New 'On the Boulevard' Musical Theatre Concept Album a Fresh LGBT Take on 'Pygmalion' Story
*WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA / ACCESSWIRE / April 14, 2023 / *The new "On the Boulevard" Original Cast Concept Album (available now on Amazon Music, Spotify, and all music streaming services) is the labor of love of long-time Los Angeles gay men's specialist psychotherapist and life/career coach Ken Howard, LCSW, who produced the album and wrote the full-length musical's score, lyrics, and libretto. Howard adapted George Bernard Shaw's classic 1914 play, "Pygmalion," upon which the more familiar classic musical, "My Fair Lady" was based, with a modern retelling of the story with an LGBT perspective. Instead of Shaw's Edwardian London flower girl (Eliza Doolittle) learning to speak like a lady to gain upward mobility and social class status with the help of an expert in speech and phonetics (Henry Higgins), in Howard's version, an obese gay nerd from the Midwest (Eli Dillingham, brought to life by breakout star Michael D'Elia, recently of the East Coast "Dirty Dancing in Concert" tour) is transformed into a hunky Hollywood actor worthy of superhero movies with the help of a celebrity personal fitness trainer to the stars (Robert Riggins, played by Los Angeles actor, singer, and vocal coach Ryland Shelton).
Just as Shaw provided a somewhat critical social commentary of his times via the play, which he called a "highly improbable" story, Howard's adaptation takes place in the gay haven area of West Hollywood, and its main thoroughfare, Santa Monica Boulevard, the historic "boys town" and includes an idealized version of the "creative city" with a majority-LGBT city council. The bars and clubs in the show have fictional names, as do the actors in superhero movies Robert Riggins coaches, but they are based on real nightlife venues which frequently change names. All of the action is narrated a fierce black drag queen named Elphaba (played by Delandis McClam) ("I'm black, not green; just go with it, OK?").
Howard created the album of the musical's score moonlighting over five years of composing, casting, and recording on weekends. During the week, he provides psychotherapy and coaching (www.GayTherapyLA.com) as a specialist in working with gay men and gay male couples for over 30 years in a private practice online.
Musical theatre is in Howard's blood; he is the great-grandson of 1920s Broadway music director J William Howard II ("My Maryland, "Blossom Time"), as well as the great-nephew of actress Esther Howard, prominent in Broadway musicals of the 1920's such as "Sunny" (Kern), "Tell Me More" (Gershwin), and "The New Moon" (Romberg) and later a character actress in over one hundred Hollywood films, from early talkies to the 1950s, portraying a rotation of playful flirts, glamorous comedic dowagers, and boozy hags.
Howard his earned a degree in Theatre from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, and later an MSW (Master of Social Work) from the University of Southern California, where he later taught LGBT Social Work Socio-Cultual-Political Issues, Psychotherapy Practice Models, and Couples Therapy after ten years in various Los Angeles County AIDS service organizations, including work with LGBT homeless adults in Hollywood living with HIV, psychiatric disorders, and substance abuse. He has always integrated creativity and activism in his work, often coaching young actors and writers on how to remove personal barriers to professional success. He writes a monthly blog on issues pertaining to gay men's mental health and well-being (www.GayTherapyLA.com/blog) and hosts a popular podcast, "Gay Therapy LA with Ken Howard, LCSW", heard each month in over forty countries.
Howard gave up his own acting career in the eighties but held a place in his heart for Broadway musicals, performing with the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles in the early nineties at the height of the AIDS crisis, and volunteering as a peer counselor for people living with HIV/AIDS at AIDS Project Los Angeles and the LA LGBT Center. His experiences with the clients inspired him to go back to school become an expert in HIV mental health and support the quality of life for gay male individuals and couples. He also became one of the few gay nationally Certified Sex Therapists from AASECT, the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists. Howard has been living with HIV/AIDS himself for over thirty years. One song on the album, "A Time We Learned What Love Was," serves as an education of sorts from an older gay character (Robert) to a younger one (Eli), poignantly describing to the new generation the experience of caretaking for a partner with AIDS and eventual widowhood, something many of Howard's clients have been through.
