Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 1 (17 page)

She finished out her run in L.A., rushed to N.Y. and learned the part in four days. Interestingly, the length of time it took for her to learn the part is the same amount of days the show ran. It's that old equation we had in freshman year algebra: Length of rehearsal = Run of show = Flop.

And, finally, the old-school Broadway sasstress Alice Playten came to see
The Ritz
this week. She is so cool. She was a replacement Baby Louise in
Gypsy
opposite the Merm as well as the original Bet in
Oliver!
and Ermengarde in
Hello, Dolly!
Get thee to
Bluegobo.com
ASAP, and check out her Ed Sullivan clip from
Henry, Sweet Henry
. Watch the part where she asks the audience to donate money into her hat. She checks inside the hat, sees that there's nothing and gives the most amazing face ever! Also, check out the ensemble. Baayork Lee, Pia Zadora (!), and coming in for the last section of the song and standing in the back row, Priscilla Lopez
!
Alice passed away a few years later. A great talent missed by many.

Okay, one more week before opening! Peace out!

Adam Pascal, Prop Drops and Stokes

October 9, 2007

I dropped my prop. That's not a euphemism. I have a feature in Act Two of
The Ritz
and as I exited, I dropped my prop. For the rest of the show, I couldn't stop obsessing about it. Especially, because I knew critics were in the house. Nowadays, critics come during the last couple of shows before Opening Night. I wasn't sure that there would be critics there that night, until I was talking to someone on the creative staff who flat-out told me... without me asking! Note to staff member: keep your trap shut about things like that. Although, note to myself: keep my trap shut as well. I told my friend David Turner that our mutual friend Paul Castree was in the audience and he told me that, in the future, I should zip it. He said that he spent the whole show thinking: "Hmm… I wonder if Paul will like the way I always read this line. Well, I guess we'll never know since I can't re-create what I normally do because I'm thinking about Paul's reaction."

Well, I had the same problem after I dropped my prop. The next scene is where I have my signature line "Careful, Googie." I was onstage obsessing about why I dropped my prop, if I broke it, if the audience now hated me, if the critic would mention that the show would have been a hit were it not for the butterfingers of a one "Seth Rudetsky," etc… when I heard silence onstage. Oh, no! That's me! I quickly spat out "Careful, Googie!" but was now obsessing that the review headline would be "Quick paced farce becomes slow paced dirge due to Rudetsky's slowness on the uptake." My friend Jack Plotnick says that actors are like Jacob Marley after they make a mistake. Instead of letting it go and moving on, they add it to the chain of shame they wear. True 'dat.
We actually wound up getting a pretty good review from the NY TIMES, fueling my expectation of a long Broadway run.I’m still waiting
.

My friend Aaron, who's hilarious, came to
The Ritz
over the weekend. He sassed me with a text message right before the show.

ME: Watch for me in the opening scene. I'm the old, hunched over biddy in black with a walker.

HIM: So, you won't be wearing a costume?

Brava! Oh, yeah… speaking of which: in the last scene in the show, there're a bunch of us onstage in a crowd, and at one point we're supposed to be happy about something Kevin Chamberlin does. Well, usually we all applaud, and I ad lib a word or two. Cut to last week when, for some reason, no one in the crowd audibly applauded, so all you heard was my exposed vocal ad lib. In the middle of the scene, in total silence, the audience heard me shout out a loud, nasal,
Brava!
to Kevin Chamberlin. I was mortified.

I got to interview Adam Pascal on Sirius this week. I asked him about what Broadway shows he saw growing up, and he told me that he saw
Les Miz
but didn't remember much of it… because he was such a little kid. He was mortified when I told him that it opened on Broadway in 1986 when he was a teenager. Hmm… maybe he saw the original French production.
Quelqu'on? Personne.

I asked Adam if my favorite song in
Rent
was his: "La Vie Boheme." He said a decided "no." I was shocked, outraged and more than a little put off (not really, I just wanted to see what it was like writing that). Anyhoo, he said that "La Vie Boheme" has always made no sense to him from an acting perspective. He asked me how come his character, who hasn't left his apartment in months, is suddenly laughing, singing and shaking his butt in a restaurant. Hmm… I guess that is the definition of zero to 60: from house-bound to on-table butt-shaking. He said he's finally given up trying to justify it and just does it. As an audience member I say, yes, it makes no sense, but it sure is fun to watch. So dance, monkey, dance!

He talked about doing
Aida
and how terrifying it was when the set broke. At the end of the show, he and Heather Headley were inside a "tomb" that was lifted pretty high above the stage. Suddenly it fell three feet… then it fell all the way to the stage! He and Heather tumbled out, and someone from the show literally yelled, "Is there a doctor in the house?" Adam said he remembers looking up as a confident man bounded up to the stage saying, "I'm a dermatologist." Whoever yelled for the doctor should have been more specific. He and Heather were rushed to the hospital, and Adam remembers that one of the orderlies gave Heather his number. So I guess it all worked out.

I also got to interview Brian Stokes Mitchell at the
Chatterbox
. He calls himself the "luckiest man in show business." His first minute in L.A. he got
Roots: The Next Generation
. Then, while doing a play in Los Angeles, the producers of
Trapper John: MD
were in the audience, and that's pretty much how he got that part. Although his luck ran out during his first foray onto Broadway. First, he did the short-lived
Mail
, and then he did
Oh, Kay!
which was David Merrick's last show. He said that Merrick had a stroke before
Oh, Kay!
began rehearsals, but he was still very present at rehearsals. Stokes remembers singing a song onstage with Tamara Tunie and hearing Merrick yelling in the audience. Of course, he and Tamara thought it was something about them but, turns out, Merrick was raging because he noticed that one of the drapes on the set had a wrinkle. Merrick closed the show temporarily because he was going through a divorce, and if the show was closed for seven weeks, his wife wouldn't get any cut of the box office. Merrick then re-opened the show, but Stokes bowed out after he heard his new co-star was Rae Dawn Chong who, let's just say, was not musical theatre royalty.

