Places, Please!: Becoming a Jersey Boy (24 page)

“So I say again, screw the budget.”

She’s right. Screw the budget. I buy plane tickets for every Sunday night through Tuesday afternoon for the rest of my contract year. We cannot put money into our savings account this way, but we are happier. Much happier.

Every Sunday afternoon at 4:35 p.m. I take my final bow. I run into my dressing room, jump in the shower, and am out of the building by 4:45. I take the subway and then a cab to the airport (this transportation combination is the quickest). I whip through security like George Clooney in
Up in the Air
. I fly, landing in Newark, New Jersey by 7:30. I bound up three flights of stairs to be the first in line at customs, run through the airport (taking a shortcut that I refuse to put in print for fear it will be closed off) to catch the next train to Manhattan, and am in my apartment by 8:45 p.m., where I enjoy Sunday night dinner with my family. And I’ve come to realize that it is well worth screwing our budget to have that dinner.

149th Show

More weeks go by. I’m settled into the physical requirements of the show and my body hurts a lot less (although I still slice my arm on guitar strings once in a while). I receive a tremendous amount of support from family and friends; it seems like every weekend a different cousin drives ten hours to see the show, only to return home the following day. And I feel more and more comfortable onstage.

Being in front of almost two thousand people is not as nerve-wracking as one might think. While the beginning of the show will always get my adrenaline pumping, once we settle into the story, I feel quite calm. So calm, in fact, that I have recently found myself multi-tasking.

I sing “Sherry” and I think about when the next sale at Porter Airlines will come up. I sing “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and consider what to have for dinner, a burger or pasta. I sing “Walk Like A Man” and realize I have run out of Fruit Loops in my dressing room. (Fruit Loops are great for immediate energy when my blood sugar gets low, and they are high in fiber.) (That last sentence is my way of justifying the unhealthy cereal I am completely addicted to.)

My body remembers what to do. If I ever fear for a second that the words or moves will not come out, I need simply abandon active thought and let my body react; the correct lines and moves will happen. Muscle memory seems to be a very real phenomenon, so forgetting lines becomes the least of our troubles. Some of our recent plights:

• The Problem: The elevator lift carrying many of the microphones and set pieces breaks during my first song, leaving us without a way to move things on and off the stage.
  
• The Solution: The production stage manager makes an announcement to all the swings hanging out in their dressing rooms to put on a costume and begin carrying things on and off as needed. (A swing is often told to play a role at the last minute, but I can’t recall another time when all the swings were called upon to help out at the same time.)
  
• The Problem: The onstage drummer becomes terribly nauseous right before the show, and cannot find a substitute because it is so last minute. (Actor understudies at
  Jersey Boys
  must be present at the theatre; not so with musician subs.)
  
• The Solution: A bucket is placed at his feet “just in case.” And he uses it. Many times. And yet he never misses a beat! (Pun intended.)
  
• The Problem: An actor misses a cue and doesn’t show up for one of his scenes, a scene that reveals the group’s new name to be the Four Seasons. (An important plot point, don’t you think?)
  
• The Solution: Two other actors find a way to segue into the next scene (I am absolutely no help in this), leaving the show a few minutes shorter and us hoping the audience just catches on to the fact that we have a new name.
  
• The Problem: After the twentieth expletive uttered in Act Two of the show, an audience member yells out, “Stop swearing!” He has already listened to about fifty such words up to this point.
  
• The Solution: We make fun of him backstage.
  

160th Show

It’s official. Tommy DeVito has infiltrated Daniel Robert Sullivan. Not only am I swearing a lot more, but I am refusing to take any shit from anyone. Period. (Yeah, that’s right, I said “shit.”)

After receiving an unjustified parking ticket here in my own building, I respectfully complain six times to ever-higher officials in the building management, but am given the runaround each and every time. Finally, I begin yelling. A lot.

I harass them. I try to use my neighborhood mini-celebrity status. I write a seven-page letter to the Board of Directors, complete with full-color pictures and diagrams. I file in small claims court. I even submit my name to be elected to the Board of Directors so I can fight from the inside. Tommy DeVito never gives up.

