Broadway Tails (15 page)

I also began working on the understudy. BJ was a nice dog and was recovering well, but he was barely housebroken and knew very few commands. He worked hard, and little by little he learned basic obedience. One stage manager, Mo Gibson, always felt sorry for him and gave him extra
attention, which came in very handy later on. As rehearsals continued, I was still worried about the watch trick. I knew that Riley would try to do it right every night, but there was always a chance he wouldn’t, so I came up with a backup plan. I rigged an extra watch onstage in case Riley had a problem.

We finally moved to the Marriott Marquis on Times Square for the beginning of technical rehearsals. My contract called for a private dressing room for the dogs, both for safety and so they could rest. We had such a large cast that all the dressing rooms were taken. I was arguing with the management over my dressing room when Arthur offered us his. Arthur Laurents is a brilliant writer and director with a legendary temper, but he was always kind and understanding with the dogs and me. He listened to my suggestions and either agreed or worked with me to solve problems. My work with him on
Nick & Nora
remains one of my most pleasant experiences with a director.

But the word on the street was that the show was having terrible troubles, and to some extent it was true. The computerized set was groundbreaking but flawed. There were cast replacements and illnesses. In addition, the storyline was very dark—not what you expect in a Broadway musical, especially one based on a very popular film series. Changes in the script and music were coming fast and furious.

The big watch trick, on the other hand, was proceeding very well, with a 100 percent success rate. At the top of that final scene, Joanna would get a piece of cheese offstage. Riley would carry the watch in and trade with Joanna for the cheese. In his mind, he was getting the better end of the bargain. Then he would go off to Mo, stage left. But we soon found out why it was a good thing I had a backup plan. During dress rehearsal, the watch slipped out of Riley’s mouth. This had happened now and then in rehearsals, but he’d just pick it up and continue. This time it fell directly through one of the quarter-inch tracks on the stage used for the moving scenery. Riley began digging at the floor to get it back, but Joanna had the presence of mind to give him the cheese, send him off, and pick up the spare watch I had hidden behind the wall. Arthur later thanked me for thinking ahead.

Finally, we began previews. In the old days, you took the show on the road to work out all the bugs before you came to New York, but in the last twenty years, that process has become too expensive. So producers take the big risk of opening in New York. The audience loved parts of the show, and Riley was one of those parts. Arthur and the creators worked to fix the others.

I always ask the people involved to inform me when any new element is being introduced to the pattern of the show. An actor, prop, costume, sound or line change—any change in the set routine will distract the animal. This time, a change was made in previews, and they didn’t tell me. Joanna Gleason is a vegetarian and won’t wear fur. But our designer, Theoni Aldredge, felt a socialite like Nora should wear a fox stole in one of the scenes. Joanna refused. Unless an actor has refusal over costumes in her contract, she is obligated to wear whatever the designer assigns. It was a battle of wills in which neither woman would budge.

Arthur stepped in and persuaded Joanna to wear it for one performance so he could look at it and make the final decision. No one told me. The scene was entitled “Walking the Dog.” Nick and Nora take Asta for his evening walk. Each evening I met Barry stage left, handed him Riley’s leash, and went stage right to wait for them to exit. That night when I got to my position, I saw Riley growl and leap at Joanna! I couldn’t see Joanna, but I could see Barry trying to pull Riley off her. In that moment I saw my career and everything I owned going down the drain. None of my animals has ever bitten an actor, let alone in front of an audience. The moment went on forever.

Barry finally got Riley detached and they started the number. Barry and Joanna were trying to sing but they couldn’t stop laughing, Riley was growling and barking, and the audience was in stitches. The number finally ended and they all exited. As I frantically tried to see if Joanna was hurt, apologizing the whole time, she threw her arms around me and thanked me for helping her with her problem. What I couldn’t see from the wings was that Riley had attacked the stole. He is a fox terrier—he saw
a fox wrapped around Joanna’s neck, its beady little eyes staring at him, and he tried to kill it. Although I had no clue from my vantage point, the very amused audience could plainly see what was happening. All furs were banned from the show, and no new elements were added to Riley’s scenes without informing me.

