Fire'd

As usual around here, the weathercasters wreaked havoc with their dire predictions of a Winter Storm, due to hit DC this afternoon. Events were canceled, schoolkids were sent home, disaster loomed. But instead, we received a light dusting of the biggest, fluffiest snow flakes imaginable.

So, tonight, for the first time in a very long while, I lit a fire. The crackling makes one of the most relaxing (and most exciting. Go figure...) sounds in all of Nature.

A simmering fire, a martini with all the trimmings, and all is well.

Getting With the Program

My previous rant against Manhattan started me wondering just how many New York shows I have seen over the years. There is one way to tell, by digging out my programs.





When I first started attending professional shows, I saved every program, but that collection soon grew way out of hand. If I had continued that habit, I would now need a separate building to house so many tons of paper. So, I do not have concrete evidence of all the shows I have seen. It's too bad, because those first shows I attended, as an early teen, all live on in my memory. Growing up in Atlanta, I saw several seasons of Theatre of the Stars, the summer stock company which brought in mid-level celebrities to star in various older shows.




















It was there that I saw one of my favorite clowns, Paul Lynde, in Neil Simon's Plaza Suite, starring opposite Elizabeth Allen, who went on to costar as his wife in his sitcom. During those summers, I also saw Joel Grey in 1776, only a year before he won his Oscar, Ann Blythe in The Sound of Music (she was waaaaaay too old), and Betty Grable in Hello, Dolly! Guess who swung through town as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof? Leonard Nimoy.



























Vincent Price came through Atlanta as Fagin in Oliver, and as I was only about 12, you would think I would have imagined myself as Oliver, or more likely, the Artful Dodger. But no, I came away from the show wanting to play Fagin. It remains on my list of roles to play.


















Well, I'm glad I still have those memories, because I long ago threw out the programs.
But I made a point of keeping all the programs from Broadway shows I have seen over the years. Yesterday, I rummaged around downstairs and found them. Some of them have not been examined in over 30 years.





I mentioned in an earlier blog that a group of us from college made the trip from LA to NY several times, and my programs verify that memory. I took trips to Manhattan in late 1975, in late 1977, again in 1978, then again in 1991. Over that period, I saw well over 30 productions, including some masterpieces and some mistakes.





I've made a cursory examination of these programs from the past, and have found some really surprising stuff. I'll sort it all out, and report back my findings.

















You can't wait, can you?

So Many Possibilities

I have a love/hate relationship with New York. I'm in the hate phase these days.






For many years I was in the love phase. Those were the "tourist" years, back when I was in college, and a group of us made the trip from LA, every year, the week between Christmas and New Year's. We made the trip solely to see shows, and, with the holiday matinees staggered throughout the week, one could see 10 or 12 shows if you tried hard enough.






And I always did. Rather than spend a lot of time on touristy traps, we spent our time On Broadway (and occasionally, Off-). I have already mentioned that these trips afforded me the chance to see many now classic shows with their original casts.







In the same week, for example, I saw the original Chicago, with legends Chita Rivera, Gwen Verdon, and Jerry Orbach, and the original A Chorus Line, right after it moved uptown from the Public Theatre.






But I never go to NY these days to see a show. I bet I've only seen two or three there in the past decade. Instead, my NY trips are simply schlepps north, looking for work. I am only brought to the City That Never Sleeps when I have an audition there.








I used to look forward to these audition trips. I had some nice success with them early on, right after I finished grad school. In fact, the very first time I ever went to NY for an audition, I booked the gig. It was with Shenandoah Summer Music Theatre, and it began a relationship which continues to this day. I've already written about that theatrical birth in a previous blog.











I've had limited success with other Manhattan auditions. Most of them run together in my fading memory, but I do recall one or two with some humor. Every time I'm summoned to NY to attend one of these overcrowded monsters, I try to remember one instance years ago. I don't even remember what the gig was, but I had been given some sides to study out in the hallway before being called in to read. This ante-chamber served as the waiting area for at least a dozen auditions happening in various rooms at this rehearsal studio. So, many people were sitting around in states of nervousness (or feigned indifference, or what have you), preparing to be called into the Principal's Office.











I couldn't help noticing an odd duck among us, a young man with (what's the PC term these days?) a developmental handicap. He had clearly wandered in off the street, looking for something to audition for. He was seated excitedly among us, waiting for someone, anyone, to come out of one of the doors so he could announce his intention to audition.











I glanced up at him, and he beamed a huge grin at me. "So many doors!" he exclaimed with wonderful anticipation. "So many possibilities!"











I remember that guy every time I am called up to one of those horrible rehearsal studios where auditions are held. Sometimes, it helps.









Here's one time it did. The gig was a summer stock production of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. After performing my standard monologue, the director proceeded to tell me all about his concept for this production. Shakespeare's treatise on Young Love, Courtly Behavior, and Growing Up, was to be set in...outer space.











The director got more and more excited, telling me all about this new interpretation which would shed so much light on Shakespeare's play, including the fact that it would take place on the Planet Navarre. I kid you not, the Princess and her ladies were to arrive on Navarre via spacecraft from (wait for it): The Planet France (my first thought was, "are they coneheads?", but I kept my mouth shut).











Though the four sets of lovers would all be human in appearance, the rustics local to the Planet Navarre (Costard, Holofernes, Nathaniel, etc) would be in alien form. Don Armado and his page, Moth, would be visiting from the Planet Spain.












