arts & life

theater

PHOTO BY SEAN CARTER PHOTOGRAPHY

Science,
Ethics,
Rock ’N’ Roll

Pam Houghton | Special to the Jewish News

Atomic comes to
Metro Detroit.

Danny Ginges (left) and
Philip Foxman

details

Atomic plays at Meadow Brook
Theatre on the campus of Oakland
University in Rochester through
March 6. $27-$42. (248) 377-3300;
mbtheatre.com. Visit mbtheatre.
com/stories to read or contrib-
ute real-life stories about the
Manhattan Project.

A

recurring childhood fear
inspired Danny Ginges
to create Atomic, a WWII
musical that blends ethics, scien-
tific progress, love — and rock
and roll — during the U.S. race
with Germany to produce the first
atomic bomb. The show is mak-
ing its regional debut at Meadow
Brook Theatre through March 6.
“When I was quite young and
growing up in Australia, I was ter-
rified of nuclear war,” Ginges says.
“As I got older, the terror stayed
with me.”
His terror led to a fascination
with the history of the atomic
bomb and the discovery of Jewish
physicist Leo Szilard, who emi-
grated to the U.S. from Europe in
the late 1930s.
Szilard assumed a leading role
with the Manhattan Project, a gov-
ernment-funded program of top
scientists whose goal was to trans-
form the power of atomic energy
into something that could be used
militarily. Though Szilard was the
mastermind behind the bomb,
he struggled with its potential to
destroy innocent human lives, a
conflict the show tries to reconcile.
“I was shocked I hadn’t heard of
him before,” says Ginges, who, after
years of research, wrote a film script
based on Szilard’s life.
It was shopped around the film
industry in Los Angeles, and it

Lucas Wells, Stephanie Wahl and Ron Williams (as Jewish physicist Leo Szilard) in Atomic

seemed Szilard was unknown there
as well. Unable to sell the script,
Ginges “put it on the shelf, assum-
ing someone would eventually write
[another] story, but no one did.”
Years later, “I decided [the script]
could work as a musical. I always
thought the story needed to reach a
broader audience.”
But turning it into a musi-
cal required the talents of Philip
Foxman, whose deep apprecia-
tion for music was influenced by
a father who listened to Chasidic
music every weekend.
“Danny was asking everyone
if they knew of a composer,” says
Foxman, who met Ginges through
a mutual friend about three years
ago. With a lengthy career as a
composer, songwriter and music
supervisor for films and TV com-
mercials in his native Australia,
in London, England, and later,
New York City, where he moved in
the early 1980s, Foxman, also an
accomplished rock musician, was
game.
“The whole show was Danny’s
idea. [In our initial discussions,]
he kept referring to Led Zeppelin,
which was perfect, because I love
rock music,” Foxman says. “After
reading the script, I felt rock music
was a perfect format for Atomic.

It [has a way of] raising the emo-
tional stakes, and works really well
within the context of the show.”
The show had a three-week run
in Sydney, Australia, in November
2013. Foxman, who has dual
citizenship in both the U.S. and
Australia, had a ready-made string
of “deep connections” in New York
City, which allowed the collabora-
tors to launch a limited off-Broad-
way run in the summer of 2014.
Both admit to learning through
trial and error, cutting characters
and scenes along the way. “Writing
musicals is a very difficult process,”
Foxman says. “You are marrying
every form of entertainment into
this one genre — acting, dancing,
singing — and you don’t really
know what you’ve got until you put
it on stage and see how the audi-
ence responds.”
Though audiences in Australia
and New York appreciated the
show, including one fan who saw
the New York show six times,
Ginges felt the script still needed
work. “When I did the re-write
[after the New York show], I made
it more historically accurate. In
doing that, it feels more real. It’s
very powerful now.”
He thinks highly of the Michigan
crew and says the latest rewrite,

along with Meadow Brook’s profes-
sionalism, makes the show even
better than New York’s. “The cast in
Michigan is fantastic — really, really
good. The cast and crew are taking
the show very seriously here.”
The opportunity to create a
musical represents a second career
for Ginges, who had a long career
in advertising as a copywriter,
creative group head and creative
consultant in Australia. “I’ve been
a writer all my life,” says Ginges,
whose grandfather wrote “boxes
of stories” in Yiddish about life in
1920s Australia. “But it’s a big step
to go from writing three-minute
commercials to a two-hour-long
musical. I’m still learning.”
Yet wandering into the uncertain
field of musical theater has been
“very rewarding,” Ginges adds, and
tracks a theme in the show: It’s
more important to inspire others in
pursuit of a worthy goal than it is
to achieve it.
The time spent tinkering with
the script, songs and lyrics have
paid off: Atomic finally feels fin-
ished. “It’s like a child, where you
want to say, ‘You’re on your own
now.’ We’re not making notes to the
script anymore,” Foxman says.
Ginges agrees. “It feels fully
cooked.”

*

February 18 • 2016

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