Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 1 (27 page)

Anyway, Tommy took the role and was nominated for a Tony! I asked how he felt when he was nominated, and he said that it was bizarre because all he ever wanted to do was dance in the chorus. He loved doing that so much, he never thought he'd do anything else. Tommy talked about Tony night and said that it was a bittersweet experience for him. At the time, he was dating Michael Stuart (the original Greg from
A Chorus Line
), but the powers that be told him that he had to have a girl as his date at the Tonys. He was shocked because he was playing a gay character in
Seesaw
! Actually, he said during the interview that he was playing the
first
gay character in a musical, and I corrected him by saying that Duane in
Applause
was the first… and he one-upped me by telling me that he was originally offered the role. Busted!

Anyhoo, he decided to ignore what they told him and bring his boyfriend to the Tonys. Well, because of that, when the camera filmed each nominee in the audience before the award was given, they went to a photo of him instead! I was shocked and asked how the TV audience would even know that it was his boyfriend, and he said everyone sat boy, girl, boy, girl. He wound up winning the Tony, but the memory of that night has always been tinged with sadness, and Tommy said that for everyone who thinks gay rights hasn't come far, just remember how it used to be
!
Cut to Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman smooching it up in 2004!

In the mid-'70s, Tommy started on the path towards being a director, and that meant making some tough decisions like turning down the original
Annie.
His agent felt that if he accepted being choreographer of
Annie
, he'd never graduate to being director. Tommy said that Michael Bennett was always frustrated during the years he spent just choreographing because he knew he could direct, and Tommy didn't want that to happen to him. He waited it out and was offered a chance to be choreographer of
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
and asked Peter Masterson if he could co-direct (à la Michael co-directing
Follies
). Peter said yes, and that changed Tommy's career… and, he said, his bank account!

I asked him about that brilliant number he created for Michael Jeter in
Grand Hotel
. He said that they couldn't find someone to play the role of Kringelein and Tommy remembered seeing Michael play The Dormouse opposite Meryl Streep in the Public Theater's
Alice in Wonderland
. He tracked him down and found out that Michael was working as a secretary in a law firm. Tommy brought him in and at the audition Michael Jeter told everybody that he didn't sing. Tommy wanted to know if that meant that he had never sung, or if he was literally tone deaf, so he had Michael match different pitches… which he was able to do. Tommy sat with him onstage, held his hands, and asked him to sing something really simple. He remembers Michael's hands shaking terribly as he sang, but he got through it. Of course, his acting in the audition scenes was brilliant and he was cast. But Tommy forgot to ask him to dance. He said he likes to see how everyone can dance at an audition, just in case it's needed somewhere.

Well, one day during rehearsals, Michael was holding himself on the bar (drinking bar, not ballet) and making his body do these crazy Raggedy Andy/spineless/no-bones-in-his-body moves. Tommy saw it, loved it and made it the basis for "We'll Take a Glass Together." You all need to go to
Bluegobo.com
ASAP and watch it… it's literally what I put on every time I want to love Broadway. The two moments I love are when the bar is pulled away right near the end… you can hardly see it, but it's thrilling… and then the very last button when Michael jumps in Brent Barrett's arms… so satisfying!

I feel that Tommy is one of the all-time great directors because he can take a show that isn't working and make it a hit (like
My One and Only
and
Grand Hotel
). That's the skill that made Michael Bennett, Gower Champion and Jerome Robbins such brilliant directors. Tommy told me that the most important person needed to fix a show is the librettist. I had always thought it was the songwriters, but he explained that many flop shows had brilliant scores, and I realized he's right! (See:
Merrily We Roll Along
and
Rags
). Shout out to librettists!

I begged Tommy to come back to Broadway, and he said he had gotten really depressed because so many of his friends (especially Michael Bennett) died of AIDS. He felt he had no one to talk to and bounce ideas off of. He fled to Vegas for a few years to do
F/X
(where he won entertainer of the year). The thing he loved about Vegas is that "you get to do ten shows a week. On Broadway, you only get to do eight a week."
Get
to do? I explained that many people put in their contract that they'll only do six a week! He patiently explained that his father was a farmer and used to tell him that if he didn't go to bed dog tired at the end of the day, he didn't work hard enough. Hmm… was his father related to Chita? Same work ethic.

The good news is, he's back from Vegas and he just started an online art gallery with beautiful pictures that are c-h-e-a-p (some are as low as $20!). He feels that people need to have affordable art. Get thee to
TommyTuneGallery.com
and here’s hoping we’ll see his work again on Broadway!

The rest of the week was dedicated to seeing shows I've been wanting to see but couldn't because I was doing
The Ritz
. So, first James and I saw
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
It was hilarious! The new cast was fantastic, and my friend Jennifer Simard was
brilliant
as Rona Lisa. If you've never seen the show, you may not know that they bring up three audience members and make them participate in the Bee. I'm obsessed with the comments that Rona Lisa and the vice-principal make about them. After the show, Jen told me that many of the comments are made up on the spot! One guy was dressed in a button-down sweater and loose corduroy pants and, when he approached the mic, Jen gave his background information: "Fred Lackey likes to intimidate the other contestants by dressing as their Dad." She followed it with "Fred Lackey is sick of being considered everybody's lackey and is changing his name to Sting." When Fred was asked to spell a word and started running out of time, she warned him with "Five seconds, Sting."

I was also obsessed with how she’d say a funny line and then start writing something on the pad on her desk. I told her I loved the total lack of acknowledging she just said a funny line and she told me that was based on the Bea Arthur school of saying a laugh line; you say the line and then immediately occupy yourself with something during the laugh. I remembered that backstage at
The Ritz
, the other actors and I would talk about Bea's signature picking lint off of her sweater after she'd land a zinger on
The Golden Girls
.

