Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 1 (31 page)

Next, a bunch of guys went out to the stage and pretty much the same thing happened. Some guys left and the others celebrated getting the gig. Soon, the only ones remaining were Paul and two other guys. They talked amongst themselves, and after weighing rumor and innuendo, decided that the two roles left open were the understudy for Hugo and Harvey Johnson. That meant that two of them were going to get a gig! Paul felt pretty good about his chances... two out of three! All three of them came out onstage and had to read for Hugo and sing, "Hello Mr. Hankle, this is Harvey Johnson…" while cracking their voice on the high note. After they sang, they awkwardly stood there while Tommy Tune, Stuart Howard, Gene Saks (director) and the Weisslers (producers) discussed them in the audience. Paul felt incredibly awkward. He tried to look pleasant and not aware that he was on display. Sort of a combination of fun-to-work-with and eager for the job, but not immature/unfocused and/or needy and desperate. In other words, more subtext went into his standing there than into his actual reading of the scene. Finally, Stuart Howard slowly approached from the back of the audience.
This is it
, Paul thought. One of them is going to be sent backstage, and the other two will get the gig. Finally, Stuart looked at them all and said… "Thank you very much." What? They had "decided" backstage that two of them would get the gig so all of them being sent home was not in the equation. Therefore, no one onstage budged. After an awkward pause, Stuart said, more pointedly, "Thank you! We'll be in touch." AKA we
won't
be in touch. All three started walking off the stage in a depression. Paul couldn't believe how close he had come only to have it all end so depressingly. They were all walking slowly and Paul was the last one to exit. Right when he got to the wings and was about to walk offstage, he heard Stuart stage whisper, "Paul!" Paul looked over his shoulder. Stuart beckoned him back onstage. Paul walked back in a state of shock. What now? Some fatherly advice? A question about the origin of his Kmart shirt? Finally, Paul got center stage. Stuart looked at him squarely and said, "Paul. We'd like to give you your Equity card and have you go out on tour with Tommy Tune to understudy Hugo Peabody and play the role of Harvey Johnson. You got the job." Paul was so overjoyed yet emotionally and physically exhausted that he immediately collapsed his body into a compact, tight ball. He said he didn't
ex
plode… he
im
ploded.

He did the tour (with Ann Reinking as Rose, Susan Egan as Kim, Marilyn Cooper as Mae and Marc Kudisch as Birdie) and met one of his best friends, Jessica Stone, who played Ursula. Can you imagine? Flying in from the Midwest for your first New York open call and by the end of the day having your whole life changed! How thrilling is that? And, P.S., how terrifying for the ladies to have Tommy Tune watch your feet while you tap. It's like singing in front of Barbara Cook as she stares at your larynx. Paul also said that for every amazing story about getting a gig, there's the parallel story for someone else: many years later, Paul was backstage and telling his
Saturday Night Fever
co-stars his Tommy Tune audition story. He then found out that one of his fellow actors was one of the three guys in that final audition!
His
version was: "I went to callback after callback for
Bye Bye Birdie
. Finally, at the final one, this red-headed kid from the Midwest appeared out of nowhere and got the gig!" The good news, that performer has gone on to be the brilliant choreographer of
In the Heights
— Andy Blankenbuehler
!
P.S.
Andy won a Tony Award a few months after I wrote this!

Also this week, I got a call from my agent who told me that I had an audition for a Sandra Bullock movie… to play a flight attendant. I've decided that I've had it with the unfunny/stereotypical gay roles and asked if the word "flamboyant" was in the character description. That's always the code word for gay and it means the character comes on, throws a few sassy quips and saunters off. I don't know why that's the majority of gay characters that are written for TV/films. Don't gay people have any personality traits besides bitchy asides? Anyhoo, she checked out the traits and "flamboyant" was nowhere to be found. I was thrilled and agreed to audition. I got the script emailed to me and boastfully told James the story about how I set a professional boundary. I opened up the email in front of him and proudly read the character description. "Listen to this, James. The role is 'Flight Attendant.' The description is, ‘A middle-aged’ —
What the?!?!?!?!?!!
" I went into a state of shock, and James remarked that perhaps "flamboyant" would have been preferable. Not cool.

