Broadway Tails (12 page)

Right before Christmas of 1988, I got a call from the general managers of the original production of
Annie
. They invited me to the apartment of Charles Strouse, our composer, for a private reading. They wouldn’t tell me anything more, saying only that it was “very secret.” When I arrived at Charles’s penthouse, it was like old home week. Martin Charnin was there, along with Tom Meehan, who wrote the book. Dorothy Loudon, who had won the Tony Award for playing Miss Hannigan on Broadway, was also there, along with many of the original management team and a number of other potential investors. After a few drinks we all sat down in front of a piano. I was about to witness my first backers’ audition.

When they started, they said they’d be presenting their idea for the sequel to
Annie
, called
Annie 2: Miss Hannigan’s Revenge
. Martin and Tom had talked about writing a sequel, and this was it. They explained they were putting together a proposed multimillion-dollar extravaganza. Then they began narrating it and singing some of the songs. It was a spoof of the original production, not at all what we had expected. The role of Miss Hannigan was greatly expanded. The plot was that she breaks out of jail, kidnaps Annie, and substitutes a double, then plans to marry Daddy Warbucks, kill him and the real Annie, and steal his money. To those of us who had worked on the original show, it was hilarious—funny, clever, full of twists. Sandy’s part was also expanded. He discovers Miss Hannigan’s plot, tries to expose it, then identifies the real Annie in the last act to save the day.

The mood at the end of this reading was joyous. Two months later I had a copy of the script. The original Sandy was too old now to do this show, but I had been working with a dog named Beau, adopted from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York. He had been doing regional productions of
Annie
and had a real stage presence. The original Sandy had floppy ears, but Beau had pointy ears, just like the Sandy in the comic strip. I thought he would work. When Martin met him, he loved him, and we had our Sandy for
Annie 2
.

They did a nationwide search for the new Annie, selecting a young actress named Danielle Findley. Over the coming months, she worked very hard with Beau. We began rehearsals in New York in September 1989 and traveled to Washington, D.C., for previews and performances in December. The official Broadway opening was scheduled for March 1990. Before we even left for Washington, the marquee was up in New York, a big annie 2 on the Marriott Marquis Theater. Because of my long-standing relationship with the creators and producers, I got title-page credit in the program for the first time. It took me out of the league of just being part of the crew and elevated me to the same level as a designer or creator.

We had only one problem with the training: At the climax of the play, when Miss Hannigan is about to marry Daddy Warbucks, Martin wanted Beau to erupt into barking when the minister asks if anyone objects to the wedding and says, “Speak now or forever hold your peace.” Beau did bark on cue, but it was not the excited outburst that Martin wanted. One week before previews started, I was still stumped about how to make this happen. Then, driving home one night, as we passed Central Park, Beau went crazy when he saw the horses waiting to take people on carriage rides. That was it. I convinced one of our production assistants, Jeff Markowitz, to wear a horse costume during rehearsal one day. On cue, we let Beau get a glimpse, and he went nuts—Martin almost fell off his chair laughing, but
it was just what he wanted. Poor Jeff had to put on that horse costume for every performance during our Washington run.

The first preview of
Annie 2
at the Kennedy Center was sold out. We were all excited to see the audience reaction. Then something strange happened. The audience didn’t like it. We had forgotten that the original
Annie
had only become a hit when they made Annie a real character the audience could root for. Adults in the audience who had grown up loving
that
Annie were upset we had turned her back into a comic strip character. The kids they brought with them to the theater were actually frightened by several scenes—we saw them crying and leaving the theater before the end of the first act.

The next forty-eight hours were a blur. The reviews were horrible. The
Washington Post
even gave Beau a bad review for not looking like the original Sandy. It was a multimillion-dollar mistake. I remember going to visit Martin in his room at the Watergate Hotel. I just wanted to give him a hug and make sure he was okay, but he was already talking about how we could rewrite the show. The New York opening was canceled, and by the end of our run in Washington, there were the beginnings of a whole new musical.

Two months later I got a call from Martin. The Goodspeed Opera House had agreed to do a new version of
Annie 2
in their small space, the Norma Terris Theatre, starting in May. The one thing that Martin wanted me to do was find a new dog that looked exactly like our original Sandy. I rallied all my contacts, and my friends at The Associated Humane Society in Newark came through again. In March I adopted Chelsea, who was only about eight months old, very hyper, but she could have been Sandy’s twin. Chelsea was probably given up at the shelter because she was young and wild and undisciplined. All the time as we were trying to get her used to being onstage, we had to train her in all the basics.

Martin, Tom, and Charles had done a tremendous amount of rewriting, and what was once a spoof had now become the tale of a single father trying to find a mother for his child. The show would run for ten weeks, with the hope that it would be transferred to New York. Most of the cast was new,
including our Annie—Lauren Gaffney, who is still a good friend of mine. So I was starting from scratch with a new kid, a new dog, and a very short rehearsal period. While Chelsea tried, she was very nervous on stage. Lauren worked very hard to get her through, but any little sound and Chelsea spooked. She had the look, but at this point she didn’t have the presence I like in a stage dog. Between these struggles, Norma Terris’s death, and Sandy’s slowing down with age, it was bittersweet being back at Goodspeed, in a theater named for my old benefactor, working on another show.

