Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 1 (8 page)

So, this week I was meeting with Joe outside his rehearsal for
9 to 5
, and the talented/cute Marc Kudisch walked by. He asked what I was up to, and I told him that Joe just cast me in
The Ritz
. I downplayed it and said I essentially had very few lines and I was playing tiny roles like Snooty Patron… even though I was secretly proud of snagging that part. Joe piped up and said apologetically, "Actually, I think someone else is playing Snooty Patron." Ow. My role just lost an adjective. I looked devastated but then told Joe I'm happy with any part since this is my Broadway debut. He stopped looking guilty and said, "Exactly! What are you complaining about, Meryl!" He got me.

Anyhoo, during the reading we did, I coveted the role that Brooks Ashmanskas is playing and asked my agent if I could be the understudy, assuming the powers that be would say a quick and decisive yes. Instead, they said a quick and decisive, "You'll have to audition." So, last week I went in and read for Joe, big-time casting director Jim Carnahan and the playwright himself, Terrence McNally! It was a triptych of honchos. I like auditioning, but don't you hate the moment right after you finish your audition? After I read, I have to use so much control to not obsessively repeat, "Did I get it? Did I? Did I?" I can't stand pretending I'm comfortable walking out of the room not knowing how I did. Note to all casting directors: my jaunty exit punctuated with a convivial "Great seeing you! Have an excellent day!" is a
total farce
. Inside I'm
desperate
for any and all information. The good news is, once I know whether I got it or not, I'm pretty much fine. My friend Paul Castree has a rule that you're allowed to be devastated for 24 hours if you don't book something, but after that you have to move on. So, I don't lament lost roles, it's the waiting that's brutal for me! Thankfully, I only had to wait one day for my agent to call and say I
am
understudying Brooks! I'm so crazily excited!

Here's what else happened this week. I interviewed the great Debra Monk, who is currently starring in
Curtains,
at the
Chatterbox
. Firstly, she talked about how green she was doing her first play in college. She got cast on a whim and knew
nothing
about theatre. She showed up, and the director said he wanted to start with the opening scene. He told her to say the first line at the window, start making toast after the phone rang and finish her tea on the last line. She did the scene that way, and the next day when she showed up, he said he wanted to run it. Well, this time she started the first line at the door, finished her tea right away and never made toast. He asked why she wasn't doing what they decided the day before, and she was completely confused. She had no idea she was supposed to do the same thing every time! She did the show and loved it and then discovered that people make a living acting. It was so foreign to the way she grew up because she said that her family was blue collar, and everyone hated their job — she had no idea you could earn a living doing what you loved. When she finally moved to New York, she couldn't get work or an agent, so she and her friends wrote an act about a rockabilly band and decided to run it once a week at the Westside Arts Theater. It was the ‘80s, and that part of town literally had groups of rats running around the sidewalk, mixing it up with the prostitutes. The show was slated for 11 PM at night, so they begged their friends to come and comped their admission, except for making them buy one drink. The show got great word of mouth, and they finally got a little blurb written about them in the Post.

Suddenly, 11 producers wanted to buy the rights! The show became
Pump Boys and Dinettes
and moved Off-Broadway and then to Broadway! It was then nominated for a Tony Award opposite
Joseph, Nine
and
Dreamgirls
! Monk remembers being backstage at the Tonys right after Jennifer Holliday blew the roof off the theatre with "And I Am Telling You… " She said the audience went
crazy
from the
Dreamgirls
number. The curtain opened, and then "there we were. The whitest show ever." It was a letdown for everyone… onstage and off.

The real devastating part was that after writing a Tony-nominated Broadway show
and
starring in it, she still couldn't get an agent! After the show closed, she had such trouble landing work that she took a gig in the Midwest doing
Pump Boys
in a mall! A part of the stage led to the loading dock, and one day a UPS man actually came onstage and asked someone to sign for a delivery…and Deb did. Maybe now he can sell it on eBay?

The great part is that she heard that The Louisville Rep was having auditions for their season, and she flew herself there and asked to audition. They kept saying that she had to be submitted by an agent, but she begged and said that she flew there on her own dime and just wanted a chance. She auditioned, got a part, and while she was in Kentucky, she finally got a New York agent who she's still with today. I love that she took her career into her own hands and wasn't afraid of begging.

Sunday night, I went to Caroline's Comedy Club to see my old buddy, Linda Smith, whom I used to be a writer with on
The Rosie O'Donnell Show
. Her stand up is hi-larious. She said she loves the beach but can't deal with the sand, so she wants to stay in her apartment and pretend she's at the beach. "First, I'll gather up a couple of radios and put them all on different stations, then I'll invite over a really loud family with kids and make 'em sit right next to me… and then I'll just sit in front of a fan and try to light cigarettes."

OK, I saw the all-Asian version of William Finn's brilliant
Falsettoland
and, as I predicted, I literally cried from start to finish. I went twice this week because I love it so much and, of course, in the middle of my weeping, my mother leaned over and (loudly) asked if I had allergies. I was in a rage that she didn't pick up on the fact I was crying, 'til I realized that I was pre-crying. That's when you know a show so well, you cry way too early because you know the devastating things that are gonna happen later on. For instance, the second time I saw
Ragtime
, I broke down in tears as soon as Audra walked onstage. Hence, my mother assumed it was hay fever that made me do non-stop nose blowing during the hilarious "Baseball Game" song. It was very well directed by Alan Muraoka, and the cast was top notch. I think the show should perpetually be playing in New York. The characters are so rich. There's no hero, no perfect person. All the characters are flawed, and that's what makes them real. And the story is so beautiful. It's about what love really is. Not, "Oh, you're great looking and nice, I love you," but true love like 13-year-old Jason deciding to have his Bar Mitzvah in Whizzer's hospital room because he loves his father and he loves Whizzer.