All right everyone, my West Coast best friend Jack Plotnick is visiting all week, so I have to hightail it to delicious brunch. Go see a Broadway show!

Chip,
Jerry
and a
Late Nite Comic

February 4, 2008

Welcome to February! I love February because, not only is it my birthday month, but also because I think of it as the transition to spring. Peace out, winter… see ya next year! Although, with the charming onslaught of global warming, that should actually read "see ya next year for a period of one, maximum two days."



My life has gotten kind of hectic with doing
Lend Me a Tenor
and my radio show, etc. While I was performing in
The Ritz
on Broadway, the performance schedule was a typical eight shows a week, but
Lend Me a Tenor
is only five shows a week, so sometimes it's hard for me to keep track of what I'm doing on the other nights. That being said, I called James on Monday night and asked if he and Juli had time for dinner. He started to say "Don't you have to do-" and I thought he was going to say that I had to do
Celebrity Autobiography
, which I'm not doing 'til next week. So I was about to do my signature interruption, cut him off and tell him that
Celebrity Autobiography
is next week, but I decided to resist my rudeness urge for once in my life and let him finish the sentence, which wound up being, "Don't you have to do a Barnes & Noble show?"
Holy you-know-what!
Not only was he right and I had totally forgotten, but it was 5:20 PM and I was supposed to be there at 5:30! Revelation: maybe I shouldn't constantly and consistently interrupt people because I "know what they're going to say."

I ran out of my apartment and got down to the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble ASAP. I was there to celebrate the release of the
Late Nite Comic
20th anniversary CD (whose proceeds go to The Actors Fund). Brian Gari wrote the music and lyrics to that show, and it was a devastating flop (opened and closed on Broadway in one weekend). He tells the whole story in an amazing book called
We Bombed in New London
(which they certainly did). I love backstage books because it's always fascinating to know all the ups and downs that go into bringing a show to Broadway… and this show had more than its share of downs. On Monday night, Brian recounted the story about the director trying to cut the song "Late Nite Comic," AKA the title song. Brian went to The Dramatists Guild and filed a complaint and they ruled that the song couldn't be cut. Yay! It was back in. Brian came to the show that night and found out that he'd been banned from the theatre! He forced his way past the producer and found a seat, and sure enough, even though they were told
not
to cut the song, it was missing more than Madonna's vibrato! However, in Act Two, they did keep the reprise. Reprise of what?

After Brian told the story, he performed the title song from the piano and, whether or not it worked in the show, it's beautiful. The CD is star-studded: Brian D'Arcy James, Julia Murney, Daniel Reichard, Marty Vidnovic, Mary Testa and, in a small but pivotal role, Seth Rudetsky! I play one of the comedy club owners in the song "The Best in the Business," and I performed the song on Monday night with one of the women who was originally in the show, Luba Mason. You may remember her as Linda Eder's velvet-voiced replacement in
Jekyll and Hyde
, but you probably don't remember her in
Late Nite Comic
because she used a completely different name back then. Lubitza Gregus is her original name, and when she started on Broadway, she wanted something more vanilla, so she used the stage name Kim Freshwater. Wow. That's a lo-o-o-o-o-ong way away from Lubitza Gregus. The only similarity is that it consists of a first and last name.

Jerry Stiller introduced the whole evening and said that, early in his career, he was helped tremendously by Brian's grandfather. Brian's grandfather happened to be Eddie Cantor who, incidentally, was born with the name Israel Iskowitz. Hmm… Israel Freshwater?

Tuesday I went to see
Jerry Stiller: The Opera
… I mean,
Jerry Springer
. I was very proud of David Bedella, who plays the warm-up guy and Satan, and whom I've known since the early ‘90s and whose voice sounded fantastic! The show was super fun, and there is something inherently funny about hearing the moronic vernacular of
Jerry Springer
in an opera. Singing "whatever" like a Valley Girl is one thing, but singing it on a high G in a covered tenor voice is hilarious.

