ABSTRACT
For Maltby directing a musical “is so different from directing a play that they should have a different word for it. It seems to use the same elements, it seems to use the same skills, but in fact the way you apply
the skills is so completely different that the things you know about directing a play are virtually not applicable.” Maltby comes to directing with an instinctive understanding of the craft. “I think I was fundamentally
a director-I think that was my impulse. I only became a writer because I wanted to put the shows on the stage and someone had to write them.” Having been “just the lyricist on a bunch of shows” and unhappy
“seeing the material not come off well” by other directors, Maltby, at the age of thirty, decided to take charge of his own productions. “I thought, ‘How bad could I be? Could I be any worse than anybody
who ever directed anything of mine?’ And the answer was ‘no.’ So then I was freed to do it.”
