Cinco Paul grew up on musicals. His mother, a piano teacher, played cast recordings often and taught him many of the songs. As a boy, Paul would imagine himself as a knight in “Camelot,” a guy in “Guys and Dolls.” He knew “South Pacific” and “My Fair Lady” by heart. He watched the movie versions of “The Sound of Music” and “Singin’ in the Rain.” When theater companies local to Phoenix, where he grew up, put on shows like “Once Upon a Mattress” or “Carousel,” he saw those, too, tearing up at songs like “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
As an adult, Paul became a successful screenwriter of family films (“Despicable Me,” “The Secret Life of Pets”), but he never entirely left ballads and patter songs behind. In his 30s, he had an idea for a show, loosely inspired by the 1947 chestnut “Brigadoon,” about two outsiders who stumble onto a remote village where everyone behaves as if they are in a musical.
He put it aside, only to pick it up again two decades later for what became “Schmigadoon!,” the 2021 AppleTV+ series about a pair of burned-out doctors, Melissa and Josh, trapped in a town where a reprise is never far away. With the help of the occasional dream ballet, even Josh, the more cynical of the couple, learns to love and trust and sing.
That show, which ran for two seasons, has since been reimagined as a Broadway musical. Elisabeth Vincentelli described it in The New York Times as “affectionate without being misty-eyed, sharp without being sanctimonious.” When it came to writing songs for the show and musical, Paul rarely walked alone. Every number is a homage to at least one classic musical, and often two or three. Here, the hills are alive with the sound of pastiche, the plains and the valleys, too.
Still, Paul, 61, insists that even the Joshes of the audience, who can’t tell a surrey with the fringe on top from a hole in the ground, will enjoy the story. “The comedy is pretty universal, but there’s a whole extra level for those of us who realize that Oscar Hammerstein wrote, ‘steal it or take it’ [in the ‘Soliloquy’ number from ‘Carousel’], and they’re the exact same thing.”
The show draws from more than a dozen musicals — all the ones that Paul loved as a child, along with “The King and I,” “Funny Girl,” “The Pajama Game,” “Damn Yankees,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” and then right at the end, shows of the 1970s and ’80s like “Pippin,” “Godspell” and “Sunday in the Park With George.”
These tributes resonated with Tony Award nominators, who put the show in contention for 12 awards, the most (tied with “The Lost Boys) of any musical this season. “There’s a skill to pastiche,” Paul, who was shocked and thrilled by this bounty, said. “I feel like in some ways I was being honored for honoring the greats.”
On a recent afternoon, Paul discussed four musicals he borrowed from — or stole or took from — to make “Schmigadoon!” sing happy.
A story of a con man redeemed by love, this 1957 Meredith Willson musical, gave “Schmigadoon!” its setting. “Because to me, the classic American small-town musical is ‘Music Man,’” Paul said.
Emma Tate, a schoolteacher Josh falls for, is explicitly modeled on that musical’s Marian; her lisping brother — is he really her brother? — also has an analog. Paul borrowed the show’s mayor character and remade the mayor’s judgy wife into Mildred, the “Schmigadoon!” villain. Mildred sings “Tribulation,” a riff on the patter song “Ya Got Trouble.” (That “tribulation” is a synonym for “trouble”: “Not the most subtle,” Paul said.)
From “Shipoopi,” an infamous nonsense song of “The Music Man,” Paul took inspiration for “Corn Puddin’.” “These songs that don’t add anything to the plot or the characters but are just a fun time,” Paul said.
This 1943 musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein gives “Schmigadoon!” a couple of set pieces, several characters and an ugly fear of outsiders. “Schmigadoon!” repurposes the box social from “Oklahoma!” as “Picnic Basket Auction” and provides a riff on Agnes de Mille’s famous dream ballet — though this one involves a vending machine.
Betsy, the farmer’s daughter with a crush on Josh, is a riff on the flirty Ado Annie. Her song, “I’m Not That Kind of Gal,” echoes “I Cain’t Say No.” And if Danny, the carny Melissa has a fling with, is an amalgam of both the cowboy Curly from “Oklahoma!” and the reprobate Billy from “Carousel,” his big song, “You Can’t Tame Me,” is a tribute to “Oklahoma!,” particularly “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top.” When Danny sings about a cozy little cottage with a white picket fence, “that’s 100 percent Oscar Hammerstein corn-pone lyrics to evoke that American bucolic feel,” Paul said.
‘Carousel’
Paul described this 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein show as gorgeous and experimental. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” inspired “When the Night Is Darkest,” which is sung at Danny’s funeral. “It’s a take on Oscar Hammerstein’s optimism, which is also my own optimism. You could call it toxic optimism sometimes, toxic positivity,” Paul said.
Of course, “Carousel” isn’t all positivity. Billy beats his wife, which inspired a few lines in the song “Lover’s Spat.” When the men sing in an offhand way about giving their girl a “smack,” Melissa sings, “Oh, oh no, that’s not OK / Unless it’s consensual.” And is there a touch of “A Real Nice Clambake” in “Corn Puddin’”? You bet!
‘The Sound of Music’
This 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein show “has wormed its way into the heart of every person,” Paul said. “People say it’s corny. They’re dismissive of it because, even though there are Nazis in it, it doesn’t really have the darker character themes that you see in ‘Carousel’ or ‘Oklahoma!,’ but I’ve always loved it.”
Doc, the gruff but loving physician, who romances Melissa, is a riff on the musical’s Captain Von Trapp, and his one-time fiancée, the Countess, is a stand-in for the Baroness. “Do-Re-Mi” is repurposed as the instructional song “Baby Talk,” in which Melissa, an obstetrician, explains to a couple of expectant parents how babies are made. “It’s a journey to getting these two uptight young people to say the word ‘vagina,’” Paul explained.
The film version of “The Sound of Music” gave Paul his first taste of romance, so he borrowed that, too, transforming “Something Good” into “Suddenly,” which includes some of the sweetest lyrics in “Schmigadoon!”: “All I know is suddenly I love you / And suddenly that’s all that matters now.”
