Seth's Broadway Diary, Volume 1: Part 2 (24 page)

Kelli got an audition for
Sweet Smell of Success
, but it was while she was in tech for
Follies
. She asked if she could go in during her lunch break, but it was the same lunch break that
Sweet Smell
was taking! Still, she went to the rehearsal studio and hoped someone would be there. She knocked on the door, and there were a few people there from the creative staff (including the director) and she begged them to let her sing. Unfortunately, there was no pianist, but one of the guys there offered to play. She started singing and felt the tempo was too slow, so she did ye olde "snap at the piano player to pick up the tempo" routine. Kelli described the audition to her friend that night, including the part about the too-slow accompanist, and her friend went on the internet and pointed to a picture of a guy and asked, "Was this the pianist?" Kelli then realized that the man she snapped at was the composer…
Marvin Hamlisch
! Of course, Marvin thought it was hilarious and loves to tell the story to people. Kelli had the good fortune to get a lead in
Sweet Smell of Success
and the
bad
fortune to be doing
Follies
at the same time with the girl who did it in the workshop but didn't get the Broadway gig. Yay. It's fun to feel awkward eight times a week.

After
Sweet Smell
, she went to Sundance to work on the musical
The Light in the Piazza
, where she played Franca, the wife of the Michael Berresse character, and she was excited to know that it was coming to Broadway in February. She was then offered
Dracula
and turned it down because she was doing
Piazza
that season. However,
Dracula
said they would let her out after six months! Even though she felt a little dubious about the show, she needed the work, the exposure and the health insurance (!), so she took the gig. Kelli was told that she wasn't going to have to be naked, but the next thing she knew, it was required for her role. She recalled that right before she took off her clothes, an
enormous
group of stagehands would suddenly have a cue to prepare for stage left. She's still got it!

As she was preparing for
Piazza
, she got a call from Bartlett Sher telling her that it was decided that Celia Keenan-Bolger, who played Clara, looked too young for the role. They said that Clara has to look like a woman so that the child-like behavior she exhibits is more incongruous. They had auditions around the country and finally asked Kelli to try out for the part. She said
absolutely
not. She told Bart that everyone was happy where they were and not to change anything. But the role was definitely going to be open and Kelli boycotting the audition wouldn’t have changed anything, so Kelli finally went in. She got the role and a Tony nomination, and before you're devastated for Celia, just know that she got
Spelling Bee
that same season
and
a Tony nomination as well!

Kelli said that playing Babe in the Broadway revival of
The Pajama Game
made the creative staff of
South Pacific
realize that she could do more belty-style Broadway (not just soprano), and that's why she was brought in for
South Pacific
. However, she had to wait four months (!) for a callback because they wanted to cast the Emile first. They felt that he was a more difficult part to cast, and once they had him, they could match a Nellie to whoever it was. As a matter of fact, they had three different age ranges up for the role: Kelli was in the middle, the younger actress up for Nellie was Celia Keenan-Bolger, and the older one was Victoria Clark!

This week is the "fun" holiday of Yom Kippur. Oy. Let me wish my fellow Jews an easy fast and Happy New Year!

Wright On (and Off) Fire Island

October 13, 2008

I'm back from beautiful Fire Island.

I've only been there a couple of times, and the last time was when Linda Blair was starring in
Grease
… AKA a long time ago. Suffice it to say, it's still stunning! I went out there because I was invited by Ben Hodges (one of the editors of the
Theatre World
books and the producer of the Theatre World Awards). He asked me if I would come and interview two of the writers of
Grey Gardens
. James, Juli and I stayed in a beautiful bed and breakfast (The Madison Fire Island Pines) that was all white with white flowing fabric everywhere. I felt like I was spending the weekend in one of Barbra Streisand's outfits.

On Saturday afternoon, a big crowd sat around the spacious pool and I interviewed Michael Korie, the
Grey Gardens
lyricist, and Doug Wright, the librettist. They told us that composer Scott Frankel came up with the idea of writing a musical about
Grey Gardens
and Michael quickly came on board. Doug said that they asked him to write the book and he was on the fence about the whole idea. "I'd show up every week and tell them it wouldn't work as a show. After two years we had a first draft." One of the big problems, he felt, was that the documentary is just a slice of life about these two ladies. There's no beginning, middle and end. One night, though, Michael and Scott were out to dinner when Scott suddenly took a dinner napkin and wrote Act One 1941/Act Two 1973. Those two years not only relate to Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones' birth dates, but they gave the show a framework.

The real Little Edie passed away before the show was completed, but she did give her blessing to the show. She wrote a letter giving her consent, writing that since their whole lives were music, it was fitting that there'd be a musical about it all. Doug remembered one line in the letter that said, "With all that we didn't have, our lives were joyous." Very sweet.

If you didn't see it, let me tell you that Christine Ebersole played Big Edie (the mother) in Act One and Little Edie (the daughter) in Act Two. I asked why Sara Gettelfinger played Act One Little Edie Off-Broadway (and on the recording) but not on Broadway. Doug said that, because there were 30 years between acts, they needed a Little Edie in Act One who'd look like a young version of Christine Ebersole in Act Two. Sara is taller than Christine and has a naturally dark look, and they felt that it was confusing for the audience for the two Edies to look so different. Michael remembered being in final callbacks for the role of Little Edie on Broadway. There were two women being considered for the part, and their agents told them that one of the two of them would get it. That same day, they were having auditions for the Little Edie understudy. Cut to: Erin Davie came in to audition for the role of the understudy and later that day, her agent called and told her that she didn't get the understudy… she got the part! Michael told us that the other girls cried while they were singing the audition song ("Daddy's Girl"), but Erin had actually made
the auditioners
cry. Brava! Erin was on Fire Island with us and performed "Daddy's Girl" and "Will You?" and was fantastic.

