With Dear Jack, Dear Louise and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, Ken Ludwig Isn't Slowing Down

Within five years, the playwright Ken Ludwig had two Broadway hits: the eternal backstage farce Lend Me a Tenor and the beloved Gershwin musical Crazy for You. A veteran scribe would kill for back-to-back hits like that; Ludwig was barely in his 40s.

In the decades since, Ludwig has become one of America’s premiere and most-produced dramatists. In addition to those two now-classics, his oeuvre includes Moon Over Buffalo, A Comedy of Tenors, the Sherlock Holmes-inspired Baskerville and Moriarty, and adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, among them.

It’s no shock that a playwright whose output is so prolific would have multiple shows on at once. There are 300 separate productions of his plays expected this year across the United States alone. Death on the Nile just closed at Arena Stage. Dear Jack, Dear Louise, the epistolary romance of his parents, is running though February 16 at 59E59, in a production of Penguin Rep and Shadowland Stages. Asolo Rep is premiering his latest work, the mystery comedy Lady Molly of Scotland Yard. And he’s got at least half-a-dozen works in various stages of the process.

So when does he rest?

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

After all this time toiling away in the theater, what is it like to see your parents’ story getting its due on a New York City stage?
Oh, it gives me such immense joy. I had a happy upbringing. It was a small town; it was the Amish country. My dad was the one and only dermatologist in town, so all my high school friends knew him because they went to him for their acne. They were two very good people, and I was so lucky.

Jack and Louise are writing letters to each other during World War II. It’s such a quaint concept, as our reviewer pointed out, in an era of online dating. Was there an inciting incident that led you to writing about your folks?
I’m always looking for new stories to write. I usually write two new plays a year, and for whatever reason, they came into my consciousness at that moment. My stock in trade is to write extravagant or muscular comedies like Lend Me a Tenor. I’ve written about 12 of those. I like to try to get out of that box for a while.

I must’ve written it around 2018. When I write things, I usually finish them, call theaters that I’m interested in, and on they go. It opened in 2019 at Arena Stage, just before Covid hit. Something stepped up out of the blue, changed our lives, and we all had to fight it in a united form. It was an evil out of the Middle Ages. So, after Covid, it took on new resonance. But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was just writing a play about my parents.

Is it harder for you — or does it take a different kind of skill set — to create an original play like Dear Jack, Dear Louise or Lady Molly of Scotland Yard versus an adaptation like Murder on the Orient Express?
I think they both take an equal amount of effort. When I write an adaptation of something like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, they end up being an original play by me. The skills need to write a good play, be it a comedy or a thriller or a mystery, that keeps people spellbound for two hours are the same skills needed to write a play from scratch from your own story.

You’re one of the most-produced playwrights ever, basically. I went on the Concord Theatricals website and counted almost 300 different productions of your plays over the next 12 months.
And that’s just in the United States. Murder on the Orient Express had, I think, 700 separate productions last year. It’s immense. And thank goodness. It’s how I make my living!

Can you wrap your head around that number?
I’m very, very grateful. More to the point, as I’m sure we all did, I grew up going “Oh, my God, the theater. I love this.” This isn’t because I kind of like theater. This is what I want to do to earn a living. The fact that the things I write that mean everything to me are being done so much is the fulfillment of my life’s dream, times 10.

What are you working on in the immediate future?
I’m down here at the Asolo working on Lady Molly of Scotland Yard. This is a world premiere and I just have to get the play right, and I get it right through the rehearsal process and preview process. I’m still rewriting until it opens.

My next one is halfway done; I finished the first act. It’s a straight comedy and I’m trying to make it as funny as possible. I can say that it is set in Stratford-upon-Avon, in that world of Shakespeare’s birthplace, which I love so much.

In terms of what’s happening in my life, Murder on the Orient Express is doing a tour of the UK and Ireland and China right now, and it looks like it’ll do Australia, as well. The wonderful director is Lucy Bailey.

I just opened Death on the Nile at Arena last month, because the Agatha Christie people asked me to do a second one. I’m doing a workshop in London in March of a new play; I have a new play opening the season after next at a big major regional. And I actually have another show that looks like it’s going to tour the UK and Ireland next year. So, it’s busy, busy.

When do you sleep?
[Laughs] You know, it sounds like a cliché, but what my dad always said to me was, “If you don’t wake up in the morning and look forward to going to work, you did something wrong and you’ve got to fix it.” I get to do what I love. I had day jobs early on, and then I fell into my first big Broadway play, Lend me a Tenor, and then three years later, Crazy for You. Then I was able to go “I don’t have to do a day job to eat.” I’d reached a point where I was making enough money to rent my apartment and survive so I could become a full-time writer. And that’s what I did, and it worked.