And I win.

I arrive home today to find a reimbursement check from the building management. Surely the best thirty-five dollars I’ve earned in a long time.

173rd Show

While letting some of Tommy’s personality traits take over my own is fun, I do have to make sure I keep some of them in check. Snapping my fingers at Cara when I want something done, for example, proves to be a very bad marital technique. Yelling when I am angry is equally uncalled for, as I have to remind myself this week. I arrive home in New York on Sunday evening ready for a peaceful and relaxing day off, and a sleep in my own bed. But Cara has a surprise for me. She is excited. She is proud. She has redone our bathroom.

Now, most guys would probably think a new paint job, a shelf, and some plants would be nice, especially if the guy didn’t have to lift a finger to have it all completed. But I react very differently. I am angry. Tommy DeVito wants to yell. But Daniel Robert Sullivan tries to keep him in check.

“Cara, why didn’t you tell me you wanted to do this?”

“Because I wanted it to be a surprise. Why do I have to tell you?”

“What do you mean, ‘why do I have to tell you?’” (Anger is bubbling inside me. Tommy DeVito is about to emerge.)

“Why do I have to tell you when I want to redo the bathroom?”

“You have to tell me because it is our bathroom, not your bathroom!” (Stop yelling, Tommy DeVito.)

“Well, you are being controlling. First, I didn’t even think you’d care that much about the color of the bathroom. And second, I should be able to change it if I want to change it. You’re hardly here anyway.”

“I’m here every fucking week!” (Stop swearing, Tommy DeVito.)

“Yeah, I know. And you always find something to fight about the day you get home.”

Cara is right; I always find something to fight about the day I get home.

I’m going to be unfair now and use this book as a way of getting in the last word in our debate. (Note to guys: Getting in the last word by publishing a book is also not a good marital technique.) I am upset not because of the bathroom change itself, but because I was left out of the change. Because I am hardly ever at our home, I want all the more to be included in decisions made. To relinquish my vote is to relinquish my involvement, and I want desperately to stay involved. I am angry because I was not involved today.

The bathroom looks really great, though. But don’t tell Cara I said that.

205th Show

I never throw out a playbill. I have a tremendous storage case full of them dating back to 1988. My favorite part of the publicity surrounding my joining this company of
Jersey Boys
was when it was announced on Playbill.com. When I began performing this role, updated playbills were not back from the printer and so the audience received full-color cardboard inserts with my picture and bio. Michael Lomenda called these inserts “rather fancy,” and I was sure I would find hundreds of them in the trash outside the theatre. When the new playbills arrived, there was no longer a use for the inserts, and last week I was allowed to take them. Three thousand photos of me.

So I went to the theatre two hours early and used them to cover the walls, ceiling, and mirrors in Michael’s dressing room. Playing pranks is a theatre tradition. While most actors are professional enough to keep the pranks far from the stage itself, there is always excitement when someone gets punked.

One of our guitar players has a talking stuffed parrot that he has made speak only lines from
Jersey Boys
. But that parrot is “kidnapped” all the time. Once, the parrot sent pictures of itself on the beach in Mexico. Another time, the parrot was found hanging in a noose forty feet above the stage with a bright spotlight trained on it. The parrot even sent pictures of itself on top of the Empire State Building.

Quinn VanAntwerp’s dressing room flooded a few times…in one day. So fellow castmates removed everything from his room and set him up again, not in another dressing room, but in the main hallway of our building. It “forced” him to reside in this hallway for four days.

I made a joke about a chicken once. The band heard it; it was not a good joke. But the next night there was a live chicken in my apartment when I arrived home after the show.

My chief dresser, Andy, is the one in charge of making sure every costume I wear is in perfect condition and in the right location before each show. He is also in charge of my quick-changes, which means he spends part of every day on his knees in front of me while I wear nothing but my underwear. So I began attaching signs to the front of my underwear. I wore these miniature signs through the show, revealing them to Andy when I stripped down in front of him backstage. Some recent signage: “Andy’s Fan Club,” “Jersey Boy,” “Are You Having A Good Day?” and “Warning: Explosives Inside.”

