Rick Elice: The Winding Road to Jersey

About the author:
It’s a rare feat for a first-time musical book writer to achieve Tony-nominated success—and rarer still for that first show to become a long-running smash hit. But Rick Elice was no theatrical newbie when he partnered with Oscar-winning screenwriter Marshall Brickman on the outstanding book of Jersey Boys. As creative director at the theatrical ad agency Serino Coyne, Elice spent almost two decades analyzing what works onstage and, as he explains in this appealingly modest essay, his theatrical roots actually go even deeper. Who knew that he entered Yale Drama School after graduating from Cornell with the intention of becoming an actor? Or that he first worked with Jersey Boys director Des McAnuff as a cast member in the Public Theater’s production of The Death of von Richthofen as Witnessed from Earth, a 1982 musical written, composed and directed by McAnuff? By all accounts, the success of Jersey Boys couldn’t have happened to a nicer person, and Elice has another big show on tap in 2009, The Addams Family. Here, he reflects on a happy life in the theater.

When I was at Yale Drama School, nobody was into Broadway musicals. It just wasn’t cool. Everybody was genuflecting at the altar of Chekhov, but working on Broadway was my private dream. Don’t get me wrong—I loved me some Chekhov. You know that speech of Sorin’s in The Seagull: “I want to give Kostya a subject for a story,” the old man says. “It’s called ‘The Man Who Wanted To.’ When I was young, I wanted to be a writer, but I couldn’t put two words together. I wanted to make speeches, but I stutter too much. I wanted to get married, and here I am, still single…”

My “Chekhov” story could be called “The Man Who Lucked Out” subtitle: A Broadway Fable.

I got into Yale with no resume. Lucked out. Was hired in a Broadway musical the day I graduated. On the strength of that, got an agent, an apartment and a life. Lucked out.

Five months later, I was fired. Lost the agent, wrote pitch letters for 75 bucks a week, ate a lot of baked beans, but I lucked out again. Was hired by American Repertory Theatre, and two years later, returned to New York ready, once more, for Broadway. Choreographed a show at the Astor Place and heard about auditions for a musical Joe Papp was doing across the street, written and directed by this freakishly talented Canadian dude, Des McAnuff, about the Red Baron—a big production that was definitely going to Broadway. I got cast. Lucked out.

The critics didn’t much like it. The transfer evaporated. But while I was performing Des’ musical at night, I picked up a part-time day job: writing funny headlines at an ad agency specializing in Broadway shows. Lucked out.

A month later, I was offered: a season at the Guthrie, a full-time copywriting job at the agency and a shot at a trans-Atlantic love affair. I passed on the Guthrie. Lucked out.

The copy job became a career as a creative director, trailer cutter, commercial director, radio producer and friend to one of Broadway’s greatest resources, and a great woman, Nancy Coyne. Lucked out.

The love affair, now almost 27 years later, continues, albeit on this side of the ocean. Really lucked out on that one.

In 2000, I left the ad agency to consult at a motion picture studio. I had been the captain of a team, and suddenly, I was an independent contractor with nobody to talk to or bounce ideas off of. The work was interesting, but my life was emptier than Pete Doherty’s minibar at the Chateau Marmont.

Then I lucked out again. Got a call about doing a musical about the Four Seasons. Lucked out again: asked my buddy he hates when I say “hero” Marshall Brickman if he wanted to write a Broadway musical with me. He said “Why not? I love Vivaldi.”

For a “writer” like me, partnering with Marshall Brickman is the 11 o’clock number in the musical of my life.

Then I lucked out again: Des McAnuff, the guy who’d hired me back in 1982, said—before the show was even written—that he’d direct it at La Jolla Playhouse.

I remember the box office at La Jolla telling us, after five previews of Jersey Boys, that they were inundated with repeat customers coming back with friends. As a former marketer, that was when I knew we’d lucked out again. Big time. A few months later, we were in rehearsals for Broadway.

Four years, and six companies of Jersey Boys, later, I get to stand in the back of various theaters in various parts of the world and watch audiences watch our show, leaving a bit happier and lighter in their hearts than when they arrived. That is the best.

Get to write another show The Addams Family with Mr. Brickman. Get to work with Andrew Lippa, Phelim McDermott, Julian Crouch, Sergio Trujillo. Get to stand in the back of another Broadway theater and watch other audiences laughing, enjoying themselves.

So here I am. One lucky so-and-so. Keenly aware of all the happy accidents that’ve brought me to this point. Keenly grateful to all the people I’ve watched and learned from since I fell in love with theater as a kid.

If I were asked what kind of a writer I am, I imagine the great film director Stanley Donen who introduced me to Marshall Brickman saying, “Let’s define our terms. Tom Stoppard’s a great writer. Stephen Sondheim. Pinter. Kushner. Miller. Perelman. Steinbeck. Chekhov. Like that. Now, what kind of a writer do you think you are?”

I suppose my answer would be, a helluva lucky one.