'If/Then' authors on their Paul Simon-meets-Stephen-Sondheim tale of one woman's parallel lives

As a unit, composer Tom Kitt, lyricist/librettist Brian Yorkey, director Michael Greif, and producer David Stone do not make run-of-the-mill, feel-good musicals.

Next to Normal is their Pulitzer- and Tony-winning chamber ensemble work on bipolar disorder.

And the tender If/Then - which comes in a national tour to the Academy of Music on June 21-26 - is a Paul Simon-meets-Stephen-Sondheim orchestrated tale of one woman's parallel lives.

This creative quartet takes a complex but successful road to the Broadway musical.

"I love that musicals can be as light as air or the equivalent of cotton candy," says Yorkey with a laugh, pointing to silly longtime favorite Anything Goes. "But that is not what I ever wanted to do. I think I'm more interested in modern people, their real needs and emotional concerns." Yorkey, who collaborated with Sting on his dour fathers-and-sons musical The Last Ship ("a real pinch-me moment") says that, true, his next musical with Kitt is the mother-daughter role-reversal musical Freaky Friday - "OK, no heavy pondering there" - but that even there they will imbue that Disney comedy with heft. "I want to get to the heart of the matter," Yorkey says, "find what is important and powerful within its characters."

Yorkey met Kitt at Columbia University. They became instant friends, and they have collaborated since the 1990s - they are "like family, really," says Kitt, "when you consider that my girlfriend then, who is my wife now, hooked us up because she thought we'd make a good writing team." Kitt wrote additional music and orchestrations for the Green Day musical American Idiot ("I pretended I was George Martin while with Green Day") and Bring It On with Hamilton auteur Lin-Manuel Miranda ("his mind works so unbelievably fast").

Next to Normal and If/Then are clearly not happy-go-lucky musicals. "I saw this thing on Dateline [on] NBC about electroshock therapy," says Yorkey. "I didn't know it was still practiced. And I recalled the people I knew who struggled with mental illness. I thought how emotional and real that story was, one we had never seen before on stage."

In December 2008, after Next to Normal began its run, Kitt had his own idea: alternative existences and parallel lives. "I was thinking of who I was at that time and wondered how much of my existence would have been radically different if but for one single choice," Kitt says. "One choice," Yorkey adds, "would have made his entire world different from that point onward."

If/Then was born, a musical in which a 40-year-old woman named Elizabeth moves back to New York City for a fresh start. Then she must navigate different, separate realities and parallel lives, each arising from a choice.

Elizabeth was originally imagined as a woman in her 20s. Then came the chance to cast Idina Menzel, the powerful mezzo-soprano Broadway sensation of Rent and Wicked, in the lead. It was less Menzel's age than her power and command that led producer Stone to ask Kitt and Yorkey to think of an older woman as If/Then's central character.

Stone stressed that, compared with the life of a young adult, maturity made it harder, and more urgent, to repair the damage from one's wrong choices. As Yorkey puts it, Stone led the duo to "explore the universality of people discovering themselves - alone - a little bit later in life, when most people aren't alone."

Kitt was aiming for a score with the sophistication of Sondheim ("because he's always on my mind") and enough gravity and range for Menzel's vocal presence. (Jackie Burns, the lead for the national tour coming through Philadelphia, has comparable chops.) He wanted thoughtful songs that addressed the issues of choice and maturity, such as If/Then's pivotal "You Learn to Live Without."

And Kitt also sought orchestral colors that would match his primary inspiration: the folk sounds of Simon and Garfunkel.

"I wanted to recapture the sound of my youth and New York City," says Kitt. "I hear 'The Boxer' and their harmonies, and I am immediately transported to the '60s, that naïveté. I also thought of my dramatic, traumatic parts of my life - having to evacuate my brother's apartment during superstorm Sandy - and I quickly considered the precariousness of life."

For all these reasons, it made more sense for a mature woman to sing If/Then's folkie orchestrations and words about life changes: "Someone older," Kitt says, "brings more urgency to the choices they are making, that they must make."

Yorkey wants If/Then audiences to walk away from the theater with a sense of being alive in the moment: "Tom and I want people to think about the roads they have traveled, the choices before and the choices ahead, and to feel alert in the world, this world."

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If/Then

Tuesday through Sunday

at the Academy of Music,

240 S. Broad St. $20 - $110. 215-893-1999, kimmelcenter.org

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