NR: Now with Pimpernel, I know you and Nan (Knighton) had a concept CD long before you had a book.

FW: Yeah. That comes from my relationship with the record companies. We're sitting here at Atlantic Records and I always walk the corridors of the record company as much as I walk theater. In fact, my life gets out of balance when I'm not making as many records as I'm doing theater. That's why I'm kind of taking a breath right now.

NR: It took you so many years... Jekyll & Hyde was a long journey.

FW: Seventeen years.

NR: Seventeen - wow! Getting it to Broadway, what did it feel like on Opening Night?

FW: It was great, but as all journeys are, never what you think the ending is going to be. That's why I'm a person who doesn't pay much attention to the endings of things. Songs I wrote that I thought were going to be hits, nobody liked. Songs I thought were "eh" made millions of dollars. Jekyll & Hyde, because it took so long, there were so many times that people said, "Frank, give it up. It's just not going to happen." But, no matter where it played and no matter who heard the music, the reaction was always such that I put my faith in that reaction and in the people. I wouldn't take "no" for an answer and the reason we're sitting here today is because of Jekyll & Hyde. I didn't have to do theater. In fact, I do pop and I'm a record guy too. It was the love affair I had with theater because of Jekyll & Hyde that even let me go to another project. Then, through Jekyll & Hyde I figured out I can make records and do theater at the same time in the same project. I can combine my pop sensibility with a theatrical sense, so I said, "This is fun. Let's explore this further."

NR: Were those the biggest surprises? First of all that you can do both and...that you really can't tell what people are going to like?

FW: Yeah, I'm a regular guy. I'm a man of the people. If I'm nothing else, I'm that. So, when I sit down at the piano and I write something and it moves me, or I get excited by it, then my faith will always be that it will move most people. Thank God, so far, knock on wood...

NR: It's doing very well. I understand the one thousandth performance is coming up soon.

FW: It is and after this year we'll have nine Jekyll & Hydes around the world. We're going to have Tokyo and Madrid next year. We're about to open in Sweden. Germany's doing great. We're talking with Australia. We've already done Holland and Belgium. You know, we're getting there.

NR: How about London? I received a question about that.

FW: It's on its way. It is absolutely on its way. I hope very much after Pimpernel opens in September that Pimpernel follows in those footsteps. It's a very different way, very different show, very different kind of thing, but I am putting my faith in Pimpernel that it will also have an international scenario.

NR: Are you amazed at the journey that Pimpernel has taken?

FW: Yeah, but you know what? After Jekyll, because of so many years, and just being in the entertainment business, nothing surprises me anymore. I think the thing about Pimpernel that is so amazing...I always say this...the most any artist can ask for is that their voice get a chance to be heard and then you have faith that it will work. With Pierre Cossette and Bill Haber, Ted Forstmann, Kathleen Raitt, Hallmark - they gave me that chance. The fact that it went through the life that it did, and then for Ted Forstmann with Dave Checketts and Madison Square Garden to come in and give us a second chance for our voice to be heard, and probably in a way more like what we would have liked the first time, that's amazing, and it is surprising. In fact, it was so amazing that I didn't think Pimpernel was going to have a life because of all the struggles, so I said to my kids, "If this happens, whatever I make from it goes to you" and I've done that, because it's such a gift and I'm very grateful for the gift.

NR: That's wonderful. And here we are, you're about to open SP3.

FW: Yeah and I think, given from what I've seen and heard of the show so far, if we just get over the first hump, and we educate the public that we are here, I can't see any reason why we won't run for a long time. The show works. It's entertaining and it's a lot about what theater's supposed to be and it's great.

NR: You had this great thrill of being the first American composer in, I think it was twenty years, to have three shows run at the same time. Then, not too long after that, Civil War closed and Pimpernel temporarily closed. What was that like? That's such a huge difference.

FW: No, it's fine. If the goal was just to have shows on Broadway then I might have thought differently. But, like I said to you, I've always been very consistent on what my goals are. My goals are to write shows that I love, do them with people I love to make music with, and hopefully share them with the world. The fact of the matter is Civil War starts a two year tour in Cincinnati in January. Pimpernel, even if it wasn't about to open, starts a two year tour in February in New Haven. The shows now have lives and the copyrights have lives. The albums sell great. When you add up Jekyll with Pimpernel and Civil War, a couple million people have seen this stuff and experienced it. In fact, with Jekyll, something like eighty thousand people a week see Jekyll between the tours, Broadway and the international productions. That's what it's about. I don't get into that mentality. That's something you should know about me. I've always been consistent. I'm a music guy who works in the theater and I don't get carried away with things like that. The theater is a wonderful life and a wonderful place to work in, and you work with wonderful people. It's also a very small, envious, jealous, back-biting strange world of which...that part of the world I try to keep a distance from. I keep a distance from it by being true to myself and just being a musician.

NR: Do you think there was a way to make Civil War where it would have been more accepted? I honestly think it will do very well on the road.

FW: I think it's going to do great on the road. I think The Civil War not succeeding on Broadway had to do with things like...if Civil War ran at the same costs that Jekyll ran at per week, (which it probably should have), we wouldn't be having that conversation. It would still be running. The costs got a little out of hand to a place where it couldn't support itself. When we closed we were wrapping well and we had over a million dollars in the bank but we were just losing too much per week based on what the weekly running costs were. So, it had a lot to do with economics. That's number one. Number two - we really failed in the marketing research on Civil War. It was very hard for women, and mothers especially, to put the words "Civil War" and "entertainment" in the same sentence. Because women buy 70% of Broadway tickets, that was a tough hurdle to overcome. I think what we're probably going to do on the tour is that we'll have a lot of stars in the show. I think that will help the "entertainment" education of what it is and help bring people in. I do believe it's going to do great on the road.

NR: I do too. I think it will do better away from that closed community you spoke of.

Did you expect to evoke such strong sentiment from people? It seems that you either have people who adore everything you do, or they absolutely hate everything you do, no matter what.

FW: I look at it this way. We're making something. I'd rather have people react strongly to it because of something about it that touched a nerve, positive or negative, than walking by it and ignoring it. What's the point? So, I'm OK with that, as long as there are more people that love it.

NR: Do you feel like you're fighting an uphill battle with some critics?

FW: I don't even feel it's a battle. I'm not fighting anybody. That's a combative kind of...someone asked me the other day, "With the success you have, do you feel vindicated?" I said "No" because that means there's vindictive qualities in there. No, that's not who I am. I get too much joy and fun out of doing what I do. Whether I play in a band or I'm writing for these artists or I'm writing for the theater, I'm the same guy. You have to know that. If you know that and understand that about me, you'll know my disposition and why that stuff doesn't bother me much. What does bother me is the fact that people I love, like my parents or my kid, read that. They get exposed to it and then they worry about me because people are attacking their son, or attacking their dad. That's a tough thing to deal with because I have to tell them, "Don't worry about it. We're OK." Let's face it. Critics are in the business of criticizing. That's what they're in the business to do. They're going to do that. The fact that they didn't support Jekyll & Hyde, and it became so successful, just annoys them even more.

NR: Especially if you look at the Best Musical nominations for the `97 Tonys. They're all gone now and Jekyll is still here.

FW: Right. So, if you spend a lot of time thinking about that, you get bitter. I can't do that. I have too much music to make.

Interview conducted and photographs by Nancy Rosati.