Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 2 (9 page)

After he graduated, he made money by accompanying singers and dance classes. Eventually he got a gig playing rehearsals for a show called
Saratoga
, and the stage manager said that he had an idea for a musical. The idea was about a new phenomenon called… teenagers and the show became
Bye Bye Birdie
. They went through five bookwriters (!) and eventually came up with the Elvis Presley character. The first song Charles wrote was one of my favorites, "An English Teacher." I asked him about the phrase at the beginning: "Albert, Albert, A-a-a-albert!" He said that phrase stems from his classical training. He feels a straight-up pop composer wouldn't necessarily think to put four notes on the same syllable (see "The Glory of the Lord" from
The Messiah
… which has thirty notes on the first syllable of the word, "glory"). I love Chita Rivera on that song, though it turns out the role was not written for her. Rose was not supposed to be Hispanic. All of the jokes originally were about her being Polish because the role was written for Carol Haney! If you don't know, she's the original Gladys from Broadway’s
The Pajama Game
and the film as well as the star who broke her leg allowing Shirley MacLaine to go on.

Unfortunately, Carol started having vocal problems before
Bye Bye Birdie
and couldn't play the role, so Charles recommended Chita, whom he had worked with on
Shoestring Revue
. They kept all the songs they wrote for Carol and added one for Chita, "Spanish Rose" (which you can see her do on the Ed Sullivan Show if you go to
Bluegobo.com
).

I asked Charles about something that's always driven me crazy. Now, you all should know that I think
Hair
is a brilliant show and every song in it is phenomenal. But… I get annoyed when people say
Hair
was the first rock musical.
Bye Bye Birdie
was the first rock musical! It was the first show to have used actual rock music ("One Last Kiss," "Sincere") and an electric guitar. Charles thinks that, because the show satirizes rock music, people don't credit it with being groundbreaking (my word). What's funny is that he said they couldn't get any backers for it because of the new-fangled score. The music was just too modern. Think about it, they started writing it in the mid-‘50s when rock literally first began. It's like writing a musical in the style of (insert latest music trend here… I faded out on pop radio so long ago the last trend I know about is a young upstart named Tiffany).

Dick Van Dyke was not originally thought of for the lead role of Albert Peterson. They wanted Jack Lemmon or Steve Lawrence. It was Chita's agent again, Richard Seff, who was also Dick Van Dyke's agent, and kept pushing for them to see him again, even though the creative team thought he wasn't quite right. Then, when Dick finally got the role, his big number, "Put on a Happy Face," was bombing. Charles immediately set out to write a new song. But Marge Champion, who was married to the director (Gower), thought that the staging of the number wasn't right. It originally took place at the Ed Sullivan show while they were setting the lights, and she thought of the idea of setting it in Grand Central and making it about two young girls who were depressed. Suffice it to say, it worked!

Of course, I had to obsess about
Annie
. Martin Charnin asked Charles to write it because Charles had written
It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman
, and this was another musical based on a comic. Charles thought the idea was
awful
but liked Martin and Thomas Meehan, who was writing the book, so he went along with it. Charles told us that the original concept was for Annie to be played by… Bernadette Peters! All I can say is "what the-?" The first song he wrote was "It's a Hard Knock Life," which was also the only song in that show that had the lyrics come first. He said the fun of writing a musical is not knowing what's gonna work and what isn't. In Act One, there’s a scene where Annie meets Sandy the dog for the first time and then Annie gets thrown back in the orphanage. There was a clever scene change with a sliding panel, but it needed time to get set up, so Charles wrote a song to cover it. When the change happened for the first time, the audience cheered, and Charles went to the back of the house to tell Martin that they really loved that clever scene change. He didn't realize until months later that the audience was actually loving the song he wrote to cover the change, "Tomorrow"! All these stories and more can be read in his excellent memoir,
Put on a Happy Face
.

OK, everyone, get ready for next week’s Tonys!! I cannot wait to see all those performances. As Patti LuPone ad-libbed at the end of the Tony opening number I wrote in 1998, "Go, Tony!!!"

When You Got It, Flaunt It

June 16, 2008

Hello! Happy post-Tony Awards. I'm actually writing this before watching it, so I can't give you my opinion of the show. I can, however, give my
estimated
opinion of the show. Please stop with the Hollywood celebs and bring on the Broadway! I want longer performances from every musical, not four minutes and we're out. Remember
Dreamgirls
in 1982? We got to see the fight scene leading to "And I Am Telling You"
and
all of "And I Am Telling You"! These days, they'd skip the fight scene and we'd only get a truncated version of "And I Am Telling You" to make room for a headache-y TV star to present.

Ladies and gentlemen…
Dreamgirls
!
"And I am telling you… you're gonna lo-o-o-o-ove me-e e-e-e-e-e!" 
And now… Patricia Heaton.

Since I can't (yet!) recap the Tony Awards, let me recap my week. On Tuesday I performed in a benefit that Judy Gold put together for the public school her son goes to (which is the same one Juli goes to). Andrea McArdle and her daughter Alexis performed and sounded fabulous. They're both doing
Les Miz
in the late summer with Andrea as Fantine and Alexis as Eponine. I love it! Triumph The Insult Comic Dog puppet performed and was hilarious. He talked about Judy Gold being a gay mom and said that while Andrea and Alexis are doing
Les Miz
, Judy and her sons are doing Miss Lez. He followed that with, "I'm not saying Judy is raising her sons gay, but Andrea McArdle is backstage right now singing, 'Your son'll come out… tomorrow.'" I wish I could tell you some of the jokes he said about me, but
Playbill.com
is a family site.

