Broadway writer, composer, and actress/director debut musical about Pete Rose at OCC

NOVI — Oakland Community College theater students had a rare opportunity to debut a brand-new musical before it ever hits Broadway.

“Charlie Hu$tle,” the story of baseball legend Pete Rose, opened at the Smith Theater on OCC’s Farmington Hills campus Nov. 14 — a date that coincidently coincides with Rose’s jersey number.

Written by screenwriter and lyricist Ryan Noggle, whose credits include writing for “Saturday Night Live”; composed by Neil Berg, of “Grumpy Old Men: The Musical” fame; and produced under the direction of Broadway actress Jennifer Little, whose credits include “The Phantom of the Opera,” the show tells of the highs and lows of Rose’s career and, in doing so, illustrates the dangers of gambling addiction.

Noggle said that the story of Pete Rose is rich in plot, characters and controversial themes.

“It just checked every box that I was looking for in a story,” he said. “I thought it would make a sensational musical. An unexpected musical.”

“I went to college to play baseball, and even though I make my living writing musicals, I always wanted to write a story that is relatable to baseball,” Berg said.

“When this came to my desk through my agent, I recognized very quickly that this story is much like a Greek tragedy, very theatrical, somebody reaches the pinnacle and falls all the way down, and as a musical you want to write about and you musicalize the height of emotions. … There’s anger, there’s love, there’s all these types of things that make you want to sing,” Berg said.

He said it is a challenge to create a musical based on the life of a Major League Baseball player because “people like to pigeonhole things.”

“People think it’s a baseball musical, and it’s not. What attracted me to this was not baseball. … To me this is about gambling,” Berg said.

“There’s never been a real musical about gambling addiction, since maybe ‘Guys and Dolls,’ which was kind of a light comedy. So (it’s a challenge) for us to tackle an addiction that people don’t really think is an addiction.”

Noggle said he has always wanted to write a musical and was an avid fan of Rose as a child. He said that his entire family were fans of the Cincinnati Reds.

“When I came to be the age of knowing players and collecting baseball cards, Pete Rose was the most famous player on our team. He was the centerpiece of the team,” Noggle said.

“He was the most exciting player to watch, and so I got big into Pete Rose as just a 7-, 8-year-old kid. I listened to him on the radio every night.”

He said the song “Little Boy” was inspired by how much he idolized Rose as a kid. He said he would try to play like him in Little League and try to match his work ethic in playing hard and loving the game.

Noggle was 12 when the Pete Rose scandal hit in 1989 and said it was devastating for him to see his idol go down like that.

“It hit me hard. When you see someone that you’ve put on a pedestal come down like that and sort of not be the hero that you thought he was, it kind of can shake affirmative youth,” Noggle said. “So this story is very personal to me in that I kind of grew up with him in a sense.”

Berg said Broadway theaters often look for new shows to produce two to three years in advance, so they decided to have the musical debut as a college production so that they could see how it works on stage. Such a debut allows the writers to make modifications to the show’s script or score before it hits Broadway. He said that by having the show performed by students, they are able to get valuable insight on how to make the show better.

“Even though they are not the same talent level, it’s still getting a production where you are seeing people telling your story, and for us in the developmental process to be able to see a continual production with lights on stage, we can absolutely tell what we need to do for the next round to help make it better,” Berg said. “There’s a lot of things that I can learn.”

Berg said he previously had a good experience debuting one of his musicals at a college, and when he heard his longtime friend, Little, was the theater director at a community college, he asked her to consider having the students perform “Charlie Hu$tle.”

“What’s really wonderful about this is that everyone wins,” Berg said.

“We get to see the production. … We get to see our work. Now the kids, they get to do something they never get to do ever, anywhere. They get to develop a new show without preconceived notions. … Everything you see up there, these young actors are creating for the first time themselves,” Berg said.

“The workload definitely increases when it’s the first time the show’s ever been put on its feet before,” said Tessa Gibson, who portrays Pete Rose’s wife, Carol. “Workload, and pressure too, because it is the first time and it’s like we’re placing the ground rules. So it’s a lot of pressure, but also excitement, because there is a lot of opportunity in a brand-new show.”

The college production of the show also featured the talents of shadow actors, who followed the main actors around to translate their spoken words into American Sign Language. The shadow actors are advanced ASL students who are OCC faculty and deaf mentors.

“We partner together and we work together to tell the story,” Little said.

Little said she decided to do a partnership with the ASL department at the school when she started at OCC three years ago, as the school has a strong ASL program, and it is something she has always been interested in. The performances are part of the ASL students’ final project/internship.

“They are integrated from day one. We only differentiate by saying these are signing actors versus speaking actors, but we build the whole show with that concept in mind,” Little said.

She said there is a large deaf population that comes to their performances, and a smaller deaf/blind population that comes to the shows as well. The show incorporates videos and signs on large TV screens to also assist deaf attendees in enjoying the show during certain fast-paced scenes.

“We are constantly thinking how do we do visual cues for people who can’t hear the audio,” Little added.

The final two shows at OCC took place Nov. 21-22.