The Flop That Would Not Die

Remember Glory Days? It was the brand new musical which premiered a year or so ago at Signature Theatre to positive response, then transferred to Broadway and flopped big time. A musical has not opened and closed on the same night in many years, but Glory Days accomplished the feat. But something about the piece keeps it going, and a Japanese language production was recently announced. Now, the young creators and stars have more good news: the score is being recorded. I have no doubt this will be a boon for the show, giving thousands of high schools, colleges, and small professional theatres a chance to hear the music. I wrote a while ago that, with such a small, young cast and limited requirements regarding sets and orchestration, the show could rise from the ashes of its Broadway demolition and find regional life.

A full cast recording is a phenomenal achievement for a show with such a checkered history. While I was not really won over by the show, it's a great chance for authors Nick Blaemire (music) and James Gardiner (book) to become better known. Anything that leads to more opportunities for new theatrical writers is a good thing.

Friday Dance Party: The Panza Pirouette

If you occasionally drop by these pages, you know that I am currently working in a lovely production of Man of La Mancha at Wayside Theatre. Sancho Panza is well-remembered by anybody who has ever seen a production of the show, as a comic sidekick (though he has some tender moments as the play progresses, which I hope I fulfill). He gets lots of laughs and two throw-away comic songs; I'm enjoying the heck out of playing him.

In our production, Sancho also acts much like a stage manager, helping to set the various scenes, passing out props, etc. These instances have been choreographed just like dance numbers, and as I have very little formal dance training, I believe I'm doing only moderately well in this department. Here is one of the sequences when I'm setting the stage by handing out props (in this case, cups). I was so lucky to have someone in the audience last weekend with a Flip Camera who captured this brief moment on film, enabling me to share it as this week's Dance Party. If you have trouble spotting me (my make up transforms me completely), I'm the guy in the blue tights:

Saturday Knight Fever

Man of La Mancha is up and running. I wrote about our final week of rehearsal and our opening night earlier in these pages; we have now completed our first regular week of performances, which were enhanced by several glowing reviews.

Now, about reviews. Usually, they are not very well written, and are often penned by people who have very little experience in live theatre. At least two of our raves are more book reports than critiques, but you know, if they are positive, we don't make noise. It's only if the review is negative that we complain about the sloppy writing.

As I said, all our reviews have been raves, and I hope they will help increase attendance. Wayside Theatre depends on them, as well as on good word-of-mouth response. So far, we have had smaller houses than I would expect, for a musical with this kind of name-recognition. But of course, small houses don't necessarily mean "bad" houses. In fact, we have had two spectacular audiences, including our big Opening Night, and another which included dozens of teen aged actors. They were great fun.

Other houses, though, have surprised me with their reticence. Wayside's core audience is an older one (nothing new there; I doubt there is a theatre in the country which does not depend on seniors for their attendance), and out here in Middletown, VA, the oldsters seem tired. Last Saturday evening's performance, for example, I was surprised that the response during the show was so tepid. Nation-wide, Saturday Night performances are usually the best of the week. But here, it was as if the audience was worn out before we ever started. Interestingly, though throughout the performance these folks seem overly quiet, when it comes time for the curtain call, they are up on their feet, applauding wildly. They clearly are enjoying the show, and are attentive to the show, they just don't respond during the show.

I admit to being disconcerted by this response (or lack thereof), which I feel pretty keenly, as Sancho has so many comic moments. There is nothing odder than delivering laugh lines to tentative response. In my younger years as an actor, I would be quite worried, and would try to "pump it up," to go Over The Top to get more vocal response (the role of Sancho Panza already straddles the line between the comedic and the clownish, so it would take only a small push to shove my performance into cartoon territory). But I am an older and wiser coot now, and have resisted that temptation.

So far.

Friday Dance Party: My Favorite Carradine

While the late David Carradine's ex-wives are all crawling out of the woodwork for their 15 minutes of fame, dishing the poor guy's sexual deviations, I am remembering a pretty swell stage performance of his younger half-brother Keith. I wrote about seeing the original Broadway production of The Will Rogers Follies here, in which Keith surprised the heck out of me with a warm and winning performance. The show was an enjoyable ride, and swiped the Best Musical Tony from the blockbuster Miss Saigon (coincidentally, the subject of last week's Dance Party. Eventually, we'll hit them all...). I did not see Miss Saigon (that helicopter phobia) and thus hoped Carradine would win a Tony for his performance, but Jonathan Pryce's "Engineer" instead took the prize.

