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:

On a Wednesday morning with no interference from parents, a boy from Northeast Philadelphia drives in a car to the Trenton train station with his pal, Bob, takes a New Jersey Transit train to New York, and gets off in what the great Zero Mostel of The Producers calls “the most exciting city in the world.”  There is a walk uptown through the garment district-which exemplifies the word “bustling.”  We weave through the cars and hand trucks and bolts of fabric to the Rickshaw Express, the novel Chinese fast food joint, and order exactly what we want without the strictures of the “family special dinner” choices at Kum Tong back home.  We get in the TKTS line and wait with great anticipation.

I am an insufferable young ass.  Fresh from my high school triumph as “Grandpa Vanderhof” in Kauffman and Hart’s You Can’t Take it With You, I look forward to enjoying the performances of my Broadway colleagues.  Perhaps Frank Langella, the exciting actor in the title role of Dracula, will glance in my direction.  I realize he will take no notice of me but that will soon change.  As soon as I get that college degree (so I’ll have something to fall back on),  I will work my way up until I assume the role I’m born to play-Zero’s role of Pseudolous in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  Until then, I’ll learn what I can from my spot in the audience.

As it turns out, Bob and I score half-price tickets to Dracula.  And, just like an adolescent boy/girl party, there are highs and lows.

The most obvious low is the slip of paper that Broadway habitués know and dread.  According to this slip of paper in the program an actor named Jean LeClerc (whose name, his bio says, is pronounced “Le Clair”) would play the handsome count instead of Frank Langella.  The disappointment in the house is palpable.  One guy in the row behind me grumbles that Lemonjello couldn’t be bothered today and we have to see this soap opera actor instead.  As it turns out, however, LeClair is just fine-but then we habitués always wonder what we are missing.

The second low is the script by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which is the same creaky version that Bela Lugosi played on Broadway fifty years earlier.  It is also the script on which the 1931 Tod Browning film is based.  (Have you ever seen that film?  Despite Lugosi’s iconic performance, that is one slow-moving and incomprehensible stinkeroo.)   So, in the late seventies, we’re watching a talky, three-act play from the 1920’s in which Dracula only appears onstage for a few minutes at a time.

Fortunately, there are some high points that compensate.  The remarkable black and white set is designed by Edward Gorey, the well-known creepy illustrator.  It is thrilling to ponder the many bats that seem to be etched into this set, as well as to marvel at Gorey’s trompe l’oeil.  While staring at the vaulted ceilings during the slow parts when neither the Count nor the lunatic Renfield are onstage, it dawns on me that the domes are painted on flats.  The illusion is flawless and mind boggling.  And speaking of illusion, it is also fun to see the bats fly in and out and over our heads, as well as watch the thrilling stage right vanish of the Count and his seemingly instantaneous re-entrance from a door on stage left.  The bat’s curtain call is a memorable flourish.

The following weekend I attend a community theater rehearsal for a scene from The Dybbuk, which is, coincidentally, another play about spirits of the deceased wreaking havoc.  The director asks me what I saw in New York and how I enjoyed it.  Forgetting about the slow script and missing star, I give a starry-eyed, adolescent answer:  “It was perfect.”  I can see the director begin to roll his eyes, but he catches himself, and then smiles widely.  This director of amateur theatricals undoubtedly remembers his own theatrical adolescence, when the magic of a Broadway theater was like the tingle of a girl’s waist, a heart’s flutter, an “I love you” whispered to a girl whom you wouldn’t have even noticed the year before.

Broadway Fred Quiz

In this installment of Broadway Fred there is an obscure reference to Lemonjello.  Besides being a corruption of the star’s name, Langella, what is the significance of lemon Jello? 

The answer will appear next week.

*To see Fred’s list of Broadway shows, click here.

“Broadway Fred” appears every Wednesday.

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