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LIFE
Broadway musical coming to the Keith
Musical director Rob Cookman’s Tony Award-winning “Movin’ Out” tour, the Broadway collaboration of legendary choreographer Twlya Tharp and five-time Grammy Award winner Billy Joel, features a cast of about 30 dancers and musicians. It is the story of lifelong friends through two turbulent decades that changed the world forever from post World War II idealism to the collective unrest during the Vietnam War.
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Just a few days after finding out he didn't get a teaching job at Marshall University, the Romney, W.Va.-native piano man, Rob Cookman got a call and began "Movin' Out."
It was the national tour of "Mamma Mia" calling, wanting Cookman, who was living in Chicago, to hit the road playing keyboards.
A classically-trained pianist, Cookman has fallen in love with the rhythm of the road.
This week, the musical director of "Movin' Out," the tour of the Tony Award- winning Broadway collaboration of legendary choreographer Twlya Tharp and five-time Grammy-Award winner Billy Joel, brings it back home to West Virginia.
On Wednesday, the tour plays Morgantown, where Cookman went to undergrad at West Virginia University, and at 8 p.m. Friday, the show featuring a cast of about 30 dancers and musicians, plays the Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center as part of the Marshall Artists Series.
Told through the choreography of Twyla Tharp and rocked up with more than two dozen Billy Joel's songs, "Movin' Out" is the story of lifelong friends through two turbulent decades that changed the world forever from post World War II idealism to the collective uwnrest during the Vietnam War.
Songs like "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me," "We Didn't Start the Fire," and "Pressure" come together to weave a musical backdrop which complements Tharp's innovative choreography.
Cookman, 35, who has performed with the Dearborn Symphony, shared the stage with Collective Soul and John Entwhistle of The Who, said this touring show got a great start out of the gates since it spent the whole summer at Harrah's in Atlantic City.
And it had the luxury of having Tharp come to Atlantic City to do the tech week with the dancers, Cookman and the band.
Both Tharp and Joel won Tony Awards for the musical -- Tharp for Best Choreography and Joel for Best Orchestration for the musical that debuted on Broadway in October 2002. The show had 1,303 regular performances on Broadway and ended its run in the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Dec. 11, 2005.
The national tour began on Jan. 26, 2004, according to www.playbill.com.
"We went to work in a casino every single day and up until Christmas," Cookman said. "I think it really helped in all different facets of the show with the dancers, the band and the crew. It also helped to get to know everybody."
Speaking from Wilmington, N.C., where they were doing a week of shows, Cookman said this musical is truly different since there is no dialogue.
Joel and Tharp melded together characters such as Brenda and Eddie (from "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,") from Joel's neighborhood and street-gathered story songs, as well as the dancers' movements, to tell the story.
"The whole fad now is with jukebox musicals -- that's what they call them," Cookman said. "But this one is so different because here there is no dialogue. The whole story is told through the songs of Billy Joel, with basically like a ballet underneath... There are like three levels of watching. Just watching the dancing for dancing's sake, watching the story the dancers are telling, and then the rock band, we're visually up above the stage. So it's almost like three shows in one."
An incredible tribute to the power and emotion of Joel's music, it takes two "piano men" to play out his two dozen songs nightly.
Matthew Friedman and Kyle Martin each do four shows a week backed by eight other rock band members that also includes Cookman on synthesizer.
"They're doing twenty-some-odd songs a night and it's a lot of hard-core singing," Cookman said. "It's a lot compared to other Broadway shows where the lead singer may sing four or five songs. They are singing non-stop."
Cookman, 35, said the show has given him an even deeper respect for the deep songwriting catalogue of Joel, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 and is married to Barboursville native Katie Lee Joel.
The show, which starts with "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant," features big hits such as "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me," which introduces the characters, as well as many of his most popular songs such as "Big Shot," "We Didn't Start the Fire," "New York State of Mind" and "Uptown Girl."
The show's story is also painted with Joel's more obscure early work such as "Angry Young Man," "James," Summer" and Highland Falls."
"I think we're reminded nightly that he is such a good storyteller," Cookman said. "I mean it kind of speaks volumes that there is no dialogue in the show. That you could weave a story just through the lyrics of his songs."
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