Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 1 (40 page)

Don’t forget that this week is Sherie Rene Scott's concert for BC/EFA (
BroadwayCares.org
). Go see this brilliant entertainer and support a great cause!
It was called YOU MAY NOW WORSHIP ME and it went to Broadway a few years later as EVERYDAY RAPTURE
.
And when you have a moment, download
The Me Nobody Knows
. It's not just for Latinas… Long Island Jews love it, too! Peace out!

Hey, Old Friends

April 7, 2008

Last Monday, I went to a concert of music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. You may not know, but in 1976, they wrote the show
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,
which was a musical about many of the different presidents who lived in the White House and the staff that served them. The show was a Bicentennial bomb (seven performances only… I guess seven's not always a lucky number) but then had its script thrown out and they combined a chunk of the songs to form
The White House Cantata
. The show was performed by some great soloists and the Collegiate Chorale.

Afterwards, I hosted a post-performance discussion with some original cast members and the original co-director/choreographer, George Faison. Beth Fowler recalled how she was offered an audition to be in the chorus of the original show and to understudy the First Lady. Her agent told her that she absolutely should not audition because she had already been featured as one of the Liebeslieders in
A Little Night Music,
and it would be a step back for her career. But she felt that she had to audition because (as she reenacted, all a-flutter) "Leonard Bernstein wants my voice." She said that she remembers talking to Patricia Routledge (who played The First Lady), who told her that when she first read the script, she thought it needed a lot of work but… "Leonard Bernstein wants my voice." Original cast member Jack Witham talked about meeting Beth Fowler during rehearsal, asking her out… and they've been married ever since. I guess the seven performances paid off for some people! And by "some," I mean two
.
This talkback was before Beth’s newfound fame as the nun on ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK.

I asked director George Faison the biggest problem he had with Bernstein and he said that they once had a note session at The Watergate hotel with Bernstein in a silk dressing gown eating from a sumptuous buffet of truffles and lobster… as they discussed writing for the common man. I understand what George was saying, but it's not like Bernstein came from such opulence. He certainly understood what it was like to not be rich, and as they say in
The Producers
, when ya got it, spend it.

Back to the
Cantata
, Emily Pulley gave a great rendition of "Duet for One" where she portrayed the outgoing First Lady (Julia Grant) as well as the incoming one (Lucy Hayes) at the Hayes inauguration. Beth Fowler recalled the final performance of
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
where Patricia Routledge got such an ovation that she finally did the whole song again! After the talkback, I ran into Alice Playten and, like I always do, brought up
Henry, Sweet Henry
. She told me that on opening night, the audience wanted her to sing "Nobody Steps on Kafritz" again… but she employed ye olde adage, "Always leave 'em wanting more." If you've never seen Alice do this number (she got a Tony nom. for it), you must visit
Bluegobo.com
and watch her on the
Ed Sullivan Show
… brilliant!

On Sirius Radio, I interviewed my old friend Emily Skinner. I've known Emily ever since she graduated Carnegie Mellon and reminded her that I coached her for her audition for the ‘90s revival of
Grease!
She then promptly reminded me that she didn't get the part. Touché. She told me that she grew up in Virginia and was so hyper as a child they wanted to hold her back in school and not have her enter first grade, but her teacher gave her another option. Emily was told she could have ten minutes every day where she could entertain the class, and after that she had to be good in class. Emily took the option, doing mini-plays, singing songs and lip-synching Jackson Five albums, and she was able to avoid being held back! I'm jealous. I want a delicious captive audience ten minutes a day. Must I go back to kindergarten? Wait a minute, I just remembered, I started first grade at five years old… I skipped kindergarten! That's why I'm still desperately searching for the audience I never had. After 20 years of therapy, it just took one interview with Emily Skinner to pick up on the reason for my neediness. Brava!

Like me, Emily grew up listening to the
Annie
album. I asked her who she was obsessed with, assuming it was a toss-up between Andrea McArdle, Laurie Beechman and the girl who played Duffy ("Who cares what they're wearing on Main Street or Saville Row"). Turns out, it was Dorothy Loudon! I forgot that Emily's been a character actress her whole life.

Emily's first big break was doing
A Christmas Carol
at Madison Square Garden, which was her last ingénue role. The good news was she didn't have to worry about remembering her character name (it was "Emily"); the bad news was they had 15 performances a week! Wowza. In one week they more than doubled all the performances of
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
. Then she got cast in
Jekyll and Hyde
as Linda Eder's understudy. Thus follows a story I'm totally obsessed with: during previews, Linda Eder, who normally has vocal chords of steel, lost her voice, but the understudies hadn't been rehearsed yet. Emily didn't know any of the stage fighting and didn't want a "new life" as someone with a sword stuck in her arse (British pronunciation). Plus, the stage was constantly filled with London fog, and she was terrified of falling into the pit… even with all those synthesizers there to break her fall. They told her that they understood and she would not have to go on. Hmm… sounds good so far. However, they really meant she wouldn’t have to go on… stage. Instead, they asked Linda Eder to act all the scenes and when it came time to sing, Linda had to star onstage and move her mouth while Emily sang into a mic backstage! Seriously! It wasn't that devastating since, thankfully, it was only a rehearsal with a few friends in the house. Oh, I'm sorry… it was an actual performance with a full paying audience! The thing is, I've never run into anybody who actually saw that performance, and I have a terrifying suspicion that the producers wanted the story never to be told, so they had everyone killed on their way out of the theatre. Any survivors? Email me!
I’ve since found out that not only did the audience survive… but there’s a bootleg of the performance!

