Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 1 (5 page)

Okay, I have to gear up to read all the Broadway message boards about the Tony nominations
and
watch the finale of
America's Next Top Model
! Talk soon!

Talkin' Tony Noms

May 22, 2007

First of all, a problem with dating a guy who is raising a six-year-old daughter is that I have to have food for her in my apartment. Instead of munching on my fiber and flax seed-filled Uncle Sam's cereal, I'm about to eat a big fat bowl of Froot Loops because I bought her a jumbo size last Friday. You may ask, "Why buy a jumbo size when you know she's only staying over on the weekend?" and I may answer something couched in denial. But instead I shall admit: I bought it hoping she would eat a quarter of it and leave the rest for me. Here's the deal, I don't even like Froot Loops, but if it's sitting in my kitchen and there are pretty colors on the outside of the box, I'm in.

Oh, wait! Just remembered I did an emergency midnight run to Fairway last week and bought myself Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I'm gonna ixnay the Froot Loops (the spelling of "froot" is whimsical… and mandatory because you can't put the word "fruit" in the title of your food if it only consists of sugar, circles of starchiness and food coloring) and have a delicious bowl of CTC.

Oh yeah! That reminds me! Attention message boards:
please
stop referencing shows by their acronyms! Who started that madness? In my day, when we wanted a sassy nickname for
Phantom of the Opera
we shortened it
Phantom
, and
Fiddler on the Roof
has always been called
Fiddler
from Zero Mostel's original production through my high school's critically acclaimed production to the Topol revival in the late ‘80s. Who changed the rules? I'm not a World War Two trained code breaker who can figure out a panicked theatre board message entitled "New opera diva
fierce
in POTO" or "Why no Jews in FOTR?" I've spent way too much time staring at the screen of Talkin' Broadway mumbling "P… what starts with P?
Paint Your Wagon
?"

All right, let's talk Tony nominations. Yes, I woke up and watched them on NY1. Do you watch the nominations and fantasize what it would feel like to have your name called? Do you tape it, erase the sound and dub in your name? In all categories? If you do, can you tell me the technology you use because the only part I've mastered is taping it?

There were some glaring omissions. Where was Kristin Chenoweth's nomination? She was
so
funny in
The Apple Tree
, or should I say TAP?

It's kinda fun not having any total shoo-ins. Remember the year the Best Actress race was between Glenn Close and Rebecca Luker? I'm not saying that they were the front-runners, I'm saying they were the only two nominated!
And
Glenn hosted. It would have been pretty awkward if she had lost. What if she had left in tears? "Ladies and Gentlemen, for the remainder of the Tonys, the role of the host usually played by Glenn Close will be played by… Karen Mason."

Wednesday was a day of panic. I really wanted a Tony nominee for my Thursday
Chatterbox
but kept putting off calling anybody because I knew everybody'd be so busy. I decided to call
Legally Blonde
's Laura Bell Bundy at 1:45 before the Wednesday matinee and had my whole schmooze pre-planned to leave on her cell phone. Well, instead of a message I got a high-pitched "Hello?" I was flummoxed and said, "Why are you answering the phone instead of getting into a fierce lace-front wig?!" Instead of hanging up, she graciously agreed to do the interview, and she was adorable. She has such a great personality and although we differ in age, let's just say May-December… of the following year, we both have reflux! I asked her why reflux seems to be so prevalent now, and she thinks it's because of Starbucks coffee. It
is
crazily strong. I have to pour a ton of half-and-half into my "tall half-caf" just to change it from black to black-ish.

Laura Bell also talked about doing the Off-Broadway musical
Ruthless
when she was a kid, and the bizarre fact that her understudies were Natalie Portman
and
Britney Spears. That's a
lot
of star power sitting backstage and being bitter. Laura Bell assured me that they were "super nice and not bitter," and I assured her that the Brooklyn Bridge
is
for sale. She also said that she turned down two pilots to do
Legally Blonde
, and I say brava! I love someone who puts Broadway above TV. It seems that so many people do Broadway just to get to TV. To do what, I ask? An amazing episode of
Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place
?

This weekend I saw
Deuce
with my mother. The whole time I kept looking at Angela Lansbury thinking, "She used to sing 'Open a New Window' eight times a week. So cool!" It was pretty amazing to see her with Marian Seldes. There's a moment in the show where Michael Mulheren references them and says we won't see women like this again. It seemed like such an homage to their talent and history that I immediately started crying. And then tried to mask it because I knew my mother would be mad at me for not carrying around those portable Kleenex tissue packets.

OK, one more bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. As the "hilarious" refrigerator magnet says, "My Diet Starts Tomorrow."

Straight Talk

May 29, 2007

Hi, everyone! There are two things I forgot to write about last week. First, I played an audition for my friend Andréa Burns, who’s sassing it up in my new favorite show,
In the Heights
. She was trying out for the Jane Fonda part in the workshop of the new
9 to 5
musical. It’s being directed by Joe Mantello and has music and lyrics by Dolly Parton. Well, Andréa and I were waiting in the Bernie Telsey lounge with all the other actors trying out for various commercials and the
Drowsy
tour when everyone started to look toward the elevator. I turned and suddenly saw that Southern sasstress, Dolly Parton! She walked across the lobby, and everyone was in a star-struck state of shock. I don’t really remember what she was wearing, but I have a vision of a snakeskin one-piece. It was something amazing like that, and it closely framed her size zero figure. I couldn’t believe she was going to be at the audition! I did harken back to the time I was staying home because I was sick in the early ‘90s and I asked my roommate, Tim Cross, to go out and rent me a movie. Well, instead of bringing me home a classic from the ‘40s I had never seen or a new release I had been salivating for (
The Crying Game
,
Single White Female
, etc…), he proudly brought me
Straight Talk
! Remember? That was the movie where a small-town woman, played by Dolly, becomes a radio therapist by giving the people "straight talk" instead of supposed psycho babble. It is
so
not my style. Suffice it to say, it lasted ten minutes in my VCR. Has anyone
ever
sat through that entire movie?