His later work with gay men struggling with body image issues and cultural pressures about appearance privilege led Howard to observe how the local social currency of West Hollywood was focused on gyms and competitive physiques, prizing youth and beauty over just about anything else. This reminded him of Shaw's sardonic social critique in "Pygmalion," about how society bestows prestige, social status, and popularity with rather dubious qualities such as how one speaks or how one looks, currently ubiquitously observed in modern times with the proliferation of visual social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
"We all know the platitudes and themes: don't judge a book by its cover, it's what's inside that counts, beauty is only skin deep, and so on, but when was the last time you saw a guy with anything other than an idealized masculine physique playing a superhero? The heavier or nerdier guy is always the sidekick in the lesson from Hollywood. That, and Hollywood's frequent hypocrisy of being dominated by gay male creative professionals, yet still pressuring its closeted gay male heartthrob actors to stay closeted or at least ambiguous about their sexual orientation. The persistence of this despite more progressive times speaks to the timeliness of the show," Howard explains. "With all the invalidation that LGBT people go through, both growing up in their families of origin, and certainly even now with the civil rights of LGBT people being undermined, I see the long-term negative effects on self-esteem and self-agency in my client. I wanted to tell a story about how gay men really know what love is, for the self and for others. That's the message show, along with learning to love yourself and others. Along with love triangles, comedy, movie premieres, and intrigue, all set to music. And narrated by a fierce drag queen, of course."
‘On The Boulevard' was originally titled, ‘PygMALEon', referring to its adaptation from ‘Pygmalion', with the creative spelling emphasizing its male leads. While Howard produced the album, as a non-musician, he had a lot of help from collaborators who provided arrangements, scores, orchestrations, and multi-track accompaniment that sounds like a full orchestra that the actors sang against in the studio in a long series of asynchronous sessions.
"It was a classic Hollywood 'let's put on a show' collaboration, with the miraculous skills of arrangers like Stuart Wood, Silvio Buchmeier, and Michael Van Bodgeom-Smith, all composers in their own right," Howard explains. "I directed the actors in the recording booth to sound as if they had been playing these characters on stage for months, but we haven't had the show produced yet."
Howard recruited actors/singers by asking friends, friends of friends, or recruiting from other local LA theater productions he saw. He found the lead, Michael D'Elia, playing the title character in "Dorian," a musical adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and expanded the network from there, with some recastings over time but always with the stalwart talent of D'Elia, a vocal powerhouse that drives the score like Idina Menzel mastered "Wicked".
"Beyond the project as such, recording the full score of a musical, I learned a lot about the labor of love that happens among theatre people. The abundance of, first of all, talent in the cast, but also the skill, commitment, perseverance, generosity of spirit and boundless energies that each song required of the team. The team was like family of actors, arrangers, and recording studio engineers, all taking the songs on paper and breathing life into them like they've been playing these parts for months, before the show even has its first production. Plus, it was a lot of fun for all of us to be part of making something new that has elements of classic musicals, but with a fresh twist. In these times of crazy news and stress, musical theatre offers an escape into a better world where people sing it out. With a concept album, you can sit back and imagine how it would all look on a stage," Howard adds.
Early critiques, contributions, and moral support came from generous friends such as (writer) Malcolm Heenman, and (director/choreographer) Rob Iscove ("She's All That"). Family and friends listened to early songs, read various drafts, and guided the shape of the story's evolution, in part to reflect the changing values of the times. Howard counts his "when I becomes we" husband, Michael Ryan, as the soul of support. Howard and Ryan were among the first 18,000 couples to marry in California when same-sex marriage became legal in 2008. They have been together navigating the colorful world of West Hollywood since 2002, a rare long-term relationship in transient Hollywood.
The ‘On The Boulevard' Original Cast Concept Album can be streamed on music services like Spotify, with more information on the show's history on Facebook, and YouTube. The show awaits its first production.
For further information: Ken Howard (310-339-5778; kbhmsw@aol.com)
*SOURCE:* On the Boulevard Original Cast Concept Album
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