Josh Gad still remembers the first time he and Andrew Rannells met, in June 2010 in a Los Angeles audition suite. No matter what Gad did during their scenes together, Rannells didn\u2019t laugh. Not once.<\/p>\n
Rannells was auditioning for \u201cThe Book of Mormon,\u201d the new musical from the creators of \u201cSouth Park.\u201d Gad, then a correspondent on \u201cThe Daily Show,\u201d had long been attached. The producers wanted a celebrity opposite him, and they\u2019d invited several to these tryouts. Rannells, a replacement actor in \u201cHairspray\u201d and \u201cJersey Boys,\u201d was not remotely famous. Confronted with Gad\u2019s cyclone energy, he chose stillness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so intimidated. And it really upset me,\u201d Gad said, over dinner at Chez Josephine, a theater district mainstay where Rannells, in younger days, used to work the coat check. Gad turned to Rannells. \u201cI had that Tony locked until you walked in the door. And I still had a grudge because you beat me out for \u2018Jersey Boys.\u2019\u201d (It was unclear if Gad was joking. Then again, Gad is almost always joking.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Book of Mormon\u201d opened in 2011, to rapturous reviews, with Rannells as the strait-laced Mormon missionary Elder Price and Gad as his co-evangelist Elder Cunningham, whose laces are a lot looser. Both men were nominated for a Tony Award and both men lost out to Norbert Leo Butz for \u201cCatch Me If You Can.\u201d Somewhere along the way, they became close friends, which was apparent over dinner, a symphony of bits, riffs and callbacks between bites of tuna tartare and duck breast. They had ordered identical meals and identical Diet Cokes.<\/p>\n
Rannells, 45, has spent his post \u201cMormon\u201d years in other Broadway shows and on television (\u201cGirls,\u201d \u201cBlack Monday,\u201d \u201cGirls5Eva\u201d). Gad, 42, has since become a voice-over luminary (\u201cFrozen,\u201d Frozen 2,\u201d \u201cCentral Park\u201d). Now they are reuniting, one block south and one block east of their \u201cMormon\u201d haunts, in \u201cGutenberg! The Musical!\u201d which begins previews at the James Earl Jones Theater on Sept. 15.<\/p>\n
\u201cGutenberg!\u201d directed by Alex Timbers and written by Scott Brown and Anthony King, is a farcical, largehearted duet about a pair of nursing home workers, Bud and Doug, bitten grievously by the Broadway bug. Using an inheritance and the proceeds from the sale of a home, they rent a Broadway theater for one night, hoping to find a producer for their deeply misguided and tragically under-researched original musical about Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of movable type and the publisher of the Gutenberg Bible.<\/p>\n
Two old friends finding a vehicle for a Broadway return has the whiff of a vanity project. But this deliriously silly show, in which the two actors play dozens of characters and wear a combined 107 baseball caps, demands that vanity be left at the stage door.<\/p>\n
Over dinner, Gad joked (probably!) that when Timbers had sent him a photo of those 107 hats, each inscribed with the name of one of the show\u2019s characters, he\u2019d tried to back out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was too late,\u201d Rannells said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d Gad said. \u201cI read my contract last night.\u201d<\/p>\n
The day after dinner, at a rehearsal space at the Alvin Ailey Extension, Gad and Rannells were stumbling through (with an emphasis, perhaps, on stumbling) the second act of \u201cGutenberg!\u201d In a scene at the top of the act, as Bud and Doug introduced themselves to the audience, Rannells hit Gad in the face, perhaps accidentally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s assault,\u201d Gad said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou walked into it,\u201d Rannells replied. Moments later they were standing cheek to cheek, singing spooky oo-oo-oos.<\/p>\n
Rannells was wearing a shirt and shorts in complementary greens, his wavy hair reliably perfect. Gad was all in black. He was also drinking an iced coffee. Given his typical energy levels, this seemed like a bad idea. He had burst into the rehearsal room after the lunch break singing \u201cUnchained Melody\u201d with heavy vibrato. He also riffed on a line from \u201cSunset Boulevard\u201d: \u201cWe taught the world new ways to dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Rannells said. He hugged Gad. Or maybe he gave him a mild version of the Heimlich maneuver. This is more or less their way, with Gad as an avatar of chaos and Rannells in smirking control.<\/p>\n
Casey Nicholaw, the director of \u201cThe Book of Mormon,\u201d had noted this contrast. \u201cJosh\u2019s comedy basically just says, \u2018Watch me. Love me.\u2019 Josh is just out there,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd Andrew\u2019s is sneaky. Andrew knows how to just hold himself with grace and dignity and then just go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each has a different process, a different style, a different affect. Collaborators I spoke with compared them to famous comic duos \u2014 Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello. Gad cited \u201cThe Odd Couple.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely am more anxious than he is,\u201d Gad said over dinner. \u201cI\u2019m a bundle of anxiety when it comes to learning dances. I\u2019m a bundle of anxiety when it comes to getting lines right.\u201d Gad said that he is also a hypochondriac and that sometimes, offstage during \u201cThe Book of Mormon,\u201d Rannells would suggest possible diseases for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a mean streak,\u201d Gad said. \u201cI can say that now.\u201d Rannells, sipping his Diet Coke, didn\u2019t deny it.<\/p>\n
