Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 1 (28 page)

I then chatted with Nancy Anderson, who told me that she was helping Celeste Holm clean her closets. First of all, that last sentence gets an "only in New York" tag. Secondly, if you don't know, Celeste Holm was Bette Davis' best friend in the film
All About Eve
as well as the original Ado Annie. Not the recent one with Patrick Wilson, I'm talking the version seen by FDR. Nancy told me that there was one bag filled with clothing swatches and she decided to look all the way to the bottom of the bag. It was filled with Celeste's diaries from the late 1920s! They had writing in those days!? And apparently, Celeste remembers every person mentioned in those pages. I'm dying to know if there's any amazing theatre stories like: "Went to an open call for a new show called
Porgy and Bess
. Got typed out."

This week I interviewed Judy Kuhn at the
Chatterbox
. She told us that her first big Broadway audition was for
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
and the final callback was for
all
the creative staff: producer Joe Papp, composer Rupert Holmes, director Wilford Leach, Graciela Daniele (choreographer) and her assistant, Rob Marshall. She was asked to sing a song that ends with the character of Edwin Drood angrily leaving the theatre. The director told her to sing it and then storm out like it would happen in the show. Judy started singing and told me that she spent the whole time thinking, "Did he mean for me to
literally
storm out of the room?" Finally, she thought that she should go for it full out, so she hit the last note, glared at the creative staff, grabbed her stuff, stormed out of the room and slammed the door. She then realized that the lobby was filled with other actors waiting for their callback. She murmured that she wasn't really angry and then started to wonder what she should do next. Was that the end of her audition? Should she open the door and go back in? Hmm… She waited for an awkward period of time. Then Robbie Marshall stuck his head out of the door and thanked her. Uh-oh. Sometimes the ol’ "Thank you" is the kiss of death, but turns out, she got it! Phew. That gig demonstrates her brilliant voice - she understudied the high soprano part of Rosa Bud
and
the Betty Buckley belt of Edwin Drood! Unbelievable.

On the third preview, she got a call at three o'clock in the afternoon telling her that she was on for Rosa Bud. It was so early in the run that no one had ever rehearsed her. Nonetheless, they quickly went through everything with her and she got through everything she needed to do. Or so she thought. At the very end, all the characters hold signs with numbers on them, and the audience votes for who they think the murderer was. Whoever is chosen as the murderer has a special song they have to sing with lyrics that explain why and how they did it. After the voting, Judy headed offstage to do a quick costume change and prepared to run back onstage to watch Cleo Lane sing a song and then watch the murderer sing his or her song. As she was coming offstage, the stage manager pointed at her and said, "It's you." She laughed. She had spent the afternoon reviewing the regular role of Rosa Bud… not the extra song she'd only have to sing if she was voted murderer. He pointed again, "It's
you
!" Before she could scream, "I don't know the lyrics!" she was being put into her last costume and was suddenly onstage. All through Cleo Lane's song, she was trying frantically to remember the lyrics. And the extra song she had to sing ended on a crazy coloratura note. I asked her how it went, and she said she has no memory of performing it. That's what the brain does after trauma: it never happened.

She left
Drood
because she got cast as Bella in
Rags
starring Teresa Stratas. She said Teresa was an unbelievably great artist. One day they were rehearsing her song "Blame it on the Summer Night," and Teresa was resting her voice. Judy said that even though Teresa performed the song in barely a whisper, the whole cast was riveted. That's how emotionally connected she was to the material.
Rags
had lots of problems… one of which was that the director was fired a few weeks before the show opened on Broadway… and was never replaced!

Unfortunately, it opened on a Thursday and closed three days later. The cast decided to have a march from TKTS to the theatre to protest the closing of the show. As Judy told us, "We were so naïve." I asked her what she thought the march would achieve. She laughed and said she probably assumed "millions would join us!" I said that I would have joined (if I hadn't been in college) because the score to
Rags
is fan-effing-tastic. As a matter of fact, it got a Best Score and Best Musical Tony nomination! And thus begins another amazing story. Judy got the role of Cosette in the original
Les Miz
right after
Rags
closed… and was nominated for her first Tony Award. She was going to sing "One Day More" with the
Les Miz
cast on the Tonys, and Teresa Stratas was going to sing from
Rags
. Well, right before the telecast, Teresa dropped out, and they asked Judy to sing the
Rags
title song. That would mean that she'd sing as Bella in the
Rags
number and Cosette in the
Les Miz
one! The title song from
Rags
is a brilliant number, but much longer than the time it was allotted for the Tony telecast. They kept trying different cuts in the song to make it fit and still be effective. Finally, they came up with the final version, and Judy learned it with the new funky cuts. She was thankful that her award category was first because she wanted that stress over with. Frances Ruffelle, who played Eponine in
Les Miz
, won and Judy now only had to worry about her two numbers. The people who ran the show told her that a PA would come get her from her seat and bring her backstage with plenty of time. The first commercial break came, and no one got her. Second one, still no one. She was incredibly stressed because she had no idea where she went in the lineup. Finally, even though she had been told to wait in the audience, she decided to go backstage. As soon as she got there they screamed, "Where were you? You're on next!" They threw her wig and costume on and, minutes later, pushed her onstage to sing. She started the song, hoping to remember all the new cuts. As she was singing, she heard the orchestra start playing the wrong section. She then thought, "Wait a minute. The orchestra is on tape...
I’m
in the wrong section!" Yes, she had started to sing the bridge instead of the tag of the verse. Dick Latessa, who was playing her father, was a pro and went right along with her. Finally, the bridge started and she repeated what she just sang. The funny part is, I've seen the video of that performance many, many times and never noticed she had made a mistake until
years
later. She’s so committed throughout and so is Dick Latessa!

