Quotable Quotes: Dishing with the Company of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
WHERE Hip hotspot Copacabana
WHEN Thursday, March 3
"There's this little oiled machine of people who trust each other and love each other we just had a great time. And I think it shows on the stage, I really do." -Director Jack O'Brien about working with David Yazbek, Jerry Mitchell and Jeffrey Lane
"It's about going to work with the people you love to work with and being able to have that opportunity over and over again. That's why I did it and that's the fun I've had. I'm looking forward to the next one we all do together." -Choreographer Jerry Mitchell on working with the same group of people
"You can't fake it. You can't fake chemistry and you can't fake the kind of enjoyment we are having with each other." -Joanna Gleason, who plays Muriel Eubanks
"The comedy in this is very difficult. There's one entire scene in which the comedy is based on a retarded individual. There's another in which one character beats another savagely with a willow's stem. It was very, very important to modulate the comedy very carefully and bring the audience along." - John Lithgow, who plays Lawrence Jameson
"I pace a lot during it. I watch and go, 'Does that line work tonight? Does that line not work tonight?'" - Writer Jeffrey Lane
"All of the material is so solid. But there are different audiences every night. We don't even have to discuss it. We know that when we go out we'll get the feel of where the audience is and we both can just put it right in the right pocket. I'm so safe with her." -Gregory Jbara about his frequent scene partner Joanna Gleason
"We literally have the All Star team, I feel. We just feel very lucky and all of us across the board believe in the material and the story so very much that it just makes it a joy to come to work." -Sara Gettelfinger, who plays Jolene Oaks
"I like being responsible for an evening that an audience clearly enjoys from the beginning to the end. I love to feel like we have earned laughs." - Composer and Lyricist David Yazbek
"I've got to move. I love that about this. I love that a prop lands in a different direction, so let's see where the scene take us." -Norbert Leo Butz, who plays Freddy Benson
"Those five people are at the top of their craft." -Jack O'Brien on his stars
"It's sophisticated naughtiness. It's smart. It touches on what's so great about traditional musical theater while still bringing to forward into the future in a way that's very accessible to all types of audiences." -Sherie Rene Scott, who plays Christine Colgate
"John is what every director and choreographer dream of, which is a star who leads your company with so much aplomb, so much style, so much grace, that no one else can be a loud-mouth or backtalk because he doesn't. He's the cream of the crop. And it makes going to work everyday a pleasure." -Jerry Mitchell on John Lithgow
"This cast. A bunch of grown adults doing a great Broadway show. And we're all just happy to be a part of it." -Gregory Jbara
"We've got an extraordinary group of people that hold that stage every night, and we're in the hands of the wonderful creative team, so we're just ready to roll on and do our show." -Sara Gettelfinger
"The comedy and the reality. I've always been fascinated by conmen and the idea of a conman who has to understand what's in another person's heart but can never show who he really is. A conman reflects back a person's dream and that's how he makes his living. And yet, John has a speech about that and says, 'But you can't get to close.' That's always fascinated me, and I think that's the thing that first did it." -Jeffrey Lane on what promted him to turn Scoundrels into a musical
"I hope there's heart. I hope that the laughs are genuine and funny and in the story. Getting a laugh is easy. Having a laugh land in a story line is hard." -Jerry Mitchell
"They are so great together. They work off each other really well and the rest of the cast works off the two of them. So it's sort of like this disease of committed comic energy that spreads throughout." -David Yazbek about Lithgow and Butz
"I think these characters--they're completely nonsexual--but it's very much an affair that they're having. I love that about their relationship." -Norbert Leo Butz about the characters he and Lithgow play on stage
"It's the kind of show for women that always want to come see musicals and their husbands are like, 'No I don't want to go.' The guys will also really enjoy themselves on this one." -Sherie Rene Scott
"I saw him and I just grabbed him and ran him up the aisle and gave him this huge hug. I didn't even know him. And I said, 'We are going to have so much fun.' I just knew it was going to work, chemically. He's just such a great guy." -John Lithgow on his first meeting with Norbert Leo Butz
"It's smart. It's funny. It's naughty. It's heaven." -Joanna Gleason
Interviews by Paul Wontorek
Compiled by Alixandra Liner