Hooray!

(Update: In what other city but New York can you watch live TV coverage of the end of a Broadway strike?)

Early last week, we optimistically bought tickets to August: Osage County through TDF for this Friday, thinking that the stagehand strike would be over by then. So much for that.

Even so — this is going to sound strange, but I felt a twinge of disappointment late last week when I read that the two sides were going to sit down for talks, and a bit of excitement when I read that the talks had failed. This has nothing to do with the real-world impact of the strike – stagehands, actors, restauranteurs, bartenders, and store owners are all hurting, and they deserve their livelihoods back. It’s more a feeling of curiosity on my part. The novelty of it. Disruptions of the normal routine are exciting, in a sense. I’m not sure what this says about my day-to-day life.

My odd feelings about the strike are also because I’m a news junkie. I’m a news junkie because I’m not just interested in what happens in the world; I’m interested in seeing how what happens in the world is covered. That’s why I’m an obituary geek and why I like newspaper front pages. I’m interested in seeing how things are covered day by day. I like that every day lately, the headline lead article on the Playbill website tells what day of the strike this is.

I know I shouldn’t feel this way about the strike. And if it were affecting me more personally, I wouldn’t. And I don’t really feel this way deep down. It’s just that it’s something different. And sometimes, something different can be bracing.

I’ve generally been going with the flow lately. We’ve been settling into our (temporary) apartment, work’s not bad, I go to chorus rehearsals on Tuesday night, I haven’t been to the gym in ages. (There’s no New York Sports Club within walking distance of our new place.)

We managed to get in several Broadway shows before the stagehands’ strike. I should point out that we see most shows for cheap because Matt works in higher education and gets great discounts – I’d never be able to see all this stuff at full price. In the past couple of weeks we’ve seen:

The Little Mermaid. Disney musicals really aren’t my cup of tea, but it was better than I’d expected. Certainly better than Tarzan, which isn’t saying much, and somewhat better than Mary Poppins, too. Colorful sets and costumes, catchy new tunes. Call me a theater snob, though, because I hate the audiences that show up for these things. Everyone cheers and shouts as the lights go down (you’ve never seen theater lights go down before?), and a totally undeserved standing ovation at the end (though that seems to happen at every show these days). The couple sitting next to me in the very last row of the balcony was a guy and a girl from either New Jersey or Long Island. I could tell by the guy’s accent. He was sorta hunky, and when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him put on his glasses right after the lights went down, he got a tiny bit cuter.

Cymbeline. One of Shakespeare’s late plays. I’d never read or seen it before. Great cast, although Phylicia Rashad talked like she was wearing dentures. This is a long show – it ended at just about 11:00. After it ended, I said to Matt, “Well, it’s still in previews, so maybe the writer will make some cuts.” Some weird set choices toward the end. I more or less liked this – it was just long.

The Seafarer. A new Irish play by Connor McPherson. There’s a twist toward the end of Act One that virtually every news article about the show has given away — even a Playbill article about the show gives it away. The play is spooky, with some terrific acting, but it doesn’t have much of a plot and the second act goes on forever. I liked McPherson’s previous play, Shining City, better.

The Drowsy Chaperone. We saw this for the second time, for free, as part of a trip with some of Matt’s coworkers. Currently starring as Man in Chair is Bob Saget. Although he’s no Bob Martin, he was better than I thought he’d be – this is still an enjoyable show. Matt thought that Beth Leavel has become a bit too carried away as the Chaperone, but I still liked it.

The Farnsworth Invention. This is Aaron Sorkin’s newest, about the invention of television. (Eat your heart out, David!) Fast-paced in that “West Wing” way. I really enjoyed this. Lots of fun.

Young Frankenstein. I liked this more than the critics seem to. I’ve never seen the movie, so I don’t have any comparison. It’s not The Producers, but it’s still probably the funniest new show this fall.

The other day we optimistically ordered tickets to see August: Osage County late next week, hoping that the strike will be over by then. At this point it’s looking unlikely. Hopefully we can get a refund.

As for the other strike: with no new “Daily Shows” or “Colbert Reports,” I’ve been getting to bed earlier. So that’s nice.

Cripes. First the TV writers go on strike and now the Broadway stagehands. What’s a New Yorker supposed to do at night?

Oh, well. I guess I can still surf the Web.

If the Internet goes on strike, I’ll really be screwed.

