In the theater world, it’s quite a long run. And now, after 28 years at Goodspeed Musicals, Resident Music Director Michael O’Flaherty is stepping down.

Over that time span, he has worked on about 90 musicals, at the Opera House in East Haddam, where he conducted and played keyboards for almost all shows, and at the Terris Theatre in Chester.

He is leaving at the end of February and is currently overseeing things as rehearsals take place for “A Connecticut Christmas Carol,” which is being staged for the third year at Goodspeed’s Terris Theatre. O’Flaherty wrote the music and lyrics for that show.

As for why he decided to retire now, O’Flaherty says, “Because I’m very old.” He laughs. “I turned 70 in January. … It just felt like it was time and while I’m still healthy and young enough to get out and do some other things I want to do.”

Those “other things” include some more writing and maybe teaching; he has been in touch with a couple of universities and says, with his self-deprecating sense of humor, “They seem to think I have something to offer — I don’t know why they’re thinking that.”

In all seriousness, he does realize he has something to give back. He has, after all, been working in musical theater for 50 years.

He won’t be doing anything full-time, but he does still want to work.

“I can never retire and just sit around at the pool all day — that would kill me,” he says.

Asked how he feels looking back at his time at Goodspeed, O’Flaherty jokes, “Exhausted!”

He says, “It’s been fun, I get to work with the best people in the business. The level of actors and directors, and designers and choreographers — all these people that I get to work with — they are at the top of the craft. You can’t argue with that and how much fun that is.”

Passing the baton

O’Flaherty’s job at Goodspeed is an unusual one, and he says there aren’t many resident music directors at the major theaters in the U.S. He is a music director, but he’s also a Goodspeed senior staff member. Among his many responsibilities: He is involved in choosing the shows, directors and choreographers. He does pre-production work with the directors and the choreographers. He also, of course, deals with the musicians and says, “We are very fortunate here that we have a brilliant roster of musicians that we pull from on a regular basis, so we’re not constantly hiring new people and training them. There are musicians in our pit that have actually been here longer than me.”

O’Flaherty’s replacement is Adam Souza, someone who knows Goodspeed well and understands all the moving parts of the Goodspeed resident music director’s job because he’s seen it first-hand.

Souza, a Killingworth native, has worked a lot at Goodspeed over the years, including performing in the ensemble for a couple of productions; being assistant music director for shows at the Terris Theatre; and serving as music director for “Because of Winn Dixie” earlier this year at the Goodspeed Opera House.

A stand-out ‘Show Boat’

One of the great Goodspeed productions O’Flaherty worked on that stands out in his memory is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Show Boat” in 2011.

“I think what we did with ‘Show Boat’ was astounding, in a way. It was really fun because (director) Rob Ruggiero and I, we got the chance to rewrite it a lot. We really created a lot of that from the ground up, with the help of the Rodgers and Hammerstein people,” he says. “That’s the part of this job that has always fascinated me the most, not so much the music direction as the arranging and the finding new ways to do the shows. Goodspeed is unique in that we get a chance to do that. We get permission to do that more often than most theaters would.”

When the Goodspeed team first approached The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, which owns the rights to the duo’s shows and is the leasing agent, about doing “Show Boat,” they were told there was no definitive version. It has always been a show sort of in flux, so they were happy for Goodspeed to rework it.

“Now the version that we did here is the one that’s in the catalogue,” O’Flaherty says. “They actually license our version now, which is very nice to know. There is a lot of arranging and a lot of rewriting that happened on that one.”

Ruggiero, who figures he has directed 10 or 11 Goodspeed shows where O’Flaherty has been music director, says, “Michael has been this amazing kind of person who is so accommodating on one hand and loves to serve a vision and contribute to a vision. But he also will speak up when he has a strong point of view or maybe disagrees with a choice but in such a respectful, collaborative way. I know if Michael O’Flaherty says, ‘Hey, you should look at this’ or ‘What do you think about this?’ that I take it seriously because he is so respectful and collaborative.

“He’s also amazingly talented, like he will create transition music, he will restructure something, he will underscore or not underscore, all of those choices we make. He’s an amazing partner, but he’s not only a collaborator in the choice, he’s also a creator.”

The path from classical piano to musical theater

O’Flaherty grew up in Reading, Penn., and played the piano from a young age.

“I was raised up to be a classical pianist, and I was on a track to do that. I went to the Eastman School of Music to become a concert pianist and really quickly found out that that’s not at all what I wanted to do. I got a little taste of musical theater and never looked back,” he says.

He was part of his first musical in high school, when he played piano for a production of “Little Mary Sunshine.”

“That was it — I just had such a great time,” he says. “I just loved the life of (musical theater), the spontaneity of it, the fun. I love classical music. I just don’t think I ever would have been happy in that world. It’s a very strict, very rigid world. … I don’t have the discipline to sit in a little cubicle and just play scales for eight hours a day.”

And while being a concert pianist is a solitary existence, working in musical theater is the opposite.

“I just love the fact I got to work with all these other people. That’s what keeps this fresh for me. Every show, it’s a new person, it’s another director, another choreographer, more actors. You’re learning to work with different people in their way, and they’re learning to work with you in your way,” he says.

One of his jobs before Goodspeed was as musical supervisor and cabaret director at the vaunted Williamstown Theatre Festival for 11 summers. He has worked with some icons at Goodspeed, and the same was true at Williamstown. Among them was actor Christopher Reeve, whom O’Flaherty became friends with. O’Flaherty introduced Reeve to his future wife, Dana, who was a cabaret singer at Williamstown.

How DO you become a music director?

O’Flaherty essentially trained himself to be a music director, which he says is not that unusual. Most conductors on Broadway would probably say the same thing, he says; they are likely to have started out playing auditions, then being rehearsal pianists and getting into the pit orchestra before eventually taking over as conductors.

The next generation of music directors, though, have the chance to learn about the art form at the Music Direction Intensive at Goodspeed that O’Flaherty co-created.

“That’s my other biggest legacy thing I’m most proud of,” he says.

It was an idea that arose when he and assistant Bill Thomas were talking about a decade ago and thought they could teach music direction because no one else was doing it. At that time, no universities were giving degrees in the subject (now, a couple are). They created a curriculum, and in the program now, according to its online description, “Participants will use the latest technology to receive hands on training in the management and implementation of the audition, rehearsal, and orchestration processes as well as attend nightly lectures given by industry experts on pertinent subjects …”
The program has had 125 graduates since it began. One of the most vital parts of it is the networking aspect, O’Flaherty says.

“They always say we don’t ever get to sit in a room with another music director. … How often do you get to be in a room with 20 or 22 music directors and share experiences?” he says.

It’s about the collaboration

Discussing what he has enjoyed most about working at Goodspeed, O’Flaherty says, “In a very practical sense, it’s been the stability. There’s almost no one who does what I do that has 52-week-a-year, 28-year gig. It just doesn’t exist anywhere. … On an artistic level, it’s about the collaboration, and it’s not only with the actors and the directors, it’s about the people who work here, too. It’s about the staff here, who are just the best, and many who have been here a very long period of time, longer than me. This theater is odd in that way, that it has such longevity among its staff people, it’s very unusual. Everyone here, no matter what they’re doing, is working for the same thing, which is really cool.”