"I dreamt of Manderley" : Attending the opening of 'Rebecca The Musical' in Vienna
by Brendon Henderson, Guest Editorial
Twitter: @WaitWings
1.
“We don’t like to talk about the show before opening…because something could curse it.”
Roswitha Kunze tells it like it is, and after she told me this, I knew she meant it.
Still slightly jet-lagged from a cramped 8-hour flight, my brain tried navigating through the fog to make sense of the situation I found myself in. What day of the week was it? How did I wind up in an Austrian cafe? How do I order something called, “Kaffee Mit Schlag” without getting punched in the face?
Everything came back into perspective after Roswitha Kunze told me that — the brief silence masked by clinking silverware and the rustling papers of a piano player setting up for his evening set at the Cafe Diglas in Vienna. Given the history of the show in question, any concerns of curses held validity. My eyes shifted to her husband, Michael, sitting in the booth next to her. A girl at a table across from us, no older than 12, secretly propped her phone up to take a picture of him before showing her mother. He had to be nervous, but the relaxed demour he held while drinking his cappuccino didn’t show it.
The odyssey of his musical Rebecca rivaled the classic whodunit novel it was based on.
It had been 16 years since the show first took to the stage in Vienna, and ten years since its planned Broadway transfer went down in flames. But none of that seemed to matter as he leaned back in his booth and told me with a gentle smile, “I think we have a great show.”
Michael and I first met in a series of emails and phone interviews I conducted for a documentary on Rebecca das Musical last year. Admittedly, the history behind the doomed New York transfer piqued the curiosity of many a commenter on my YouTube channel (and myself, as well). This story had everything. Multi-million dollar fraud, betrayal, lies, deceit–the perfect venomous ingredients to create a truly sensational headline.
After announcing I’d cover the topic, this comment from Katie-Louise Veidt caught my eye:
“What happened in New York didn’t have anything to do with the show.'' Kunze tells me, as we drink yet another collection of cappuccinos in the lobby of his hotel once inhabited by Mozart, and I begin questioning if my kidneys are gonna survive this trip.
“It was about the financing and the people who were involved in the production. It didn’t have anything to do with the structure…or the content of the show.”
Up to this point, my only exposure to Rebecca mirrored that of everyone else who didn’t live near Vienna in 2006: cast albums, archived television performances, and LOTS of poor-quality Viennese bootlegs. No matter the form, the incredible theatricality and the raw energy of the score transcended its tiny confines. Hence, the beauty of the show made it all the more heartbreaking when any google searches for it ended with a barrage of links only highlighting the scandal.
After four months, the documentary finally made its way online. I’d be lying if I said Kunze’s approval of it didn’t mean a lot to me. With how badly this show and everyone involved got dragged through the mud, it was important to me.
If I’ve learned anything after four years of documenting musicals, it’s that it’s important to dive past the attention-grabbing headlines to recognize that they involve actual human beings.
Human beings who don’t want to wake up when the alarm clock goes off, who misplace their car keys, who take way too many pictures of their pets, and who aren’t immune to feelings of hope, frustration, and disappointment.
This made it all the more stressful when I finally got his response to the documentary in October 2021. Thankfully, he enjoyed it and confirmed that it was factually sound.
That alone would have been enough for me. But later that week, he took things one step further and invited me to fly out to Vienna this fall to actually experience the musical in person.
2.
Do you ever want to find the fastest way to feel imposter syndrome? Go to a red carpet opening night.
Growing up in a small town in Utah, the only red carpet I’ve experienced came from spilling kool-aid on the carpet of my friend’s run-down trailer. Definitely a far cry from the exterior of the Raimund Theater on September 22nd, 2022. Countless tall tables circled by people dressed in suits and dresses that probably cost more than I make in three months. Blinding lights from the monstrous television cameras of German news networks and an intoxicating blend of colognes and perfumes strong enough to knock out a horse.
Then there was me. The 20-something kid with a tiny camera on a tripod and a cheap suit I panic bought from Macy’s after watching Mission Impossible 5.
In the theater world, I’ve dealt with a lot of egos, and given the amount of success Michael Kunze, he could get away with having a massive one. I mean heck, he beat out Andrew Lloyd Webber to score the staging rights to Rebecca and the revival has already sold 60,000 tickets.
When we showed up, Rebecca played on a loop above the baggage carousels, adorned the walls of train station after train station, and featured prominently on a billboard outside the Vienna State Opera house. Heck, the Raimund Theater’s display case celebrating past shows was 95% Kunze musicals.
