Stephen Sondheim has been pretty hot in his 80th year. His book, Finishing the Hat, became available in time for the holidays and I have finally had the chance to read and enjoy. It is a demanding text. What is it? The subtitle tells us: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes.
We’re coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of the fabulous Frank Loesser musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. To celebrate, Daniel Radcliffe will star as window washer turned business hotshot, Finch, along with John Larroquette as the big boss, J.B. Biggley. I’m looking forward to this one, not only because of the dissonance of watching Harry Potter sing “Brotherhood of Man,” but because of my personal history with this play. Yes, readers, a much younger Broadway Fred was one of the great Finches of his time, in one of the finest productions of the mighty Studio Y Players.
In her director’s notes, Emma Rice, Artistic Director of Kneehigh Theatre, writes of a creature from Scottish and Irish folklore called the Selkie. This is a seal who sheds her skin, assumes human form, and dances at the beach. In some versions of the tale the Selkie is kidnapped by a man, has children, and lives among the humans. Eventually, however, she locates her seal skin, puts it on, and jumps back into the ocean forevermore. [Read more →]
I wasn’t wild about the original movie, La Cage Aux Folles, which came out when I was a freshman in college. Maybe it was the subtitles, but no matter how many friends told me between guffaws that the guy buttering the toast was pee-leaking comic perfection, I just didn’t laugh that much. Then, in the 80’s I was aware of the original Broadway musical version, but it wasn’t on the top of my list and the revival in 2004 was not that highly regarded. Now, a year into its ecstatically received third incarnation, I finally scored half-price tickets and made the visit.
Have you ever sat in the dark? Really dark. You can’t see your hand if you hold it inches from your face. No movie projector. No spill from the concession stand. No cracks from the parking lot. No LED’s for the steps. No flash lights. No iPhones.
How about no exit light?
A couple of months ago a musical theater holy grail became available on DVD. Evening Primrose was made for television and broadcast at the end of 1966. It is based on a short story by John Collier with a teleplay by James Goldman, but most lovers of Broadway will be interested in the music and lyrics of a post-Do I Hear a Waltz?/pre-Company Stephen Sondheim. All Sondheim fans will want to see this fascinating DVD.
I recently added two engaging and informative show business memoirs to my collection. The first, having recently won the National Book Award, is all the rage. The second was all the rage in 2006. (Even though I am not on the cutting edge, I eventually catch up.)
Say you’ve just gotten your tickets at the TKTS booth in midtown and you have a couple of hours before curtain. Your first impulse might be to go to a deli, but delis in midtown have absurdly large portions and prices to match. I say go west towards Hell’s Kitchen. A nice street is 46th where you’ll pass Restaurant Row, a stimulating stretch that is a little like the back end of a carnival midway. Pretty hostesses and handsome hosts are on the curb to entice you into their establishments with pre-theater specials. This is prime tourist country, however, and while you can get a good meal there (and sing show tunes at “Don’t Tell Mama” when your show is over) the prices go down as soon as you turn the corner onto Ninth Avenue. So that’s what I do.
I regret that I am not old enough to have seen a proper burlesque show, although I have done my homework on the subject. I have studied the writings of the late Ralph Allen, who did for old burlesque sketches what the Brothers Grimm did for folk tales. I’ve read accounts by burlesque habitués and sons of habitués. I have decided that my seventh grade math teacher, a nutty old man who frequently used the exclamation “cheese and crackers!” probably learned that term from Billy “Cheese and Crackers” Hagen, a top banana who frequently appeared at the Troc, Philadelphia’s last burlesque house. The Troc is still there but with bands, not bananas.
Not all of my Broadway experiences have been in midtown theaters. Between 1988 and 1993 I did my graduate work at 721 Broadway in lower Manhattan, the sixth floor of which housed (and still houses) the NYU Department of Performance Studies. There I learned to think of performance as something broader and more diverse than what happened on so-called legitimate stages. I had friend who was into Japanese Rakugo, another into shamanic rituals involving trance states, another into queer theory, and still others who studied downtown dance in which the women lifted the men. My area was American popular performance, especially vaudeville with a concentration in magic–the entertaining deception kind, not the raising the dead kind. Today, I sometimes teach a course with a deception theme, but back then I was still learning the basics.
