Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 1 (22 page)

Even though BC/EFA is losing a tremendous amount of money due to the strike, the good news is that
The Ritz
is working super hard to fundraise due to the amazing leadership of our stage manager, Tripp Phillips. Tripp was the stage manager for the
Jersey Boys
national tour last year — that was the first national tour to actually win the Easter Bonnet fundraising over all the Broadway shows! Brava! Anyhoo, many nights we not only collect money in buckets, sell autographed posters/programs and the
Carols for a Cure
CD, but we also auction items. Young hunk Justin Clynes and ex-porn star Ryan Idol have been auctioning off their towels (seriously! Once for $700!), and the dedicated Rosie Perez also auctions off her earrings. One night, someone actually said they'd pay $2,000 for her bra! She literally wriggled out of it onstage, autographed and forked it over!

I was collecting after the show one night and a woman approached me and commented that the time period being shown onstage was not consistent with today. "I mean," she shook her head, "the bag the leading man carries says
Pan Am
." I looked at her, confused. "Well," I said, "it takes place in the ‘70s." Pause. "Oh… I didn't know that." What? The stage is filled with ‘70s pantsuits, afros and disco music. The whole bows are choreographed to Donna Summer's "Last Dance." Maybe we should be more presentational and have a character stand center stage and say, "I love living in the 1970s. One day it will be 2007, but not for many more years."

My sister came in from Virginia to see
The Ritz
, and she was telling the woman next to her that I was in the show. The woman looked in the program and asked, "So… he plays Us?" Nancy was confused until she looked down and saw my credit in the Playbill (Sheldon Farnethold, u/s Chris). She politely explained the u/s means understudy. My questions are: 1. Why is u/s the only "character" she focused on when there are two proper names surrounding it? 2. Who spells "us" with a slash in the middle? 3. How can I play a pronoun?

Saturday night, James and I went to see Chita Rivera's late-night show at Feinstein's. Apparently we also traveled back in time because she looked and sounded faboo. The good news for theatre fans is that she does some of her classic songs including "Kiss of the Spider Woman," "A Boy Like That" and (for you
Rink
fans) "Chief Cook and Bottle Washer"! I have to say though that the most thrilling moment for me was watching her do "All That Jazz." I was obsessed with
Chicago
as a child. It was the first show that I knew by heart and then saw on Broadway. She was such an important part of what made me love Broadway, and to see her so brilliantly do the song I saw her do 31 years ago had me full-out crying in the audience.

Speaking of which, Sunday night, I had my book release party/show/Actors Fund benefit for my new novel
Broadway Nights
. I read scenes with the brilliant cast of
[title of show]
, the hi-larious Mary Testa and the comic genius Andrea Martin. I literally had to stop myself from crying because I grew up obsessively watching SCTV every Friday night, and to be standing onstage reading a scene with my comedy idol was such a dream come true. Heidi Blickenstaff sang the song "A Way Back to Then" from
[title of show]
, which is about recapturing the joy and hope you had as a kid obsessed with theatre and the song references little-girl-Heidi listening to Andrea McArdle on the record player. Well, Andrea was one of the performers at my book event, so Heidi got to sing it in front of her which was obviously so moving to Heidi. Then, after the chapter in my book where the lead character sees
Annie
and decides to ixnay opera and become Broadway obsessed, Andrea McArdle got up to sing. She thought she was gonna do "Everybody Says Don't" but realized she wasn't when I started playing the vamp to "Maybe." Sorry! I needed to make Heidi's dream come true and it was amazing to watch Heidi weeping while Andrea sang.

This week, James, Juli, James' mom and I are going over to my mom's house for Thanksgiving. I've already asked William Ivey Long if he can upgrade my
Ritz
robe to an extra-fat. Bring on the stuffing!

