Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 1 (11 page)

Okay, this week is
110 in the Shade
again and then
Gypsy
. Note to self: "Little Lamb" is a vital song in the score and should not be spent rifling through the Playbill.

Gypsy, The Ritz
and P-Town

July 31, 2007

Greetings from Provincetown, or as it's also called, P-town (tip o' the hat to
Urinetown
?).

 Last Sunday night, I saw
Frost/Nixon
and sat right behind Charles Busch’s director Carl Andress in the upper right box seats. We felt like a combination of Glenn Close from
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
, Raoul from
Phantom
and the "Let's go flying" guest star from
Will Rogers Follies
.

After seeing
Frost/Nixon
, all I dream about is living back in the '70s. I don't even smoke, but all I want to do is book a flight on TWA or Pan Am and light up a Newport. The performance was an Actors Fund Special Performance and if you don't know, it's an added ninth show where all the ticket money goes to the Actors Fund of America. It's on a dark night for most shows, so the audience is filled with Broadway performers. They're always so exciting because, even though they take place in the middle of a run, having all those Gypsies in the audience gives the actors so much energy that it's like seeing an Opening Night performance.

Monday night, I played piano in the pit of
Phantom
and had one of my signature debacles. During "The Music of the Night," I was counting the measures I had to rest until I played, and suddenly the bass player in front of me turned around and scared me because she was wearing a crazy mask that covered three quarters of her face. Musicians are often trying to lighten up the repetition of playing in a pit by doing something "wacky," so I assumed she was trying to parallel the Phantom's mask with her own "hilarious" version. I sort of laughed and was still counting measures and noticed that she refused to turn back around and kept saying something unintelligible. I sort of indicated that I got her Phantom mask reference by covering my face with my hand and pointing to her mask. Still, she continued playing while facing me. Finally, I looked beyond her and saw the conductor also looking at me. I suddenly realized that we were at the bridge of the song and I hadn't yet played note one. I later found out that the bass player was wearing the mask because she doesn't want to breathe in the Phantom fog that flows down from the stage. Turns out, I had miscounted and missed my first cue. She had turned around to try to get me to play. Unfortunately, because she was wearing a mask, I couldn't hear what she was saying, which was essentially, "
PLAY!
" So the whole time I was supposed to be playing my beautiful piano arpeggios, the conductor was watching me stare at the bass player and imitate the Phantom's mask by putting my hand over my face.
I did a video about this that’s become one of my so-called classics! Watch it on SethTV.com!

Wednesday, I saw
Gypsy
. First of all, it was phenomenal to hear that delicious overture with a full Broadway orchestra! Nowadays, the overture is when people read their
Playbill
s and chat up their neighbors. But because it was an actual full orchestra and not four synthesizers with a drummer, the audience was riveted. The difference in sound changes the whole attitude of the crowd. I actually saw a harp player! I thought they had been outlawed from Broadway in '97.

I have to talk about Laura Benanti as Louise; she’s so brilliant that she made "Little Lamb" fantastic! As I’ve written before, I’ve always been so bored during that song, but while she sang (beautifully), she showed the loneliness and vulnerability of her character so beautifully it was devastating. Plus, her comedy was
brilliant
. The splitting headache she indicates getting in Act Two when Mama Rose hauls out yet another "I had a dream" literally made me LOL. Speaking of laughs, Marilyn Caskey as Electra! She took the stripper that has the least material to work with, honed in on one lyric ("I'm electrifying and I ain't even trying") and hilariously based her whole character on "not even trying." Is she on Valium? In a coma? Post-lobotomy? It’s a brilliant comic turn.

And of course, there's Patti. First of all, the voice. She's been starring on Broadway since the '70s, and she still sounds
the same
! Is there a larynx aging in an attic somewhere? I watched her during the bows and thought that she is truly a gift to Broadway. Oftentimes I get depressed that I wasn't alive to see Angela in
Mame
or Barbra in
Funny Girl
, but I was so thankful on Wednesday that I've been able to see Patti through the years. Why isn't she in a musical every year!?!?!! If she's gonna do another play like
The Old Neighborhood
again, they'd better add some belting. The nicest thing was that during Patti's solo bow, the whole cast stood in the wings applauding her. Usually, the cast rushes back to their dressing rooms to get their wigs/costumes off, so the fact that they wanted to give Patti riotous applause says a lot for her and the company.

Now, a
The Ritz
update. I not only have a (little) part in the show, but I'm also putting together the number that Rosie Perez is performing in the show as Googie Gomez. The super-talented Chris Gattelli is choreographing the show
Pre-Tony Award for NEWSIES
!
, and he and I have been creating the number for the past week. Friday, we presented it to Joe Mantello and Rosie Perez in my apartment. Rosie was adorable. She was mortified that she was late, but I totally understood because she did something that everyone does at least once. She wanted to go to 72nd Street but by accident took the A train, which goes from 59th to 125th Street! It's so shocking when that happens. You're so close to your destination, and suddenly you're in Albany.

I was nervous presenting the stuff to Rosie, but she was super nice and laughed right away. If you don't know the plot, Googie is a minimally talented songstress who is performing in a gay bathhouse to further her non-existent Broadway career. Chris and I tried to make a medley of the most inappropriate material possible, and while I don't want to give anything away, suffice it to say that there's a section featuring her singing "Sabbath Prayer" from
Fiddler
!