But the undisputed star of The Will Rogers Follies did not appear on its stage. That distinction was held by creator/director/choreographer/everything else Tommy Tune, who turned a pretty slim story into a series of showstoppers. Tune had another musical running simultaneously, Grand Hotel, which I also saw and loved. The differences between the two shows couldn't be more striking: while Grand Hotel was dark, grim, and utterly pessimistic (in the first moments of the show, an emaciated doctor crosses the stage and shoots up heroin before beginning the story), Will Rogers was bright and sparkling like a Fourth of July parade. (Grand Hotel has also appeared on the Friday Dance Party here; see what I mean about eventually getting to everything?)

Here's a swell clip from Will Rogers Follies, which was telecast live in Japan to attract foreign tourism. Try to ignore the subtitles; to my knowledge, this videotape has never been released in the US. A portion of this same sequence was performed on the Tony awards program, where it took the roof off the joint. This showstopper, buried in the middle of act II, proves that Tommy Tune can do anything, even bring down the house with choreography which all happens sitting down.

Enjoy my favorite Carradine, as he considers running for president:

The Kookie, Quirky Carradines

David Carradine:

1936-2009

By now, everybody in the world is buzzing over the provocative death of David Carradine. I don't begin to understand such things, being the naive innocent that I am. I do wonder why Carradine, if he indeed was...um...pleasuring himself with asphyxiation, was found in the closet. Is that part of the fantasy? Well, we may never know, though the Carradine family has apparently requested FBI intervention to sort out the mess in Bangkok.

I confess that I was not a big fan of David's, I suppose because I had no interest in his role in Kung Fu, which made him into a martial arts icon. His earlier breakout performance was in Bound for Glory, a bio-pic about folk singer Arlo Guthrie, which I also have not seen. But I have no doubt he was a fine actor, if for no other reason that it was in his genes.

The Carradine clan must be Hollywood's largest acting dynasty, beating the Baldwins, the Bridges, the Arquettes, and the Fondas. Patriarch John Carradine was surely the most prolific of the family, appearing in hundreds of films and television shows during his long career.

If he is remembered at all these days, it is as a regular player in lower budgeted films of the western and horror genre. His gaunt face and deep basso voice kept him employed for 60 years or more. John Ford used him frequently, and he created the role of the disillusioned preacher in the classic Grapes of Wrath:

John was an experienced stage actor, and led his own Shakespearean troop for many years. He has a fond place in my heart for his stint in the original production of one of my favorite musicals, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, in which he created the role of the procurer Marcus Lycus (he's on the far left).

John married multiple times, and sired four sons, three of whom (David, Keith, and Robert) became actors (he adopted a fifth son, Bruce, who is also a performer).

Middle son Keith Carradine is well-known for his appearances in several Robert Altman films, including Nashville, in which he sang his own composition, "I'm Easy." He won the songwriting Oscar for the tune. (Keith will be starring in this week's Friday Dance Party in these pages...aren't you trembling in anticipation?)

Robert Carradine is fairly well-known these days for having played Hillary Duff's father on the Disney series Lizzie McGuire. In his earlier career, he was a regular in the Revenge of the Nerds film series, and appeared with his siblings David and Keith as the Younger Brothers in The Long Riders.

The third generation of Carradines is headed by Keith's daughter Martha Plimpton, who was conceived while her parents appeared together in the original Broadway production of Hair. Ah, free love! Plimpton has had a long career in film and onstage, including a starring role in a John Waters movie which is near and dear to my heart, Pecker. (I'm in it, but did not work with Martha.) She is known to a whole generation of movie-goers as Stef Steinbrenner in the smash Goonies; she was often cast as the tomboyish, troubled teenager in such films as Steve Martin's Parenthood and Running on Empty, in which she appeared with her boyfriend River Phoenix. (She dumped him over his repeated drug abuse; he later died from an overdose.) Plimpton appears regularly onstage, and recently won three back-to-back Tony nominations for her work in Coast of Utopia, Top Girls, and Pal Joey.

Other members of the third generation of acting Carradines include Robert's daughter Ever, and David's daughters Calista and Kansas. Yes, these people actually named their children "Ever" and "Kansas." David even named his son, by actress Barbara Hershey, "Free." (That travesty has since been rectified: Free Carradine changed his name to "Tom").