"Vicki/Victoria" and Rosie's Costume Malfunction

November 27, 2007

Happy post-Thanksgiving! Who acted out with food? I did!
I went to my Mom's house with James, his mother, Juli, and my sister, Beth, and friend Tim Cross. First of all, we made the wise choice of renting a car to go out there, so instead of a half-hour train ride, we had an hour-and-a-half car ride. That damn parade ruined everything... including my love of Broadway (more on that later). After we ate, we saw
Enchanted
. My favorite part was the fact they put all of the Disney princesses in cameo roles. Jodi Benson (Ariel) was Patrick Dempsey's secretary, Paige O'Hara (Belle) was a soap actress and Judy Kuhn (Pocahontas) was a harried mother. I love when they do things like that... like giving Chita Rivera a cameo in
Chicago
and John Waters a feature in
Hairspray
. Perhaps when they make the movie of
The Ritz
, I can strut across the screen and… oh, they made it already? Thirty years ago? Well… (said
Bewitched
Samantha Stevens-style).

I interviewed the talented Tony Award-winner Victoria Clark (
The Light in the Piazza
) for my Sirius radio show. First of all, in real life she goes by Vicki and apparently a lot of folks don't realize that it's short for Victoria. She teaches voice, and she said that students have come over for their first lesson, looked at her face, looked at the Tony Award sitting on her piano and said, "Hmm… I know your name is Vicki Clark, but you happen to look a lot like an actress named Victoria Clark. Weird." Hello!? The face is the same, the Tony Award is the same and the first syllable of the first name and the last name are the same, but that's simply not enough for people to assume the obvious. Let me reverse the expression to "When you
don't
assume, you make an a**out of you and Victoria."

She talked about understudying Faith Prince in
Guys and Dolls
and how she was called for a special rehearsal because she wasn't hitting Nathan Detroit's face exactly right with her handkerchief during "Sue Me." She snuck her parents into the rehearsal because she knew they would not believe the minutiae one has to worry about as an understudy if they didn't see it.

She was also the understudy for 11 parts in
Sunday in the Park with George
, and there was another understudy who was competitive and literally tried to sabotage her during an understudy run-thru. They were standing backstage, and suddenly the understudy told Vicki that it was their cue. Vicki said that it wasn't her entrance yet, and the other understudy hissed, "
Yes, it is
!" and pushed her onstage! It was very
Showgirls
… without a staircase and/or horrifying lap dance.

She actually didn't want the role of Smitty in
How to Succeed
… because she had just given birth a month before and was getting two hours of sleep a night. Of course, she got the gig, and the show had such a nice long run that her son was able to come see it! Unfortunately, it also ran long enough for him to learn how to talk. He was sitting in a box seat with his dad, and when Vicki began a scene with Matthew Broderick, she suddenly heard "Hi, Mommy!" The audience started laughing, but Vicki tried to stay in character. The scene continued, and so did another "Hi-i-i-i-i-i, Mommy!" Finally, she heard the sound of a muffled "Hi, Mommy" as her son was obviously taken out of the box seats and spoken to sternly by his dad. The scene finished, her son came back and Vicki exited out the big double doors onstage. As she was walking out she heard, "Bye-e-e-e-e, Mommy." That's what I call a shout-out!

We talked about her vocal technique, and she said that she never had a vocal problem throughout the whole run of
The Light in the Piazza
. Unfortunately, the show was so emotionally debilitating that she was having tons of physical problems, but the voice never gave out. I complimented her on the consistency of her accent. So many times I've heard actors have an accent when they do dialogue but then totally drop it when they sing (see:
Jim Nabors' Greatest Hits
). I love how in "Dividing Day" she sings, "Dashing as the day we met, only there is something..." and pronounces the word "only" "own-ly" like a Southern belle. She said that the mother of one of her son's elementary school friends is from the South and Vicki had her record the entire script and lyrics into a tape recorder (three times!) so Vicki could copy her.