During the interview, I mentioned that I had met Jerry (the marble faun) the week before. Doug said that Jerry is now a cab driver and while
Grey Gardens
was on Broadway, he'd drive by the Walter Kerr Theatre every night at 10:30 PM. He would always pick up a couple who had just seen the show and listen to them talk in the back seat about it. If they liked the show, he'd wait ‘til he dropped them off to drop that bomb that he was Jerry, and if they didn't like, he'd keep his trap shut.

On the Long Island Railroad back from Fire Island, I asked Doug about
I Am My Own Wife
, which was the show he wrote about a transvestite who had outwitted the Nazis and the Communists. He had heard about the story when he was touring Europe to celebrate his 30th birthday with his college buddy, director Chris Ashley. He met Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who remained physically a man but still dressed as a woman. In one of the many interviews he did, he found out that one of Charlotte's lovers was a woman! Doug said, "So, at one point, you were straight?" and Charlotte replied, "Heavens, no. I was a lesbian!"

After the show opened on Broadway to great acclaim, he was directing a reading one day and an intern kept knocking on the door of the rehearsal room. Doug didn't want to be disturbed, but the intern said that there was a very important phone call. Doug picked up and it was the publicist Don Summa, who told him that there were 100 people who wanted to interview him. Doug was shocked.

"Why?" he asked.

"You haven't heard?" asked Don. 


"Um, no."

"You won the Pulitzer Prize!" Don screamed.

Doug was so excited that he immediately hung up on Don and called his parents. It was partly for them to share in his joy, partly to alleviate the dishing his mother had given him when he sold his car so he could fly to Germany for one final interview with Charlotte. It paid off. His mother was happiest, though, when he wrote
The Little Mermaid
because he "finally wrote something his nephew could see!" He said that
Mermaid
was the most fun he had writing a show. He knows that some of the reviews weren't great but has no idea specifically what they were because his boyfriend has set parental blocks on his computer. Doug said that he can go to the dirtiest porn sites out there, but he can't access any of the theatre websites or message boards!

Right now, Doug is working on a movie about Gershwin, and the movie focuses mainly on
Porgy and Bess
. He said that after Anne Brown played Bess, she couldn't get any work singing opera in America because she was black, so she went to Europe, where she had a great career. She's the last principal cast member alive from the original production, and he flew to Oslo, where she now resides in a nursing home, to interview her. She recalled auditioning for Gershwin and singing a Schubert song. He then asked her for something else and suggested a spiritual. She sassed him and said that they didn't teach spirituals at Juilliard! "Why does everyone assume I know spirituals?" she asked him. "Because I'm black?" Gershwin backed off and asked her if it would be all right if he taught her one, and she said yes. So, Jewish George Gershwin taught African-American Anne Brown "City Called Heaven," her first spiritual.

This week, I saw
13
and I'm very glad that show didn't exist when I was a kid because if I didn't get to be in it, I would have pulled a Madame Bovary. Not only is the cast all teenagers, but the band is too, so there would have been many parts for me to not get cast in. I loved lots of the voices in the show, especially Elizabeth Gillies, who plays the bee-yatchy girl and has a sassy vibrato, and Graham Phillips
later on THE GOOD WIFE as the so
n
,
who plays the lead and whose voice is in that nether region of when your voice starts changing but isn't quite there yet. He doesn't have a boy soprano or a man's range yet. It's right in the middle, like a contralto. Essentially, he's got the looks of a Bar Mitzvah boy with the notes of Melissa Manchester.

There's an amazing benefit coming up at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. It's called
Broadway Voices for Change
, and it's for America Votes, which is an organization that increases progressive voter registration and turnout. Now, you know that I'm not the biggest fan of sopranos, but this benefit features two sopranos that I think are a brava: Audra McDonald and Barbara Cook! I was chatting with Barbara on the phone (while holding the receiver and mouthing to James, "Can you believe I'm talking with Barbara Cook on the phone!?!?!?!"), and she told me that she loves singing with Audra. The show is going to be tons of solos for both of them and some sassy duets. I, of course, immediately began asking her questions about
Music Man
, specifically about one of my favorite Broadway songs, "My White Knight." Turns out, Meredith Willson kept changing the song because the first version was too long and by the time he came up with the final one, Barbara had sung 12 different ones! And it really was 12 versions. Barbara doesn't do my mother’s style of number aggrandizing ("You spilled grape juice on me! This sweater cost me seventy fi-… eighty… ni-… a
hundred
dollars!").

One of my favorite Audra McDonald facts is that she tried out for the ensemble of
Beauty and the Beast
… and didn't get it. I'd love to see the "No Callback" pile of 8x10s from that audition with Audra's mug staring up from it. My other favorite Audra lore ties in with the sad closing of
[title of show]
. Heidi Blickenstaff and Audra grew up together in Fresno and both tried out for the local production of
Annie
. Heidi got the role of Annie, and Audra's picture yet again wound up in the reject pile. Of course, you'd think Heidi would be happy about that, but she told me that the reason Audra didn't get the part was actually because she was such a great performer that the director felt that she would outshine the rest of the cast. Poor Heidi walked around her whole life knowing that she only got
Annie
because Audra was too amazing. Well, I confronted Audra with the story, and she blatantly 'fessed up that she made up that spin just to save face. Audra said, "The truth is I tried out and didn't get it because the director said my audition was sub-par." Brava on Audra’s spin doctor-technique, but no brava for making Heidi feel like a loser for getting a lead role. I finally got to tell Heidi that she got the role of Annie because she had the goods, not because Audra outshined her. And if Audra was hurt revealing the truth, she can cry all the way to where she stores her four Tony Awards
.
As we all know, Audra now has six!