Four years ago, Julie Boyd and William Finn announced that they would start a Musical Theater Lab in Pittsfield, which would make its home at Barrington Stage Company's Stage 2. They said it would be an incubator for new musicals, and it got off to a brilliant start in 2006 with The Burnt Part Boys (photo left); the show—with music by Chris Miller, lyrics by Nathan Tysen, and a book by Mariana Elder—was presented in the basement of the Berkshire Athenaeum, which had been cleverly outfitted with planked walls to feel like a shaft in a coal mine. Finn, who had taught two of the show's creators at NYU, was kvelling and wrote in the playbill: "They are not only charmers, these writers, but they're artists not afraid of entertaining. This story is classic but fresh; it's an old western transposed to a mining town where lessons are learned and lives are changed. The lyrics I love because no one else but Nathan could have written them in such an openhearted way. And the music, by Chris Miller, is down-home yet sophisticated and always transporting. How lucky I am to present the professional debut of these young writers." Fast forward three years, and the incubation period is not quite over: The Burnt Part Boys, which is still being billed as a "new musical," will be presented this summer at Vassar & New York Stage and Film's Powerhouse Theater (July 17 - 26). What's more, it is already set to open Off Broadway in 2010 in a joint venture between Playwrights Horizons and the Vineyard Theater. "I didn't see it three years ago, so I cannot say exactly how it is different," says Johanna Pfaelzer, artistic director of New York Stage and Film, who says that the "story has radically changed" since its first incarnation. "This is the next step in the evolution," she says. Boyd takes great pride not only that Barrington Stage presented the "world premiere" of The Burnt Part Boys, but also that another Musical Theater Lab show from 2007, Calvin Berger (book, music and lyrics by Barry Wyner), will be getting a staged reading this month at Playwrights Horizons in New York directed and choreographed by Tony-winner Kathleen Marshall. So, it's a sure bet that a couple of this summer's Musical Theater Lab productions will have lives after Pittsfield, too.
