Let Me Be Your Star (6 page)

On my last day of theater school in college, the head of the
department said something I’ll never forget.

He said, “Don’t think about trying to do great things. Think
about trying to do small things, with great love.”

I never knew what he meant before.

I do now.

Extras for the DVD

From “The Church of St. Gummer,” recap of Season One, Episode
Nine, in which I realized four constant themes in my work thus far and wrote a
song about it. Here are the complete lyrics, to be sung to the tune of “My
Favorite Things”:

Meryl and Sondheim and Richard Santorum
Bettelheim’s witches and Whoopi in Forum
Adolf who prances and Patti who sings
These are a few of my favorite things

Golden retrievers and salmon sashimi
Ice cubes and vodka and bars that ID me
Flexible morals and secretive flings
These are a few of my favorite things

When my feet hurt, when the bills come
When the card’s declined
I simply remember my favorite things
I then I don’t really mind

* * *

March 22, 2013, marked the 83rd birthday of Stephen Sondheim.
The following instructions for observing the religious holiday based on same
were considered for, and ultimately cut from, my recap of March 27, 2013 (Season
Two, Episode Eight): “The Naked and the Dreaming.”

The Festival of Sondheimas is celebrated each year on
March 22
^nd
. It is a holiday especially enjoyed by children, who love
the ritual of sitting in the festively decorated “barber’s chair” in the mall
to tell Sweeney Todd what they would like to receive for gifts. If they are
good, they get what they ask for, if they are bad, Sweeney’s accomplice Mrs.
Lovett comes and bakes them into a pie. At Sondheimastime, carolers in limp
costumes roam the street, singing madrigal versions of heart-warming holiday
favorites such as “Sorry/Grateful” and “In Buddy’s Eyes.” Schoolchildren
perform in pageants consisting of all the vaudeville acts from “Gypsy,”
although the more religious variety pageants depict the virgin Anne Egerman
giving birth to the Baby Stephen, as her husband Bobby looks on, unable to
feel. On Sondheimas Eve, celebrants gather around the communal table and talk
deeply and searchingly about their interpersonal relationships. Those incapable
of intimacy gather in adjacent rooms, playing word games, or sit solo, quietly
doing crossword puzzles in ink. That night, the three wise Armfeldts help Santa
Sweeney to make/deliver his gifts (they enter through the false chiffonier).
Grateful children leave gifts of figs and raisins next to their hip-baths;
those expecting punishment may spread pitch on the stairs, to impede their
path. Houses are typically decorated with branches, foliage, tree trunks, and
other implements so as to resemble a vast metaphorical woodland, Traditionally,
one decorates one’s Sondheimas beanstalk with ornaments in the shape of sharks
and jets. On the day itself, people dress in traditional festive Sondheimas
colors, such as red red red red red red orange. Typical foods for the
Sondheimas feast: egg rolls, spare ribs, lychees, kumquats, fried rice, sticky
buns, and just a loaf of bread, please. You leave an extra eggroll out for Mr.
Goldstone when you open the door for him. He visits every Sondheimas table in
the world.

(Additional Sondheimas research provided by Betty Aberlin,
Jose Piano, Emily Gould and Molly Pope.)

* * *

In Season Two, Kyle Bishop (né Cohen), called Goblinweed in
the recaps due to his resemblance to a sort of dutiful house-elf/woodland sprite,
was introduced to the show’s cast of characters. In the complicated cosmology
of my alternate Smash universe, he was a relative of Ellis Dappledawn’s, and
his Manichean opposite, the light to his dark, the Ahura Mazda to Ellis’s Angra
Mainyu, the Edgar to his Ellis’s bastard Edmund, the Bernadette Peters to
Ellis’s Patti LuPone. No wonder he got run over by a car and killed, an
occurrence immortalized in my recap of May 5, 2013: “The Sacrificial
Goblinweed.” The following is a funeral dirge I composed in his memory, which
was later cut and replaced with an abbreviated, Kyle-specific version of
Auden’s “Funeral Blues.”

Pore Kyle is daid
Pore Kyle Goblinweed is daid (note: you have to add a couple extra notes to fit
in Goblinweed)
All gather round the green room now and cry
He had a small pink nose
And ten furry woodland toes
Oh why did such a creature have to die?

