this in mind. Before this, the only production we’ve had was with the Passage Theatre in ’98. But June (Ballinger) liked it so much she wanted to bring it back for the 20th anniversary season. It’s nice for us to be able to work on it again. It’s a musical that has potential for an audience and deserves to find it.
"Bringing it back has been enormously rewarding for me and Sally and Bill," he continues. "It’s pretty much the same but it needed some updating. For instance, when we started writing, the cell phone wasn’t around. Now, if people needed to use the phone quickly, they don’t have to leave the building to find a pay phone or borrow someone’s landline. These are things you don’t think about."
No cell phones? It sounds like Move It and It’s Yours! was written in the Stone Age. Not quite, says Mr. Finkle, but it goes back to the early ’90s and took years to finish, since the partners had to squeeze the writing process in between all their corporate work.
"We had to write the musical in between assignments, so it took about seven years to get it entirely done," he says.
The three partners began as Weeden, Finkle and Fay, mostly a comedy and cabaret trio writing and performing social satire off-Broadway.
As well as winning awards for their nightclub act, they have written and performed two original off-Broadway musicals, Trust Us and Survival Kitsch. Their successful children’s musical, Babar’s Birthday, commissioned by Theatreworks USA, toured theaters and schools all over the country. Through their corporate entertainment firm, the partners have written, performed and produced humorous business shows for a long list of Fortune 500 companies, including Fortune magazine itself. That aspect of their career came to them through blind luck, Mr. Finkle says.
They were making a decent living in the early ’80s, but envied the more financially rewarding corporate work, wondering how to break into the business.
"We got some attention because we wrote for the Obie Awards and that one particular year the Obies were televised," Mr. Finkle says. "Someone from the marketing department at ‘Fortune’ (magazine) saw us, loved us and asked us to write their 50th anniversary show.
"We toured the country and because they were presenting it for all the companies, by the time the tour was over we had all these offers," he continues. "So in three to six months, we went from wondering how to break into this business to being entrenched in it."
The seeds for Move It and It’s Yours! were planted when producer/director Ira Weitzman of Playwrights Horizons heard one of Weeden, Finkle and Fay’s performances and suggested they flex their collective talents and do a musical.
"Then I had that lucky day when I sold my piano and got the idea for the play," Mr. Finkle says. "Nothing would have happened if my living room had been slightly larger. The piano would still be sitting there with all my sheet music on it."
Move It and It’s Yours! plays at Passage Theatre Company, Mill Hill Playhouse, Front and Montgomery streets, Trenton, Oct. 27-Nov. 19. Performances: Thurs.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2, 8 p.m.; Sun. 5 p.m. Tickets cost $25. For information, call (609) 392-0766. On the Web: www.passagetheatre.org