Sometimes I play a game for my own amusement. I sprinkle references to musicals into my conversations and lectures and wait expectantly to see if anyone notices. A few years back a student returned to class after an absence and as I took roll, he asked facetiously if I missed him. I said, “I cried and cried until the tears came down and I could taste them.” No response. Then I added, “I love to taste my tears. I am special. I am special. Please, god, please… don’t let me be normal.”
After I got no response, I announced the name of the musical I quoted and asked if anyone had ever heard of it. Still no response. Then one of my brightest students, a fearless and flamboyantly “out” gay man, answered “No, I’m not that gay.”
I read in Playbill that Broadway’s original Harold Hill, Robert Preston, had a ritual whenever he went to a Broadway show. Just before the curtain was to go up, Preston would roll up his Playbill, place one end to his wife’s ear, and whisper “I love you” into the other. Damn. I wish I had thought of that.
I was not born Broadway Fred. I was, however, born into a family in which the elders liked Broadway shows. After a brunch at Ratner’s- a now defunct blintz, lox, and whitefish emporium staffed by suffering waiters with Old Country accents-we met the paternal uncles and their families at Duffy Square. Emissaries from each branch waited on the TKTS line and made a quick decision and purchase. With giddy expectation, we walked past giant posters and street hustlers and fancy marquees and urban blight, found our theater and were shown to our seats. We weren’t all together, but the cousins could wave at each other from a few rows apart in the balcony.
A few minutes before the play begins actors enter wearing not Elizabethan, but Edwardian apparel. Gradually, they populate a stage setting dominated by a ticker tape machine, towering abacuses, and walls that appear to be assembled from exquisitely sharp blades. These blades form a cool steel fortress in which those who belong can do business and from which those who are reviled can be shut out. While it may seem irrelevant in 2010, I feel compelled to mention that in this play the reviled ones are my ancestors. And bizarre as it may sound, I can’t help feeling that if this play could prick us, my ancestors and I would bleed.
In 1975, on the most magical day of my fourteenth year, my father took me to New York. First, we went to Tannen’s, the largest magic shop on the east coast, where I got the birthday present of a hippie puppet with long yellow hair and flowered clothing. After a turkey sandwich at Howard Johnson’s, we went to the Cort Theater and saw a matinee performance of The Magic Show, a musical comedy starring the amazing Doug Henning.
I define my Broadway adolescence as my fifth through fifteenth shows*. During this period I remember feeling an exhilaration similar to that of my first boy/girl parties at which I learned that girls’ waists felt tingly when you danced with them, that hearts could literally ache, and that the words “I love you” could be uttered with perfect sincerity to a girl in your class whom you wouldn’t have even noticed the year before. Am I smearing it on too thick? Well, imagine this:
Last March I was at the TKTS line with my wife, Gail, and my sister-in-law, Helaine, and we were trying to figure out what to see. Nothing on the board grabbed us. What we really wanted was A View from the Bridge, but with the ecstatic reviews and the movie stars Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson in the lead roles it would be absurd to imagine that seats would be available for half price. We contemplated walking to the box office and seeing if there might be three seats left at the absurd full price, but Gail suggested we ask one of the TKTS line people if it ever appeared on the board. In the interest of a harmonious marriage, I have learned to not roll my eyes at my wife’s foolish ideas. So we asked. [Read more →]
In recent years I have developed a small obsession. With the help of the Internet Broadway Database, I have compiled a list of Broadway shows I have seen.
I don’t mean road companies. I don’t mean local productions of shows that appeared on Broadway.
As I type this I realize I must sound like something akin to a bagel snob. [Read more →]
You take a train to Penn Station, make a left onto Seventh Avenue and fight uptown through the crowds until you hit the TKTS line at 47th Street. You wait on what used to be the Howard Johnson’s side but which is now the Roxy side. You figure you’ll be on line for an hour or so and you inch forward. You and your companion take turns moving up front to check the board, which used to be narrow signs slid into slots but now is LED’s. You lament the fact that the shows you want to see the most are not up there. Too new.