Pore Kyle is daid
Pore Kyle Goblinweed is daid
We've wrapped him in a cobweb for a shroud
And the lights on Broadway dim
For the memory of him
Old Acorntown has never been so proud

Then Cousin Debbie’d get up and say:
“Folks, we are gathered here to groan and moan over our brother Kyle Goblinweed
Who got hisself smushed by a gypsy cab in Greenpoint.”
And then there’s be weepin’ and wailing — that’s from some of them chorus boys—
Then she’d say: “Kyle was the most misunderstood wood sprite in Actors’ Equity
People used to think he was a sad little gnome with nothing better to do than
follow around a psychopath
Hoping one day he’d let Kyle touch his pee-pee”

BUT

The folks that really knowed him
Knowed that beneath those two lesbian colorblocked blouses he always wore
There beat a heart as full as
Mormon’s
house (as full as
Mormon’s
house)
Kyle loved his fellow man (he loved his fellow man)

He loved Laura Bell Bundy
And Emily Skinner and Kelli O’Hara
He loved Ann Harada and Harriet Harris
And he treated the ensemble like equals (which was right)
He loved all the little interns
He loved everything and everyone on Broadway
Even… even if Jimmy came first
Which everybody always knew

Pore Kyle is daid
Pore Kyle Goblinweed is daid
His friends all weep and wail and wonder why
The squirrel and the fawn
Even Ellis Dappledawn
Is sad that Kyle has gone up to the sky

Pore Kyle is daid
A street lamp lights his head!
He’s lying out there bleeding in the street (Street)
His body may be crushed
But his rosy cheeks are flushed
A slaughtered lamb has never looked so sweet (Sweet)

PORE KYLE
PORE KYLE

* * *

I was asked by FunnyorDie.com to write the following skit for
Christian Borle and Jack Davenport, as a sort of playful promo for the second
season. Although we never got to make it, I know they both liked it, and in my
new Zen universe of lowered expectations, that was enough for me. I’d still
like to meet Jack Davenport, though.

CHRISTIAN BORLE/JACK DAVENPORT
SMASH
PROJECT

INT. DAY OR NIGHT OR WHATEVER

CHRISTIAN BORLE and JACK DAVENPORT are standing in front of a
plain backdrop, maybe behind a low wall, like in Sesame Street when Elmo is
about to teach someone a hard lesson about vegetables or the importance of
brushing one’s teeth. They are playing themselves.

CHRISTIAN: Hello. I’m Christian Borle.

JACK: And I’m Jack Davenport.

CHRISTIAN: You may know us from the character we play on our
sexy show
Smash…

JACK: And since Valentine’s Day is coming up… eventually —

CHRISTIAN: We thought we’d get you in the mood by telling
you what gets us in the mood. When we’re about to be intimate with adult human
women.

JACK: Right.

CHRISTIAN: So what about you, Jack? Do you have a particular
song you like to put on when things are getting you know…

JACK: Vaginal? Yeah. Easy. “I’m Still Here.” Gets ’em every time.

CHRISTIAN: “I’m Still Here”? You mean, like, from
Follies
?

JACK: Yeah. It’s all about the subliminal messaging. Think
about it, Christian. What do women want? Security. Persistence. Clever
Wordplay. Put on “I’m Still Here” and bam. You’ll be nailin’ like Michael
Palin. As we say in the UK.

CHRISTIAN: Wow. Okay. So do you use the original cast
recording or —

JACK: Elaine Stritch. Sondheim 80th birthday concert at
Lincoln Center.

CHRISTIAN: You have a recording of that, or —

JACK: It’s on YouTube. Believe me, Christian. Nothing gets a
pussy wetter than the sound of Elaine Stritch.

CHRISTIAN: Nice.

JACK: What about you?

CHRISTIAN: Well, I guess I’m kind of a romantic. When I’m
with a woman, I like to make her feel beautiful. Cared for. I dim the lights, light
a few scented candles, and then (he sings) bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum.

JACK:
(approvingly)
“Finishing the Hat.”

CHRISTIAN: Only in this case, the hat that I’m finishing is
—

JACK: Ejaculation.

They high five.

JACK (CONT’D)

So that’s if you’re with someone really special. What about
someone who’s just, like, a fuck buddy?

CHRISTIAN: “On the Street Where You Live.” Where I just
happened to be. Ex sex?

JACK: “I Dreamed a Dream”?

CHRISTIAN: So literal.

JACK: Why, what’s yours?

CHRISTIAN: “Little Bird, Little Chavaleh.”
Fiddler on the
Roof
. A father tenderly laments as his daughter leaves his family and his
traditions behind forever. Very hot.

JACK: What about a hate fuck?

A quick beat, then in unison!

TOGETHER

“Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina!”

CHRISTIAN: Yeah, bro! Patti sounds so angry! You’d never use
the Madonna version, would you?

JACK: God no. I’ve never hated anyone that much.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah. (
Changing the subject.)
Come to
think, Jack, have either of us ever had sex to a song that wasn’t from a
Broadway musical?

They think.

JACK: Well, I fooled around to some Kings of Leon the other
day.

CHRISTIAN: Really.

JACK: Maybe it was Rihanna. Whatever was playing in the
steam room at the gym. So that...

CHRISTIAN: ...doesn’t really count.

JACK: No.

They look at each other very meaningfully. Music — perhaps
one of the aforementioned songs — plays. Scene.

THE END