Matt and I finally saw Curtains last night. We try to see most shows in previews, because we like to be part of the Cool Crowd, and we can usually get preview tickets for cheap. But for some reason we never got around to Curtains until Matt saw an offer on TDF last week.

The only catch was that David Hyde Pierce, who won the Tony for his role in the show, is on vacation this week. But that was okay. His stand-in, John Bolton (no, not this one – but couldn’t you just see him playing the lead role in a musical?), did a fine job.

I liked the show much more than I thought I would. In fact, I really enjoyed it. I think that’s because I went into it with low expectations — it didn’t get good buzz when it opened last spring. In reality, it’s a cute, old-fashioned murder mystery.

So few new musicals open on Broadway these days that every new show carries the burden of Saving Musical Theater. But a musical doesn’t have to redefine the art form in order to deserve a stage. Sometimes it’s enough just to put on a good show.

Yesterday I posted my first diary entry ever. Here’s another entry from my diary, when I was 14 years old and got to attend a famous Broadway flop.

* * * * * * *

Friday, May 6, 1988 (Actually, Saturday May 7, but it’s 12:33 in the morning.)

This day will live in my mind forever! My parents were supposed to see a preview of a new Broadway musical, Carrie, based on Stephen King’s book, but they couldn’t find anyone to go with them so they took me and A____ [my brother].

It was really strange. Act I was weird, but Act II was better. Actually, the play was great! It was surrealistic. The audience really got into it! It ended at around 10:30.

And afterwards, we waited outside the stage door. I saw several actors walk out – and then I saw Gene Anthony Ray (Billy) walk out! I got his autograph!

Later, I got the autograph of Linzi Hately (Carrie)! She talked to me (well, I said she was great, and she said “thank you”).

That was around 11:05-11:10.

But the person I was really waited for was Betty Buckley (Margaret). I waited… and waited… and waited…

Finally my Dad brought the car around + he and Mom waited there. Some guys left, but they came back – one of them saw her manager, who said she would be coming out soon! (This was around 11:45!)

Sure enough, she did! A_____ got her autograph, then I did!!! I told her she was great. She asked me how I liked it. I said I loved it! I was ecstatic and I still am! I definitely want to be an actor!

I MET A STAR!!!

I MET A FAMOUS PERSON!!!

I MET BETTY BUCKLEY!!!!!!

This day will live in my mind forever!

* * * * * * *

Don’t you want to just throw up?

Matt and I saw Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes in Deuce last week. It’s gotten mediocre reviews, but at the special price of three bucks a ticket, who’s going to turn down a chance to see Angela Lansbury live on stage?

Umm… that sounded so much less insulting in my head.

Anyway, the play isn’t very good. Nothing much happens, and there’s one character, a middle-aged tennis fan, who basically beats you over the head with the show’s theme. There were a couple of times where I nearly nodded off.

But it was worth it for the pleasure of watching two veteran actresses on stage. I’ve loved Marian Seldes every time I’ve seen her in something – including the time she walked past me on the Columbus Circle subway platform as I was waiting for an uptown 1 train. (As Charles Isherwood wrote a couple of days ago in the Times, “if you have not seen Marian Seldes on a New York stage, you are not a true New Yorker.”) In fact, it was worth it just to hear Ms. Seldes use the four-letter “C” word.

As for Angela Lansbury, she does a fine job with her material. I’ve finally seen her on a Broadway stage, so she can die now.

Umm… that sounded so much less insulting in my head.

Yesterday I saw Frost/Nixon, a new Broadway play, originally produced in London, about David Frost’s interviews with Richard Nixon, three years after Nixon resigned. The most famous line from those interviews: “[W]hen the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

Nixon died thirteen years ago today, and coincidentally (or not), the play officially opens on Broadway tonight.

From the show’s producers: “How did David Frost, a famous British talk-show host with a playboy reputation, elicit the apology that the rest of the world was waiting to hear from former President Richard Nixon? The fast-paced new play shows the determination, conviction and cunning of two men as they square off in one of the most monumental political interviews of all time.”

It has a classic structure: a dual character study. Two characters meet in a confrontation, and we get to see both of their motivations. Frost actually seems to be the more important character than Nixon here — after all, Frost’s name comes first in the title. I was fascinated by the play, even though it was hard to hear Frank Langella, who portrays Nixon. He mumbles and swallows his words. Fortunately, the mezzanine wasn’t very full, so at one point I got up and moved closer, and after that I could hear him better.

