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

Jason talked about doing
The Full Monty
on Broadway and one particular devastating night. Normally, at the moment when the cast finally takes it all off, the audience is blinded by a giant
Full Monty
sign so they really can't see any "business." Well, the actors realized as the song went on that the computer had malfunctioned and the light cues were one ahead! So, instead of the blinding light cue that normally happens during the nudity, they realized they’d be disrobing in the full stage light cue for the bows. Jason remembers being mortified.

When I interviewed Patrick Wilson he, too, remembered the horrible moment when he realized he was going to be nude in full light. At the very moment before the final disrobe he uncomfortably locked eyes with a 12-year-old girl in the third row… and then was forced to demonstrate to her what the words "Full Monty" meant. Ah! First he was devastated and then enraged at her parents, thinking, "Why the H did they bring a 12-year-old girl to this show?" 

Jason also talked about the brilliant performance of Kathleen Freeman and how the whole time she was doing the show, not only was she in her eighties, but she was going through radiation for lung cancer. He said that no one in the cast knew, they just thought that offstage she had less energy than onstage. I used to sub in the pit, and I can vouch that in every scene, she was
always
at full sass. I don't remember her ever missing a performance or laugh line. Talk about Dr. Theatre!

This weekend was dedicated to getting ready for my Actors Fund show,
Seth's Broadway 101
. I had the hilarious Charles Busch at my apartment as well as Andrea McArdle. Why has she never been the lead in
Mamma Mia!
? She'd sound amazing! She told me that all the original
Annie
orphans are having a 30-year reunion. Did you hear that? Thirty years! Mark your calendars: Winter 2037. 30-year reunion of
Spring Awakening
.

Andrea also said that "Maybe" had been put in a high key because Annie didn't wear a body mic, but she never understood how the littlest orphan could have her head in Annie's lap and been soothed to sleep by "Maybe far a-
waaaaaaay
" belted on a high D#.

I'm now starting my big week of rehearsals leading up to
Broadway 101
and hoping that the dancing I'm doing will counteract the delicious bowl of Waffle Crisps I'm eating. And yes, I'm busted, because it's so
not
Kosher for Passover… but c'mon, fellow Israelites, I'm stressed!

Broadway 101

April 18, 2007

Hey, everyone! Last Monday was the first rehearsal for
Seth's Broadway 101
. The show describes to the audience how Broadway works (what is a vocal arranger, orchestrator, swing, etc.) with live examples. At the first rehearsal, Devanand Janki, the choreographer, staged the dance segments. The first thing he did was the section about swings. If you don't know, swinging on Broadway is not the same thing as swinging in the movie
The Ice Storm
. (‘70s key party? Anybody?) "To swing" means to understudy the ensemble. Usually one man for all the guys in the chorus and one woman for all the ladies. I wanted to show the audience how the swing has to be ready to go on at a moment’s notice
and
how terrifying it is to go on for the first time. So in order to create theatre vérité, I made myself the swing. Have I ever swung before? No. Would they ever hire a swing whose leg extension is in the early double digits (39 degrees)? No. But I knew it would be exciting for the audience to see real fear and profuse sweating. 

Anyhoo, Dev staged the number and apparently it's not good for your body to take dance class in college, take 20 years off, and then dance again full out. Let's just say, after that rehearsal I was only physically able to swing the role of Madame Armfeldt.

The more dances I learned, the more I realized how hard it is to be a gypsy on Broadway. I'm used to music directing and yelling at the cast to cut off on beat three-and-a-half. I didn't realize that you have no time to think about cutoffs when your lower body is doing one thing, your torso is doing another, your head is facing is one direction and you
still
have to think about minutiae like where your focus is (Dev was always yelling things like, "First look at the orchestra seats… then lift your eyes to the balcony"). There was no way I could sing and do all that, so after this week I must ask Ashlee Simpson to move over, because I am now the king of lip-synching. If all the body mics had cut out during the show except for mine, you'd have seen my mouth moving but heard only a stream of air coming out of my yap that was very similar to heavy breathing. How do people sing and dance at the same time? I couldn't even inflate my lungs. Hats off to gypsies everywhere!

Monday night, I saw the brilliant Kristine Zbornik's show at the Metropolitan Room. She is so unbelievably funny, yet is also able to belt Es. She brought down the house by just saying simply, "Antonio Banderas' cologne is sold
exclusively
at Walgreens." I'm also obsessed with her version of "Some People": "There I was in Mr. Orpheum's orifice… and he was saying to me, 'ARGH!!!!'" (followed by uncomfortable grunts).

Tuesday was more rehearsal and the day I found out how much I owed for taxes. Most jobs I have don't take out money, so I owe it all at the end of the year. My reaction was the kind you'd have after spending a day seeing a matinee of
Death of a Salesman
, an eight o'clock performance of
Marie Christine
and a special midnight showing of
'night, Mother
.

Wednesday, Raúl Esparza came by to work on his song, "Morning Glow." He told me that he thought Sondheim would love my
Broadway 101
show and that he would email him. First of all, I'm dying to know what his email is:

[email protected]?

[email protected]?

Also, who has ever said that in a sentence? "I think I'll email Sondheim." Okay, I think I'll email Mozart.

Also, the previous Sunday, Patrick Pacheco wrote an article about the
Grease
reality show that ran in the LA
Times
. My friend Paul Castree was quoted, and I bragged to him that I had three paragraphs to his measly one. On Wednesday they reprinted it in
Newsday
. Paul still had his delicious paragraph, but they cut mine down a little. And by "a little," I mean to zero. Nary a trace. I've heard of instant karma, but never four-day-later karma. It was like karma mailed third-class.

