Ian Ward and company Photo by Mark Frohna

1. A) The gritty war novel "From Here to Eternity"
2. B) Musical Theatre
3. C) Milwaukee, Wisconsin as the site of premieres of new work by major writers.

One would think any of the above, really. But in fact, Tim Rice's musical adaptation (with music by Stuart Brayson, book by Donald Rice and Bill Oakes) of James Jones' novel opened in a revised version different enough to be called a premiere at Milwaukee's Skylight Music Theatre on April 12, 2024. With Sir Rice, his collaborators, and Jones' daughter Kaylie Jones in attendance, no less.

Lest the above paragraph seem too snarky, I'll disclose that I'm a native Milwaukeean who lived 12 years of my adult life as well as my first 18 years of life in that city. I know it as having long had an exceptional performing arts and visual arts scene. It boasts a community of appreciative and knowledgeable arts lovers who are terrific test audiences for new musicals. Though I now live overseas following years in Chicago, I remain a booster of Milwaukee and was thrilled to learn of this premiere and that it was happening during my recent trip back to the U.S. Before attending the premiere, I had the opportunity to visit with Skylight Music Theatre Artistic Director Michael Unger, From Here to Eternity's director/choreographer Brett Smock, and Jones' daughter Kaylie to learn more about their commitment to this piece and how it happened to be produced in Milwaukee.

As noted in the Audience Guide distributed at performances, the idea of musicalizing From Here to Eternity originated with composer Stuart Brayson, who says the thought came to him as a kid who loved the novel and thought he would like to write musicals. A chance meeting with Rice led to a correspondence between the two, and eventually Rice became interested in working with Brayson on a musical adaptation of the Jones novel. The musical with a book by Bill Oakes opened to mixed reviews in October of 2013 at London's Shaftesbury Theatre and ran until early 2014. It was during that run that Brett Smock, then associate artistic director for the Finger Lakes Music Theater Festival (now called REV Theatre) in Auburn, New York, saw the production and saw potential for further development.

Soon after seeing the musical in London, Smock was promoted to producing artistic director of the company. Having, as he told me, "a soft spot for new musicals," he directed a significantly revised production at that theater in 2016. Smock developed the piece further for a production at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine the following year, and in 2019, directed a workshop production with a new book by Tim Rice's son, Donald Rice, based on Oakes' original book. This newly revised version returned to London in a production at London's Off West End Charing Cross Theatre in 2022. The creative team has made further changes to the book that are being premiered in Milwaukee.

"We've compressed the timeline," Smock explained. "We've put all the action of the story into just two weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The audience knows what is about to happen, but the characters don't. They're still living in this beautiful but conflicted paradise of Hawaii to which they requested to be assigned, thinking that it was unlikely to see any action. We tell it through flashbacks as a senior officer (a new character) is making an inquest into two suspicious deaths in the company."

Over the past ten years, as the musical was being developed, Smock was in regular contact with James Jones' daughter, novelist Kaylie Jones ("A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries"), who together with her brother Jamie, is the executor of their father's literary estate. She attended the London productions in 2013 and 2022 and explains why she believes the story is appropriate for a musical adaptation. "For these soldiers–Depression-era boys who had maybe been kicked out of their homes and enlisted in the Army so they would be able to eat–it was music that held everything together. In their leisure hours they would play the music they knew from their homes. Stuart Brayson has incorporated these musical influences from across the U.S. into the score.

Though the novel was nine years old and the film seven years old when Kaylie was born in 1960, it has been ever present in her life and she has been protective of it and its legacy. She oversaw the restoration of her father's original manuscript. She explained to me how the biographer George Hendrick recreated the manuscript from James Jones' notes and letters, using them to distinguish between deletions demanded by the book's editors that Jones objected to and those to which he agreed. It's this revised edition, released in 2011, that is the source material for the musical, rather than the film screenplay. Among the material cut from the original novel that has been included in the musical is a subplot in which some of the soldiers, including the protagonist Private Prewitt, perform sex acts for pay to civilian customers of a local gay bar.

Smock admits that at some 850 pages, "the novel is a bear, but we've focused on the stories in that are most compelling. Additionally, we've combed the novel for details that have informed us in many ways, for example influencing some of our design elements. We've also focused on the novel's themes of love, duty, and morality."

From Here to Eternity: The Musical came to Skylight Music Theatre through Artistic Director Michael Unger's past associations with Rice and Smock. "I first met Tim Rice in 1997 when I was assistant director to Mike Ockrent on the musical King David, which Tim wrote with Alan Menken. It was the first production presented in the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway. I had been Facebook friends with Brett Smock for years before ever meeting him in person. We finally met last year when he attended our production of Evita. Smock thought of Skylight as a perfect venue for this latest iteration of From Here to Eternity, in a market large enough, but still somewhat removed from the eyes of quick-to-judge theatre fans and national critics. The musical fit just as easily into Skylight's artistic agenda. The company, founded in 1959 as Skylight Opera and in its early years known mainly for operettas and chamber operas, in the 1980s began to focus more heavily on contemporary musicals. In recent years, the company has produced newer works including Dennis DeYoung's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Paul Williams' Fortunate Sons.

Having travelled from London to the U.S., back to London and then to Milwaukee, what's next for From Here to Eternity: The Musical? Smock said he doesn't think it'll be Broadway but hopes this production will build awareness of the piece and that it will enter the popular repertoire. With the novel's continuing appeal after nearly 75 years and audiences eager to further explore its characters and themes, it seems he and the musical's creators won't be disappointed.