Arthur Laurents, the 91-year-old librettist of Broadway classics "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" and director of the last revivals of those two shows, visited the Playbill Radio studio for a far-ranging two-part interview in which he aired his opinions on sex, drugs, death, Patti LuPone, gays in theatre, his own 52-year relationship, foul language in the theatre, a highly-critical recent New York magazine profile; collaborators Jerry Herman, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins; plus the forthcoming revival of "La Cage aux Folles" (which he will not direct). His new memoir, "Mainly on Directing," focuses on his work on the 2008 revival of "Gypsy" and the current revival of "West Side Story", which was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Revival of a Musical. For this week's part 2 of the interview, Laurents talks more about "West Side Story", the upcoming revival of his "Anyone Can Whistle" and his plans for the future, including the name of the young composer with whom he'd like to write a new musical. But first, Laurents takes us back in time to the beginning of his career – in radio!
Publish Date: 07/02/2009 Length of clip: 00:25:22 Size of clip: 11.6 MB