Michael plays Nick, a character who is very quiet and seemingly in control…until he explodes in a comic rage. This character mimics Michael’s actual personality, making him a fun target for mischief-making. (The photos of me that now line his walls are not nearly enough of a prank.)

Michael’s dressing room is next to mine; so last month I came to the theatre early, crawled up above the ceiling tiles, and rigged up a rope that I can pull from my room to cause his entire ceiling to lift, shift, and rattle. I do this only a little bit each day, just enough to drive him crazy, without making it an obvious prank. He is convinced that the rattling is mice. Or rats.

Finally, today, I gather seven cast members in my room before the show. I pull the rope harder than ever, making the ceiling actually rain plaster dust all over his room. He needs only ten seconds to figure out what’s going on and charges into my room, with comic rage flaring, to the cast’s applause. He’s a good guy. And good guys deserve to have pranks pulled on them!

I’d like to think I’m a good guy, too. Maybe that’s why I’m becoming convinced that the fan mail I’ve been receiving lately is not actually from real fans…

240th Show

Christmas Eve. We have just one show today, and it’s a matinee. I’m not sure, but I think we shaved at least five minutes off the show with everyone rushing through dialogue to get home to their families. My trek home begins by trudging through the slush outside the stage door at 5:00 p.m., racing to the airport by 6:00, being delayed until 11:30, and arriving home in New York at 2:00 a.m. December 25th is a day off, and a simple and joyous one it will be. I’ll have to return to Toronto to do two performances on December 26th, but the short time at home is well worth it. My parents will join us for Christmas Day, and we plan to have dinner at the kosher Second Avenue Deli. Now if that isn’t a New York Christmas, I don’t know what is.

267th Show

Winter is harsh in Toronto. I am lucky to live next door to the theatre, and the underground parking garage that connects the two buildings means that I have no real reason to go outside. At all. The crowds in the theatre are still huge, still thrilling. But they don’t come to the stage door anymore. Too cold, I guess. We have no interaction with them, and somehow that changes this whole experience.

Perhaps my want for audience interaction stems from a selfish need for personal approval; although I would like to think of myself as above that. Their applause should be enough, right? Or perhaps my want for interaction is simply a need for basic human contact. I see no one all day long, then see my co-workers at the theatre only briefly before the show and during intermission. I’m lonely; that’s all it is. The show remains the most satisfying artistic experience I’ve had, but it also remains the right job in the wrong city. I’m itching for home.

331st Show

It’s my birthday, and Cara hasn’t called me much today. We usually talk twenty times a day, so why she would be unavailable through most of today puzzles me. And truly hurts me.

Quinn invited people down to the local BBQ joint after the show for a small cowboy-themed birthday party. I didn’t realize he knew I own a cowboy hat. And that I absolutely love that cowboy hat. At intermission, the cast sings for me and presents me with an ice cream cake. (That’s the only kind of cake I like. How’d they know that?)

Intermission is over, and it has now been four hours since I’ve heard from Cara. Not cool, right? I call her, and she does not pick up. I know she is a very busy person, but I also know her schedule well enough to understand that she shouldn’t be particularly busy today.

I do the beginning of Act Two and finish the Sit-Down scene by two “thugs” escorting me off stage. When we have left the stage, one of the thugs stops me. He hands me an envelope from his pocket. He’s carried the envelope with him through the entire scene. I open it, and inside is a copy of a plane ticket with Cara’s name on it.

I enter my dressing room knowing what to expect. There is my wife waiting for me, kicking back in a cowboy hat that matches mine. It’s her first visit to Toronto since last summer.

She is the reason behind the ice cream cake. She is the reason behind the cowboy-themed party. And she is the reason that the BBQ place is covered in fifteen “Wanted” posters with my picture on them, posters that were there all day and were probably viewed by many of the folks who had dinner there before seeing the show.