Theatre / Road Show

WILSON: You know what that is? It's the road to opportunity!
ADDISON: It's the road to eternity.
WILSON: The greatest opportunity of all. Sooner or later we're bound to get it right.

Road Show is a musical with a book by John Weidman and lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim. It is based on the lives of historical figures Addison and Wilson Mizner. Addison Mizner was an architect mostly active during the 1920s, while Wilson Mizner was a jack of many trades (at various points of his life, he had been a fight manager, a restauranteur, a playwright, and a screenwriter). The musical mainly focuses on Addison’s relationship with his brother and the role that the two of them had in the Florida land boom and bust of the 1920s.

The musical had a long and tortured development history due to the director leaving for a couple of years to work on American Beauty in 1998 and a lawsuit involving the producer in 2001. It was first known as Wise Guys in 1996 before it changed its name to Bounce in 2003, and finally settled on Road Show in 2008. All three can essentially be called different shows despite being the same story and sharing much of the same songs.

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Road Show/Bounce/Wise Guys contain examples of:

• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: In his first act as a gambler, Wilson ends up betting twenty thousand dollars (Wise Guys) or the deed to a gold vein (Bounce and Road Show). Addison, the person who actually worked to dig the gold, doesn’t appreciate this.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite breaking off ties with Wilson and wanting nothing to do with him, when he actually looks to be dying, Addison is frantic to save his life.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Applies only to Wise Guys, which starts off with the brothers talking directly to the audience, bemoaning how people have forgotten about them.
• Eccentric Artist: Addison. As an architect, he apparently had a habit of putting birds on the top of his houses and forgetting important aspects of architecture, such as doors. At the same time, he does exploit this image of himself to endear him to all the millionaires.
• Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: In Wise Guys, Wilson and Addison learn about the San Francisco earthquake and the Florida land boom from the same hollering newsboy. Who apparently works in both New York and Florida.
• The Gambling Addict: Wilson.
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: Wilson pursues these with wild abandon and strings the Boca Raton investors along with promises of getting rich quick.
• Gold Digger: Wilson marries Myra Yerkes and immediately throws her money around, investing in horses and plays and boxers while barely paying any attention to her.
• List Song: “Addison’s Trip” is an increasingly long list of Addison’s collection of souvenirs as he travels the world.
• Loveable Rogue: Wilson, who seems to be able to get away with gambling illegally, fixing races, and flaking obligations while his victims sing adoringly. Mama is thrilled. Addison isn’t.
• Lyrical Dissonance: “Fourth Vaudeville,” from Wise Guys, is the same cheery vaudeville song that shows up throughout the show, where Addison happily sings how Wilson can “fucking go to hell.”
• My God, What Have I Done?: After they caused the land bust, Addison is distraught that they have just financially ruined very many people. Wilson is less so.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Hollis Bessemer, who is a stand in for real life entrepreneur Paris Singer. In Wise Guys, Singer remains intact, but because Sondheim and Weidman wanted to address Addison’s homosexuality more prominently, and because (in Sondheim’s words) “in reality, Paris Singer could not have been less homosexual” and they did not want to be sued by his descendants, they opted to change the name.
• Parental Favoritism: Mama very clearly adores Wilson over Addison, despite saying that she has no favorites.
• Sanity Slippage Song: An interesting case where the character has a nervous breakdown in public but nobody is able to notice. In “Call It Home” (a Wise Guys-only song), Wilson suddenly pauses in his fevered Boca Raton pitch to sing of how tired he is of his free-wheeling lifestyle, tired of being haunted by his mistakes, and how he wishes he could find a place where he could simply stay. Unfortunately, since he’s in the middle of trying to sell real estate, all this just looks like a normal pitch to everybody else.
• Sibling Rivalry: For Mama’s affection. It’s a bit one-sided, as Wilson doesn’t even seem to notice that Addison is trying to one-up him at all.
• Siblings in Crime: Wilson and Addison finally collaborate for the Boca Raton scheme, riling up investors with overblown pitches. Unfortunately, the land bubble eventually bursts and they end up ruining the lives of many people.
• Successful Sibling Syndrome: Wilson lives the high life while Addison is struggling to get his career started. This does not help Addison’s jealousy.
• Vaudeville: Wise Guys uses a vaudeville framework to intermittently update the state of their relationship to the audience, with hat and cane and everything.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The sibling dynamic is a bit overblown, and it is likely that Wilson didn’t play as big a part in Boca Raton as he does in the show. It also doesn’t help that their memoirs are probably very exaggerated, so you could say the show is very loosely based on a very loosely true story.