A couple of days before the show, I got an email from a group asking me to protest the show, and I wrote back immediately. I didn't argue whether or not it was offensive to them, but I mentioned that it seemed to me there were many more devastating problems in the world (war, homeless vets, children that need fostering) and if they were going to organize something, aren't there more important things that all that energy could go to? I concluded by reiterating that it seems to me that there are more pressing issues that could use all those people's help. No response. I heard there was a group of protesters outside Carnegie Hall, but I missed them because I entered through a different door. My seat was next to a very New Yorky elderly lady who looked at me as I sat down and immediately said, "Do you wanna hear something funny?" I said, "Sure," and she said, "Well, first of all, I was in the lobby, and I approached two women and said, 'Do you wanna hear something funny?' and they both said, 'No.'"

Ouch. I guess that's why New Yorkers are known for their honesty. She continued. "The story is that I normally have bible study group tonight, and I didn't feel I could tell them I was seeing this show, so I said I was busy. I figured that they'll never know. Then, as I walked in, I saw the TV cameras filming me!" Busted. I'd love an update on next week's class.

This week I also interviewed Chip Zien on my Sirius radio show. First of all, he's so charming. Even though many of his theatre stories had a section where he admitted that he had a big, fat angry fit about something that he now realizes was not worth it, he would tell me about it with a big smile, and I would think, "That must have been
adorable
!" He grew up in the Midwest, and when he was a boy, his Mom enrolled him in dance class. Soon he got cast as one of the little kids in a professional production of
South Pacific
. She then made arrangements with a New York couple to take Chip to live with them so he could get a Broadway gig. The only problem was, she never consulted with young Chip and he said, "No way!" He didn't want to be shipped off to New York City to live with random people. It was very
Into the Arms of Strangers
(the film about parents during WWII who gave away their kids to live with families in safe countries), but instead of wanting Chip to escape the London Blitz, Mama Rose Zien wanted him to get his Equity card.

He eventually got an Ivy League education and, after spending a few years teaching, he moved to NY. He soon met an agent (who lived in the apartment above his friend) and she flat out told him that he didn't look like an actor… at all. She asked what his father did. He told her that he was a plumber, and she told him to move back to the Midwest and become a plumber. The next day, though, she passive/aggressively got him a commercial audition for Planters Peanuts… and he got it!

Speaking of peanuts, he next did a national tour of
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
playing Snoopy, and then he got cast in
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
at The Equity Library Theater playing the lead role of Finch… or as Chip called himself in the role, Finchstein. His wife was working as a dancer for the New York City Ballet and one day she ran into a fellow ballerina when she and Chip were in a store on the East Side. As the ladies stood there chatting, a man tapped Chip on the shoulder and said, "Don't try anything with the lady… she's my wife." Turns out the man was joking...
and
he was Dustin Hoffman! Well, just the night before, Dustin's name was on the backstage list of celebs seeing
How to Succeed
so Chip was excited to hear what Dustin had to say about his performance. Well, instead of commenting about Chip’s portrayal of the lead role in a play he literally just saw, he instead asked Chip what he did for a living. Zero recall. Chip was mortified and muttered that he "worked at night." They then all went back to Dustin's apartment, and Dustin asked if Chip was an actor. Finally, Chip said, "Look, you saw me last night starring in
How to Succeed
, and obviously I was so bad you don't even remember me." Dustin laughed and told him that he hadn't come. His business partner had used his name! He then asked Chip to audition for a play he was directing, and Chip got the understudy. Chip said that Dustin was a brilliant director but had no confidence. He kept saying, "If you all don't like what I'm doing, I can get Mike Nichols." Interesting… I often say sentences like that. While I was in
The Ritz
, I would tell my boyfriend at night, "If you don't like what I'm doing, I can get Ryan Idol." Unfortunately, he tried to take me up on the offer. And thus ends the Borscht Belt section of this column.