While leaving Caroline's on Tuesday, the weather seemed crazy — super quiet, but windy and on the verge of something terrifying. I knew
something
was about to happen, so I raced to the subway to get home before it hit. And while I was on the subway, my block was hit by a
tornado
!!!! Seriously! One of the supers was standing on the street and said he saw a swirling mass of dust at the end of the block and, when it cleared, a tree had been uprooted and was sprawled across the street! I couldn't believe it, but then Christine Pedi told me that her friend was leaving Carnegie Hall that same night and saw a twister going down 57th Street. Al Gore, please help!

At the
Chatterbox
I interviewed a young Tony nominee from
In the Heights
, Robin De Jesús. I asked him where he was from and he told me "a factory town in Connecticut." Huh? When questioned further, he admitted that just saying Connecticut sounds too middle to upper class, so he adds the "factory town" part to give him some street cred. He loved singing when he was a kid, but could not match pitch and essentially clanked, so he would pray to have a better voice. I asked who he wanted to sing like and he replied immediately, "Ariel."

Robin was working in a camp right after he graduated high school and heard about the auditions for the movie
Camp
. It was an open call and he kept getting called back. He gave his final audition on a Friday and knew he'd find out later that day. He was so excited when the casting person called him and said… he needed to come back Monday. Turns out, they had auditions in California and wanted to bring everyone in together. He went back, saw his competition and, after he auditioned, he was told they didn't need anything else from him. But the other guy was asked to stay! Robin was like, "…um… I can sing something if you want…" and they were like, "That's all we need." He thought he definitely didn't get it, but on the train ride back to Connecticut, he pulled an Oprah's secret and decided that he
did
get it. Cut to: the casting person called him later and said he was cast. Brava, Oprah!

Robin loved working with the director, Todd Graff, and after the movie wrapped (as they say in the film world), Todd paid for the cast to come to NYC, stay in hotels, and see two Broadway shows (!). Afterwards, they went to Planet Hollywood and he showed them 15 minutes of the film. I think that cost him the entire budget of the movie! One of Robin's co-stars turned to him while they were seeing the first cut and said, "Wait... it actually looks good!" They were super surprised it came out so well because the whole time they were filming they were told that the budget was non-existent and there would be
no
retakes whatsoever. After they stopped filming, Robin's friends told him that his hair was out of control (it was an enormous afro), and he needed to cut it ASAP. Right after that, Todd called and said that they got some extra money, so they were going to do a bunch of retakes. Robin had to get his courage up to say, "I, um, sort of cut off all my hair…" Todd was not fazed and immediately figured out a way to solve the problem. Let's just say that you can tell the scenes in the movie that were re-shot because they feature Robin's crazy afro wrapped up in a bandana... AKA a bandana covering Telly Savalas' head.

After
Camp
, he thought he'd be getting some delicious performing offers. Unfortunately, he got offered Priscilla Lopez's signature song ("
Nothing
"). He worked as a waiter in Connecticut and finally decided to move to New York. Unfortunately, he couldn't get
any
work in the city, so he went back to his old waitering job in Connecticut and would commute back to NYC every night. It's like Elaine Stritch's fun story about having to commute every day because she was starring on Broadway
and
in a show in New Haven… but without the "fun" part, "show" part or "starring" part. He finally got a headache-y job waitering at Bubba Gump's Shrimp Factory in Times Square and a job at FAO Schwarz. The FAO Schwarz gig was known as the "perfect" job. It was designed for actors because you were allowed to sign out whenever you had an audition, and all you had to do was play with a toy all day long. He lasted three shifts. First of all, because he was new, they gave him the most headache-y toy…
Yu-Gi-Oh
cards. Then he realized that most people coming to the store didn't want to watch him play with the cards, they wanted to ask him where certain toys were located. Because he just started working there, he didn't know where anything was, so he had to keep telling customers to ask the other "toy players," who all wound up resenting him for constantly sending people over asking for directions. That was exacerbated by the mortification of people recognizing him from
Camp
. It was very much like Boyd Gaines in the
Fame
movie. Remember? He's the hot actor at the High School of Performing Arts and, after he graduates, some students are at a restaurant and he's their waiter. He tells them what's going on career-wise and then has to awkwardly segue to, "So, today's specials are…" Devastating.

Robin said that seeing
Caroline, or Change
changed everything for him because it made him realize that theatre and performing could be art and not just a gig. He made a decision to leave his agent and not take every job that came his way. Well, when he was in high school and heard the solo in "Will I," he said to his friends, "I would love to do
Rent
just to sing that small amazing solo," and that's the solo he wound up having on Broadway when he was cast in
Rent
! He also got to play Angel on Broadway as well! One of his friends told him that he'd be perfect for the role of Sonny in the reading of
In the Heights
. He asked his agent to get him an audition, and she called him back and said he didn't have to audition, he was offered the role! The director (Tommy Kail) and Lin-Manuel Miranda had both seen
Camp
and knew he'd be great. He did the reading, the workshop, the Off-Broadway production and now he's on Broadway!

I asked him how he found out that he was nominated for a Tony and he said that he was about to perform on
Good Morning America
when the stage manager got a sheet of paper with all the nominations. He handed it to Robin and said, "You should look at this." Robin thought that the stage manager said that because he got a nomination, and he got so excited! But then he thought that he'd better not think it because if he looks at the list, and his name isn't there, everyone's gonna see his face crack. He finally looked, saw his name and started sobbing uncontrollably, but then one second later curtailed all emotion because he had to perform and didn't want puffy red eyes. It was very
Dreamgirls
: "I got a show to do!" The most amazing part was that he knew he had a Tony nomination
and
he was performing a song from his Tony-nominated Broadway show on
Good Morning America
outdoors on the little island in Times Square, which is right across from… Bubba Gump Shrimp Company!