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The 1983 Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles was almost a project titled The Queen of Basin Street, with music by Maury Yeston and direction by Mike Nichols.
In the new book A Very Unusual Way: Maury Yeston and His Singular Path to Broadway and Beyond (released Wednesday, July 1), author Joshua Rosenblum recounts how Jean Poiret’s French play La Cage aux Folles — which was adapted into the 1978 film of the same name — was originally going to be developed for the stage by a different creative team.
“[Producer Allan] Carr quickly assembled a dream team of director Mike Nichols, choreographer Tommy Tune, and librettist [Jay Presson] Allen to create the musical version,” Rosenblum wrote. “Tune wanted to bring Yeston on board to write music and lyrics.”
At the time, Yeston was working on Nine with Tune, but their Tony Award-winning musical hadn’t opened on Broadway just yet — so Yeston agreed to “write several songs on spec,” per A Very Unusual Way.
According to Rosenblum, “Tune mentioned the La Cage opportunity to Yeston, but told him that other, better-established composers like Marvin Hamlisch, Cy Coleman, and Jerry Herman were already hungrily eyeing the project.”
The title The Queen of Basin Street came from one of Yeston’s songs of the same name that he wrote for the project — and it wasn’t long before he landed the job.
“Yeston’s agent, the legendary Flora Roberts, negotiated an advance for him to write the score, and he promptly took a leave of absence from his teaching job at Yale for the 1981-82 academic year,” wrote Rosenblum.
The New York Times reported in 1981 that the project — which took 18 months to assemble its creative team — was Broadway-bound and that it would mark Yeston’s Broadway debut.
“I was going to do La Cage aux Folles as a straight play in London, but then I was sitting in my house in Hawaii and got all these calls from composers saying they had seen the film and wanted to set it to music,” Carr told the Times back then. “That’s how I started thinking about it as a musical.”
However, Carr allegedly couldn’t afford the financial demands (the Times reported that he expected the production to cost $2.5 million), and the project was stalled. It’s said that when executive producers Fritz Holt and Barry Brown came aboard, the creative team began to disband.
“At one point, it seemed that Tune would possibly stay on the project as both director and choreographer, and Nichols would be dismissed — a jaw-dropping potentiality to all who caught wind of it,” Rosenblum recounted.
“As the team dissolved, lawsuits ensued,” he wrote in A Very Unusual Way. “According to Arthur Laurents, who ultimately directed the reconstituted La Cage aux Folles, ‘The resulting lawsuits were lost by all except Maury Yeston, who got a small royalty.’”
However, Rosenblum said that Yeston has a “slightly different” version of events and explained that he “reached an agreement” that included getting 0.25 percent of the weekly box office from Broadway’s La Cage aux Folles, as well as a “similar cut from all subsequent productions.”
“There’s no way that they could move forward and write a show, adapt it as a Broadway musical, after I had written eleven songs, outlined the story, and put it in New Orleans, because you know what would’ve happened if they had put that show on and didn’t make an agreement with me?” said Yeston. “I would’ve sued them and I would’ve made four hundred million zillion dollars.”
Yeston instead made his Broadway debut with Nine, which won five Tony Awards including Best Direction for Tune, Best Score for Yeston and Best Musical. He also wrote the Tony Award-winning score of the musical Titanic.
Rosenblum’s A Very Unusual Way: Maury Yeston and His Singular Path to Broadway and Beyond — which charts Yeston’s life and career in the theater — is now available in stores and online.