Despite that mean streak, a friendship endures. Nikki M. James, their \u201cMormon\u201d co-star, recalled watching it begin. \u201cOnstage, they played very different people who end up becoming each other\u2019s best friends,\u201d she said in a recent interview. \u201cThat camaraderie and friendship and love and sense of family, it was very clear offstage as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
That show left them inextricably linked. \u201cWhen I die, if I get an obituary in The New York Times, Josh\u2019s name will also be in it,\u201d Rannells said, somewhat darkly.<\/p>\n
And after they departed \u201cThe Book of Mormon,\u201d each for a quickly canceled sitcom (\u201c1600 Penn\u201d for Gad, \u201cThe New Normal\u201d for Rannells), they would often talk about how they might work together again. A revival of \u201cA Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum\u201d was mooted. So was a revival of \u201cThe Producers.\u201d About four years ago Timbers (\u201cMoulin Rouge,\u201d \u201cBeetlejuice\u201d) had another idea.<\/p>\n
Brown and King (\u201cBeetlejuice\u201d) had first conceived \u201cGutenberg!\u201d more than 20 years ago. Back then, King was a musical theater intern at Manhattan Theater Club. Tasked with sifting through the slush pile, he found himself listening to home-recorded tapes and CDs of new musicals, most of them sung through by the author or authors, most of them hopeless. King thought that he and Brown could write something just as bad. Worse even.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried to come up with, like, what\u2019s a terrible idea for a musical?\u201d King said.<\/p>\n
But what began as a way to prank King\u2019s boss evolved into something just a little more sincere. As King put it, \u201cWe fell in love with our own dumb stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2003, Brown and King performed a 45-minute version of the show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York. It ran for about two years. With encouragement from a producer, they wrote a second act and took it to London. The show that emerged was never about the real Gutenberg \u2014 Bud and Doug have only the vaguest ideas of how movable type and medieval history work. Instead it was a loving lampoon of Broadway wishes and tropes.<\/p>\n
But for the Off Broadway premiere in 2006, directed by Timbers, the creators stepped out in favor of actual actors, Christopher Fitzgerald and Jeremy Shamos, which made it feel more like a real show and less like a goofball routine written by two starving artist roommates.<\/p>\n
There had been conversations about moving the show to Broadway. Those conversations had never been especially earnest. Then Timbers slipped Gad the script, hoping that he would share it in turn with Rannells. Which is exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
With Brown and King and Timbers, the actors met for a reading in workshop in Los Angeles in March 2020, an inauspicious moment for Broadway-bound musicals. The reading went well. To succeed, the friendship between Bud and Doug has to feel ardent, unbreakable. Gad and Rannells had that.<\/p>\n
So after a delay of about three years, conversations began again. A two-person show felt overwhelming, especially one in which the actors also had to serve as their own crew, moving each prop and set piece. Gad described it as \u201cmore intimate, and yet much more insane than even \u2018Mormon.\u2019\u201d Still, he and Rannells agreed.<\/p>\n
In rehearsal, that insanity was in evidence. The two men were playing not only Bud (Gad), the composer, and Doug (Rannells), the book writer, but also every other baseball-capped character. And they had to play them with all the na\u00efvet\u00e9 and enthusiasm that newbie writers would bring, but also with the necessary skills of a practiced musical theater performer, because bad acting and bad singing aren\u2019t funny for long.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to commit to doing fully lived-in characters by performers who otherwise would not be on Broadway,\u201d Gad said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s literally a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat,\u201d Rannells sighed.<\/p>\n
Hats aside, they seemed to be having a pretty good time, particularly during one sequence where Rannells reenacted an eagle attacking a sea gull, while Gad, playing a pubescent girl, did a sexy, scary skeleton dance.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t all skeletons and sea gulls. Opening a Broadway show is stressful. \u201cI think our actual human sweat will give us away,\u201d Rannells said. \u201cI\u2019m going to be a real mess 10 minutes into the show.\u201d Opening a Broadway show with a best friend in accidental smacking distance is stressful in a different way. But it\u2019s also pretty nice. \u201cGutenberg!\u201d is about two characters supporting each other, through thick and thin and third reprise. And as Gad and Rannells tell it, that tracks for the actors, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are times where I want to fall down and just cry at how tiring the show is,\u201d Gad said. \u201cThen I look at Rannells and I\u2019m like, \u2018OK, he\u2019s going to keep me upright.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
He turned to Rannells, adding, \u201cI\u2019m so happy you got \u2018Jersey Boys\u2019 now. Now I actually think they made the right choice.\u201d<\/p>\n