I'm writing this all in my charming Provincetown one-bedroom apartment, feeling an actual breeze from the bay. James and I drove up on Saturday with Maggie, my lab mix, in the back seat. His daughter Juli is in Texas with her Gran and arrives Tuesday. Sunday was the R Family Cruise sponsored "Broadway Brunch" where the high-belting Farah Alvin sang "Meadowlark." I first met Farah when she joined the
Grease!
revival to understudy Jan. I was teaching her the backup to "Freddy My Love" and noticed she had incredible vocal placement. I casually asked her if she knew
Evita
and when she said that she did, I immediately launched into the vamp for "A New Argentina" and forced her to sing "He supports you…" on non-stop E's. After that delicious diversion, I was forced to go back to plunking out the notes to "so-o-o blue…"

Sunday night, we all went to see
Varla Jean Merman Loves a Foreign Tongue.
Varla is really Jeffery Roberson and he always puts together an amazing evening. The show celebrates foreign cultures and has my kind of chestnuts like Varla bragging that "I've performed in 15 foreign countries… and I've done shows in three of them." She also proudly demonstrates that she's learned how to say "this sore is not contagious" in ten different languages.

All right, time to enjoy "Family Week." And by enjoy, I mean having Cape Cod Ice Cream, fish and chips and clam chowder. At this rate, I should comfortably fit in during "Bear Week."

Luxury Problems

August 6, 2007

Have you heard the expression "luxury problem"?
Like the quandary Jerry Herman was in eight times a week during the mid-‘60s: "Hmm… should I see the first act of my smash musical
Hello, Dolly!
and then catch the second act of my smash musical
Mame
? Or vice versa?" That was me and my boyfriend all last week. We went up to Provincetown to do some shows for "Family Week" because it was run by the R Family Vacations people (who do the Rosie cruise). Essentially, we're both in the worst moods now because our vacation wasn’t perfect. So, I know that's a luxury problem, but please allow me to vent. Firstly, we went to a restaurant that lured us in with a man standing in front of it holding a menu. I looked at it and decided that I wanted the delish lobster salad and thought the prices were A-OK. James and I sat down and (a) they then informed me that they no longer make lobster salad and (b) when we both opened our menu, we noticed that someone had meticulously put liquid paper on every price and raised it a dollar. But I guess the one menu they managed to miss was the one the man was holding outside. I'm sure that was just a coincidence.

Then James got food poisoning from said restaurant and had to start using the bathroom as often as a typical
Christmas Carol
at Madison Square Garden daily show schedule (believe me, that's a ton of times a day). Also, since I was doing my own show, the theatre gave me a great one-bedroom apartment. "Great," except for the fact that most of P-town has that Massachusetts attitude of, "Why would anyone possibly want air conditioning? This state was founded on hard work and deprivation. Sweating all night long is a badge of courage. Pass the chowdah." The whole first night was brutal. I tossed and turned because I felt like I was starring in Farah Fawcett-Majors’ first dramatic turn ("The Burning Bed." Anybody?).

So, finally, the second night I had a complete breakdown from the heat
and
feeling bad for James with his upset stomach. And I couldn’t believe how extra hot the apartment was. The weird thing was that every time I went to the window to get some air, I felt even hotter. Could it be
that
hot outside? Finally, I bent down near the window pane to see why it was so boiling in that area, and my hand touched a scalding hot radiator. That's right, James' six-year-old daughter Juli had tried to put on the overhead light hours before and, by accident, turned the heat on — to 80 degrees! That was it for all of us. I grabbed everybody and booked us a room at "Christopher's by the Bay," which is a great guest house.
The only thing we cared about was that it had
air conditioning
. We all traipsed over there at 11 PM and, even though I was getting free housing from the theatre, I paid for the next three nights because I don’t enjoy vacationing in a Dutch oven.

Anyhoo, while in P-town we all went to see that divine drag artist, Edie. Edie is really Christopher Kenny, a fiercely tall, beautiful ex-ballet dancer with whom I've done tons of benefits with and who was in the
Threepenny Opera
revival last year. Edie is a very sweet, adorable character, and the show went over great with the guys and gals in the audience
and
the many children in attendance. By the way, not only did six-year-old Juli love Edie, but so did ten-year-old Maggie… my dog. Before the show, we were all eating outside and ran into Lea DeLaria. She mentioned that Edie's show was starting. I said I didn't have time to take Maggie home. She told us that she plays the same theatre and it's dog-friendly. I didn't really believe her, but the next thing I know, Lea walked us in, and Maggie planted herself in the aisle…
and
she loved it. I always knew she had a campy sense of humor.

Also, here's a pronunciation lesson that should be taught in "Survey of Theatre" classes across the country. It's LAY-uh Salonga and LEE-uh DeLaria. James and I were sitting outside and heard some pretentious guy say to his circle, "Let me introduce you all to my good friend, Lay-uh DeLaria." That's like saying, "Let me introduce you to my good friend
Wise Guys
." It's
Bounce
, people!
Bounce
!
Actually, when it finally opened in New York, it was ROAD SHOW. Yowza!

All right, here’s the part where the vacation plummeted. James, Juli and I went to "George's Pizza" and bought some pizza. As we were sitting at the table eating, I got up to get Juli a cup of water.

MAN BEHIND COUNTER: We only sell bottles of water.

ME: Oh… I just want a paper cup of water. 


MAN BEHIND COUNTER: We don’t do that. 


ME: Plastic bottles are bad for the environment. 


MAN BEHIND COUNTER: You can buy a paper cup… for $1.75. That’s the price of a bottle of water.

ME: (Defiantly) Fine. 


MAN BEHIND COUNTER: (Takes cup of water, puts ice in it, turns on faucet, fills it. Takes $1.75 from me.)