Stokes and I met when I was the rehearsal pianist for
Kiss of the Spider Woman
, and he took over for the lead role of Valentin. He said that he learned how to lead a company from Chita Rivera, who knew
everybody's
name at the theater. Speaking of names, I asked him about "Stokes." When I met him, he was Brian Mitchell… what up? He said that during
Ragtime
he began to research names and how certain names had power. The best is a one syllable beginning and last (like Tom Cruise). He felt that the scan of Brian Mitchell was clanky and was going to change it to something totally different… but then decided that all he had to do was add his middle name. I was fascinated ‘til he said that Seth Rudetsky was a good name. All I can say is, try making a collect phone call with that clunker.
P.S. My editor just told me this reference was too old for most people to remember. YAY! It’s fun feeling like Hume Cronyn. P.P.S. An even more dated reference.

The most exciting news is: this Thursday is opening night!!!! Next week I'll give you all the scoop… Peace out!

Opening Night

October 15, 2007

Opening night was
so much fun
!

But first, the days before. On Monday,my boyfriend got a babysitter. That was so exciting! We were actually able to make plans at night. Normally, we're like the opposite of vampires. We're only out during the day. Anyhoo, we hightailed over to Ted Sperling's gorgeous apartment for my first foray into one of his signature game nights. He has the ground floor of a brownstone with a beautiful garden in the back. I decided that this would serve as the beginning of many, many trips to his city oasis. Of course, he immediately informed me that he's moving. Well, at least I got to see it once
.
P.S. It had such an effect on me and James that our next three apartments had backyard gardens!

Anyhoo, there were a ton of people whom I did not know, some I recognized, and some I did many low-paying readings with. The gorgeous Kelli O'Hara, soon-to-be Nellie Forbush in Lincoln Center's
South Pacific,
was there with her new hubby, Gregg Naughton. I was also thrilled to see the multi-talented Jeff Blumenkrantz, whom I first met while I was still in college doing a New York internship back in the late-mid-‘80s! Also, I hung out with cutie pie Steven Pasquale, whom I heard is rumored to play Lt. Cable
.
But didn’t because he was doing RESCUE ME on TV and they wouldn’t allow him to do a Broadway show at the same time.

Everyone came to play "running charades." That's where you have three teams of people (or in this case, three teams consisting of various Tony nominees/winners/egregiously overlooked), and each team is in a different room. Apparently, this game is only for people on a white contract who can afford more than a studio. There is one person with ten titles (movies, songs, plays, books, etc.) who is centrally located, and every time a team gets a right answer, they run back and get the next clue. Whatever team gets all ten first, wins. My favorite mistake was when David Turner gave the title
Dobie Gillis
, which was an old TV show. The Kelli O'Hara team was stumped on it for the whole time period. We later found out it was because the clue giver had never heard of it and mistakenly told the group: A) it was a song and B) it was one word. It’s one thing not to know what it is, but why commit to something it’s not
and
not take to take the time to read both words?

Tuesday, at Sirius radio, I interviewed one of my favorite Broadway composers, Stephen Schwartz. He said that when he first started out, he wanted to write Broadway music that had the essence of Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, The Mamas and the Papas, James Taylor and various other late ‘60s, early ‘70s singer/songwriters. He created a meld of all of them combined with his own sass. And he writes his own lyrics! I don’t think that he gets enough credit for coming up with a new sound for Broadway. He paved the way for William Finn, Andrew Lippa, Jason Robert Brown and Tom Kitt to name a few. Stephen had the nerve to have
Godspell
,
Pippin
and
The Magic Show
all come to Broadway while he was in his twenties. So young! He said he was thrown when he went from
Godspell
to
Pippin
because
Godspell
was Off-Broadway and so informally put together. The cast would improvise harmony, and when it sounded good, they would keep it. When he walked into rehearsals for
Pippin
, he was shocked that the cast wanted the harmony written out! But he did write it out, and now listen to the amazing backup for "Morning Glow" or the beautiful harmony in the finale. My favorite part is when Ben Vereen and Leland Palmer sing "Think about the beauty... in one perfect flame." Gorgeous!

He was very concerned with trying to sell his cast albums as crossover pop albums, and that's why he decided to cut the opening number off the
Godspell
album. I guess he thought that people who liked pop music didn't want their albums to begin "Wherefore, O men of Athens…" He also said that he took out a lot of the brass parts in the
Pippin
orchestration on the album so it didn't sound too Broadway. That's also why "Magic to Do" does the signature pop "repeat and fade" at the end. And why Irene Ryan adds all those crazy riffs during "No Time At All." Anybody? Nobody.

I saw
Pippin
when I was a little kid and one of the few things I remember is that the lyrics to "No Time at All" came down on a scroll for the audience to sing with. Stephen said that he loved folk groups growing up, especially The Weavers, and they always had a sing-a-long so he decided that when he did a Broadway show, he'd have one, too. Stephen also confirmed the crazy David Merrick story that happened during
The Baker's Wife
. Producer Merrick had the nerve to hate "Meadowlark," but everyone else wanted it to stay in the show. He finally figured out the one way the song wouldn’t be performed: he snuck into the pit after a Wednesday matinee and stole the music so the orchestra couldn't play it that night! Brava, cuckoo bird!