My New York Branch: Year One, Assembly Required

My Garden-In-A-Glass martini takes on added flourish in NY

With the massively destructive Sandy roaring through the New York region last week, Halloween was a bit overlooked, which is fine by me, since I am not a fan of dressing up in costumes for free.  What was also overlooked, though, was the fact that Halloween marked my one year anniversary in New York City.

The corridor outside my apartment has a large picture window facing the river, where the big cruise ships dock. I enjoy looking out this window as I wait for the elevator.

That anniversary is only technical, as far as I'm concerned.  I do not consider that I have been in NY one solid year.  Yes, it's true that, one year ago on Halloween, I had my final walkthrough of the apartment awarded to me in Manhattan Plaza, and I accepted the keys. 

The lobby of Manhattan Plaza is always decorated.  I failed to snap a shot of the spectacular Christmas decor, but here's the lobby during Easter.

I have been paying rent here for a year, but I still don't believe I've actually lived here a year. 

I am incompetent with my hands, but I assembled each
piece of furniture, like this desk, as it arrived.
It was agonizing work for me.

That first night, I had dashed up from DC to take possession of the apartment, which would have been passed on to the next person on the waiting list if I had not done so, but as I was finishing up a show in DC, I only stayed overnight. 

It took many months before my apt. had enough furniture
to be considered a home. This is a picture of my
newly delivered couch. It stayed in that box two weeks.

Then the holidays arrived, which included lots of traveling for me, then business in DC kept me there well into the New Year.  I really don't feel like I landed in NY until around March.

But on paper at least, I have been in NY a full year.  That first night, Halloween last year, I had only a blowup mattress, a high director's chair, and a martini glass to prove that I was "home." 

Here's that couch, out of the box.

A trick-or-treater unexpectedly knocked on my door; I invited her in, to prove that I had, indeed, just moved in, and had nothing to contribute to her bag of candy. 

An inflatable mattress is great for guests, but when you sleep on it night after night, you start to feel like you're perpetually camping. As soon as the holidays were over, I bought a bed.

It took a long while for the anxiety of being in New York to subside.  I never had the strong desire to live in Manhattan (and I think you really need that to be successful here), but when the apt dropped into my lap, it could not be refused.

But there was only one reason to give the city a try: my career.  So once I settled in to the New York branch for more than a night or two at a time, I began attending general auditions (more on that in a mo'). 

My first piece of furniture was
waiting for me when I arrived.
Though I had to assemble it.
Which was the theme of my NY
life this year.

It must have been around February or March when I snagged my first New York gig, The Taming of the Shrew.  I wrote about that experience here, but in a nutshell, I had a great part and an artistically satisfying time. 

Gremio in Taming of the Shrew, my NYC debut.
I alerted the media. They didn't really care.

The show was performed in Queens, which I was assured would qualify as my New York City Debut (though one witty friend advised that it would be my NY Debut until I snagged a show in Manhattan, at which time that would become my NY Debut).

It wasn't too long after winning the role of Gremio in Shrew that I did, in fact, snag my first Manhattan gig, playing the Mayor in Richard III.  I was very pleased to be asked to play the Duke of Clarence as well, when the original actor bowed out or was fired or something.  The production, about which I wrote here, was performed outside.  In August. 

The murder of Clarence in Richard III is, so far, my
favorite New York Moment.

Again, the experience was a great one for me, artistically.  Playing two very different roles in the same production is always a challenge, and I hope I accomplished it.  I would have to say, though, that with rehearsals happening in the dead of summer, outside, the process was the clammiest of any I've had.

As I write these words, I am in the midst of rehearsal for the third of the shows I've done this year. 

Next up.

A Midsummer Night's Dream will be another first for me:  it will be my Manhattan Debut INDOORS.  We'll be performing on the fourth floor of a building in downtown Manhattan, assuming that the chaos from Hurricane Sandy has subsided by then.

I'm not sure how to gauge my past year in New York professionally.  Everyone is told that actors are likely to snag only one job out of every 100 auditions.  Since February, when I started attending general cattle call auditions in earnest, I've had a whopping 64 New York auditions.  I have booked three of those jobs, and artistically speaking, those three were all gems.  But all three paid only subway fare.  So I've worked a lot in New York in the past year, and earned nothing.  Conversely, I've had only three stage auditions in DC since January, and all were general calls which I attended on my own (that is, without invitation).  I actually snagged one of those gigs, but had to turn it down when the producer refused to provide health insurance.  Other than a couple of film auditions which also came my way, that was the extent of my DC career this year.  I think word may be spreading that I am in New York these days, so my name does not spring to the minds of DC's theatrical casters.  I really need to address that problem, as I remain a bi-urban actor, able to work "locally" in both NY and DC.

