An improbable musical on the virtue of laziness has its world premiere in Iowa
After careers in ice cream and telecommunications, why wouldn't Fred Gratzon also try his hand at ... musical theater?
Fred Gratzon has been a restless creative soul for all of his 79 years.
While an art major at Rutgers University in the late 1960s he garnered press coverage for his scheme of selling sweatshirts emblazoned with a photo of the university president. The Star-Ledger newspaper said Gratzon “reportedly has 20 ideas a week on new things to do.”
That hasn’t really changed.
The gregarious Gratzon is a self-described “archetypal tofu-eating, touchy-feely, tree-hugging, organically-nourished, yoga-practicing, New Age, rock-o-phonic Child-of-the-Sixties, author, and entrepreneur.” He moved from the East Coast to Fairfield, Iowa, in 1979 among the migration of practitioners of transcendental meditation (TM), drawn by the Maharishi University of Management (now Maharishi International University) founded by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
In search of a career, Gratzon soon founded the Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company. People magazine in 1984 named his blueberry ice cream the best in America. He served it to the Reagans on the White House lawn during a congressional luncheon in September 1987.
After he was fired by his board of directors in a business dispute, Gratzon about a year later launched a telecommunications company serving small businesses. That generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and went public before its business model was disrupted by transformations in international phone communications at the end of the 20th century.
In 2003, Gratzon self-published a book titled “The Lazy Way to Success,” earning high-profile coverage (the New York Times, etc.) and reprints around the globe. Gratzon’s main thesis was that passion is a bigger success factor than hard work.
“The first person who domesticated a horse was tired of walking,” Gratzon explained to the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “The first person who thought of putting a sail on a boat wanted to stop rowing.”
I later met Gratzon and his wife, Shelley (author of her own fun vegetarian cookbook, “Crouching Tofu, Hidden Zucchini”), thanks to my ritual retro recreational toil of pedaling a bicycle. They were gracious hosts in July 2019 for our bike team when RAGBRAI, the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, stopped overnight in Fairfield.
I learned at that time that Gratzon already had years of passion and hard work wrapped up in another epic project: an original stage musical based (believe it or not) on his self-help book about laziness. The idea had been suggested by some of his international readers.
Gratzon began writing the libretto during the 2012 Thanksgiving holiday at his sister-in-law’s house. After an initial burst of creativity generated the core plot and lyrics, bringing the musical to life became (ironically?) an occasional grind that consumed more than a dozen years.
Yet here he is in 2025, finally ready to unleash “The Lazy Show,” “a topsy-turvy romp to witness pivotal moments when laziness changed the course of history.” The three-act production premieres May 3 at the Sondheim Theater in the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center.
“I’ve never had more fun in my life,” Gratzon said.
Yet in the same breath he admitted that he has also “whipsawed between euphoria and abject terror” as he’s poured tens of thousands of dollars into the production and juggled a fluctuating cast and crew.
It took him years to find a composer for his musical. He said he approached all the usual suspects in Fairfield and even lobbied TM devotee Mike Love of the Beach Boys.
Gratzon finally discovered an alumnus of the Berklee College of Music, Jake Cassman, who wrote about two-thirds of the songs. Alejandro Villanueva Medina wrote more from his home in Mexico City.
A third composer, “Barbershop” John Howard from San Diego, also signed on as the musical’s leading man. He’s paired with actress Nicole Jones from New York.
Gratzon has burned through a few stage directors. He’s leaning on the veteran talents of retired local band director Jim Edgeton as his music director.
Gratzon himself “couldn’t carry a tune if you welded handles to it,” he said. He may lack the expertise to produce a musical on par with his personal Broadway holy trinity of “West Side Story” (speaking of Sondheim), “My Fair Lady,” and “The Music Man.” But if he has one gift, Gratzon said, it’s his enthusiasm. His passion.
This newbie theater mogul of the baby-boom generation, dozens of ZIP codes removed from a Tony Award, is just one of the numerous examples of why I say that if any city in Iowa over-indexes on quirkiness, it’s Fairfield.
I celebrate Fred and anybody who can retain the same creative fire at age 79 that fueled them at 19.
“It’s really most precious when you collaborate with another creative person,” Gratzon said one evening earlier this month, as his cast rehearsed nearby in his living room. “There’s nothing more fun in life, I’m convinced.”
This whole experience has left him with at least one nagging question:
“Did I waste the first 70 years of my life not doing musical theater?”
“The Lazy Show” runs May 3-6 and 8-10, at 7:30 each evening, with $35 tickets for the public and $15 for students.
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