The play set my mind going, and I started to think about how an ex-presidency has a life of its own. I realized that even on January 20, 2009, we won’t have heard the last of George W. Bush. He’ll be 62 when he leaves office. Will he pull a Gerald Ford, never to be seen again except at golf tournaments? Will he pull a Carter or Clinton, setting up a foundation and trying to change the world – in his case, by spreading Christianity or trying to export democracy abroad? I doubt he’ll pull a Nixon, writing memoirs and trying to rehabilitate his reputation. In his mind, he probably has nothing to atone for.

I wonder if he’ll ever sit down with an interviewer like Nixon did with Frost and try to explain himself and his actions.

Oh, please.

Scott Rudin, the producer of “The Year of Magical Thinking” on Broadway, is pissed at the New York Times for allowing readers of its website to post “Reader’s Reviews” while a show is still in previews. He got back at the Times by taking out ads in the paper, quoting one of those “Reader’s Reviews,” which said, “An evening of magical theater. Get yourself a ticket to the Booth Theatre,” and Rudin purposely and misleadingly attributed the quote to “The New York Times Online.” And the Times is not happy. Letters ensued.

For those who don’t know, before a show’s official opening, there are usually a few weeks of previews, which is an opportunity for the creators of the show to see what works in front of an audience and what doesn’t and to adjust things accordingly. From night to night, entire songs might be added or removed, scenes might be rearranged or taken out or whatever. The show doesn’t get “frozen” until opening night. Anyone can see a preview; the ticket prices are usually the same; you still get a Playbill. The average theatergoer would have no idea whether he or she was attending a preview.

Here is the page on the New York Times website where you post Readers’ Reviews. There’s no indication of whether a show is in previews or not. Savvy readers can tell that a listing without a New York Times review is probably still in previews, but the average reader won’t catch that. It’s probably a good idea for the Times to designate shows in previews as such.

But if Scott Rudin’s pissed at the New York Times for allowing readers’ reviews before a show has opened, he may as well go after All That Chat, and the entire Intarweb for that matter.

If you’re going to charge audience members full price to see a preview of your show, they have the right to know what they’re getting into beforehand, and that includes hearing about the show from others. If Rudin’s unhappy with the Times policy, he should, um, TELL THEM, instead of acting passive-aggressively.

According to my stack of Playbills, this the list of the shows I’ve seen so far this year:

January 18 – Regrets Only
February 8 – Follies at Encores!
February 11 – The Coast of Utopia, Part I
February 28 – 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2nd time; 1st time was Off-Broadway)
March 3 – Prelude to a Kiss
March 8 – Talk Radio
March 9 – Journey’s End
March 18 – Grey Gardens (2nd time; 1st time was Off-Broadway)
March 29 – The Coast of Utopia, Part II
April 8 – Legally Blonde
April 12 – LoveMusik

Also a production of Violet, in Brooklyn, that a member of my chorus was in.

This is actually not as many shows as I’d thought.

We went to see a preview of Mary Poppins on Broadway tonight. About 15 minutes into Act II, the show stopped. Three actors were performing a scene in front of the scrim, during which we heard what sounded like furniture moving around behind the curtain. The scene ended with the three actors walking offstage, and then… nothing happened. Silence.

We sat there a few seconds. Then a voice came over a loudspeaker announcing a delay. We sat tight.

About ten minutes later, one of the producers, Thomas Schumacher, walked onto the stage from the wings and told us that there was a problem with the foundation and they were trying to fix it. He apologized, quite charmingly, and said he hoped to return in five or ten minutes with the news that it was fixed. Then he disappeared again.

Fifteen minutes later, he reappeared and told us they couldn’t seem to fix the problem and that we would get refunds.

Sigh.

Of course, by the time we got home, we saw that an audience member had already posted about it on All That Chat while sitting in the audience.

Theater geeks…

We just got back from seeing the first preview of The Times They Are A-Changin’, the new Twyla Tharp/Bob Dylan project on Broadway. (Bob Dylan’s song catalog; Twyla Tharp’s choreography.)

Incomprehensible. Not awful – just incomprehensible. There’s basically no plot.

When I read earlier today that the show takes place in a circus, I knew this was going to be a weird one.

The dancing is very circus-influenced. There are several clowns. Circuses and clowns scare me. Not just clowns – circuses themselves. I must have some hidden childhood circus memory that subconsciously haunts me.