Thursday, I hosted the
Chatterbox
with
Legally Blonde
's Michael Rupert. I was obsessed when he told me that he did all these television shows when he was a kid like
My Three Sons
and
The Partridge Family
. It's so much cooler to have grown up in that time period. People my age can only brag about doing guest spots on
Silver Spoons
and
Alf
. He also said that when he auditioned to replace John Rubinstein in
Pippin
, Bob Fosse asked him to take off his shirt. Even though Michael said it was above board and solely because Pippin spends much of the show shirtless, to me it smacked of Coco in the movie
Fame
("Tres jolie, Coco." Anybody?).

We also talked about him playing Marvin in
Falsettos
, and he told us about the myriad letters he got from kids who got the courage to come out because they saw the show. Or the glaring, uptight folk he'd see in the front row who'd be near tears by the end of the show. He also described how moved he was when he'd meet sickly looking men at the stage door who had flown to New York for an AIDS treatment. They'd always tell him how necessary it was for them to have seen the show. I remember seeing Falsettoland when it was Off-Broadway and loving it so much. Bill Finn and James Lapine wrote such real portrayals of gay people. So many times, gay characters in shows have one character trait: they are gay. And, P.S., that’s not even a trait! It’s like saying someone’s character trait is the fact that they’re white. Lapine and Finn made every character in
Falsettos
complex, like in real life. And the story is so incredibly moving. It's always embarrassing for me to be listening to "Unlikely Lovers" at the gym and be crying on the Stairmaster. I’m serious!

Friday, I met with Laura Benanti, and we had a long discussion about her wig for
The Wedding Singer
. She said she used her own hair when the show was out of town, but they wanted to make her look dowdier. She thinks someone was backstage washing windows, looked at the rag in their hands and said, "Hey! This can also be a wig!"

Friday was also the sitzprobe, meaning the first time the cast sang with the orchestra. We had a delicious 26-piece orchestra with a full string section. It was thrilling for us all to hear the
Gypsy
overture with all those instruments and so nice to see the musicians receive all that love from the cast. Friday was also the rehearsal for Manoel Felciano's section, and he warned me not to be shocked when I saw him. He has to gain 40 pounds for a Todd Solondz movie and has already gained 25. He said he's doing it by drinking ice cream shakes and not exercising. It was obviously a replica of my "diet" in junior high school, minus my signature supplement of Tastykakes.

Saturday and Sunday were a blur of run-throughs and me frantically going over dance steps. Suddenly it was Monday night.

We were sold out, and it was so nice for me to see the people in the cast who I admire so much getting a barrage of love from the audience. Pamela Myers sang "Another Hundred People" from
Company
just like she did in 1970 — in the original key! The audience demanded that she take a second bow. Andrea McArdle sang that last verse of "Tomorrow," and people freaked out. Before that I had talked about how devastated I was that I saw her replacement in
Annie
back in 1978, so after she sang, I whipped out my original Playbill (which had Laurie Beechman's autograph on the front!) and had Andrea finally sign it!

The whole time Raúl Esparza was singing, I saw a girl in the third row with her hands over face mouthing, "Oh My God!" The whole show was so thrilling to me.

Natascia Diaz did the section about quick changes. First she did a section from
Evita
where she goes from her small town to the cosmopolitan Buenos Aires and did a quick change, frumpy dress and long hair into tight skirt and short bob, when she changed cities. The whole thing was done in a matter of seconds while she was blocked from the audience by a bunch of dancers. She finished the number and then did the whole thing again. This time, however, she reversed the perspective so she was facing upstage and the audience was "backstage" so they could see everything. The crowd went crazy!

The whole thing ended with Norm Lewis singing "Lullaby of Broadway" with his signature velvet voice and the brilliant ensemble dancing up a storm.

I'm spending the rest of the week in an Epsom salt bath, and then this weekend I go to Palm Springs to play for Jennifer Hudson! I'll tell you all about that and my visit with my dad, who lives there, next week. Till then, take out your recordings of
March of the Falsettos
and
Falsettoland
, and cry up a storm!

Busch, Hudson and the Shaky Leg

April 24, 2007

Happy sixth anniversary to
The Producers
and farewell as well. Thursday was the sixth anniversary and Sunday was the closing.

I've been involved with
The Producers
since my birthday in 2001. First, a word about my birthday. It's on February 28. The same date that William Finn, Bernadette Peters, Kelly Bishop and Tommy Tune celebrate their birthdays. December birthday folk are always whining, "I never get a separate birthday or Christmas present. They're always combined." I hear ya, but let me simply say that it's just as annoying to share your birthday with four Tony Award-winners. Whenever theatre message boards print "today's birthdays," mine gets as much recognition as Sanjaya's will in a year.
Ooh! That’s a dated reference!

Anyhoo, on my birthday in 2001, I had brunch with Paul Castree, and I was complaining I had no money. Just then I got a call on my cell phone asking me to sub for
The Producers
! Oh yeah, a word about subbing. Subbing is like being an understudy in the pit. Every pit musician has around four subs, and it's very fun to do. And by "fun," I mean literally terrifying. When you sub, you first spend time learning the music you have to play at home and then you sit in the pit, watching the conductor so you know how it will look when you have to play. How many rehearsals do you get with the orchestra before you have to go on? None! Zero! You go from playing by yourself in your apartment to hearing "Ladies and gentlemen, the taking of photographs and the use of recording devices is strictly prohibited" with no transition. You're suddenly on Broadway. I think it’s scarier than being an understudy. When you're an understudy and you go on for the first time, if you make mistakes, you simply correct them the next time you go on. When you're a sub, you
can't
make mistakes your first time because you don't even have the job yet. The first time you play is your audition, so if you're nervous and you clank it up, you're never asked back.