Bewitching road to success

The graduates of Ohio State University recently completed the book and score for a $7 million London musical (The Witches of Eastwick) and have signed a contract to write a new Disney musical for Broadway.

"It's funny how these things happen," Rowe said from London. He recently took a break from rehearsals to return to Ohio to attend the graduation of his daughter, Amber, from Newark High School. Rowe also has a 16-year-old son, Landon. His sister, Carol McClure, lives in New Albany.

"We feel very lucky," Dempsey said. "There was a time when people wrote Broadway musicals at a very young age -- Stephen Sondheim did West Side Story at 27 -- but that's rare today."

Dempsey, 35, and Rowe, 43, met in their 20s while performing at Players Theatre Columbus. Dempsey appeared in Sweeney Todd (1984), while Rowe appeared in Evita (1986) and was the voice of the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors (1987). Rowe, who has arranged or performed music for Sandy Duncan, Tony Randall and the Miss America Pageant, also served as music director for Little Shop, Players' Tintypes and Cotton Patch Gospel and Gallery Players' Hey There Good Times.

"It's great to have a collaborator. Composing can be a very lonely profession," Rowe said.

"John is a musician who knows rhythm and how to talk in 'musicalese.' A lot of people who aspire to write lyrics don't know rhythm and don't how to vary it. What's wonderful about working with John is that he challenges me constantly, with odd phrasing or odd bars."

The secret of their success, Dempsey said, is that they each write fast, giving them time to step back and rework songs.

After a false start with a proposed musical version of Charlotte's Web, the duo turned their attention to The Reluctant Dragon, a fantasy by Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows).

The children's operetta became their first show to reach the stage. Players Youth Theatre Columbus' 1989 world premiere was praised by The Dispatch for its imagination, "clever lyrics" and "spirited music."

"Dragon was our first exciting moment in musical theater, and our first step toward Witches," Dempsey said. Later published by Dramatic Publishing, Dragon has had more than 50 regional U.S. productions.

Rowe, who grew up on Columbus' East Side, fell in love with musical theater while attending second grade at Scioto Trail Elementary School. He played one of the Siamese children in a production of The King and I at Marion Franklin High School.

"I was immediately hooked," he said. "Every night, when Mrs. Anna sang Hello, Young Lovers, I would weep onstage." In third grade, Rowe followed his stage debut by playing one of the children in a Kenley Players tour of Oliver!

While Rowe aimed for a musical-theater career, studying classical piano and opera and performing in a touring band, Dempsey "fell into it by luck."

After growing up in Youngstown, he trained to become a teacher. He volunteered for "a lot of community theater." After Dragon, he rewrote the lyrics for a second Players production of Ed Graczyk's A Country Christmas Carol. But he continued to view musical theater as a sideline to his main career.

Dempsey taught second grade for six years, mostly at Royal Manor Elementary School in Gahanna.

He didn't give up his day job until 1996, when "the stakes started getting too big and I had to make a choice to take the scary road."

That was the year Rowe and Dempsey's second musical reached the stage. Zombie Prom, a wacky satire of 1950s high schools and horror movies, reached New York for a short off-Broadway run following several popular productions in Florida.

British producer Cameron Mackintosh (Cats, The Phantom of the Opera), always on the lookout for fresh talent, spotted it in Zombie Prom. With Mackintosh's support, Rowe and Dempsey wrote The Fix, a surrealistic musical satire about Washington politics.

Walt Disney representatives were impressed by Rowe and Dempsey's songs for The Fix and The Witches of Eastwick, and the company has signed the pair to write the score for a new Broadway musical to be announced. A developmental workshop production is tentatively scheduled for next year.