Daily Loaf

It’s the musical that had to be written. And only Gil Perlroth could be trusted to bring it off.

When Gulfport:The Musical premieres in January, 2010 at the Catherine Hickman Theater as part of the town’s centennial celebration, it will feature the book, music and lyrics of one of the most prolific and successful playwrights in the Tampa Bay area. At age 81, Gil Perlroth (pictured) has written over 20 shows, including the recent hit at the Venue Theatre, Ain’t Retirement Grand?

After the break, read more about Gulfport:The Musical and listen to my interview with Gil Perlroth on Creative Loafing’s ArtsSpeak podcast.

A Gulfport resident himself for the last 12 years, Perlroth brings to his recently finished script the talents he honed over years as a jazz trumpet player, a writer of pop songs and advertising jingles, and as a public relations specialist. He’s worked on this show lovingly.
“I started about a year and a half ago,” Perlroth told me during a recent interview. “I’ve been working with the town historian, a woman named Lynne Brown, who has produced two books on the history of Gulfport which are really very interesting. I worked with her, I read her books, and she and I decided on the highlights of the history from the very beginning until the present day. I took it from there and I started writing. The show was finished last week….

“Auditions are September 14 and 15 at the Back Door Theater in Gulfport, and we are hoping for a good turnout, because singing male actors are rare, and we need male actors who can sing.” The play, which is co-presented by the City of Gulfport and the Gulfport Community Players, calls for 24 actors, including two narrators and some children. Most performers will be asked to play multiple parts.

Who’s the most notorious character in the entire play?

“The Hurricane of 1921,” said Perlroth. “That really destroyed and changed the character of Gulfport. Before that they were just a struggling village dependent on Boca Ciega Bay for fishing, etcetera. The hurricane came along and wiped out everything: the boats, the nets, the town itself. People were starving, some of them.

“And a little while later, Prohibition came along — and the fishermen turned to being bootleggers. And that’s what saved the town, as far as making a living.” Liquor distilled in Gulfport was delivered as far away as Clearwater and Tampa, Perlroth said, a process he’s memorialized in a “flapper song” called “Booze.”

Other highlights include the coming in 1878 of the first white settlers in the area — the Native Americans had left because nothing could grow there — and a segment heralding the arrival after World War II of the first electrical air conditioners (the song is called “Cool”).

The most recent event that Perlroth has celebrated — just before the closing “hymn” to the city — is the advent of the biker gangs around 1980.

“It became so rough down along the waterfront there, that Gulfport citizens just didn’t go down there after dark….There were fights, there were murders.” Perlroth has musicalized this era by imagining two bikers “in full regalia” who sing a song called “Pussycats” — “saying we’re just pussycats, we’re misunderstood — but don’t mess with us.” Finally, Perlroth said, there was “a coterie of people who wanted to see Gulfport be a decent place to live. And eventually the bikers left.”

Perlroth’s own story is almost as interesting as Gulfport’s. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, started playing jazz trumpet in his early teens, and performed with the orchestra in the pit when South Pacific and Carousel were trying out for Broadway at the Shubert Theatre. He wrote his first musical when he was a senior at the University of Connecticut — BMI selected it as the best college musical of 1945 — but then, after a sojourn at the Hartt School of Music, devoted himself to writing pop songs (”Kid’s Stuff”) and advertising jingles (The Princess Phone: “It’s little, it’s lovely, it lights”), working for Grumman Aerospace (the information manual for the Apollo Lunar Module) and Eastern Airlines.

In 1980, he decided that “I have to get back to my music — and my wife said, ‘I think you should.’” Since then, only one of his more-than-20 shows has not been staged: Tom and Sally, about the love affair of Thomas Jefferson and slave Sally Hemings.

And now comes Gulfport: The Musical, slated to premiere on January 8, 2010. It’s Perlroth’s gift to the town he lives in — and if it’s as special as its subject, it’s bound to be fascinating. At the very least, it’ll give you a chance to encounter of the Bay area’s most successful theater artists.

Check it out if you can.

Download the episode here.

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