This coming week starts intense rehearsals for The Rosie Cruise… and then we sail next Saturday.

I want to close
by writing about Thommie Walsh, the original Bobby from
A Chorus Line,
who passed away two weeks ago. I met Thommie when he worked on a show I did with Kristine Zbornik and Varla Jean Merman called "Holiday Hams." Thommie staged the songs but spent much time answering my obsessive questions about his Broadway career… especially his first Broadway show,
Seesaw
. Thommie was in the original version that was playing in Detroit (on its way to Broadway) when the director was fired and Michael Bennett was brought in to fix the show. Michael, in his direct way, ixnayed most of the ensemble by walking around backstage and telling them they were fired right before they went onstage! Thommie said he would be backstage stretching, see Michael coming, and literally hide behind a costume rack to avoid being canned! He needn't have hidden because Michael loved him as a performer. He kept him in the show and, of course, a few years later, cast him as Bobby in
A Chorus Line
. He then went on to do brilliant work on the other side of the stage with
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, My One and Only
and one of my absolute favorite shows,
A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine
. Thommie was hilarious and multi-talented and will always be remembered as a part of Broadway history ("If Troy Donahue could be a movie star… then I could be a movie star…").

Xanadu
's Holy Rollers and More

July 10, 2007



Let me give you pre-cruise updates. Last Monday, I hauled it downtown to the Metropolitan Room and saw Christine Pedi do her new show,
Great Dames
.

She did a great version of "A Spoonful of Sugar" which she did all sexed up… a phrase I never thought I'd use to describe that song. And she closed with her brilliant rendition of "And I Am Telling You" sung as Bernadette, Little Edie, Joan Rivers, etc. that I described last week. She was recording the show for an upcoming CD and got crazy cheering throughout, but the accolade I was the most excited about telling her was that, during the performance, my boyfriend leaned over to me and whispered, "She's got a
great
body." It's exactly what I'd love an audience to be whispering whenever I perform. But if it had the same pronoun it would sort of be devastating.

Tuesday, I interviewed
Xanadu
's Tony Roberts at Sirius. What a career! His first big break literally was just that. When Robert Redford took off two weeks from
Barefoot in the Park
, they decided to put on his understudy, and Tony got a two-week gig as
his
understudy. Right before the two weeks began, the replacement was playing baseball in the Broadway Show League and broke his leg! Tony went on for the full two weeks, and when Redford left, he became the replacement!

Tony also starred in
How Now, Dow Jones
(check out
Bluegobo.com
for fab footage). That show had a short run because Equity went on strike and when the strike was over, David Merrick decided to punish the cast by closing the show. It sort of gives you a comeback to say to those people who complain about the lack of Broadway shows with one producer. Tony was also one of the stars of
Annie Hall
, which is one of my all time favorite movies. He has a great part, but said it could have been much bigger. When he shot the movie, he had a beard and when the shoot was over, he couldn't wait to shave it off. The next day Woody Allen called and said that he had all these new scenes he wanted to film with Tony. Oh no! There was no time to wait for Tony's beard to grow back so the scenes were never filmed. How depressing is that? Don't they have fake beards in Hollywood? Insert closeted gay actor joke here.

Thursday, I had Victoria Clark on the
Chatterbox
. You need to find a copy of her
Piazza
performance on
The Tony Awards
ASAP! She talked all about what it's like being on the Tonys. You do eight shows during the week, but you're also spending time at Radio City doing camera blocking. Morning of the Tonys, she had to wake up at 7 AM so she could rehearse again at Radio City in full costume. Then, out of her costume, went to the theatre to do the show back in costume again. Finished the matinee, got into her glam gown for the red carpet. Got to Radio city and put back on her costume again. When she was backstage, she was reviewing the new speech Craig Lucas had written her to start the number. It set up who and where her character was. Well, as Adam Guettel was making his speech in front of the curtain accepting his Tony, literally seconds before she got onstage, a stagehand told her that her body mic wasn't working and handed her a handheld mic that was twice the size of Bob Barker's. What about her handheld props? How could she carry a mic and her gloves, pocketbook and guidebook? She shoved them all into her other hand and went into a full anxiety attack/shut down. Kelli O'Hara must have noticed it across the stage, even though Radio City is the size of a football field, because Vicki heard Kelli yell, "It'll be OK! Don't worry!" Well, that relaxed her enough to walk out onstage and start her newly memorized speech into her microphone while walking forward towards a moving camera and also looking at the stagehand to the side of the camera who was making enormous hand motions. She thinks he was telling her that her body mic was still broken. This went on ‘til the last moment of the speech where he gave her a big "A-OK" sign and took the microphone away, and she immediately started singing. You have to watch it to see her panicked walking, shifting eyes and last minute mic trade off. Terrifying/hilarious! Of course, the number sounded beautiful… and the hat trick at the end worked!

James’ birthday was Friday night and we went to see
Xanadu
and loved it. Chris Ashley directed all the comic moments so cleanly and Doug Carter Beane filled the script with his usual comedy sass. Speaking of which, I ran into him outside the theatre and asked why he had the nerve not to want Julie White for the lead in
Little Dog Laughed
(as per her Tony acceptance speech). He said it was because the role was completely different when he wrote it. The character was blank-faced and incredibly cold. She came in to the audition with her high energy and warmth and was completely wrong, but he loved her comedy so much, he totally re-wrote the role for her. So, he said, she was
amazing
in the part but he
still
doesn't want her for the role the way it was originally written!