All of which makes it even more remarkable that after emerging from the flashing lights and paparazzi encircling him after leaving his car, Michael and Roswitha found their way to us – speaking to us on this gorgeous red carpet as if it were our table back at the cafe.
Walking up to The Raimund was like walking up to a dream. It was a place that up to this point, only existed in my imagination, using Google images to build up phrases like: “The Viennese air was abuzz with anticipation.” and “ The warm glow from the exterior lights seemed to wrap the Raimund theater in a celebratory embrace as Rebecca neared the end of a nearly 10-year journey. “
Originally just a sentence I conjured up trying to sound like a dollar-store Hemingway, I find now that there’s no better way to describe it. The smiles and positive reception to the piece made all the negativity from 10 years earlier feel like it never existed, as we all took our seats and gazed upon the massive, fiery “R” blazing before us, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of Manderley.
3.
If you pull up one of the countless Rebecca clips online, you can clearly tell that this show is big. But only once you see it in person can you comprehend just how HUGE this set is. Kunze and producers sought to keep the set virtually unchanged from the original Vienna production. This allowed people who never got to see the 2006 staging to experience it, while also inviting people who were little kids at the time to revisit it as adults.
The flair of the 1980s megamusical left an indelible mark on Kunze, a good friend of director Hal Prince and the translator for Andrew Lloyd Webber hits like Cats, Evita, and Phantom of the Opera. From the cast, to the orchestra, to the gigantic staircase, Rebecca, in many ways, felt like a show Broadway hasn’t seen in quite some time – the scale unmatched by anything I’ve seen in the past three years.
With the massive elements at play, the performances from the cast needed to be just as big for fear of getting lost in it all. Luckily, the mix of veteran performers and newcomers rose to the challenge, the standouts Nienke Latten as “I” (or “Ich” in German) and Willemijin Verkaik bringing the house down (literally) as Mrs. Danvers.
After the two belted out the jaw-droppingly high final note of the song “Rebecca”, the house erupted into a deafening applause that would have lasted all night if they didn’t stop us. At that moment, I understood why producers Ben Sprecher and Louise Forlenza remained so dedicated to bringing the show to New York when everything started falling apart.
As Sprecher’s defense attorney Ronald Russo claimed in an interview with me last year, “It knocked him out.”
All of which raises the $12 million dollar question: would the show have worked on Broadway?
The question was inescapable as I exited the Raimund and looked at the marquee shining bright, envisioning what would have happened if I was looking at it outside of the Broadhurst Theater in New York.
In this writer’s opinion, I don’t think it would have.
The show is just too big, too exaggerated, and too dramatic for the commercial Broadway crowds. Sure, producers could try to tame it down, but in doing so they would rip out the soul of what makes Rebecca work so well.
Even though I don’t know any German outside of “Guten Morgen” (which I learned from the overly enthusiastic flight attendant on the plane to Vienna), the sheer intensity and over-exaggeration of the piece kept me engaged and able to follow the story through each twist and turn.
It’s exactly that kind of high drama and extravagant, larger-than-life spectacle that makes the show so special, so remarkable, and is the reason it continues to draw in audiences around the globe.
To mess with that would ultimately ruin the musical. Kunze agrees.
When I asked Michael if there was any part of him that wanted to try taking the show to New York again, I couldn’t even finish the question before he cut me off with a quick “No. We don’t need to.”
Too often, artists in the theatre place their entire self-worth on making it on Broadway. While there’s nothing wrong with that dream, it's important to remember that it’s not the end-all-be-all for deciding whether a piece of art or its creator is valuable or not.
Michael Kunze is living proof that one doesn’t need Broadway to lead a happy and successful life in the arts. Honestly, not being on Broadway has probably made him even happier.
As the cast practically dragged him on stage against his will for the curtain call, I thought about something we talked about as we finished our cappuccinos earlier in the day. From Elisabeth, to Mozart!, to Rebecca, one consistent theme appears in Kunze’s work.
Independence.
“How one emancipates and becomes themself,” as Michael would put it.
When I asked him why he thinks this theme continues to arise in his works, he took a second and plainly responded,
“I don’t know.”
~~
Brendon Henderson is the creator of the critically acclaimed Broadway documentary series, ‘Wait in the Wings’, dedicated to presenting high-quality history & analysis for the modern theater lover. 80,000+ subscribers and over 6 million total views. www.youtube.com/waitinthewings