There are other Carradines floating about, including Christopher, one of the original half-brothers, who became an architect and worked with Disney Imagineering, and Michael Bowen, another half-brother who has a recurring role on Lost. But my favorite member of the family remains Keith, probably because I caught one of his stage performances years ago. You wouldn't think anyone could be such a smooth dancer sitting down, but Keith accomplished the feat. Check back on Friday for the Dance Party, and you'll see why I think of him as the least odd of the oddball Carradines...

Kenny Rankin

1940-2009

In a career spanning four decades, Rankin was a well-regarded singer and songwriter. Though he had already released several singles, he was first noticed as a lead guitarist on Bob Dylan's landmark album "Bringin' It All Back Home" in the 60s. Appearances on The Tonight Show boosted his profile, and he became one of Johnny Carson's favorite musical guests (Carson contributed liner notes to Rankin's "Mind Dusters" album).

His hits included "Spanish Harlem," "Round Midnight" and "Peaceful." His smooth guitar skills were so evident on his cover of The Beatles' hit "Blackbird" that Paul McCartney requested he play the tune when he and John Lennon were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. His own compositions were recorded by Peggy Lee, Carmen McRea and Mel Torme, among others. Rankin was a long-time supporter of WeSpark, an organization created by my late friend Wendy Jo Sperber as a support center for cancer patients.

Here is a typically smooth performance of a soul-comforting tune:

Kenny Rankin died Sunday from lung cancer. He was 69.

Shape Shifting

I'm not a sci-fi geek, but I have long heard of "shape-shifters," who are supernatural beings able to morph from one form to another at will. I wonder, though, if there is a term for a person who causes shape-shifting to occur? If so, the names "Warner Crocker" and "Steve Przybylski" would be mentioned in the Wikipedia entry describing the term.


Last week, we began our third and final week of rehearsal for Man of La Mancha. We were a mess. Well, that's probably putting it too dramatically; we weren't a MESS, exactly, but we were clearly under-rehearsed and headed toward opening a merely serviceable production of this classic show. We were running out of time. Outside variables (such as sharing Warner and Steve for two weeks, a subject about which I refuse to shut up) added to the intrinsic difficulty of putting such a huge show onto the compact stage at Wayside. Progress at the beginning of the week was hampered by a number of things, including the necessity of re-staging much of the combat and dance movement which had been choreographed the previous week. Those earlier rehearsals were unfortunately conducted without the benefit of music, either live or on tape, so the synchronization of the music to the movement stalled the progress Warner had hoped we would be making. (He writes about the panic in the eyes of the actors here.)


Wayside has always had a limited rehearsal period, and who hasn't? I'm reminded of a tale I heard in grad school, of a production of Hamlet being directed by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre. He rehearsed the damn thing for a solid year. On opening night, someone asked his opinion of the show. He replied, "If we only had two more weeks..."


So, the early part of the week had its share of stress. The lovely and talented Vaughn Irving was feeling a lot of it, as he choreographed all the fight and dance movement in the show, despite declaring over and over, "I'm not a choreographer." Sorry, Vaughn, yes you are. Get used to it.






Vaughn is one of the many success stories to come out of the Wayside Theatre intern program. He was an intern the year I first appeared at Wayside in Black Coffee, and since then has returned many times to its stage. He is a fine young actor (with a booming voice perfect for his role as The Captain, where he summons Cervantes to be questioned by the Spanish Inquisition), and is also a skilled and versatile musician (he spends most of our show in Pitland, playing a variety of percussive instruments). Vaughn's choreography for the show is both hilarious and harrowing, and includes a comic combat sequence, a gypsy dance, a stylized number with mirrored shields, and a frightening rape ballet.



Oh, and horses who hoof. The first big number of La Mancha comes after a lengthy dramatic scene which opens the play, and in a startling bit of stagecraft, Vaughn, Warner, and Steve (our musical muse) created a moment which brought spontaneous applause from the full theatre on opening night. Yes, after a rocky start early in the week, Warner and Steve, our "shape-shifters," did not surrender; with a positive and optimistic outlook, they pressed onward, and the week ended with two solid preview performances on Saturday (I'll relate the story of my huge gaffe during the first preview in a future entry...believe me, it's worth waiting for...).


The final proof that our show had shape-shifted from a tame production of a creaky chestnut into a dynamic illustration of the power of Live Theatre came on Sunday's opening night. As Cervantes and his manservant mounted those prancing actors wearing horse heads, and became Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Defenders of the Right, our opening night audience exploded.



It's one of the most memorable moments I have ever experienced onstage.