Broadway's Most Wanted (15 page)

Dude. Skid Row lead singer Sebastian Bach has apparently found a second career in the musical theater. Admittedly, though, the roles he’s found in the theater have only been a stone’s throw from the role of hair band frontman. His first stint was in the long-running Wildhorn-Bricusse turkey
Jekyll & Hyde,
taking over the huge role of the titular fun couple in June of 2000. Next on his plate was Riff Raff in the revival of
The Rocky Horror Show,
which he took over just in time for Halloween in 2001. He was dismissed, amid some
mystery, from 2003’s national tour of
Jesus Christ Superstar.
Dude.

The bonnie Scot lassie with the number one hit made her Broadway debut in 1991, after a tour in what ads called “one of the musical theater’s great sexy parts,” Aldonza, in
Man of La Mancha.
(Memo to marketing: She’s not. She’s a “kitchen slut reeking of sweat.”). Easton got pretty bad notices, but the whole revival was a wash until some old hands came in to save it, like the original Aldonza, Joan Diener. Easton could have been well-served by Broadway; she’s beautiful and can act and sing, as evinced by a stint on TV’s
Miami Vice. Brigadoon,
anyone?

Eighties pop moppet turns Broadway trouper! So might the headlines read for Deborah, a/k/a Debbie Gibson. The possessor of Billboard number one singles before she could drink, Miss Gibson turned to the Broadway stage not long after that, playing Eponine in
Les Miserables
in 1991, and following up with
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast
(preceding Toni Braxton, as it happens),
Grease,
and, following tours of
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Funny Girl,
and
Gypsy
in New Jersey, she took over the star-spangled replacement reins of Sally Bowles in the Roundabout revival of
Cabaret.

Vanessa Williams is basically Frenchie Davis writ large (you should pardon the expression): Miss America, disgraced by porn photos, lays low until everyone realizes
she can sing and act, carves out a huge pop career, then hits Broadway. While her beauty was obvious at first sight, Williams took her time in hitting the Main Stem, finally taking over from the great Chita Rivera in
Kiss of the Spider Woman.
That role, a mysterious Argentinian film icon, was not such a great fit, but after a good stab at another Rivera role, Rose in a TV-movie
Bye Bye Birdie,
and a triumph in a 1997 concert production of
St. Louis Woman,
she blazed back to Broadway as the Witch (sporting warts in Act One, a killer Roman wrap outfit in Act Two) in the 2002 revival of the Sondheim-Lapine
Into the Woods.

One of the greatest female songwriters ever, the great Carole King carved out her own space in pop music history as both a songwriter and a superb performer. Her considerable catalogue of songs, including such all-time greats as “The Loco-Motion,” “You’ve Got a Friend,” and “Tapestry,” has been excerpted in three different Broadway shows, most notoriously the 1982 disaster
Rock and Roll! The First 5,000 Years.

King finally made her dramatic debut on Broadway in 1995, playing Mother Johnstone in Willy Russell’s one-of-a-kind musical
Blood Brothers.
She took over the role of a conflicted mother of identical twins, forced to give one up at birth, from another pop star, Petula Clark.

Now, as in the past, Broadway serves as a “training ground” for many future movie and television stars. Likewise, a Hollywood star’s appearance on the Main Stem can pre-sell a show or give the box office a much-needed shot in the arm. Here are ten performers who made it big in Hollywood, then played New York, often returning in triumph.

Rock legend Sting (nee Gordon Sumner), of the band The Police, was represented on Broadway in 1982 via some Police tunes in the disastrous revue
Rock and Roll! The First 5,000 Years.
But in 1990, after rock stardom and some genuine movie acclaim, he made his Broadway acting debut as gang leader Macheath in Michael Feingold’s translation of the Brecht-Weill classic,
3 Penny Opera.
The revival was not very well received, but Sting received acclaim for his performance in some circles.