There was one more incident before the opening. One Saturday night, I was walking the dogs after the show when Riley began limping. I inspected him but didn’t find anything wrong. I was sure it was nothing and went to bed. The next morning Riley refused to walk and seemed to be in terrible pain. Fox terriers are very tough—so this meant something serious. I called our stage manager friend, Mo Gibson, and told her the situation. She met me at the Animal Medical Center, one of the finest veterinary facilities in the world. Given the urgency of the situation, they put their best people on it, but they couldn’t find a cause for the lameness. The doctors told me they would need to run more tests. It was about noon, and Mo reminded me we had a matinee at two. She assured me Riley was in good hands and that we had to get BJ ready to go on. Those words sent a cold chill up my spine. Not the understudy!

When an understudy goes on, it is a very exciting experience. It’s a chance for an unknown to shine. The cast was thrilled, but I was scared to death. BJ knew the behaviors, but he’d never encountered the presence of an audience. He could notice them and ignore them. He could notice them and feel the need to scare them out of his theater. Or, he could notice them and want to say hello to every one of them. That’s what I was afraid he’d do.

The show opens outside Nick and Nora’s apartment. The set revolves, and we see Asta on the other side of the door, waiting for them to come home. During the following scene change, the dog had one safe path through the computerized, moving set to come to me, where I stood about thirty feet away in the wings. BJ had no problem with the revolving set. When his cue came to exit, he stepped toward me. Then he heard the audience applaud his entrance and stopped. He looked at them, he wagged his
tail, he stood there, happy as could be. I was thrilled that the audience didn’t upset him, but he was missing his safe exit, and if he stayed where he was, the set would literally run him over. He couldn’t hear my commands over the orchestra and applause, and I thought he was doomed. Thinking quickly, Mo Gibson appeared stage right about ten feet away from him, and called him. He saw her and, because of their offstage relationship, trotted toward her just in time. The rest of the performance went all right. The final cue with the watch didn’t work, but Joanna covered it. I couldn’t thank Mo enough for being there to help me and for saving BJ’s life. There are true artists in this business, and they don’t always appear onstage. We went back to the hospital after the show to check in on Riley. They’d discovered a sliver of glass in his paw. Once it was removed, Riley was as good as new.

The show finally opened. After the rough previews, we all knew what was coming. The reviews were bad and it closed in a week. Many reviewers will praise an animal’s performance in order to ridicule or insult the work of the human performers and creators and this happened with
Nick & Nora
. Riley received some of the best reviews of the show. The
New York Observer
went so far as to say the show was so bad that Asta was put to sleep after it closed. Although it was supposed to be a joke, it took quite a while for me to convince everyone from the show and the theatrical community that Riley was alive and living on my farm.

I was very proud of both those dogs. When the show closed, I could think of no happier ending for BJ than to give him to Mo. He was a great
pet. He was not as smart or good-looking as Riley, but he played the role of loving dog for many years. Riley spent many years running my house. All my dogs are welcome to live out their lives on the farm, but some have a hard time adjusting. During a show they are top dog, loved and adored by all. Then they come home with me and are part of the pack. The smart ones like Riley know the difference.

In 1998 I did a children’s production of
The Wizard of Oz
. Since all my “Totos” were out on the road, I used Riley. He loved being back onstage again. Rehearsals went fine, but during the dress rehearsal he got very interested in the Lion. He contained himself for about a week, then one night, when the Lion was chasing Dorothy, he ran up and bit the actor right on the tail. Fortunately, it was a thick costume and the actor was fine. The actor playing the Scarecrow thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. He said he would love to have a dog like Riley. He was married to a writer, and they didn’t have any children and had been looking for a dog, so they adopted him. He was back to being a star.

The 1990s were proving to be an interesting decade.
Annie Warbucks
ended up closing at the end of January 1994, after running for 200 performances. With
La Bête
and
Nick & Nora
, I added another two Broadway credits to my résumé. I had rescued seven more dogs. In 1994 and 1995, I continued to work in regional theater, small tours, and films. The best part of 1995 was getting married to Dorothy in July.

There are good things and bad things about marrying an animal trainer. One of the bad things is living with the mess, but one of the good things was being able to get any animal you want, within reason. Dorothy had always wanted a white Arabian horse, so instead of a big fancy wedding, we got married in our backyard under a beautiful tent and registered at Home Depot for the materials we needed to build a barn. By Labor Day 1995, we had our first two horses. Dorothy had found a job at the Bushnell Memorial Theater in Hartford as the personal assistant to the executive director. Life was good.

