46 | JANUARY 27 • 2022 
46 |
JANUARY 27 • 2022

ARTS&LIFE
THEATER

O

n March 11, 2020, 
casting for the 
workshop reading 
of the musical An Officer and a 
Gentleman, The Musical was a go. 
And then Broadway shut down 
the next day.
In April 2020, the first script 
reading of An Officer and a 
Gentleman was moved from 
in-person to Zoom.
“
And then the world went 
silent,” said Dan Lipton, 
An Officer and a Gentleman 
music supervisor, arranger 
and orchestrator. “I honestly 
thought, at that point, that the 
project would just disappear. 
But our team at Work Light 
Productions decided that we 
would forge ahead. And, with 
their financial resources and 
logistical know-how, we were 
able to have the workshop.”
That was in November 2020, 
pre-vaccine days. So 18 cast 
members and 10 creatives 
from the production team 
went into a quarantined bubble 
in Cleveland to hold the 
in-person script workshop. For 
three weeks, they only went 
back and forth from the hotel 
to the rehearsal hall.
“That workshop is the 
reason why the show exists 
and why we are able to go out 
on tour,” said Lipton, who 
has been the music director 

for many Broadway legends 
including Kelli O’Hara, Audra 
McDonald, Brian d’Arcy 
James, Sherie Rene Scott, John 
Lithgow, Judy Kuhn and for 
Sting’s The Last Ship.
The first U.S. tour of 
An Officer and a Gentleman 
launched on Oct. 15, 2021, 
in Elmira, New York, and 
will come to Detroit’s Fisher 
Theatre Feb. 1-13. Prior to this 
production, previous versions 
of the musical were performed 
in Australia in 2012 and the 
U.K. in 2018.
“The show is all about the 
American military, so it’s very 
appropriate that we’re finally 
putting it on in the U.S.,” 
says Lipton, who grew up in 
a cultured, upper middle-
class Jewish family in New 
Jersey and received his music 
composition degree from 
Northwestern University. 
“My songwriting heroes — 
Stephen Sondheim, Irving 
Berlin, Stephen Schwartz, 
Marvin Hamlisch and Oscar 
Hammerstein — were all 
Jewish.”
As a kid, Lipton, 46, attended 
Broadway shows, performat at 
arts summer camp, the high 
school preparatory division 
of Mannes School of Music in 
New York City and watched 
MTV. “Those MTV hits are 

An Of
 cer and a Gentleman
comes to the Fisher Theatre.

JULIE SMITH YOLLES CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Wes Williams and 
Mia Massaro star 
in An Officer
and a Gentleman

An

’80s Music
Homage to

