Adam Guettel always writes the music first.
The composer used to dread writing lyrics, he tells me. They just didn’t come as naturally as the music did, and they always took him so much time. When he was younger, he used to not even notice lyrics at all. As we spoke on the phone, he started humming the melody to “My Cherie Amour.”
“Do you know that song?” he said, pretending to ask me the question before taking it upon himself to deliver the response he would always get in return. “They’re like, ‘Well, what are the lyrics?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know!’”
Guettel enjoys writing lyrics far more now than he did at the beginning of his career. But music is still always the first thing that comes to mind.
“I think that the resolution of music is infinite,” he said. “You can say ‘I love you’ in music in an infinite number of ways. There’s no limit. Whereas in English, it’s a task to recontextualize those three words so that they are fresh.”
It tracks that Guettel would feel so connected to music in this way. His grandfather was Richard Rodgers of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the composer behind musicals like “Oklahoma!,” “South Pacific,” and “The Sound of Music.” In turn, his mother, Mary Rodgers, was a composer in own right, writing the music for “Once Upon a Mattress” and “The Mad Show.”
Guettel didn’t learn too much about musical composition directly from his grandfather – except, of course, literally at his knee under the piano while he would play when Guettel was a child. But his mother, he called his first and most important teacher – although she had some unconventional tactics.
“That’s a lazy melody. Those harmonies are boring. I’ve heard that before. You can’t end a song like that. You have to bring us home,” he said, remembering the criticisms she would dole out. “She was unforgiving, and in that way, she was the best teacher ever. The stakes were high, and she knew exactly what she was talking about.”
Looking through Geuttel’s career, his music is anything but lazy or boring. “Floyd Collins” premiered Off-Broadway in 1996 and made its Broadway debut this year, nominated for six Tony Awards. In 2005, he won the Best Original Score Tony for his work on “The Light in the Piazza.” He was Tony-nominated for his score for Aaron Sorkin’s play adaptation of “To Kill a Mockinbird” in 2019, as well as for his music in the musical “Days of Wine and Roses” in 2024.
His newest musical, “Millions,” premiered at the Alliance Theatre on May 9 and will play through June 15.
The journey to ‘Millions’
The musical, based on the 2004 comedy-drama film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, follows two young brothers, Damian and Anthony, dealing with the death of their mother. When they find a duffel bag full of cash, Damian thinks it’s a gift from God. But he’ll soon find out it’s something much more dangerous.
“Millions” is not one of Boyle’s more well-known films, and Guettel had never seen it until it was recommended to him by a friend, Amy Van Nostrand. She thought it might make a good musical. Guettel agreed. He thought the movie was great, but saw things that could be improved upon – a key for adaptation.
“It’s a wonderful movie with a huge heart,” Guettel said. “Some of the important characters are a little bit underwritten and underrealized – which is always a good thing for those of us who want to adapt to the stage.”
Guettel was drawn to the movie’s combination of soft and hard elements. This is a story about two boys who are “trying to sew their hearts back together” after the loss of their mother. But at the same time, they find themselves in great physical danger after finding the mysterious duffel bag.
“The story functions very nicely on that split level,” he said. “It is pressed forward and blown forward by a strong emotional wind and a gale force threat to their lives. You have both of those things going on at the same time.”
A personal connection
While he was working on the show, Guettel suddenly found a deeper connection to Damian and Anthony than he initially expected. In 2014, his mother passed away. Considering that “Millions” deals directly with the death of a parent, that couldn’t have been an easy thing to deal with everyday.
We didn’t touch on Mary Rodgers’ death in our conversation, but in April of this year Guettel and book writer Bob Martin spoke with the Alliance about how her passing affected the show. In my conversation with Guettel, we focused on how she influenced him, both through her teaching (as seen above) and through her own work and experience.
“She was really undervalued as a composer,” Guettel said. “Most of all by herself.”
Guettel shared a story about his mother’s work on the score for a musical version of the Carson McCullers novel “The Member of the Wedding.” After a number of setbacks, the musical fell through, the rights eventually reverting to McCullers’ estate. The loss hurt Rodgers greatly.
“We loved it too much, which is a mistake,” Rodgers wrote in her memoir, “Shy,” which you can read an excerpt of here. “Because you’ll put up with anything, including things you shouldn’t, when you’re in love.”
Guettel remembered the unpublished score to “The Member of the Wedding” as his mother’s best work. Rodgers went on to have a great career in the world of children’s books, including writing the 1972 book “Freaky Friday.” But, according to Guettel, her work in musicals was never the same.
“It was a great heightening and blooming of her talent, and they lost the rights,” he said. “She was about 40, and she never really wrote again after that – she wrote a couple of little things, but it broke her.”
Guettel experienced a similar heartbreak in the 2000s when working on a musical adaptation of “The Princess Bride.” He had been collaborating with William Goldman, the legendary novelist and screenwriter of “The Princess Bride,” for over a year when everything came to a halt. Things fell through when Goldman reportedly asked for 75% of the authors’ share of the musical.
Guettel said remembering how “The Member of the Wedding” fiasco affected his mom helped him push through.
“I’m not going to give up,” he remembered thinking. “I don’t care. I’m just not going to.”
‘Millions’ on stage
Guettel didn’t give up, and – numerous shows and awards later – “Millions” is here. Guettel wrote the music and lyrics for the show while Martin (“The Drowsy Chaperone,” “The Prom”) wrote the book. Bartlett Sherr is directing the production. The show stars young actors Keenan Barrett and Yair Keydar as Damian and Anthony, as well as Steven Pasquale, Ruthie Ann Miles, Shuler Hensley, and more.
Despite the fact that he was a child performer himself – he performed as a boy soprano soloist at the Metropolitan Opera – Guettel had never written for kids before “Millions,” which posed quite a challenge. The role of Damian is written for a child of 8 or 9, while the role of Anthony is written for a child of 12 or 13 – right about when a young boy’s voice might start to change. Guettel kept that in mind. One of his favorite songs in the show, “Childish Things,” is sung by Anthony.
“A little cracking, a little heaviness – that’s how Anthony feels,” Guettel said. “I put him in that lifted place vocally. As opposed to high and suspended, it’s lifted. It’s a bit more athletic.”
Kids play a huge part in “Millions. According to Guettel, Sherr has managed to incorporate them into the design of the show itself.
“They’re constantly running and careening through the set in transitions between scenes,” he said. “These kids flying through with their scooters, or throwing their backpacks around, screaming and running in big great circles as we need to make transitions – [Sherr] uses them as a design element. I think it’s wonderfully fresh.”
Catholicism is also a huge theme in “Millions,” and is incorporated into the design of the show. A lot of modern stage adaptations of musicals – from “Dear Evan Hansen, to a recent revival of “West Side Story,” to the most recent Broadway production of “Sunset Boulevard” – heavily include screens in their set design. Guettel praised the production’s more tactile approach, along with its ability to still capture the drama of Catholicism.
“We’ve taken that up with our set design, with our proscenium, with the painting – it’s very hand hewn, very hand-painted, very beautiful, in that way,” he said. “It’s hand done, but the sound, sometimes, reflects the exotica, the great glamour of Catholic iconography for people a thousand years ago. And also for Damian, because it attaches him and keeps him connected to his mother.”
Guettel said he believes “Millions” works best when that membrane between what’s terrestrial and celestial starts to become penetrable. In the film, Damian often has visions of and speaks with saints, and in the musical, he begins to sing when he needs their help.
“Theater does that better than any form,” Guettel said. “You can have two things at once. He’s standing there on earth, and yet he is enjoying the company of angels.”