Photograph by Tony Arrasmith/Arrasmith and Associates
Going into his 14th season at the Cincinnati Playhouse as producing artistic director, Blake Robison is working alongside Tony Award–winning director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall, who has taken the reins of the U.S. premiere of Mythic. The original Greek mythology/pop-rock fantasy musical opens the Rouse Theatre’s season on September 20, and Robison discusses his involvement in bringing the successful international production to town.
The national premiere of Mythic is happening at the Playhouse. What can you tell us about this musical?
I think it’s a truly unique piece of contemporary theater. Everybody loves musicals—there are classic musicals, there are more artsy musicals. This one rides a really fun line that you’re starting to see, which are contemporary pop musicals that appeal to both an older generation who just love going to the theater, and a younger generation who are attracted by the pop music and the content.
In this case, it’s an original story based on the Greek gods. There are some other pop rock musicals that sample popular songs, things like Moulin Rouge and & Juliet. Those shows have been big hits, but all the music in those is pop music that you already know, sampled and put into a new context. That’s not the case with Mythic. This is an original story by Marcus Stevens. It’s got original music by Oran Eldor. And they’ve imagined a very fun story to explain the evolution of Persephone as someone who is a wannabe Olympian and finds her heart and her true place down with Hades, going back and forth. We all know that myth.
That’s another thing, everybody loves Greek mythology. We all study it in junior high or high school. There have been so many fun iterations of that in the cinema recently. It’s like if you took the historical pop musical Six and Percy Jackson and smashed them together, you would get Mythic.
Mythic was a huge success when it toured through Montreal and London. Is it going to find that same success in the U.S.?
We’re confident that it is. We think that our production here in Cincinnati is the launching pad for its journey to Broadway. As you mentioned, it’s not brand-new, it’s had successful productions in two major markets: London and Montreal. The thing that is taking it to the next level here is there is a brand new director and design team of Broadway A-listers to bring it to life in Cincinnati and then take it to Broadway. Kathleen Marshall is directing and choreographing the show. She is a three-time Tony Award–winning director and choreographer. We’ve got the set designer from Hamilton, the lighting designer from Wicked, the costume designer from Anastasia. It’s absolutely the A-Team.
Does the Playhouse frequently have productions that pull from so many hit musicals?
It’s an occasional treat, let’s put it that way. There was a very famous production of the Stephen Sondheim musical Company at the Playhouse that was before my time here that had a bunch of very, very high-level Broadway people involved in that production. Our production moved to Broadway and won a Tony Award for Best Revival of a New Musical. That little Tony Award statuette is on display in our lobby, so it’s something the Playhouse is really proud of.
But it doesn’t happen every season. You have to wait until a project like this comes along and comes to your attention, we have to talk to the producers to make sure that their goals for the piece align with what we want to do for Cincinnati. To me, that’s a really important factor. We’re not just renting out the theater to a bunch of Broadway producers—we’re creating this musical in collaboration with them, so it has to serve their ultimate purpose of getting it ready for Broadway, but it has to be wonderful and meaningful to our Cincinnati community. That’s the Playhouse’s promise: That we’re going to bring you the best, most exciting and diverse American theater that has something to say to our community. Cincinnati first, and after that, the stars.
What do Cincinnati audiences need?
That’s a great question. We spend a lot of time talking about that at the Playhouse when we plan our seasons. Every Playhouse season has a lot of variety, there’s always going to be some musicals and some non-musical plays. There’s always going to be some brand-new work and some familiar titles. But within that large universe of options, we have an artistic staff and board members and others who participate in the play planning process. The number one question when we’re putting together a season and picking the component parts is why do this show now? What does this show have to say to us in 2025 or 2026, here in America, in our part of the country?
In the case of Mythic, it’s a fun, broad-based thing that, yes, is about the Greek gods, but I think more fundamentally, it’s about parents and kids. It’s about Persephone and her teenage crowd, dealing with Demeter and Zeus and the actual Olympians. And it gets its fun and its buoyancy and the comedy from the various book scenes from those relationships. We can all relate to growing up as a teenager, wanting to become your own person when you’re weighed down by the identity of your parents.
What does the collaboration between all these teams look like to put on a production of this scale?
There’s a whole series of meetings. Some of the meetings have to do with what the show is going to look like, so we meet bi-weekly with all those designers I mentioned, and the director and the Playhouse’s amazing staff. We make everything here in Cincinnati. These are not shows that come in on a truck to the Aronoff Center. These are shows that we create, they’re by Cincinnati and for Cincinnati. We have an enormous production facility on Gilbert Avenue, and we make the set and the props there, we make the costumes in our beautiful new costume shop in our recently reopened facility, and we bring it all together on stage. So we put our people together with the designers and the director from New York and have those sorts of meetings.
One of the most fun things is the casting process. I flew to New York City and sat in a studio with the great Kathleen Marshall and the entire creative team and watched her put all of these Broadway actor-singer-dancers through their paces. It’s super fun and also very difficult, but when you find the right person, you know it. I think we’ve all seen enough Hollywood movies and theater movies and episodes of Smash and things like that to know that that process of narrowing things down is very creative, and super exciting when you land on the right person.
How else has your collaboration been with Kathleen Marshall? She has a long résumé of accomplishments in theater.
It’s been a real joy and a treat. Imagine you’re a baseball player and you get to be in the room every day with Joey Votto. It sort of feels like that, someone who has built a decades-long career at the highest level of our profession. She’s kind, she’s charming, she’s thoughtful, super smart, very respectful, and understands how to take the Broadway aspirations and our regional Playhouse and bring those things together in a collaborative way. She’s a real role model for young directors in our business who aspire to reach those heights.
The Playhouse claims that the Rouse Theatre is attracting nationally acclaimed artists, and obviously this crew proves that to be true. What is it about Cincinnati and the theater?
For many years, we felt like the facility itself was not commensurate with the level of accomplishment on stage. So when we were able to renovate the facility and build what we call Moe and Jack’s Place–The Rouse Theatre, all of a sudden we elevated our physical surroundings, the support systems for the artists and the audience, and now everything is in harmony.
The actors, the designers, the directors, they all come here because they know this is a community that loves great work, and as we all know, it’s a very welcoming community. They love spending a few weeks in Cincinnati and living in the apartments we lease in Mt. Adams and going to the Blind Lemon and walking through OTR. They love that—it’s a nice working environment for them to come for eight to 10 weeks at a time.
But the theater itself was designed to have the same specs as most of the theaters on Broadway in New York, and we did that very deliberately. First, because they’re great theaters, and second, because we wanted to have more of these pre-Broadway collaborations with commercial partners. We started that last season with Rutka. This is the second one that we’re doing. And you have to have a facility that is close enough to the theater it’s going to land in eventually that the design makes sense, that they don’t have to go back and start from square one when they get to New York.
Why should audiences come to see Mythic?
You should come see it because it is the cutting edge of musical theater, and what a treat that we get to make it in Cincinnati and our audiences get to see it first before it moves to New York and then ends up touring all over the country.
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