The dancers are excellent, I’ll say that. And at least Twyla Tharp is trying to be artistic. This isn’t just an attempt to make money off an artist’s musical catalog. So I can respect that. But it’s basically a bunch of Bob Dylan songs strung together for no reason. Matt and I kept glancing at each other with puzzled looks on our faces.

I don’t know what Ms. Tharp will do to fix the show before previews, if anything, and I have no idea what the critics are going to say.

But at least Michael Arden plays the lead, and he’s always a joy to watch and listen to.

We’ve seen three Broadway musicals in the past five nights: Tarzan, The Wedding Singer, and The Drowsy Chaperone. That’s the order in which we saw them, and it’s also the order in which I’d rank them from worst to best. Keep in mind that these shows are all in previews.

I hate to bad-mouth a show, especially when I sorta know someone who’s working on it (though not on the creative side). But Tarzan sucked. Plain and simple. It might even have been worse than last season’s Dracula, which, at the time, was one of the worst musicals I’d ever seen. But at least Dracula was visually interesting. Tarzan has a boring set consisting essentially of green streamers. It has incredibly ugly ape costumes. (How did Shuler Hensley get involved in this?) It has long stretches of dialogue with static staging. It has unmemorable songs. The plot is, literally, pure Disney, but Matt says the movie is much better (I haven’t seen it). To make matters worse, we were sitting near a group of teenagers who’d attempted to dress up. Some of the girls in their strapless dresses looked like they were on their way to the prom.

The Wedding Singer, based on the movie of the same name about a wedding singer in 1980’s New Jersey, is a really cute show with an appealing cast, a funny book and catchy songs. (Its big earworm, “It’s Your Wedding Day”, keeps getting stuck in my head.) It also takes advantage of the ongoing ’80s nostalgia. Given all that, and the built-in New Jersey audience, it should do very well.

I can’t say enough good things about The Drowsy Chaperone. It’s really a tribute to musical theater – a show for people who love musicals – and it’s hysterical but poignant. The premise is that we’re in the apartment of a lonely middle-aged man, known as Man in Chair, who’s going to share with us his cast recording of his favorite old musical from the 1920’s, The Drowsy Chaperone (which isn’t a real show, of course). As he begins to play the album, the old musical comes alive before our eyes. Man in Chair constantly interrupts The Drowsy Chaperone with his own commentary on the actors, the songs, and the recording. But this is more than a one-gimmick show; the 1920s musical itself has terrifically witty songs and visuals, and Sutton Foster has a showstopper of a number. The whole cast is impeccable. This deserves to win lots of Tonys.

Coming up are two plays: Festen and The History Boys. I think I’m going to need some new Playbill binders.

Last night we saw Grey Gardens, the new musical based on the classic 1975 documentary, and loved it. If this were on Broadway instead of at Playwrights Horizons, Christine Ebersole would be a lock for the Tony.

Matt had the good idea of renting the documentary last week. Neither of us had seen it before (actually, I saw the first 15 minutes at a friend’s place last year, but that was it), and, after a while, I totally got into it. The story of a nutty elderly woman and her nutty middle-aged daughter stuck living together in a creepily co-dependent relationship totally reminded me of my maternal grandmother and my mom’s sister, who lived together for a long time as adults in an absurdly messy house. The movie is simultaneously entertaining and haunting. And it enhanced the musical experience, because we were able to catch many references to the film, some of them subtle.

The musical is unconventional, but it mostly works. The writers constructed the first act out of whole cloth: it takes place in 1941, thirty years before the events captured in the documentary, and the songs are mostly 1940s pastiche. The act goes on a bit too long and there are too many diegetic songs, but the foreshadowing of future events is eerie at times. The second act, more experimental, is a largely musicalized version of the documentary; thirty years have passed and everything has fallen apart. I think Sara Gettelfinger, who plays the daughter, Little Edie, in the first half, was miscast; she seems too sane to turn into the loopy 1975 version of Little Edie, played by Christine Ebersole. And I wasn’t totally convinced by Matt Cavenaugh as Joe Kennedy, Jr. in the first half and as Jerry, the teenage “Marble Faun,” in the second half. But Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson were fantastic, and they totally make the show.

It’s only running for another month, so if you want to see it, get tickets now.

I got to meet Broadway composer Henry Krieger today, best known for composing “Dreamgirls.” He works out at my gym, and he had an appointment with my personal trainer right after I did. The trainer introduced us. I told him that Matt plays “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” several times a week, is obsessed with the show, and is counting down the days until the movie opens in December. He seemed genuinely flattered. After my session, I was on an exercise bike, and I heard him tell my trainer that he’s not used to getting name recognition. I’m sure he’ll be getting more recognition again once the movie comes out.

