Before Tommy Tune could ever play Dr. Dolittle, the lanky legend would first have to again take on the role of Dr. Tune.
The 66-year-old dancer, choreographer and director has a list of accomplishments as long as his 6-foot-6 frame. Last year, the most-honored individual in Broadway history was asked to pay a house call on “Dr. Dolittle,” a dead-in-the-menagerie touring production based on the 1967 Oscar-winning film about a veterinarian who talks to the animals.
“I don’t like to batter other people’s work, so I will just say it didn’t work,” said Tune, who is known for turning troubled musicals such as “Seesaw,” “My One and Only” and “Grand Hotel” into monster hits, often by replacing or restaging every musical number along the way.
“I’ve done a lot of doctoring of other shows too, quietly and anonymously,” said Tune. “If a show is in trouble, somebody will call and ask me to take a look at it, and I diagnose what I see as the problems.”
But he said he has never faced a challenge like resuscitating “Dr. Dolittle,” which was shut down in October after only nine weeks on the road. Tune revamped the score, brought in a new cast, turned some puppets into people playing animals, and emphasized the love story. But the deal also required that Tune take on his first starring role in a decade. The second coming of “Dolittle” debuted Jan. 17 in his hometown of Houston; its second stop opens Tuesday in Denver.
“It really wasn’t just about ‘fixing,’ in this case,” Tune said. “I kind of had to start over because they just missed the boat, for a lot of reasons. But what I saw through to was this tale of a grown man who has forged these wonderful relationships with animals, but hasn’t learned how to do the same with human beings. And also, here is this woman next door who has no interest at all in animals. They are just an annoyance to her.
“They are absolute opposites. So I thought, ‘Well what an interesting pairing of people.”‘
Tune’s decision to turn Chee-Chee the puppet monkey into Chee-Chee the tap-dancing chimp changed not only his life, but the 12-year-old who would play him.
In July, Diane Sawyer asked Tune to judge a “Good Morning America” stunt contest dubbed “America’s Greatest Dancer.” The panel unanimously voted Aaron Burr best in tap, and three days later, best in show.
Burr had sent in an audition video, but the South Carolina youth said, “It was weird, because a couple of days later, one of my grandma’s friends said she saw me on an ABC commercial, and it was before they had even contacted us.”
But contact him they did, entering Burr in the tap category rather than a catchall kids division because, he would learn, contest honchos assumed from his video that he was at least 19. He had been 12 for a month. “But if they wouldn’t have kept me in the tap category, I probably never would have seen Mr. Tune,” Burr said, “because that was the category he judged.”
The boy still calls him that … “Mr. Tune.” Five months after Tune had handpicked Burr to perform in his first musical of any kind. “He’s such a gentleman,” said Tune. “I keep saying to him, ‘Aaron, Mr. Tune was my father.’ But he’s such a gentleman.
Burr’s not budging. “It’s Mr. Tune, always,” he said. “It’s a sign of respect. He deserves that. He’s my tap-dancing idol.”
Hold on. This kid from Myrtle Beach already knew who Tommy Tune was? Seriously?
“Almost everybody in the dance world knows who Mr. Tune is,” said Burr, who already has 9 dancing years under his toes and, yes, is a distant cousin of that Aaron Burr. “I like his style of dance because his tap sounds just so good and clear and clean.”
Clearly, this is a boy whom Tune says “is from some other time … and he’s only 12. He’s a star, and you just know it the minute you see him dance. He’s just got it.”
While Tune is known for his infectious, chorus-line glamour, Burr dances more in the Savion Glover world. “It’s like rap-tap,” Tune said. “He just connects with the beat.”
These two tappers may be 54 years apart, but they have more in common than their dancing shoes. Tune moved to New York in 1964 and landed his first job within 24 hours. He was determined to bring Burr to New York with his first job already in hand – rehearsing for the new “Dolittle” tour.
But setting Burr to tapping would be dicier than his merely being tapped by Tune. This is a nonunion tour, and penny-
pinching producers quickly pointed out that Burr would be the only cast member from outside New York. He would require a tutor. That made him an expensive hire. The moneymen didn’t even want to pay to put him up in New York.
Tune would not be deterred. “I must have this kid,” he told them. So he put up Burr and his parents himself in a penthouse apartment he was vacating. When the family first arrived and asked for access, “the doorman looked at us like we were crazy,” Burr said.
“They are quite a wonderful family,” Tune said. “Aaron’s mother’s name is Melody, and I told her, ‘If only I had met you before (your husband), you would be Melody Tune now.”‘
Tune is clearly an affable sort who once said, “My idea of gambling was walking through Central Park whistling show tunes.” But when he wrote his 1997 autobiography, “Footnotes,” he was enduring a string of unbearable loss and hard luck. Two years before, he had broken his foot just before the opening of “Busker Alley,” which then collapsed. In his book he openly discussed his bisexuality and the loss of three important people in his life, two to AIDS.
“I was trying to take stock of my life at that point because I was laid up,” he said. What Tune came up with in large part explains his personal connection to “Dr. Dolittle.”
“At the end, I realized that what was really important to me thus far in my life is kindness,” he said. “That’s such a goody-two-shoes kind of a virtue, but kindness to the people you encounter is so overlooked. And kindness to animals is high on my list because these little creatures are only here to love and be loved. They just want to please you. There is no other reason for their being.”
Three years ago, Tune christened off-Broadway’s new Little Shubert Theatre with his show, “Tommy Tune: White Tie and Tails.” Because his beloved dog had just died, he was presented with an opening-night gift – a puppy he named Little Shubert.
“I love this little creature so much,” Tune said. “Dogs just have a way of winding their way into your heart and soul.”
At about the same time, Tune became godfather to a boy named Luca. “And I really did set out to make a show that he is going to enjoy, ” Tune said. That means for “Dr. Dolittle,” Luca is the only critic who matters to Tune.
Because the tour is just 2 weeks old, he is not pitching what we will see in Denver as a finished, polished product.
“A show is a living thing, and I never, never stop working,” he said. “If a show runs for a while without constant attention, it becomes a dried arrangement. It’s all there, but the juice of life isn’t flowing through its veins. There is no such thing as status quo. If it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse.”
Words to live … and dance by.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