In ten weeks they were able to refine the play into a family musical that a lot of people enjoyed, and the reviews were certainly much better than in Washington. When we closed at Goodspeed in July, we were told that a new tour would be mounted very soon, and hopefully we would be going back to Broadway. In August, I headed down to North Carolina for a production of
Annie
. By then our original Sandy was slowing down. He was still very vital, but he had paralysis and weakness in his back legs from arthritis. He couldn’t really walk, so I had to carry him outside when he needed to relieve himself, just as I did when his hip was dislocated so many years ago. He still came with me to the theater every day because he hated to be left alone. I would carry him in and he would rest on his pillow in the dressing room until the end of the show, and then come home with me.

Beau was going to be doing the North Carolina show, but I took Sandy with me because he needed constant care. It was a two-day trip going down, and Sandy did very well. I had customized my car so that he could be lying right next to me in the front seat, while Beau had the backseat with all our belongings. On the second day of rehearsal, Sandy became very ill. He had to be hospitalized, and we didn’t think he was going to make it through the night. A wonderful local vet stabilized him; Sandy rallied and was happy to see me the next day when I went to pick him up. But the doctor told me he didn’t know how much longer Sandy would last because his kidneys weren’t functioning at the correct level. He put Sandy on a special diet of easy-to-digest food, and I spent the entire two weeks in North Carolina worrying about his welfare. Every night I would carry him to the theater
and he would lie in the dressing room and hear the music. I could tell he wanted to get up and do the show, but he would just wait patiently for me to come back into the room.

After our run, I drove the two days back to Connecticut. The trip had taken a lot out of Sandy—he grew weaker each day. On the morning of Wednesday, August 29, this wonderful dog who had taught me so much, my best friend and companion for nearly half my life, went to sleep and didn’t wake up. I cried and I cried and I cried. I called my parents, who had been so good about helping me take care of him. I called Martin Charnin. Then my parents and I took Sandy to be cremated. By the time I got home, there were dozens of messages on my answering machine. Martin had heard in my voice how upset I was and called the folks at Goodspeed, and now everyone was checking to see if I was okay. I didn’t answer any of the messages then—I just wanted to be alone so that I could grieve for my old friend.

The next day, the
New York Times
ran an obituary for Sandy. It wasn’t a funny piece; it was a serious article about this remarkable dog, highlighting all the wonderful things he had done for audiences, for animals, for children’s hospitals, and for charities. It became an international story, and soon I was getting condolences and telegrams and messages from people all around the world. The day after that, August 31, we were scheduled to do an appearance in New York City for
Annie 2
. Martin Charnin had arranged for Lauren Gaffney to sing
I Always Knew
, which they hoped would be the hit song from the show, on a stage at the base of the World Trade Center. Chelsea was supposed to appear with her. I spoke with Martin and told him I didn’t think I could do it, but he insisted. When I said I didn’t think I could drive, he said he’d send a car. He said I needed to be with the people who loved me and Sandy. I couldn’t believe he would ask me to do something like this at the moment of my deepest grief, but I hesitantly agreed.

The next morning at eight o’clock, the limousine came to bring us to New York. Now, not only was I sad over the loss of Sandy, I was also concerned that Chelsea wasn’t ready for this performance. She was a very
high-strung dog. Even in the Norma Terris Theatre, which only had 200 seats, she would get nervous and run offstage. I was sure she’d be frightened by all the commotion in a live, outdoor performance. When I got there I was still numb from grief. People really didn’t understand what I was going through, but Martin said to me, “There’s somebody here I think you should see.” I turned around and there was Andrea McArdle. I hadn’t seen her in years, and we just hugged and cried and talked about good old Sandy. It was probably the best gift Martin ever gave me—the chance to talk about this dog as my friend with the kid who was there when it all started.

I believe that sometimes we’re given signs—if you look for them, they’re usually there. When I led Chelsea up to perform that day, I was hoping beyond all hope that she wouldn’t be frightened and drag poor Lauren offstage. As Lauren started singing, Chelsea sat perfectly still. I was incredulous. It was almost as if this wasn’t the same dog I had worked with a month ago at Goodspeed. She was looking at me and she was calm. As Lauren hit the last note, a white bird flew over the stage. Now, there are many pigeons in New York, and they can be any color. But white birds are rare, and seeing them fly by themselves is even rarer. In that moment, in my heart of hearts, I felt the spirit of Sandy was sending me a gift and helping us along. As soon as Lauren left the stage, Chelsea dragged her over to me, but for those few minutes, when she needed to do her first public performance for the people of New York City to help promote the show, Chelsea was good.