I couldn’t wait to tell Matt when I got home. Unfortunately, he was still asleep at 2 in the afternoon. Once I got out of the shower, he was awake, and I told him. He was psyched. Then he told me I had to blog about it so he could link to it. (Clearly it’s taken me a few hours.)

Now that I’ve met Henry Krieger, I need to meet the other two famous people who apparently work out at my gym: Victor Garber and the Verizon guy. (One of the desk workers at the gym asked me if I was the latter a couple of weeks ago. Must be the glasses.)

I had a great time with Andy at the Met last night. We saw La Traviata.

I feel a rush whenever I’m at Lincoln Center. Walking over to it last night, seeing the opera house directly ahead, I felt a surge of pleasure. Something about Lincoln Center makes me feel like a kid, all secure and safe. I wonder if it’s because I saw The Nutcracker there when I was little? The highest of the fine arts are there – opera, ballet, the symphony. Timeless, and sheltered from the rest of the world.

The ticket-takers at the Met wear cloaks. Fancy. And the Met has a true lobby, unlike cramped Broadway theaters. Most operas seem to be three acts, so there are always at least two intermissions, and they’re long – about 20 minutes each. Plenty of time to go out to the various lobby levels and people-watch or go down to the lower level and explore all the portrait paintings of past opera stars.

I’m more or less an opera novice – this was only the third time I’d been to the opera. (And one of those times was an outdoor performance where I could hardly see anything.) It was my second time at the Met, so I’ve now seen both La Bohème and La Traviata at the Met, two of the most accessible operas. (The outdoor opera I saw was Rigoletto, another of the most accessible ones.) Traviata was beautifully performed. I wish I could say more about it, but I’m hardly the opera veteran Andy is. It was terrifically sung. Because the house is so big, though, the sound doesn’t really envelop or overpower you at the Met. I wonder what other opera houses are like.

I’m curious now to attend some less accessible operas. I have some Wagner recordings – the Ring Cycle, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, and Tristan und Isolde – and I love most of what I’ve heard. His music seems meatier and his themes more intellectual than the more popular Italian operas. But I’ve never actually seen a Wagner opera performed live. But I enjoyed last night and all its trappings so much that I’ve taken the plunge and bought myself a ticket to see Wagner’s Parisfal at the Met in May – a five-and-a-half-hour opera I’ve never even heard. Yes, I’m possibly crazy, but it’s supposed to be one of his best. I didn’t go for the cheapest ticket, either, because I figure that if I’m going to sit through a five-and-a-half-hour opera, I may as well splurge.

This opera stuff is kinda fun.

We saw The Woman in White last night, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest Broadway show, which previously opened in London. I liked it more than I’d expected to (though to be honest, my expectations were not very high). The lead actress is recovering from cancer treatment, but I thought the understudy was great. The coolest thing about the show were the sets – they’re all computer-generated animated projections. As Matt put it, it was like playing a giant game of Myst.

Like most Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, this one basically has three motifs that are repeated over and over until you can’t get the damn things out of your head.

Damn you, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and your catchy earworms.

Avenue Q is not doing too well in Las Vegas:

Steve Wynn, the casino and hotel magnate, paid $5 million for the exclusive North American rights to the Tony Award-winning show.

He built a theater especially for it in his new hotel, Wynn Las Vegas; hired, at very high salaries, several cast members from the original Broadway company; and revved up a nationwide publicity machine to hype its Vegas premiere last September.

The result?

An orchestra section in a 1,200-seat theater that’s half empty at most performances and a balcony section that Wynn hasn’t even bothered to open yet, theater people in Las Vegas and New York told The Post this week.

According to someone familiar with the balance sheet, “Q” either breaks even or loses money week to week. Advance ticket sales are well under $1 million.

One heavy-hitting Broadway producer, who’s sending one of his shows to Vegas, says Wynn has been grumbling about “Avenue Q.”

“He thinks it was a mistake,” this person says. …

One reason the show clicked in New York was that, from the very first preview, it had great word of mouth.

But theater people who’ve looked closely at Vegas say word of mouth is hard to generate in a town made up of people who are just passing through.

“There isn’t a permanent population,” says a Broadway producer.

“Q” may also be too sophisticated for Vegas audiences, whose tastes generally run to animal acts, Celine Dion and slot machines.