If there’s anything worse than being cast in the lame off-off-off-Broadway musical “Boris’s Borscht Kitchen,” actor Cornelius Love would like to know.
Love loathes musicals, but in order to stay employed, he must accept the part. Gradually, the arrogant thespian finds himself trapped in a nightmare world where everyone is singing and dancing. Love becomes the man in the musical.
Cornelius Love is the fictitious lead character and “Boris’s Borscht Kitchen” the fictitious show-within-a-show from “The Man in the Musical,” which makes its world premiere in the Bay Area next week.
Not at ACT or Berkeley Rep: This new musical comedy debuts at Berkeley High, marking the first time the school’s acclaimed theater department will stage a world premiere of a serious musical.
Two Bay Area natives, Phil Gorman and Lisa Tschapatt, wrote “The Man in the Musical.” He’s Jewish, she’s not; both graduated from San Francisco’s Link-Wilmerding High School, and both went on to graduate from Yale.
The two twentysomethings returned to the Bay Area to pursue their careers, including — they hope — a life in the theater.
“The Man in the Musical” should give the team a boost. “This show is a shout out to my heritage,” says Gorman. “My grandparents were Russian Jews. This is where I came from.”
In his day job, Gorman serves as administrator of Camp Kee Tov, the Jewish summer camp run by Berkeley’s Congregation Beth El. He is a Kee Tov alum and a bar mitzvah from Beth El. He loves his job. But the talented composer also loves putting on a show. He and Tschapatt have written five musicals and countless songs since they first collaborated back in high school.
“We’ve got it down to a science,” he says. “We work extremely well together, and put up with each other’s neuroses.”
Tschappat is equally effusive about Gorman. “Phil is phenomenally talented,” she says. “As a composer, he’s off the chart. He’s fun, spontaneous and earthy. We’re a complementary pair.”
“The Man in the Musical” is their first all-original musical (they’ve done an adaptation of “James and the Giant Peach,” among others). This new one, with a cast of 18 and an eight-piece band, tells a love story wrapped around the production of the fictitious musical “Boris’ Borscht Kitchen.”
Says Tschappat: “The lead character is stuck in this art form he detests. It’s about the Jewish mob in Chicago during prohibition,” who set up a borscht kitchen as a front for winemaking.
Both Gorman and Tschappat couldn’t be happier to have the show premiere at a high school, ambitious as their musical-within-a-musical may be.
“I was musical director at Berkeley High when they did ‘Cabaret,'” says Gorman, “and I was blown away by the talent there. I wanted the most professional cast, crew and band for this show, and at Berkeley High they are professional.”
Adds Tschappat, “We didn’t write this to be a high school show, but there is great talent at Berkeley High. The Berkeley community is very supportive of the arts, and the shows are well attended.”
What if the show’s a hit? Gorman and Tschappat would love to take it as far as it can go, even to the footlights of Broadway if possible. But both are committed to their day jobs: he at Kee Tov, she at Thunder Road, a drug treatment center for teens where she serves as a counselor. Even if Broadway bound, neither is ready to give up their commitments to the kids they help.
“The work we do is important,” says Tschappat. “We want to keep doing the double life as long as we can take it.”
“The Man in the Musical” plays at 8 p.m. Friday, April 30; 7 p.m. Sunday, May 2; and 8 p.m., May 6-8 at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Berkeley High School, 2233 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Tickets: $10 adults, $5 students. Information: (510) 332-1931.