Judy finished the number, and let me say that the last three notes of the song are so unbelievably thrilling that I've worn out my original tape from rewinding it so much. Judy ran offstage and started asking people in panic, "Did you hear what I did? Was it noticeable?" Then, suddenly, her wig and costume were being taken off, she was put into a totally new look and was back onstage in 19th-century France! And, of course, stress or not, she sounded amazing in the
Les Miz
number, too!

We also talked about the brilliant triptych of stars in
Chess
. It was her, David Carroll and Philip Casnoff. They all sound so great on the CD, it's crazy! She thinks the show failed because it was about the mistrust between The East and The West and, right before it opened, The Cold War ended. Hmph. Another thing I can blame Ronald Reagan for! Judy thinks the show would work better today because there's an us vs. them type feeling going on now in the U.S. I also think it could work because the score is fabulous and very ambitious! I did a concert version for the Actors Fund a few years ago with Josh Groban, Adam Pascal, Julia Murney and Sutton Foster, and let me say that trying to figure out how to conduct the meter changes at the beginning of "One Night in Bangkok" required a slide ruler and AP calculus.

Judy just closed in
Les Miz
, playing Fantine, who is Cosette's mother. The only weird moment for her was in the last scene when she'd be singing as Fantine, and she'd see Cosette by the bed. Not since
Chinatown
’s "She's my mother, she's my sister."

All right, people. By the end of this week I'll be in tech for
Lend Me a Tenor
, and then we open! What happened to the delicious days of six weeks of rehearsal, three months out of town and then two months of previews. Do the words LORT mean anything to you? Have a great week!

A
Tenor
, a Soprano and a
Mermaid

January 15, 2008

I began rehearsals last week for
Lend Me a Tenor
, so naturally I'm already in tech. Huh?!?!

I feel like I'm in one-week summer stock again (where you rehearse and perform a different show each week), but the difference is, when I did one-week stock, I was the music director in the pit and had the luxury of reading music. Now, I'm one of the poor actors onstage desperately trying to remember my lines, blocking and which facial expression I'm using out of my signature mugs.

On Thursday, I interviewed Christine Ebersole at the
Chatterbox
. We started the show with Scott Frankel (composer of
Grey Gardens
) at the piano. Yes, I usually play for the guests, but I wanted Christine to sing "Around the World," and the piano part is tendonitis-inducing. Scott told me that it's based on Chopin's "Revolutionary Étude," which is a tip o' the hat to Little Edie's first song in Act Two, "The Revolutionary Costume of the Day." Of course, Christine sounded amazing on it and it was thrilling for me to be on the side of the stage as she sang it and to watch her face, which is so open and seems to have such an enormous well of emotion underneath it. I asked Christine how she first learned of the
Grey Gardens
documentary and she said that she had free time while living in L.A. and rented five DVDs.
Grey Gardens
was the first and only one she wound up watching. She said she was so riveted that the friend she was living with would essentially slide food into the room through a slot à la prison. A few months later, in December, her agent called and said that she was offered a Terrence McNally play at Sundance to workshop, but she told him that she couldn't possibly uproot her life during the holiday season and go to Sundance, even though it was for the fabulous Terrence McNally. Her agent called back and told her he knew she’d say no, but
another
show wanted her for Sundance…
Grey Gardens
. She forgot all about the holidays and said YES! A little while later she was at Sundance creating Little Edie while avoiding Terrence McNally.

Christine moved from the Midwest to go to acting school and, after she graduated, she started waitressing. This was in the mid ‘70s and, at the time, Christine Andreas was playing the maid in
Angel Street
on Broadway (the play that's the basis for
Gaslight
). Suddenly, she got the role of Eliza in the
My Fair Lady
revival. Christine Ebersole auditioned to replace Christine Andreas, got the gig and told us that she waltzed into her waitressing gig saying "Ta, ta! I'm going to Broadway! See ya around!"
Angel Street
closed unceremoniously and three weeks later Christine was at the restaurant, begging for her job back.

In the late ‘70s, she auditioned to replace Judy Kaye’s original role as the maid in
On the Twentieth Century
because Judy took over the Madeline Kahn role. Christine said that there were a ton of women waiting to audition along with her. She walked in, sang, and Hal Prince ran to the stage and said, "Kid, can you learn the part in four days?" She said, "Sure!" and he hired her. She felt terrible leaving the audition area and walking through the slew of women waiting to get in and audition because she knew there wasn't a job available anymore! She played the maid and understudied Judy Kaye. Christine told us that she went on for the lead around eight times but her voice wasn't yet up to snuff. She would see conductor Paul Gemignani raising his eyebrows in the pit trying to get her pitch up to the high notes. But, she notes, even though she was a bit of a vocal clunkstress, she got all her laughs. Brava! Actually, half a brava. Bra.

After
Twentieth Century
, she got an audition for the role of Laurie in the
Oklahoma!
revival. Everyone thought of her as a soprano because of her role in
Twentieth Century
, but she really wanted to be Ado Annie, AKA get the laughs. She asked if they would consider her for that role instead — she auditioned and got it! That cast was stupendous. Laurence Guittard was Curly, Harry Groener was Will Parker, Martin Vidnovic was Jud, and the lady who unintentionally gave Christine her first break, Christine Andreas, played Laurie!