Perhaps the greatest movie actress of all time, the late, great Kate appeared in plays on Broadway as early as 1928. But it wasn’t until 1969, and after several Oscars, that she made her Broadway musical debut. For Hepburn to deign to perform in a tuner, the subject had to be as legendary as she, and indeed it was: The show was
Coco,
and Hepburn wittily essayed the part of designer Coco Chanel, she of the pink suit and big glasses. (Hepburn made the scene in the big glasses, but mostly stuck to slacks.) As high-profile as her return was, she was basically playing herself, and critics and audiences loved it live. They loved her more than the show, though, and Hepburn lost the Tony Award, to …

… Who made her musical debut that same season, in
Applause,
the musical version of the classic film
All About Eve.
Bacall completely dug the groovy modernday adaptation, swinging in a disco here, dishing with her gay hairdresser there, covering up her lack of real musical-theater savvy with her effortless glamour and star power. Despite the presence of Hepburn in
Coco,
just a couple of blocks north, Bacall’s was by far the biggest and most heralded star turn of the season. Her next musical was over a decade later, in
Woman of the Year,
another adaptation, this time from a Tracy-Hepburn film (oh, the irony). Bacall’s typical no-nonsense glamour and that unassailable star power won her another Tony, and she was later replaced in the role by…

… Who took over the role of Tess Harding from Bacall in 1982. Welch’s movie career was running on fumes at this time, but her Broadway debut created a stir of its own, skewing the role a bit younger, and offering a very different kind of glamour and hotness than Bacall. Predictably, the press embarrassed themselves, getting their tongues caught in their typewriters and debating the proper way to spell “AA-OOOOOO-GAH!”

Thirteen years later, Miss Welch played a role even more implausible than Tess Harding, when she followed Julie Andrews into the Broadway flop
Victor/Victoria. Myra Breckenridge
repeated itself here, as Welch, the ur-female, again played a woman dabbling in sexual ambiguity.

Say what you will about the star of
Knight Rider
and
Baywatch,
he was at least partly responsible for turning the former into a household name (including a forthcoming full-length “reunion” movie) and the latter into the most popular TV show on the planet. Hasselhoff also enjoys a successful career as a pop star in Germany and a decent level of fame here in the states, so the producers of the long-running
Jekyll & Hyde,
Frank Wildhorn, wasn’t exactly whistling “Dixie” when they asked Hasselhoff to take over the title dual roles.

For three months in 2000, Hasselhoff took on gallant Henry Jekyll and goofus Mr. Hyde in Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse’s cheesy take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Victorian horror tale. TV cameras for the Broadway Television Network recorded Hasselhoff’s
last night, and although he worked hard, the highcamp, totally silly material defeated him soundly. (His karate-kick exit after his curtain call didn’t help either.) Rumors have Hasselhoff headed back to Broadway in a revival of Lerner and Loewe’s
Paint Your Wagon.

While it couldn’t have been easy for a performer to grow up as Judy Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli obviously had the talent to go the distance. Her first musical was the confusing
Flora, the Red Menace,
which did less for her than she did for the show. She did, however, win a Tony for
Flora
at age nineteen, and that show’s composer and lyricist, John Kander and Fred Ebb, wrote their next score,
Cabaret,
with Minnelli in mind. She didn’t do it on stage but had some mild success with the film version (you know, co-starring with a guy named Oscar!).

Movie success in other genres followed, as well as the legendary TV special
Liza With a “Z,”
and she had fully inherited her mother’s legacy by this time. She often returned to Broadway, in full shows (Tony-winning
The Act
in 1977) as well as specialty engagements (like
Liza
in 1974).

Glenn Close made her Broadway debut in the play
Love for Love
in 1974; a year and a half later, she made her musical debut in Richard Rodgers’s
Rex.
Close’s movie career really took off after she was Tony-nominated in
Barnum;
she appeared in
The World According to Garp
not long after, and
Garp
won her the first of her five Oscar nominations. She came back to Broadway in 1983, winning a Tony for the play
The Real Thing,
again in 1992, winning her second Tony for the play
Death and the Maiden,
and won her third Tony in 1995, for her haunting Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical
Sunset Boulevard.

