The Secret Life of Joe DiPietro
By MARK BLANKENSHIP
Joe DiPietro has become a sneakily serious playwright. Granted, his shows are still comedies, but now there are weighty issues lurking inside the jokes.
Take Falling For Eve, which opens tonight at the York Theatre Company. With a book by DiPietro and a score by David Howard and Bret Simmons, the musical imagines a Garden of Eden where Eve eats the apple and Adam doesn’t. There’s plenty of banter and peppy music, but when he’s left alone in Paradise, Adam wrestles with loneliness and dissatisfaction. Even God, whose part is split between a male and female actor, has doubts.
Memphis, which just won the Tony Award for Best Musical, has a similar heft. Yes, DiPietro and composer David Bryan deliver a zippy show whose toe-tapping anthems tell the story of a black singer and a white DJ battling racism in the segregated South. But for all its hope and humor, the musical also depicts violence and bigotry. The ending is happy but not “happily ever after,” and many of the characters are left with emotional scars.
He’s tried to develop his serious side without alienating ticket buyers. “Theatre has to work for a living and first and foremost has to entertain,” he says. “Memphis could have told its story in a darker way. It wouldn’t be running, but it could have done that. And that’s just not my voice. I’m an eternal optimist, and I like to bring my optimism and my humor to more serious subjects. As I get older, I’ve tried to make the work deeper without making it less entertaining.”
DiPietro was bruised, but his frustration directly informed Memphis, which he and Bryan began writing in 2002.
“I know a lot of writers who have a big disappointment on a show they think is going to be ‘it’ for them,” he says. “When it doesn’t work out, they stop writing, and I thought, ‘I could easily just lick my wounds for two years and see where my life goes.’ But I decided to do the opposite. I decided to write twice as much and really spend time taking what I’ve learned and applying it to new work.”
With Falling For Eve running through August, Creating Claire only recently closed at New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse, and F***ing Men, an all-male adaptation of Schnitzler’s La Ronde, currently playing at the Bailiwick Theatre in Chicago, DiPietro’s new work is getting plenty of exposure. At this rate, his serious side may not be a secret much longer.
Mark Blankenship is TDF’s online content editor
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Photo credit: Cast members from “Falling For Eve.” Photo by Carol Rosegg