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TAKE HEART, all you shower singers. Keep on belting ballads, attempting arias, lathering with love songs, splashing with scat, rinsing with rap.
With a little luck - and a lot of talent - you may find your name on a Broadway marquee.
Lucy Simon, who composed the music for "The Secret Garden," which comes to the Fox Theatre on Tuesday, sings and hums, and even composes, while she showers.
"I've always done it," she said with a wide, happy smile. "There's something relaxing about being in the shower, and melodies often run through my head. I've always been a singer, and even though I compose on the piano, it all begins with something vocal, and that's where the shower sometimes comes in. I remember days when I would get out, go to the phone, call Marsha, and tell her I had solved a problem we were having."
"Marsha" is Marsha Norman, who wrote the book and lyrics. Norman, a Pulitzer Prize winner for " 'Night, Mother," earned a Tony a year ago for the book of "The Secret Garden."
Simon, willowy and open-faced, with a soft voice, was in St. Louis recently on a roundabout stop-off between New York and Cleveland. The company opened its national tour in Cleveland, just before this week's visit here, and she was going to sit in on the last week of rehearsals in Cleveland.
"We've made a few changes," she explained, "and I think we've strengthened the show, but it's important that I be there for the singers."
It's interesting, and certainly correct, that Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 tale, "The Secret Garden," be taken to Broadway by an all-woman production team. In addition to Simon and Norman, Heidi Landesman served as producer and set designer, Susan H. Schulman directed, Theoni V. Aldredge created the costumes and Tharon Musser the lighting. Landesman also earned a Tony for her set design. Simon, nominated for one for her first Broadway score, lost out to the razzle-dazzle music of "The Will Rogers...