Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, was very stingy, almost Grinch-like, with the performance rights to his popular children’s books.
But after the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre Company had a big success with a musical version of his 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, written by its resident playwright Tim Mason, in 1994 the Geisel estate allowed the stage company to adapt his How the Grinch Stole Christmas as well.
The arrangement had two conditions, however. The new musical could only be performed by the Minneapolis troupe and the script had to be written by Mason. Nevertheless, the Grinch show was an immediate hit. “For that first production in Minneapolis, people lined up around the block for the tickets,” recalls Mason.
Eventually, Geisel’s widow Audrey relented on the exclusivity of the performance rights, allowing San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre and its renowned artistic director Jack O’Brien to stage the show. That production, which has played at the Old Globe each holiday season for the past 16 years, went to Broadway in 2006 and 2007, and in recent years has toured the nation. It arrived Tuesday at the Broward Center, where it will continue for two weeks, through Dec. 27.
As most tots could tell you, How the Grinch Stole Christmas concerns a grouchy creature who attempts to end Christmas by stealing holiday-themed items from the homes in nearby Whoville on Christmas Eve. The Dr. Seuss book, first published in 1957, has been popular ever since, but adapting it into a musical had its challenges.
“The storybook is about 18 pages long, and that’s not quite long enough for a Broadway show so it had to be expanded,” explains Mason. “But I wanted to be as invisible as possible. I tried to do it in a way that I hoped Theodor Geisel would approve.”
Mason had previously collaborated with composer Mel Marvin, who jumped at the opportunity to work on The Grinch.
“I wanted to do it for my kid first of all, but it’s one of the most famous titles in American literature for children. Who wouldn’t want to do that?” asks Marvin. “What is now this big commercial thing came out of writing it for a small venue and for our kids.”
The secret of the show, Mason feels, is that it speaks to youngsters, but also has a layer of humor to keep adults entertained. “It’s written for the same audience that Theodor Geisel wrote for. He wrote definitely for children and he also wrote to entertain himself,” offers Mason. “I think Mel would tell you that there’s a subversive humor, not only to Dr. Seuss but to me. I loved getting under the skin of the Grinch.”
Marvin never imagined that this little show would reach Broadway, but he did think it could become a perennial holiday event. “Well, I had hopes,” he says. “As I tell my students at New York University, ‘Write a Christmas show. They never go away.’ ”
Twenty-eight years before the musical premiered, an animated film version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas was broadcast on television, featuring the number “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”
Years after it first played in Minneapolis, the song was added to the stage show. “We didn’t actually have the rights to use it initially,” notes Mason. “When it opened at the Old Globe in San Diego and Audrey Geisel saw it, she liked it very much but she said to Jack O’Brien, “Where’s the song?” And Jack had to tell her that we didn’t have the rights to use it. She said, ‘Leave that to me.’ ”
Asked if he would mind if the older song — penned by Geisel and composer Albert Hague — were what audience members were humming as they left the theater instead of one of his own songs, Mason says, “Y’know, I don’t worry about stuff like that. They can go out humming whatever they want to, as long as they had a good time.”
If the plot of The Grinch seems familiar to you, there is a reason. “My undocumented, unscientific theory is that Theodore Geisel decided to do his version of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’,” says Mason. “Clearly, Seuss was projecting his own irritation with the commercialism of the season and put it into the Grinch. But I think it really begins with Dickens’ ‘Christmas Carol’ and the curmudgeon who cannot accept Christmas spirit or holiday joy.”
Marvin recommends you put tickets to How the Grinch Stole Christmas on your holiday shopping list because “Because it is one of the funniest, most outrageous pieces of theater I’ve ever seen. And the production is just extraordinary. It looks exactly like the book,” he says. “We hope it’s a snarky, heart-warming show. And it makes you feel good about yourself.”
DR. SEUSS’ HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Now through Sunday, Dec. 27. $35-$85. 954-462-0222.