Forum Theatre stages revival of ‘They’re Playing Our Song’

Tom Frye says he’s always had a warm spot for Neil Simon’s “They’re Playing Our Song,” about the mismatched romance between a wise-cracking, buttoned-down composer and a free-spirit, flower-child lyricist.

“It was the second show I saw during my first trip to Broadway in 1980, sandwiched in between ‘Sweeney Todd’ and ‘Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.’ I fell in love with it because it was so different from the other two. It focuses on just two people. It’s delightfully witty and an absolute crowd pleaser,” says Frye, who is directing a revival of the show that previews Thursday and opens Friday at the Forum Theatre.

“I think of it as a mini-musical or a play with music – not heavy on production numbers and just the right, intimate balance between songs and script. And when you consider the three writers behind it – Neil Simon, Marvin Hamlisch and Carol Bayer Sager – that ain’t too bad. They’ve had a few winners among them.”

The show is loosely based on the real-life relationship between the EGOT-winning (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) Hamlisch and Oscar and Grammy-winning Sager, whose song collaboration in the late 1970s turned to romance for a time. Neil Simon was amused by Hamlisch’s tales of their ups and downs and surprised the couple with a script. They looked it over and decided to provide nine new songs for it. The show opened in 1979 with comedian Robert Klein and Luci Arnaz, in her Broadway debut, and garnered four Tony nominations, including best musical.

For the Forum revival, Ray Wills plays Vernon, the Hamlisch character, and Megan Parsley is Sonia, the Sager character. Each has a three-member chorus behind them to vocalize their inner thoughts. Vernon’s “voices” are Deiondre Teagle, Noah Montgomery and Lance McDougall. Behind Sonia are Cary Hesse, Stacy Farthing and Tillie Ehresman.

Frye says he is keeping the show a nostalgic, pre-cellphone, Bee Gees-era period piece where songwriters composed on paper and piano rather than on computers.

“It was a more innocent time for relationships, before the advent of 24/7 media,” Frye says. “I don’t personally like to think of it as ‘historical,’ but it has been nearly 40 years. However, the relationship at the core is ageless.”

Broadway veteran and Wichita native Wills, who saw the original Broadway production when he first got to New York, is playing Vernon for the second time, after a production about 15 years ago at Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Florida.

“My career has been oddly entwined with Marvin Hamlisch over the years,” says Wills, best known for five years in Broadway’s record-setting “The Producers.” For the past couple of years, he’s been home on sabbatical to teach at both Wichita State University and, currently, at Newman University. Last spring, he starred as Don Quixote in the Forum’s “Man of La Mancha.”

“I actually played Marvin Hamlisch in ‘A Class Act,’ a (2000-01) musical about the making of ‘A Chorus Line,’ which he wrote the music for. I got to meet the real Hamlisch afterward, and I couldn’t help blurting out ‘I just played you,’” Wills says with a laugh.

Now, as Vernon, a fanciful variation of the real Hamlisch, Wills sees his character as “a nice Jewish boy from New York, charming, a gifted musician and, of course, neurotic.”

“That’s the case with a lot of great artists. Vernon has so much music in him that he worries whether he’ll ever be good enough to get it all out,” Wills says. “Imagine being that talented and having the fear that if you ever find real happiness, you might lose your creativity. If you fall in love and say ‘I care more about you than me,’ you might become comfortable, then complacent, and then you’re dead as an artist,” he says.

“I can identify with that feeling. That’s not arrogance. It just comes with the territory. No matter what you’ve accomplished, you still have to work hard to prove yourself.”

Megan Parsley sees her character, Sonia, as “very bright with a lot of energy and a huge heart, but very flakey.”

“I like her openness and her acceptance. She’s kind and compassionate, but, yes, she has flaws. She’s absent-minded, disorganized and a bit of a slob. But that’s part of her charm,” says Parsley, most recently seen in several melodramas at Mosley Street, the Forum’s “Hello, Dolly!” and Crown’s “Shrek.” Nationally, she toured with “Kiss Me, Kate!”

Vernon is somewhat uptight, cynical, regimented, conservative and Republican while Sonia is loosey-goosey, optimistic, somewhat scattered, liberal and Democratic. They are beautifully mismatched.

“But they are never disrespectful to each other,” she says. “They come together for the love of the music.”

A veteran of many musicals, Parsley says she likes that “They’re Playing Our Song” is more a play with music than a musical with dialogue, so the acting doesn’t take a backseat. Her favorite scene is the inevitable confrontation between the star-crossed but very different lovers.

“There is so much meat and emotion behind the break-up. There’s so much to relate to,” Parsley says. “Neil Simon’s script is so sharp and clever that it gives me a chance to really exercise my acting chops.”

This story was originally published September 21, 2014 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Forum Theatre stages revival of ‘They’re Playing Our Song’."