But I decided to forgive her that atrocity and walked into the audition room willing to make peace. Apparently so was she, because her friendliness was mind boggling! She was all a-twitter because Andréa had brought her own accompanist (me). She said something to the effect of "Sakes alive!" or "I’ll be a horny toad!" Andréa sang and as soon as she finished, Dolly full out applauded. Literally applauded! It was so down home and friendly. I left Andréa in there to do her scene and felt so good walking out that I strongly considered putting "Straight Talk" on my Netflix queue. That feeling lasted the entire elevator ride down to the first floor of Telsey Casting and was quickly replaced by a hankering for an iced latte.

Update: bad news for Andréa, she did not get the Jane Fonda part, but good news for her,
In the Heights
is moving to Broadway! And although Stephanie J. Block didn’t get a Tony nomination for
Pirate Queen
, she did get the Jane Fonda part in the workshop. Brava!

Secondly, I forgot to mention the baby shower I went to for Jessie Stone and Chris Fitzgerald. I’ve known Jessie since right before we did the ‘94 revival of
Grease!
(I started as a piano sub), and it was so weird for me to see her eight months pregnant. Rizzo’s the one whose preggers, not Frenchie. Jessie used to make me laugh so hard when she’d tell me the story about going to a Broadway audition in her early twenties, but by accident using her very first résumé that had only high school credits. The auditioners were like, "Wow, I see you’ve played Mama Rose… interesting."

The whole party was hosted by Andrea Martin, who has one of the most gorgeous Manhattan apartments that she got in the ‘70s and still costs like $10 a month because, as people always say to my chagrin, "Nobody wanted to live on (insert Central Park West, Columbus Avenue, the West 70s, etc.) back then."

One of Jessie’s friends came up to me and told me she’s the one that called me months ago on my cell phone. She explained that she listens to me on Sirius radio a lot and heard me ask what the meaning was when Evita sang "Although she’s dressed up to the nines, at sixes and sevens with you." She knew the answer because it’s a British expression and her sister studied in England. She got my cell number from a friend and called me, but I was on the subway, so it kept cutting off and then she’d call me back or vice versa. This went on an awkward amount of times until we both gave up. Anyway, she never identified herself on the phone, only saying that she was a friend of Sam Pancake. Turns out, she’s
Gilmore Girls
star Lauren Graham! She was mortified to tell me about her stalker-ish phone call, but Jessie forced her. She’s really funny and we somehow started discussing pronunciation, and she said that "err" as in "to err is human" is pronounced "uhr," as in purr. She told me about arguing for the proper pronunciation when "err" was in a
Gilmore Girls
script, which essentially ended with the line being cut. Lauren said that she obsesses over minutiae like that and once had a boyfriend yell that he hated when she "con
den
scended" to him. She faced an incredible moral quandary about whether to correct him or not. The whole thing sounded like a real life version of Maltby and Shire’s "Crossword Puzzle." Loni Ackerman? Anybody?

Anyhoo, this week featured a big birthday party for Kelli O’Donnell (Rosie’s wife) that I played for. Kelli requested her favorite singers, and they all showed up to belt up a storm. It was held at the fabulous Ars Nova, and the show opened with Julia Murney singing "Raise the Roof." How dare she do eight shows a week and still be able to belt Ds on her night off! One of my favorite singers, Darius de Haas, did "I Am Changing," and even though he had just flown in from Japan, he sounded
amazing
. The highlight of the evening was Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald singing "Wheels of a Dream."
Foreshadowing them both starring in PORGY AND BESS
?
Audra was also on her night off and used the sound of the audience applause to mask her warming up. My boyfriend was standing right next to her and said every time the audience clapped, he heard "Mee-ah, Mee-ah, Mee-ah." Norm had the nerve to hold the D right before the "And he will ride" and take it up to an A. Is there anything he can’t do? The most gorgeous baritone in the world, yet high As as well?

Speaking of Audra, I saw
110 in the Shade
and loved it! She is so likeable onstage and adds so much humor to something that could be played very drab and depressingly. As I watched her I thought, "I am watching a musical theatre star in the prime of her career. How cool!" I thought about that and wondered if she’d be on Broadway in 20 years. Then I looked to the left of her and saw John Cullum, who’s been performing on Broadway since the 1960s! Forty years on Broadway! I’m gonna have him on my radio show soon, and I can’t wait to grill him about Barbara Harris, Madeline Kahn and Judy Kaye.

Writing about Audra reminds me of buried babies (
Ragtime
, scene two anybody?) so therefore I’m reminded that I saw
Coram Boy
. It was so exciting, original and thrilling! My question is, why would a show like that have to put up a closing notice so soon? My next question is, what did the woman next to me have in a plastic bag that she had to retrieve several times during the show? I had a mini-breakdown. When they search your bag upon entering the theatre, they should confiscate weapons, recording devices and all plastic bags. Unfortunately, that means my mother will never be able to come to the theatre again. Everything she carries is in multiple plastic bags. She’ll literally put a bottled water in a plastic bag… and then put that plastic bag in a bigger plastic bag. Not joking! It’s like one of those Russian dolls.