'Cafe' celebrates songs of Leiber and Stoller

By HAP ERSTEIN

Palm Beach Post Theater Writer

Friday, January 25, 2008

Although he did not know they were written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, director Bill Castellino grew up listening to many of the songs that fill the jukebox musical, Smokey Joe's Cafe, a surprise hit that ran for five years on Broadway in the late '90s.

"I'm a little young for the Elvis stuff," says Castellino, 54. "I was sort of more of a Beatles guy. The ones I know the best are the wonderful goofy songs that I remembered as a kid, like Charlie Brown and Yakety-Yak, the novelty numbers."

Leiber and Stoller wrote many of Elvis Presley's biggest hits (Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock, Treat Me Nice), as well as chartbusters for groups like the Coasters and Drifters, all while remaining in the background.

"I love thinking that this is so American, because here are two Jewish guys from New York who wrote songs about being women, about people of color, that talk about the underclass," says Castellino. "And they were none of those things."

Their gift, Castellino says, is "an amazing facility with catchy melody. I think it's catchy, because they really listened to the music around them, whether it was in church or a jazz club or big band. They paid attention to what the people were listening to and then they really contemporized and synthesized it into their own voice."

Smokey Joe's Cafe, currently playing at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre through Feb. 10, then moving to Vero Beach's Riverside Theatre (March 1-16), is an evening of wall-to-wall songs on subjects ranging from a town (Kansas City), a street (On Broadway), a girl's name (Ruby) or a botanical rash (Poison Ivy). It was Castellino's task to group the numbers in a way that gives the show a narrative shape.

"For example, there's a whole section in the first act that occurs in the neighborhood, in Brooklyn," says Castellino. "Although the songs are eclectic, they are located so you sort of settle into one environment at a time. We have a Times Square environment, where Spanish Harlem happens and On Broadway and D.W. Washburn and that rousing gospel number, Saved. Then, the last sequence of the evening, we organize it to look as if it were a television special from the 1960s."

Because so many performers have recorded these songs in many different ways, that frees Castellino and choreographer Josh Bergasse to get creative with the way the numbers are presented.

"It's more a respectful homage than it is a copy of the way these songs were done originally," he says. "I'm not particularly interested in just copying it. Although some of the arrangements that we're doing are different from the Broadway production, they're all inspired by what somebody did somewhere along the line."

The songs of Leiber and Stoller are bound to have nostalgic resonances.

"I think my job is to help the audience find a way into this material, to identify with the characters, follow the evolution of the people onstage and, as a result, reflect on their own lives," says Castellino. "This is us in high school up there. We hear this music and we see ourselves in a really direct way. The mirror is unfogged."