I could feel my eyes glaze over as I smiled and nodded and tried to react enthusiastically to each more outrageous concept (I needed the job). I was given a speech of Boyet's (attendant to the Princess of France) to look over, out in the hall. Ten minutes later, I was called back into the room to impress everyone with my mastery of rhyming iambic couplets. But, only a second before I opened my mouth to begin, the director proclaimed, "Oh, by the way, you're an android."












The next 90 seconds are a complete blank in my memory; I only came to when I escaped from the room.








I booked the gig, and the highlight of the Centennial Theatre Festival's 2000 season was "Love's Labour's Lost in Space."








So many possibilities...

David Groh

1939-2008

So long, Joe.

(Don't) Stop The Madness

There is finally something coming down the turnpike at me, and it's not a runaway truck. It is instead a return to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where I will once again be appearing in their resident production of Shear Madness.

It's always fun to be a part of their spring cast, which works only four days a week. The city is overwhelmed with tourists during the spring, largely due to school trips, and Shear has shrewdly taken advantage of that fact. For about 15 weeks from March to June, two complete and separate casts cover a total of 12 performances of the show per week.

There is a reason this show celebrated its 20th anniversary in DC last August. It is extremely well-produced.

I'm sure I will be blogging more as we begin rehearsals next month. In fact, I will get less than a week's worth, as the director will be spending much more time on the two newbies joining the cast for the first time. The remaining four cast members have done the show before, so less personal attention is needed.

As I've noted before, Shear Madness is the most fun gig in town, and also the most challenging. Look out!

Roy Scheider

1932-2008

It's Showtime.

Album Droppings: Unexcused Absences

I deserve a pink slip for some of the gross oversights in my CD collection.





I have finally reached a resting point in my mammoth undertaking: the transfer of my vinyl record collection to digital format.





It's taken over three months, but I have now completed the bulk of my task. But there is still plenty of work to do. I have about a hundred records which are not cast albums or soundtracks. Believe it or not, I actually purchased many "regular" albums, by "regular" musical artists.





But before I launch into that chasm, I have to confess that there were some very serious oversights regarding my theatrical collection.






I transferred well over a hundred albums, but I skipped about a hundred others. These were albums which fell into one of two categories: they were either pieces which I had already purchased on CD, or they are shows which I have decided I really don't need on home-made CD. Among those in the latter category are such items as the original Guys and Dolls (don't need it, I've got the Nathan Lane revival on CD. So sue me.), or the soundtrack to Flashdance (what was I doing with that, I wonder?).










But I have run across a handful of albums which I never re-purchased on CD, and should have. These items are imperative to have in digital form, and it is incomprehensible to me that I overlooked purchasing them, when they became available at the CD store.

















The most egregious example of my neglect is certainly the original cast recording of Sweeney Todd. Yes, I have the recent Patty LuPone revival, which is terrific, but why the hell I don't have the original Angela Lansbury / Len Cariou / Victor Garber recording on CD is just incomprehensible. The vinyl release is a double album set, and includes the controversial sequence which is almost always cut these days, the judge's self-flagellation scene. God, that's good!
















I'm also surprised that I never purchased the original cast album of Chicago, considering I saw the production live. Gwen Verdon, Chita Rivera, Jerry Orbach, supported by Mary McCarty and Barney Martin, all sharing the theatre with me, and I never bothered to pick up the CD? Whatever happened to class?





















Oh, and while I'm thinking about Kander and Ebb musicals, I'm stunned that I never purchased the CD release of an album I listened to hundreds of times in high school, the film soundtrack of Cabaret. This film may be the perfect example of how to translate a stage show to film, without alienating a modern audience.








Of course, I didn't recognize that at the time, all I knew was, I wanted to play the Emcee.

(and in 1989, I did.)

There are a couple of other film soundtracks which I have on vinyl, and should have purchased on CD. Hard to believe, but I never tracked down the soudtrack to Funny Girl, which is surely Barbra Streisand's finest film musical. I almost wore out my vinyl copy. I have the Broadway cast album, but Streisand really came into her own in the film, and the soundtrack is testimony to that. Everyone says it contains the finest recording of "People" she ever sang, but I'm not so sure (I think she always sang it better live, in concert). But it definitely contains the most exciting rendition of "Don't Rain on My Parade" ever recorded.














What did I have that I don't have? The soundtrack to On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, though again, I have the Broadway album. The movie was not all that effective, due to the unfortunate miscasting of Yves Montand as the male lead, but our Babs is a quirky hoot, and sings the score much better than Barbara Harris, who played it on Broadway.






















And what am I doing without a single CD of Sweet Charity? I don't know. I've transferred my album of Gwen Verdon's original cast recording, but I can't really understand how the years went by without my ever having purchased any digital recording of this classic show. There's gotta be something better than this...









If my friends could see me now...








In a day or two, it's time to start on the next section of my project. It's time to tranfer all my other music to CD. I'm hoping this goes a bit faster. I know I purchased a great many of these albums just to get a single song. I have the ability to transfer just one track from a full-length album, and I have a hunch I'll be doing that a lot.








It will be an eclectic group. I have everything from Gloria Gaynor to Joan Rivers to Billy Idol to Flip Wilson to Melanie to Dionne Warwick to Glen Campbell to Lily Tomlin to...well, you get the picture.








As before, the best place to start is at the beginning.: