David Pittu: Sweet Smell of an Off-Broadway Musical Satire
Some performers are triple-threats. David Pittu, the two-time Tony Award nominee whose character work on Broadway in shows like Love/Musik, Is He Dead? and The Coast of Utopia has earned him numerous accolades, is a quadruple-threat: a performer, director, writer and teacher with almost two decades of stage experience under his belt. Pittu recently channeled his theatrical encounters and real-life inspirations into What’s That Smell?, a hilariously tongue-in-cheek musical revue of fictional and slightly deluded composer Jacob Sterling’s questionable hits as presented on a local cable-access show. The satirical evening, penned, starring and co-directed by the performer, debuted to a sell-out, extended run at Atlantic Theater Company before transferring to off-Broadway’s New World Stages, where it’s running through December 28. In the following essay, Pittu discusses the origins of the madcap, self-obsessed Jacob Sterling, and the occasionally bittersweet “art imitates life” odyssey that he and his character have taken together.
So I write a show where the main character, Jacob Sterling, a struggling composer/lyricist with Broadway dreams, describes how most of his shows have never been produced, mainly due to circumstances beyond his control.
Well, I feel a bit like Jacob at the moment. We had to post our closing this past week, and we will now play our final performance at year’s end. Theater in general feels difficult to keep alive right now, which is especially cruel because it’s times like now when we need it most.
As Tina Fey proved recently, often the best way to bring people together and combat the madness of our age is to reflect it or deflect it in a fun-house mirror. Imagine, selling a Senate seat to the highest bidder, as if it was a ticket to a Mel Brooks musical or a play starring Julia Roberts! Savage satire seems our best bet right now.
What’s That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling was inspired by TV talk shows of my youth, like the ones hosted by Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore, and also by my childhood sense of what famous people, especially entertainers, did on those shows—perform and talk about themselves. I created a format and a character for myself in which to both celebrate and take a scalpel to the junk pile of American culture, which seems to have reached an all-time high or low in terms of trash eclipsing art, and our ability to discern one from the other.
The show’s finale is from Jacob’s first musical to actually premiere on Broadway, Shopping Out Loud, which is basically a mall come to life through songs that, though artfully created in the Sterling style, function really as that truest of American art forms: advertising. If I were to continue Jacob’s tale, Shopping Out Loud would also be cancelled, like all of his other shows, because of bad luck and timing, in this case, forcing a musical celebration of conspicuous consumption on a public trying only to spend money on essentials.
Poor Jacob. I know how he feels. The show opened to ecstatic reviews, sold out and extended its run at Atlantic, and then, thanks to producer Daryl Roth, moved to New World Stages. A few weeks later, despite the exciting change in our government, the sky begins to fall economically. With January around the corner, so often a death knell for theater even in sound economic times, I had a feeling our show would be a limited engagement. But I am grateful that What’s That Smell?, which began largely as an experiment, was so well-received and that it has brought so much laughter to so many people.
Carol Burnett comes to mind:
“I’m so glad we had this time together,
Just to have a laugh and sing a song.
Seems we just get started and before you know it,
Comes the time we have to say, So Long.”
For now, anyway. It’s pretty hard to suppress someone as dedicated and driven as Jacob Sterling.