Jesse Eisenberg and Meredith Scardino were trying to come up with an idea for a musical, in a conference room in midtown, one recent Sunday. Inspired by a heap of props, they tossed out vague prompts. “That van Gogh vest—I was thinking about how sad van Gogh would be if he saw that,” Scardino, a comedy writer who created the sitcom “Girls5Eva,” said. Eisenberg, whose most recent film is “A Real Pain,” yes-anded her: “Yes, like Beethoven being turned into a ringtone.”
The two had met an hour earlier, during an orientation for the 24 Hour Musicals, a yearly creative challenge that is a bit like the Pomodoro Technique for the theatre-kid soul. The charitable event, which launched in 2006 as an offshoot of the 24 Hour Plays project, has strict rules. Each year, teams of strangers—a composer, a writer, a choreographer, and a director—create a musical at breakneck speed. Actors audition, offering up eccentric props and singing sixteen a-capella bars of their choosing. (One did an orgasmic rendition of the “Woody Woodpecker” theme.) Each team selects a cast using a draft-pick system, then pulls an all-nighter, with scripts and scores due at 6 a.m. The actors rehearse all day and perform that night for a paying audience. Then the musicals disappear, popping like soap bubbles.
Eisenberg’s family were 24 Hour regulars (his wife, Anna Strout, was this year’s honoree); Scardino has done the play version once. At Funkadelic Studios, a run-down room furnished with a drum kit and a string of bright-white Christmas lights, they quickly hit on a pragmatic idea: since the production’s sets had been donated by West Elm, their musical would be set at a West Elm outlet. Two actresses (Alexis Floyd and Isabel Hagen) would play lovers, or maybe roommates, who get into a fight there. The comedian Rachel Dratch would play a store employee—or maybe a life coach?—who breaks them up. Beyond that, the details were foggy. Should the pair be buying a new lamp?
“Maybe the lamp is magic,” Scardino said.
Eisenberg liked that, but he didn’t want literal magic. He was hunting for themes: “Like, maybe this shallow thing can actually fix the deep thing?” He slid into a deadpan, self-effacing riff: “And this will be perfect for tonight, with Israel and Palestine, tariffs, and ‘No Kings’ day. This can help heal our problems.”
Scardino had a better idea: Dratch’s character would trigger the breakup so that she could sell West Elm products for two different apartments.
“So this was her plan all along!” Eisenberg said.
“She’s a Willy Wonka type,” Scardino said.
Eisenberg added, “She seems benign, but she’s ultimately revealed as a trickster. We can write in isolation a bit.”
The hours ticked by. Eisenberg, who was composing the songs, wore headphones and hummed, rocking as he jammed on a keyboard, jotting lyrics on his laptop; Scardino, who had a chiller vibe and the glossy hair of Veronica Lodge, tapped out scenes, experimenting with conflicts between the roommates, who had evolved into grad students. Eisenberg completed an eerie song praising West Elm as an oracular realm, then asked Scardino to write a short monologue to set it up.
“Keep it hallowed,” he said. “Keep it sanctimonious.” Earlier, he had suggested a Brechtian frame for the musical, and he pitched a speech for Dratch’s character using the word “dialectic.”
Scardino smiled.“I’m not good at that fancy language,” she said. “I’m not good at the—”
“Pretense?” Eisenberg cracked.
By dawn, they’d cooked up a series of musical vignettes: the jazzy “West Elm” theme, a codependent duet called “We Finish Each Other,” a darker and stompier breakup reprise, and then the reveal. In the final number, Dratch’s character sang, “A duvet cover and a herringbone lamp / A picture of a haystack that’s just this side of camp / Customers come in and I give them ammunition / . . . I’m just a little lady working on commission!”
It felt miraculous, but Eisenberg, who has built a career playing self-abnegating neurotics, wasn’t sold. He insisted that his gift for songwriting had faded. “I’m objective,” he said, slumped on a bench. “I was open-minded, free! I became stifled. But that’s O.K. I got good at other things.”
When he read Scardino’s script, however, he grinned. “This is great!” he said. “Really funny!” As 6 a.m. approached, the two were trimming Dratch’s lines, worried that it was a lot to memorize.
They headed out to their day jobs: Eisenberg was editing a film in which Julianne Moore plays a shy woman who busts out in community theatre; Scardino was consulting on a comedy starring Daniel Radcliffe and Tracy Morgan. But, that evening, they both got gussied up to see their baby musical, “Desire Under the Elm.” It killed. ♦
