Beginning on September 3rd, The Cape Playhouse will present JOAN, a new play about the life and career of legendary comedian Joan Rivers. The play premiered last fall at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, CA, and was most recently produced by the Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires. The play also focuses on River’s relationship with her daughter, Melissa, who, along with her longtime writing partner Larry Amoros, worked with playwright Danny Goldstein on the script and executive-produced the show. The production will run through September 20th at The Cape Playhouse.
by Mike Hoban
Theater Mirror: So many of the theatrical biographies that we’re seeing on stage now are centered around the careers of musicians like Carole King (Beautiful), Tina Turner (Tina), and Neil Diamond (A Beautiful Noise). How do you create a play that showcases the subject’s artistic genius when Joan’s career and persona were built around comedy performances and television appearances?
Melissa Rivers: The idea started before COVID, when everyone was doing those ‘experience’ programs like “Property Brothers at Home”. During the development process, it suddenly became clear that this project was a play. It’s funny, but it’s also telling a story. So you do get comedy. You do get parts of different stand-up sets, but it’s really a story. So instead of a song, we go to comedy. The comedy doesn’t drive the story; the comedy enhances the story. It’s sort of reverse-engineered.
Theater Mirror: I went back over Joan’s biography, and the depth and breadth of her career is just insane. Groundbreaking female comic in a boys club – that could be a story in itself – Broadway, TV, films, the first female talk show host,then the tragic elements, dealing with your dad’s suicide, the career setbacks, and then the crazy part of her career, the celebrity stuff on the Red Carpet with you. How do you condense a career like that into 100 minutes?
Melissa Rivers: It ain’t easy (laughs). It’s hard to explain, but I think the story is told through ever-changing goals. We go into her relationship with her parents, and her realizing that the traditional life didn’t work for her. We really tell the journey through events, and explore the emotional complexity of those events, and how that very much drives the two sides of who she was. You had Joan Rivers and you had Joan Rosenberg, and they coexisted.
Theater Mirror: That must have been tough on you as a kid.
Melissa Rivers: You know, when you grow up with it…my parents never had “offices”. Their offices were in our house, although at one point they converted the garage into a proper office. So I was there. I was around. People say, ‘Do you wish you had a ‘normal’ childhood?’ I don’t know. That was normal to me. And knowing the difference was always normal to me. My mother’s career was always referred to as The Career. It was a separate entity that was a family business, and I grew up over the shop.
Theater Mirror: Another thing I wanted to go back to, in going through your mother’s bio before the interview, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Joan, from the early ’60s launch in a male-dominated field, to not being afraid to make sexual jokes, to her rise to the top of the comedy world, etc. Did that play any role in –
Melissa Rivers: If you askthe Paladinos (Amy and Daniel, creators of Mrs. Maisel), it was NOT my mom.
Theater Mirror: Really? What do you think?
Melissa Rivers: I don’t really have much to say about it. I adore Rachel (Brosnahan, who played Mrs. Maisel). She’s brilliant. She’s so nice and so lovely and so funny. I got to spend some time with her last November, and I adore her. But the Paladinos say it was really based on one of their uncles. To this day, they will not say it (was my mom). They say it’s a compilation of various experiences, but clearly, everybody knows it’s very much based on or grounded in my mom. But if you ask them, no, it’s not.
Theater Mirror: Getting back to the play, was the story told from your point of view, or was the playwright, Danny Goldstein, given free rein?
Melissa Rivers: Working with Danny, it just really evolved. We went from creating what was just going to be an experience, to an experience with a narrative, to us suddenly realizing, ‘This is a play.’
I’m so fortunate to be working with Danny. We really all got on the same page creatively, and my writing partner (Larry Amoros) was very involved as well because he was also a longtime collaborator with my mom. Danny and I would spend time talking about different stories and how to leave the emotional beats of those stories in them, but it was truly collaborative and continues to be truly collaborative. It’s still growing, changing, and shaping as any play does as it matures and tours.
Theater Mirror: I know this play has a lot of comic elements in it, but how large a role does your father’s suicide figure into the narrative?
Melissa Rivers: It plays a significant part because it was such a turning point. You can’t ignore the elephant in the room. So (the question is) how did my mom work that in and turn it into humor? It’s hard to find something funny to say when something takes the air out of the room, but she made it OK for everybody to laugh. It was about how she figured out how to give the audience permission to laugh again.
Theater Mirror: The show premiered at South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa, California, last fall, and one reviewer said it was very funny but “felt like a work in progress.” I know the show just completed a run at Barrington Stage in mid-August. How has it evolved since its premiere?
Melissa Rivers: First of all, we had to figure out what works and what you need to trim back and what you want to explore more, and the audience tells you that. We’ve been able to take those notes and really delve into them and figure out where pieces were missing and things that weren’t clear. One of the big things we’ve clarified…was me. I felt like that was part of the play that wasn’t clear: Why did I go into the business? Why was I doing these things, and how did it affect the relationship (between me and my mom)? I think that’s where we’ve made the biggest changes; it’s something that has helped tremendously because it explains a lot more of my mom.
Theater Mirror: Is it now a mother-daughter story?
Melissa Rivers: It’s very much about a mother-daughter relationship. And how my mother’s relationship with her family and her work created our mother-daughter relationship – good, bad, or indifferent. My character kind of moves the story along.
Theater Mirror: So are you the narrator?
Melissa Rivers: Not so much the narrator but the through-line, taking the audience on a journey with explanation. I wish my ego would let me say, “Yes! I am the conductor,” like in Our Town, but I’m not. I’m more like the Greek chorus.
Theater Mirror: Your mother is such an iconic figure, so what were you looking for in the actor to play Joan? I mean, how much of the casting was about finding an actress who could do an impression of Joan, and how much was about capturing her essence?
Melissa Rivers: The keyword there is “impression”. That’s what you don’t want. You want someone who can understand the voice and work within the phrasing and the tone of the voice, without it becoming an impression, and that’s a needle that we had to thread.
Theater Mirror: I know the South Coast and Barrington productions starred Tessa Auberjonois as Joan and Elinor Gunn as you, but the Cape Playhouse version will have a new cast (Nicole Parker as Joan, Alex Finke as Melissa) and a new director (Tye Blue). Why the change?
Melissa Rivers: This is all a work in progress, so it’s going to be interesting to see someone else’s take and how someone else creates it. It’s all part of the process.
For more information and tickets, go to: The Cape Playhouse.
