“My wife is always telling me ‘don’t act silly’” says composer Robert Waldman when we speak on the phone, but as proved in his classic musical The Robber Bridegroom, there’s nothing wrong with his unique brand of silliness. “I get up very early in the morning, the clock radio goes on, and it is so depressing out there, not a breath of hope in the air at times” he continued, “I try to be silly to counteract that”, and he’s absolutely right, Waldman and lyricist Alfred Uhry adapted Eudora Welty’s short story about mistaken identities and gold-hearted bandits in the mid-70s, and saw it follow a strange trajectory that included back-to-back Broadway productions, and a resurgence in regional theaters leading all the way to a successful, award-winning Off-Broadway revival in the spring of 2016. To mark the release of the 2016 Cast Recording I spoke to Waldman about his lengthy career in the theatre.

The tale of The Robber Bridegroom can be quite dark, this adaptation is filled with humor, how did this come to happen?

Alex [Timbers] was responsible for bringing it back, he’s younger and I respect his work, but I told him I was here if he needed any help. I was glad he was not using motorcycles or anything like that (laughs) and I was glad there were new designers coming with fresh ideas. My attitude was knowing this wasn’t a replica of a 45 year old show.

Working with Raul Julia, Kevin Kline and now Steven Pasquale and seeing them play the title character must have been exciting. What do you discover about the piece with each new performer?

I get amazed when we have auditions. Some actor came in and he was really good, he did Musgrove and I thought how amazing it was that when an actor is good he can make a line feel fresh. The difference between Raul Julia singing, or Steven singing is what makes theatre great. Alfred and I got warnings from Stephen Sondheim, as writers he said when someone asks you to come look at their show when it’s on tour beware. It’s true, I’ve walked in and looked at the show and the one true thing is if you see someone who chooses to put  a straw in his mouth, it’s not The Robber Bridegroom, it’s Nashville. When we did the original workshop Ernie Sabella came to read, he was a miracle! I could swear he’d been given the script by our friend Jerry Bock, but no, he did his thing and played the character, and it was so good he inspired me to write a song. Alfred and I wrote a song for him overnight. Many times actors put literal life into a moment, I hope the material we created gives them the opportunity to do this.

Did you go back and tweak anything in the score for the new cast recording?

In this score from 40 years ago? No. Not that I can think of, I’m proud of the score we wrote, I’m not always happy with what productions do with certain things, but I come from a background in musical theatre and that means drama. If you pick up a play by Shakespeare, and the director asks you to read a paragraph for subtext, I think I’m giving the actor the same approach with the arrangements I made. They have the attitude, the mood, maybe he ate a terrible meal from his mother in law, I don’t know. It would be wrong if you’re being chased by murderous derelicts and you wrote a waltz. I get crazy on a lot of material that comes out and is accepted as musical theatre. A song that becomes a classic to me is because the attitude is honest and gets into the listener.

When you score plays do you approach the work in the same way?

Exactly, when I do incidental music I sit for the first three days with the cast and director. Then I go away and write a theme, I bring it to the director and if he likes it, I guess it’s my classic upbringing, but I think everything needs to be related. The audience doesn’t need to know the theme, they just need to find it truthful. When I do incidental music, all the cues are related to the opening theme. I was always interested in portraying the drama of the moment.

Staying on the theme of themes, is Salome the character you had the most fun writing music for?

No (laughs) I enjoy writing music for everyone! I did the music for The Heiress with Cherry Jones, for which she won the Tony, in those days the music was on tape, so it was finally cut down by hand, by rolling the tapes. Then I’d spot check the show at least once a week, so one day I go in after it’d been running for a while. I went to see Cherry and she said “when I go upstairs to get into my gown and come down the stairs for the final scene, I have people pulling and pushing to make this change, and I’m hearing your music and it keeps me in the character”. It was so helpful to hear that, I’m at the service of the directors, writer and actor, I wanted to serve them all.

I read your father was from Argentina.

Yeah, they were coming from Romania, or Russia, and couldn’t make it to the States, so his parents went to Argentina first.

Was tango an important part of your musical upbringing?

My father was the oldest brother, he played tangos and even played the fiddle sometimes, he was always trying to make peace between his siblings. We had music in the family, my mother was a bookkeeper for a scenic design house and she ended up running the place. The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree, my brother was an actor and producer, I have a daughter who makes guitars, a son who’s in Phantom of the Opera, he was also a standby in Gentleman’s Guide. The influence of music, joy and laughter was always floating around us. When my father died I opened up his piano bench and there sat a little music book, I opened it up and saw it was my book, there were no bar lines, or stems, just little notes I wrote. I remembered my music teacher had taught me how to turn them into real notes.

So music is in your genes.

It gets passed on, I don’t pass it on. I worked from home, when the kids got back from school they’d say “if my father’s on the piano and is having  a hard time we can’t make a sound, if he’s working without problems we can do whatever we want”. It absorbs, every now and then I’ll give my son a note though. I tell him not to repeat Brando, but to do something original!

Is there a formula to solve being stuck when you’re composing?

Yes, just keep working. I’ve never lived under the assumption that I had to wait for the muse. Alfred and I started working all the way back in 1955, when we started really writing we came to the conclusion we couldn’t wait for inspiration, so we’d work everyday from 10 to 4. We would sometimes hate each other, throw things at each other, but what we do is a job! When something comes to me and I think it’s good, I feel grateful and it’s amazing, sometimes I will ask myself “did I really write that?”, it’s like watching a baby grow up and one day realizing “oh you are related to me that’s right”.

The 2016 Cast Recording of The Robber Bridegroom is now available on Ghostlight Records.