Nearly eight years ago, a couple of NYU musical theater students began working on a show that was loosely inspired by Franz Kafka’s nihilist social satire, Metamorphosis. In development at theaters from New York to Palo Alto to London ever since, The Trouble With Doug begins performances this evening at the Theatre at Arts Garage in Delray Beach.
It has been a long road for lyricist Daniel Maté and composer Will Aronson, who concede that they were hardly steeped in musical theater when they began. “We were two people who didn’t know that much about musicals,” says Aronson, adding with his tongue planted firmly in cheek, “We liked the idea of theater and music, and thought there should be something that combines them.”
What’s more, “Neither or us had ever really read Kafka,” says Maté, whom Arts Garage audiences already know from his song cycle, The Longing and the Short of It, which opened the season.
“No, we weren’t ever at all really Kafka experts,” agrees Aronson. “It was a faculty member who said, ‘You guys are kind of weird. Why don’t you check out Kafka?’”
When they did, they found his writing to be far darker than they had in mind. “We realized, either right away or pretty soon into the process, that we were going to have to do something about tone,” explains Maté. “That to do a Kafkaesque musical was going to be a mistake. Not that it can’t be done, but we wanted a story that had some kind of emotional resonance, where the songs weren’t just jaded and ironic. And we didn’t want to write a meta-musical that was laughing at being a musical. We wanted to get some emotional peaks and valleys.”
They gravitated to Metamorphosis, the tale of a man who finds himself transformed into a bug, which is probably not an experience that most of the Arts Garage audience has had. “Yes, there’s an existential story of a man turning into something else, but that’s on the surface,” says Maté. “What we’re really writing here is a story about a family, and what happens within a family when a sudden and rather catastrophic change occurs. So in that sense, we needed to make these people lovable, funny, relatable. That was the crucial thing, that we could see ourselves in the show.”
Oh, and they changed the main character from a cockroach to a talking — and occasionally singing — giant slug. Why the switch? “Because the cockroach had become such a symbol of social commentary, we connected instead with the idea of becoming an invertebrate,” says Maté. “Losing your form, losing your shape.
“For all intents and purposes, we’ve written an original story, which is partly why it‘s taken us this long. Basically, these are five original characters,” the lyricist adds. “And we have some little Kafka in-jokes. But he’s getting no royalties from this.”
In effect, Maté and Aronson have turned Metamorphosis into a comedy. Sort of.
“I do think it’s like an indie comedy,” says Aronson. “It’s not fundamentally a comedy, but it is. We knew that we wanted to start with something a little broader, a little fun and heightened, as a way into these ultimately serious matters.”
“We wanted to honor the fact that we’re dealing with a serious topic,” emphasizes Maté. “Families lose family members to illnesses, to changes, it’s a heavy thing. The premise is meant to be an entry into something real, as opposed to a escapist fantasy.”
“In the structure of the show, you actually go from a lot of group things and then you end up getting these individual perspectives of what’s going on. So it changes its rhythm a little bit, but it never loses that humor,” notes Margaret Ledford, who was brought on to direct the Arts Garage production.
Describing the show’s appeal to herself, Ledford says, “It’s quirky and fun and odd, with a great deal of heart. And really good people. The characters themselves, not to mention the writers.”
For this production, the show has new opening and closing numbers and a new song for when Doug first turns into a slug. Maté and Aronson give Ledford the credit for transforming the number into a tour de force.
“It’s the show in a nutshell, in a way,” says Maté. “It’s hilarious, the way she’s staged it. It’s also horrifying, in a really fun horrifying kind of way. And then really heartfelt, that this is a poignant moment where a man and his body are at war with each other and he’s losing.”
The score, says Maté, is “eclectic, it can be sometimes cinematic. It’s very finely tuned, very finely wrought. I think it rewards a close listen. It’s not a huge departure from ‘The Longing and the Short of It,’ but working with Will allows me to write different things than I can on my own. I really enjoy working with someone else’s rhythms, someone else’s musical sensibility.”
“It’s an absurd premise,” acknowledges Maté. “But if they get onboard with it, I think the show will take them some place that they’ll be glad they went. You’re going to come out of this with a new sense of what musical theater can do.”
THE TROUBLE WITH DOUG, Theatre at Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach. Tonight through Sunday, May 11. $30-$45. (561) 450-6357.