In December 1995 I got a call from Roger Hess, a producer who had optioned the rights for a twentieth-anniversary revival of
Annie
. His plan was for a tour that would end up in New York, twenty years after Annie had originally opened. We had a nice chat, and he explained that they were planning to publicize and market the tour to maximize profits. I sent him an information sheet on how our agency works, and he said they would be in touch.

In the spring of 1996 I adopted a dog from a shelter in Rhode Island. His name was Zappa, after Frank Zappa, the rock star. He was the largest Sandy dog we had ever had—most dogs we used were around 60 pounds, but Zappa was over 80 pounds. Martin Charnin had always wanted an Irish wolfhound–sized dog, but that would have been impractical. Zappa was a slow-moving, gentle giant—not very excitable. He just wanted to lie around and be petted. Cindy Lou had easily learned
Annie
, as well as
Annie Warbucks
, and was performing in productions around the country. We also had two other dogs, Sparky and Cosmo, working in other small productions. Martin Charnin was going to direct a separate
Annie
revival at Goodspeed in 1996 as well as the tour, which would open on Broadway in 1997. We set up Sparky and Cosmo to do the Goodspeed run. There was something nice about coming back to the theater where I had originally begun, to re-create the work that started my career.

During the summer of 1996, two things were decided—the producers of the tour took a poll of all the theaters around the country who would book the show to see who they would like to see in the role of Miss Hannigan. Nell Carter was the number-one choice. For the first time in the history of
Annie
, an actor’s name would appear above the title. They even wrote a new song for her. The second thing was that the producer
s
partnered with Macy’s department stores to hold a nationwide search for the actress to play Annie. Auditions were held all summer in stores around the country. Andrea McArdle and Zappa were there to announce the winner at Macy’s in New York City.

ABC’s show
Turning Point
was given unprecedented access to film the whole procedure, from the first auditions to the first performance in Houston, Texas.
Turning Point
even came to our house to film the training process we used with the dogs. They were there the moment the winner was announced, an eleven-year-old girl from Philadelphia named Joanna
Pacitti. Her family was working class—her dad, Joe, owned a barbershop in the basement of their home; her mom, Stella; and two older sisters. It was a real-life Cinderella story for Joanna. The search generated photo shoots, interviews, and a lot of attention for a show that was having its twenty-year revival.

Rehearsals began in New York in October 1996. Even though Joanna only weighed 50 pounds to Zappa’s 80, she worked really well with him, and they formed a true bond. We went to Houston in November, and Dorothy decided to leave her job to travel with me and act as the kids’ chaperone. We thought we would work together to save some money for starting a family. ABC was still there, filming every day, and they were backstage for the tech rehearsals and for the first performance. This was Zappa’s first time onstage with an audience, and he didn’t do all his tricks exactly right. At the end of the show Sandy is supposed to come out in a big Christmas box. For some reason Zappa wouldn’t go into the box, so ABC filmed me crawling into the box with him and being wheeled onstage. During dress rehearsal, one of our actresses had a seizure. I knew CPR from leaner days when I worked at a hospital between gigs, so I was able to take care of her until the ambulance arrived. All of this drama was caught on film.

The show opened to the typical warm reception it always received. Nell Carter was Miss Hannigan, and Conrad John Schuck was Daddy Warbucks. John had played the role on Broadway fifteen years earlier, and now he was re-creating it for the tour. Dorothy and I traveled in a van we had bought, and we had a lot of the comforts of home. We would cook meals for the cast in our hotel room. After we finished the Houston run, our next stop was Minneapolis, where we spent Christmas. It was freezing cold, but I went out in a blizzard and found a Christmas tree and surprised the kids.

The ABC special was supposed to air in November but was postponed. On the air date in December, it was bumped for coverage of Frank Sinatra’s death. It didn’t matter to us in the cast—we were getting great reviews. We played a week in Chicago and then three weeks in Baltimore, followed by two weeks in Boston. While we were in Boston something
strange happened. When we had started rehearsals, a little girl named Alexandra had been chosen to understudy Annie and the other orphans. I had been training her all along. In Boston I was taken aside and told to secretly rehearse another orphan for the role, Brittny Kissinger. I was told not to question the decision and to keep it private. Brittny was very sweet, but even smaller than Joanna—much too small to work with Zappa, so we rehearsed her with Cindy Lou, who was accomplished in the role.

