Music in the Madhouse

Michael Friedman: You composed the Marat/Sade score for Peter Brook’s production in 1964. How did you become involved in that project?

Richard Peaslee: In those days my great interest was the Big Bands. I studied at Juilliard, but I was interested in Jazz. I had heard that Bill Russo, who was one of the great writers for Stan Kenton’s jazz orchestra, was in town, and I decided to take some lessons from him. He became my mentor. A year later he moved to London to start a band there. He asked me to write for the band. I had just gotten married, so I brought my wife to London and spent a couple of years there. Peter Brook asked Bill to orchestrate a musical, which he did, though the show wasn’t a success. But subsequently when Brook asked him to recommend someone to work for twelve pounds a week on this experimental production, Bill recommended me. It was my first project. I’d always thought that theatre music was kind of boring.

MF: Did you know what you were getting yourself into?

RP: Not really. I’d seen Brook’s King Lear, so I knew he was a hotshot. He formed a small company, The Theatre of Cruelty, which included Glenda Jackson. They did a production of Genet’s The Screens, and formed the nucleus of the company for Marat/Sade. Peter Brook had heard of this play by Peter Weiss that had been performed in Germany. The Royal Shakespeare Company asked me to adapt the German score but I told them, “You know, I’m not really any good at adapting; I’d rather start from scratch.”

MF: Did you work closely with Brook?

RP: Very closely. Adrian Mitchell, the poet who adapted the lyrics, was also crucial. He would feed me lyrics to try out in rehearsal. I think we had seven weeks. I had written some stuff before, but a lot of the work was done during rehearsals.

MF: The sound of the music is very distinctive. What sources did you find yourself drawing from?

RP: Whatever came to me at the moment. It could have been blues, or big band, or Stravinsky. The reviews called it kind of a Brecht-Weill score, and thought I was greatly influenced by Kurt Weill, though I really didn’t know much Brecht-Weill at all.

MF: Are you surprised how much your music has stayed attached to the English translation over time?

RP: Yes and no. Of course I’m disappointed when I hear of a production that isn’t using the music with the script, but it’s not like a Broadway musical where the two elements are legally wed. There’s also a whole other score in Germany.

MF: How differently does Marat/Sade play now?

RP: It was first produced in the sixties, when we were young and revolution was in the air. It surprises me how well it holds up – I’ve even seen it performed in schools, and kids really get into it. It’s like doing West Side Story.

MF: What experience had you had with Broadway musicals before Marat/Sade?

RP: I loved West Side Story because of Bernstein, but the rest of Broadway I wasn’t that impressed by. I worked on seven or eight other shows with Peter Brook and liked it because it was such a visceral experience. I remember once in Marat/Sade when everyone sang “We want our revolution NOW!” one of the cast members sang, “We want our Revolution – fuck ’em! – NOW!”

MF: What was it like coming back to the States with Marat/Sade?

RP: It was a great break for me, especially having the show on Broadway. When we arrived in New York the actors, who were all British, were put up in a hotel. They weren’t used to central heating or to the bars being open so late, so they would go out drinking late after the show, then sleep with the central heating on. When they arrived at the theatre in the morning, none of them could sing.

MF: Most people now know of Marat/Sade through the 1966 film of Brook’s production. How was that process?

RP: On the last night on the set, we were filming the chaotic final scene when the inmates go berserk and trash the asylum. Our producer, Michael Birkett, threw a champagne party before we filmed that sequence to loosen everybody up. I’m sure Peter had a hand in it. The actors literally trashed the set, and in the middle of all this craziness Peter and the cameraman were going around trying to catch it on film. There were open baths around the set and the cameraman had a hand-held camera and wasn’t watching where he was going, and he fell into one of the baths. Peter grabbed the camera away from him and without stopping to check if he was okay, he just keeps filming. He didn’t want to miss a thing.

Michael Friedman is Music Director for Marat/Sade.