Friday night, James and I went downtown to see
Gone Missing
and I thought the acting was so great! The whole show is culled from real people talking about things they've lost. One woman's answering machine message about an expensive high-heeled shoe she lost at PS 122 was so hilariously annoying: "I've notified the head of PS 122, the director, the music director, the house manager, and
no one
is calling me back. I have a photo of the shoe that I'm gonna email to you so you can make a flyer… and I'm also attaching a map highlighting the places I want the flyer hung up." Seriously! I was obsessed with her controlling-ness! Also, as I was watching the show, I realized that I knew one of the cast members, Lexy Fridell (we did a show together where I got my Equity card), and I thought she was
excellent
... especially as the woman talking about losing her necklace down the drain of her shower. Then I checked the program and found out that she was actually an understudy! BRAVA!

Saturday, we saw our second Bill Finn show of the week —
Make Me a Song.
Everyone in the cast sang great (shout out to my friend Sally Wilfert and her gorgeous mix!), and Darren Cohen burned up the keyboard. And after hearing four lines of "Unlikely Lovers," I, as usual, had tears streaming down my face. Bring back
Falsettoland
!

Then we ran up to Lincoln Center to see
The Glorious Ones
. It was so fun for me to see Marc Kudisch in a fabulous lead role. We first worked together in Kansas City back in the early ‘90s where I music directed
Forever Plaid
and he played Smudge. He's such a great character actor and truly knows how to act a song. I find that some actors don’t act while holding a note, but he’s so good at filling it with subtext. Also, everyone knows that Natalie Belcon, from the original
Avenue Q
, is funny but her costume as Gary Coleman wasn’t very sexy. Finally, New York can now see she's a beautiful woman! With a high belt! Thank you to the music of Flaherty and Ahrens and that fabulous push-up bra!

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, we went to brunch with my Mom at Marseille (delish!) and saw the matinee of
Die Mommie Die!
Charles Busch is so brilliant. I would so love for him to go back to what he did when he first started out and write and star in a different show each week. He is so mind-bogglingly funny, but you never feel that he's just going for the laugh. He perfectly blends imitating the grande dames of film with keeping everything he's doing rooted in reality. And, as you watch, you always want to be best friends with the women he plays. After the show, Charles made a sweet speech thanking us for being such a great crowd. He said that they had some bizarre audiences during the strike because they got the run-off from
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
. He recalled one evening playing the show to a group of 200 high school marching band members! He then muttered "…strange bedfellows." Hi-lar!

OK… I'm saying farewell! This week I start rehearsals for
Lend Me a Tenor
. As we would say in sixth grade to provoke gales of laughter, "see you next year!"

2008

Judy, Judy, Judy… and Julia

January 7, 2008

Happy New Year! I'm writing this from rehearsal for
Lend Me a Tenor
.

That's right, my role is big enough to give me ample down time to write… and by "big," I mean "small." I actually love my role. I play the bellhop and I come on every once in a while and annoy everybody. I'm sort of the Gladys Kravitz of the show. The theatre is the newly built John W. Engeman Theater in Northport, but thankfully, we're rehearsing in New York.

When I graduated from high school, I thought I was done with Long Island, but it keeps calling to me. And I mean literally calling. Last week, I wrote about how my mother has given me a terrible complex about my driving, and that's why I haven't driven in years. She called me the second she read it (New Year's Eve) and I assumed that by seeing in print how her lack of confidence in my driving has debilitated me for years, she would be apologizing. This was the conversation:

MOTHER: Hi. I saw that you wrote about how you've been scared to drive for all these years…


ME: (Preparing to magnanimously accept her apology) Yes…?

MOTHER: Let me just say… YOU ARE A MENACE TO OTHER DRIVERS!
That
was what I was trying to say!

Why is that any better!?!?!

Speaking of New Year's Eve, I spent it at my apartment with James and my friends Tim Cross (from college), Stephen Spadaro (one of the company managers of
Chicago
) and Paul Castree (his boyfriend, recently of
Young Frankenstein
). We planned on having a game night but wound up watching tons of videos first. We watched two of my favorites: "We'll Raise a Glass Together" from
Grand Hotel
(mentioned in last week's column) and Karen Morrow's "I Had A Ball" from
The Ed Sullivan Show
. Brilliant!

Right before midnight, my friends asked me to put on the television for the countdown, and my TV was on some station that was showing
When Harry Met Sally
. It was the scene where Meg Ryan fakes the orgasm and I insisted on watching Rob Reiner's mother say, "I'll have what she's having," which unfortunately happened at midnight and 30 seconds. In other words, we missed the countdown so I could watch a laugh line from a 21-year-old movie I've seen 1,000 times. I guess it was worth ruining my party.

On New Year's Day, James, Juli and I went to Julia Murney's parents' apartment to have pancakes. It sounds random, but it's been a Murney tradition for almost 20 years. Julia invites tons of her friends, who invite all of their friends and the apartment winds up looking like the Equity Lounge. Julia wears an apron and asks how many pancakes you want and then ladles 'em out… with a big plate of bacon that the non-vegetarians wolf down (not me). I hung out with married couple Barbara Walsh and Jack Cummings (who runs The Transport Group). Barbara always looks amazing and I asked her the signature "What have you been up to?" question. She told me she just filmed a great commercial. I asked if her type was "young Mom." She then informed me it was promoting a medicine for menopause. And that's why I'm not a casting director. It sounds like a hilarious commercial… she gets a hot flash and throws herself into an ice machine!