Pretender to the throne of King-of-TV-Movie-Land, John Stamos is an unusual Broadway crossover star, but he’s proven his chops with stints in musicals that couldn’t be more different. The “stunt” casting of a TV heartthrob may have been at work, but sometimes, these things have a way of working.

Stamos, in addition to being an actor, is an accomplished percussionist (yes, he really does play congas in the Beach Boys “Kokomo” video) and singer, so his appearance as Matthew Broderick’s replacement in the 1995 revival of
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
was not completely out of left field. For his next Broadway gig, in the highly charged revival of
Cabaret,
he definitely didn’t play it safe. In the spring of 2002, he took over the role of the androgynous, sexually suggestive Emcee for five months. Late in 2003, he got more press by stepping into the role of Guido Contini in the Broadway revival of
Nine,
succeeding the very popular Antonio Banderas.

Another candidate for Greatest Movie Star Ever, Bette Davis appeared in two musicals in her great career, with less-than-spectacular results. In 1952, she appeared, with much hoopla, in the musical
Two’s Company,
but had to withdraw early because of health problems. Her early departure caused no little financial distress to the producers.

In 1964, Emlyn Williams adapted his play
The Corn is Green
into the musical
Miss Moffat,
ostensibly as a project for Mary Martin. Ten years later,
Miss Moffat
was offered to the woman who had played her on film, Bette Davis. Davis accepted a pre-Broadway tour, then the fireworks began. She proved to be less than stellar as a singer and started to miss performances, raising the red flag again with the producers. She ultimately clashed loudly with the show’s director, Joshua Logan, as well.
Miss Moffat
never made it to Broadway.

After blazing to stardom as Mayor LaGuardia in
Fiorello!
in 1959, Tom Bosley found his good-natured bravado in some demand, Unfortunately, his next musical projects weren’t up to the level of the Pulitzer-winning
Fiorello!
The first show,
Nowhere to Go but Up,
from 1962, was a subpar comic musical about Depressionera bootleggers Izzy and Moe, and his next musical, 1968’s
The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N,
an immigrant’s tale of assimilation, might have done well had it not been undone by history. On the show’s opening night, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and the news cycle in the following days left no room for
H*Y*M*A*NK*A*P*L *A*N to
build any kind of an audience.

So Bosley lit out for Hollywood, where he found his greatest success on the TV sitcom
Happy Days.
He finally made his return to Broadway in 1994, as Belle’s Father in
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
He came back again to play Herr Schultz in the revival of
Cabaret.

Way back when, the music of Broadway was our nation’s popular music. Every one of the ten songs below has enjoyed hit status at one time or another, but many folks don’t know that these familiar melodies are actually show tunes.

Drat! The Cat! is
a sexy, funny show about an olde-tyme female jewel thief and the hapless cop who eventually catches her and wins her heart. The show, which starred Elliott Gould and Lesley Ann Warren, was a failure on Broadway in 1965, but Mr. Gould happened to be married to The Thing Itself, Barbra Streisand, and Gould’s big ballad, “She Touched Me,” was refashioned by Streisand and recorded as “He Touched Me.” Socko, boffo, million-plus sales.

Milton Schafer and Ira Levin wrote a successfully varied score for
Drat! The Cat!,
with flat-out comedy numbers, period-style charmers, and a superb overture, but scored biggest with that hit ballad, which then
reached the stratosphere when Streisand laid it down. So who knew it was written by the creator of
The Step-ford Wives?

The score to
The Golden Apple,
Jerome Moross and John LaTouche’s resetting of Homer’s
Iliad
and
Odyssey
in America between the years 1900-1910, is so well-integrated that it’s almost impossible to imagine any part of the score standing separately from the whole. But two songs did make their way out of the score: the beautiful, wistful “Windflowers,” Penelope’s lament for her golden days with Ulysses, and Helen’s sultry “Lazy Afternoon.”