Emily got her first starring role on Broadway as Daisy Hilton in
Side Show
, the story of real-life conjoined twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton. I was the assistant music director on the first reading of
Side Show
, but then it was called
The Songs of the Siamese Twins
. By the time the title was changed, I was unceremoniously replaced. Emily kept the role through various readings and they brought her in to audition with various actresses up for Violet. Emily remembers auditioning with Alice and saying, "We sound great together!" Again I say, if you've never seen them do the show, get thee to
Bluegobo.com
… phenomenal! I literally thought they had costumes that were connected to each other. I was shocked that all they did was just stand, hip-to-hip. Emily said a man once approached her at the stage door with a knowing smile and said, "I saw the Velcro." Ah… there's nothing more annoying than a know-it-all know-nothing
.

The most devastating thing that happened was at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Do you remember the year when it was so windy that a balloon was knocked down and hit a woman on the head? Well, Emily and Alice were doing a number from
Side Show
that same year, and the wind came up in the middle of it and literally blew them apart! It was only for a few seconds, but I remember Alice telling me that it was one of the worst days of her life. Perhaps that's a little dramatic, but that's why she's an actress, folks! Emily said that she loved having Alice next to her the whole show because having someone so close to her meant she always felt supported and not vulnerable. She said that during the workshop, where they rehearsed eight hours a day for six weeks, she would have dreams at night and wake up feeling the bed next to her for Alice. I've done the same thing, but I wasn't doing
Side Show
, and I was feeling for my ex-boyfriend who dumped me in 1989.

One of my other favorite Broadway debacles (besides the Linda Eder lip-synching craziness) happened during
Side Show
. Emily and Alice were doing the show at night but also getting up crazily early to do morning shows. I was working on
The Rosie O'Donnell Show
at the time, and I remember Emily and Alice singing "Who Will Love Me As I Am?" and right after that, Emily burst a blood vessel on her vocal chords! She had to take off a few shows to repair it, and her understudy, the fabulous Lauren Kennedy, went on for her. Emily was back, and she and Alice were finishing "Leave Me Alone." Usually at the end of the song, they back up until they're behind the set, do a 20-second costume change and are then revealed inside a sarcophagus for the Vaudeville Egyptian Number. Well, this was Wednesday night and during the crazy quick change, Emily couldn't get her costume on. She thought, "Could I literally have gained this much weight in two days?" and then she saw her dresser's face go white. Turns out, Lauren had gone on that matinee and the dresser had laid out her costume… and Lauren is a size zero! The music onstage now had started doubling, and the dancing boys started to repeat their dance steps because the sarcophagus wasn't opening. The dresser went running to Emily's dressing room (three flights up!!), and Alice helped out… by laughing hysterically. Finally, the dresser came back (the boys were now on their tenth repeat), Emily got into her costume and she and Alice entered the sarcophagus. Right before it opened, they realized that when they got into the sarcophagus, they somehow wound up on the wrong side of each other! It's like they had gotten the operation to separate conjoined twins, and then got sewn back together on opposite sides. Alice screamed, "There's no way I'm reversing this choreography!" and they got out of the sarcophagus, changed sides and it opened… to reveal ten chorus boys, wildly panting with a glazed look of "What the hell happened!?!??!?!!"

The show closed in the winter after 100 performances... but months later they found out it was nominated for Best Musical! But what about them? Would they compete against each other for Best Actress? No, the Tony committee solved that and nominated them as one nomination for "Best Actress." They sang "I Will Never Leave You" and sounded amazing! That was the same year I wrote the opening number starring Rosie O'Donnell (and of course, featuring my faves: Betty Buckley, Patti LuPone and Jennifer Holliday), so I got to be in the audience at Radio City and see Emily and Alice re-create their brilliance. Thrilling! Now they tour all over the place doing concerts separately and together and, if you haven't, you must get all of their CDs and give a special listen to Emily's version of "Sleepy Man" on their newest CD (
Raw at Town Hall
) and both of them doing "Little Me" on their first one,
Duets
. "Sleepy Man" is so beautiful and romantic, and I listen to "Little Me" at the gym all the time, and it puts me in the best mood.

Okay, people. This is my final week preparing for my big Actors Fund Benefit,
Seth's Broadway 101
. And next week Matthew Broderick is at the
Chatterbox
. Stay tuned for a recap!

We hope you enjoyed the first half of Seth’s Broadway Diary, Vol 1.

But wait, there’s more!

Due to Kindle file limitations, we divided volume 1 into two parts.

Continue reading Volume 1 in PART 2 available now.

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