In Boston, Joanna became ill and missed a couple of shows. Alexandra went on for the first time. Then it was announced that Brittny was going to go on, to see how she did in the role. Alexandra was upset because she had been preparing for the role as the understudy and couldn’t understand what was going on. The ABC special had finally aired in February, and people all around the country were very excited about the show. We all did our jobs professionally and Brittny went on with Cindy Lou, even though it made many people in the cast upset.

Our next stop was Hershey, Pennsylvania. There we were told that Brittny and Joanna would be splitting the role—but that Brittny would be opening for the critics in New York. Joanna’s agents were very upset and busy trying to get to the bottom of why this change had been made. Joanna’s family refused to take the deal. Her contract said she would be playing Annie on Broadway. Joanna had been getting good reviews, so no one in the cast understood why she was being asked to step down. Brittny was a sweet kid being thrust into the middle of a controversy that she and her family had never asked for. The kids were crying, the cast was very upset, and we were eight weeks away from opening on Broadway.

The ultimatum to Joanna came at the end of the week in Hershey. Our next stop was Wallingford, Connecticut, for one week. Dorothy and I couldn’t wait to get home and away from all the drama. The company took a bus, but we drove home in our van. At 1:00
A.M.
on Monday morning, our phone rang. It was Stella, Joanna’s mother, and she was crying hysterically. A note had been pushed under their hotel room door saying Joanna was being released from her contract and a car would pick
them up at 8:00
A.M.
to drive them back to Philadelphia. They were calling me for advice. After years of experience with
Annie
and
Annie Warbucks
, I always worry about kids in show business. The rejection and backstage gossip can be devastating, and I’ve seen too many kids who were pushed into performing and didn’t really want to be there. When I worked in the hospital, I had worked in the psychiatric ward with suicidal and abused kids. I felt that if Joanna was to come out of this intact, she needed some control and some closure.

I told Stella, “You have to leave, but let’s do it on your terms.” We would pick them up and bring them to our house. Joanna could play with the animals and take her mind off of all the problems with the show. In the morning she could tell us who she wanted to say good-bye to, and then they could go home—and that’s exactly what we did. At 2:00
A.M.
, Dorothy and I snuck Joanna and Stella out of their hotel room and brought them to our house. Joanna got to sleep with Zappa one more time. In the morning Joanna gave us a list of the people she wanted to say good-bye to. We found another hotel in the area and got them a room there. I called a child psychiatrist and a nurse who were friends of mine from my old job at the hospital, to help her process the good-byes. We secretly shuttled cast members to the location, and at 2:00
P.M.
, we put Joanna and Stella in a car to go home.

You can only imagine the company’s panic when they went to the hotel room where the Pacittis were supposed to be at 8:00
A.M.
, only to find they had checked out. Our call at the theater that day was 6:30
P.M.
Our producer called a meeting. Half of the cast knew about Joanna and the other half didn’t. When he announced that Joanna had left and Brittny was taking over, many people cried. When he said Joanna was doing well and sent her regards, half of the cast knew it wasn’t true. I asked if I could say a few words. I stood up and told the cast that Dorothy and I had spent the night with the Pacittis, that they sent their love, and that they were on their way home.

No one wanted Brittny to fail, so we all went on to do the show that night, and did our job well. It’s a cliché about the theater being a family,
but it’s true. When someone leaves a company, particularly under circumstances like these, it takes a big toll on the spirit of the show. Many of us pursued the reason for the firing with the company and the unions, but we were told just to let it go. ABC, meanwhile, was very angry. They had run their special just two weeks before and now felt the firing made them look foolish. National publicity about the incident generated a lot of sympathy for Joanna. She was brought on shows like
Rosie
, ABC did a follow-up special on her, and there was news coverage all over about the Annie who was fired four weeks before opening on Broadway.

The “official” word was that Joanna didn’t have what it takes to make it on Broadway, but Brittny did. Rumors circulated that the producer was hoping to generate the same kind of buzz that happened when Andrea McArdle replaced Kristen Vigard in the original production. If that’s what they were hoping, it backfired. The delay of the ABC special meant everything happened too close to the Broadway opening, and the publicity was bad.