When we were approached to write a stage musical based on the works of Dr. Seuss, we were cautious. Although we both remembered loving his stories as children, what would their appeal be for us today? How could so many disparate stories be tied together? What would the musical world sound like? And how would we ever be able to adapt his quirky language and specific rhyme schemes into something varied and theatrical?                      
   We started by doing what our mothers had done for us when we were both kids: we sat down and read the books to one another aloud. To our amazement, the stories seemed fresh and relevant and profound, we suddenly realized that beyond their inspired silliness, they dealt in the most subtle ways with very contemporary themes, from politics to nuclear war. And as we laughed our way through one story after another, rhythms and music began springing to mind and characters began leaping off the page, begging to be heard. Horton the Elephant emerged as a sympathetic hero, jeered by the other inhabitants of the Jungle of Nool, but loyal and selfless to a fault. Insecure little Gertrude McFuzz demanded to have her "tail" told. We knew the lazy Mayzie and her abandoned egg could play a part. The anarchic Cat in the Hat would wend his way through our story as the audience's "host and emcee". Of course there were the Whos, people so tiny they live on a speck of dust; and one young Who named JoJo, a "Thinker" of strange and wonderful "Thinks." It seemed to us that here were the main characters and themes for an exciting new musical.                              
   Since the world of Dr. Seuss, by it's fantastical nature, isn't based in any particular time, place or reality, we found there were no limits to what kind of music we could use. Here was a world without rules-- a rare opportunity to be completely free. The score emerged as a Seussian gumbo of musical styles, from Latin to pop to swing. For the hip, cool Jungle of Nool we used elements of gospel, R&B and funk. The tiny world of the Whos seemed to want a sound of its own: marching bands on helium with a sort of "neo Spike Jones" approach. Horton and Jojo were kindred souls--two Thinkers--whose music was more acoustic and lyrical: "Seuss Unplugged". The Cat in the Hat became a "new vaudevillian", blithely humming his way through every grim situation. We even enlisted our brilliant orchestrator, Doug Besterman, to create synthesizer sequences which turned gorillas, birds, elephants, pneumatic drills and other odd sounds into never-before-heard percussion instruments. We tried to filter all this through our own theatrical sensibility to carry the story almost entirely in the music.                 
   As for Dr. Seusss language, the challenge was to weave his idiosyncratic poetry seamlessly with our own words, yet stay true to his spirit and ideas, wit and wordplay. Soon we were spinning story titles, character names and snippets of his verse into score, making up our own strange words as we went along; if the characters stopped singing long enough to speak, they would always speak in verse. It meant a lot to us when Mrs. Audrey Geisel, the widow of Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) told us she couldn't tell where he left off and we began. High praise, indeed.
   The pure process of writing "Seussical" together was a joy. We had fun. We were free. We drank a lot of coffee and laughed and cried our way into the heart of his magical world. We tapped into our childhoods, and brought our adulthoods to bear. As a result, our collaboration of almost eighteen years has grown stronger, and the score is something we're extremely proud of. Our thanks to Decca Broadway, Phil Ramone, Elliot Schemer, David Holcen berg and our amazing Broadway cast and orchestra for this album. We hope you'll have a "stoo-mendous" time in the world of "Seussical."