One of the reasons she had a hard time getting cast in
Piazza
is because people only knew her as a comic actress and they didn't think she could do a dramatic part. She struggled to prove she could do drama and now she literally has casting agents nervously asking her agent if she can do comedy. Yay! It's fun having a whole body of work yet only being remembered for your last job.

On another note, my radio show on Sirius is called
Seth's Big Fat Broadway
and after
The Ritz
one night, I heard an audience member approach one of the other cast members and ask where I was. He pointed to me and the audience person was mind-boggled. "That’s him? Then why is his show called 'Seth's
Big, Fat
, Broadway'?" What's the confusion? It's called
Seth's Big, Fat Broadway
not "
I
am big and fat
on
Broadway." Although, I do admit I am always complaining about my weight on the air. When I was on
Law & Order: CI
, a woman with a hilariously thick Southern accent called the Sirius message center and left me this message: "Seth, I saw you on
Law & Order
… and you looked totally different than what I thought. From the way you talk, I thought you'd look like the lead from 'La Cage aux Folles'... the French version. Let me describe him: He's fat, he's got a big butt… he whistles, he whoops… and he's
adorable
. But you! (here's where it got crazy)… you look like
Hugh Jackman
!" I guess anyone you expected to whistle, whoop and have a big butt and then doesn't immediately looks like Hugh Jackman.

This week there was a theft at
The Ritz
! At the end of Act One, Rosie Perez (as Googie Gomez) does a big medley that's supposed to be a mess. At the end, she does a high kick, "accidentally" kicks off her shoe, then angrily throws it offstage. Well, the shoe didn't quite make it offstage and sat all the way stage right for the rest of the number. As Act One ended, there was a blackout for a couple of seconds, and when the lights came up, the shoe was gone! It was very
Murder, She Wrote
… without a murder and/or four-time Tony Award-winner.

Coincidentally, one of the original
Ritz
cast members (who played a bathhouse patron) came to the show and was chatting with me as I collected for BC/EFA. He said that Rita Moreno would kick her shoe into the actual audience, yet it was never stolen. He finally asked her how she always got it back, and she told him that she wrote something on the inside of the shoe: "There is a seven-foot tall Puerto Rican who will attack you as you exit if you don't return this shoe."

He was shocked to be seeing a show in Studio 54 because he used to come here when it was the famous disco. He said that in those days the bathroom had all these colognes you could apply, and it was useful when people were using the stalls to take drugs. If someone was hogging the stall too long, you'd take one of the colognes and start spraying over the top of the stall so they'd flee. I guess you could tell that someone was a heavy drug user if they reeked of Halston Z-14.

Back to Googie's number. Right near the end, there's an amazing quick change, where Rosie disappears behind a curtain and goes from a turquoise pantsuit to a purple sassy dress in literally four seconds. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work Tuesday night, and she wound up in half the dress and half the pantsuit. All of us patrons watch the show from the box seats, and it was impossible to keep a straight face. She looked like a moth that hadn't quite come out of its cocoon.

Back to the Thanksgiving Day Parade. I generally dislike the Broadway performances because I hate watching lip-synching. The whole point of Broadway is the fact that it's live, so it's always a downer to me to watch a song that I like turned into an Ashlee Simpson concert. And can we also discuss commercialism under the guise of children's entertainment? "Look! There's a giant balloon of Snoopy (OK, that makes sense)… And the Hamburglar (hmm… pushing it)… And North Fork Bank (what the…?)."

Here's a question: what do M&Ms mean to you? Broadway! They do? For some reason, Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele stood on top of an M&M float and sang "Give My Regards to Broadway." I ran into Jonathan on 49th Street the night before and he told me that it was gonna be a sort of rock version of the song. I guess by "rock version," he meant a version that retained the lyrics of the song but dispensed with that pesky melody/rhythm and any original chord changes. However, I will say that they both sounded amazing! There was a fabulous high note that I had to rewind twice! And I loved
Xanadu
. Could Kerry Butler or Cheyenne Jackson possibly sound/look any better? Short answer: no.