As for my personal life, again, I'm not sure how to gauge the year.  I was pleased to reconnect with several old friends from various eras of my life, who have settled in New York (though I have not spent as much time with them as I would like).  And I've largely lost touch with my DC buddies, who are always unsure when I will be in the District. It is another aspect of living in two cities which I need to address and correct. 



 

The past year has been spent in assembly mode. It wasn't just that desk, I assembled every single item in the apartment except the mattress and the rug.  A rolling desk chair, the couch, the floor lamp, a coffee table, two end tables, a shelving unit, and even an electric fireplace were put together by my highly uncoordinated hands.  But assembling a New York life required more than hours and hours of fumbling around with tools in my hands.  I'm comfortable but still a bit isolated in this second branch of my life; I need to expand a social network here, and of course, get my professional life improving at a nicer pace.

Manhattan Plaza

Through a fluke in the system at Manhattan Plaza, my lease will be running to July of 2013.  So, in June, I'll need to evaluate all these aspects of my life, and decide if maintaining this dual city life is worth the energy.  For now, though, I am glad I took the plunge to open a second branch, and look forward to what happens next.  Stay tuned, and so will I.

Friday Dance Party: A Tale Of Two Cities

As I write these words, powerlines are sputtering back to life in Lower Manhattan.  For almost five days, I've been living in a city split in two. 

Manhattan's skyline for most of the week.

I was in the New York Branch of my life when Sandy came a'calling, and I sat out the storm quite comfortably (and a little guiltily) by watching events unfold from my windows on the 29th floor.  Lots of wind, a bit of rain, and absolutely no flooding in the midtown area of Manhattan. 

We're told the crane dangling over 57th St. has now been
secured. Another crane must be constructed to remove it.
The process will take weeks.

On TV, I watched the local ABC affiliate (the only station I receive clearly on my swanky flatscreen TV, don't get me started...) as it covered the storm non-stop.  All their intrepid reporters were knee-deep in water from around the New York region.  Online, I watched the swaying of the broken crane dangling precariously above 57th Street, and I watched the huge substation at 14th Street explode.

It was that explosion, more than any flooding, which plunged the lower half of the island of Manhattan into darkness.  It was eerie, and the next morning, I discovered that I was only five or so blocks from the blackout.  The rest of this week, Manhattan has been split into the Haves and the Havenots.  Life proceeded with relish in my neighborhood, with Broadway losing only a day or so of performances, and the area's nightlife returning with flamboyant flourish.  Meanwhile, below 34th street, circumstances became more and more desperate, as temperatures dropped and rescue services were hard to find. 

This is not a dollhouse.  The facade to this building in Chelsea collapsed. Can you imagine cooking dinner in your underwear when suddenly the side of your house opens up?

Mayor Bloomberg, who should sometimes be reminded that he is mayor of all five boroughs of New York City, is first and foremost a businessman. 

Mayor Bloomberg both helped and
hurt recovery efforts.

As such, he recognizes that the business of New York is centered squarely in Manhattan, so his priorities all week have been to restore power to the island.  He is also aware of the power of public relations, so all week, he insisted that the internationally known New York Marathon would take place on Sunday.  The fact that much of the route traced through some of the worst hit neighborhoods of the city didn't seem to register with him.  The televised sight of fit runners jogging past people whose lives were ruined was a PR nightmare waiting to happen, so finally, that marathon was cancelled (but not before thousands of runners from all over the world had arrived, causing more chaos.  If Bloomberg had taken the advice of EVERYBODY ELSE, he would have cancelled the marathon Tuesday morning. Yet another headache he created himself.)

Bloomie also "fixed" the traffic problem which he helped create.  From the first days of the crisis, the mayor insisted that city employees be at work.  Well, city employees, though they work in Manhattan, can't afford to live there, and all the underground tunnels and, for a time, all the above river bridges, were closed, so it's unclear to me how he thought all those employees should get to their Manhattan posts from their homes in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and New Jersey. 

Sandy created a star, and it wasn't
the Christie/Obama bromance.
Bloomie's ASL interpreter stole
every press conference with her
style. Look for a parody on SNL.

Of course, they drove, creating the most chaotic traffic disaster in New York's history.  To solve THIS problem (which was largely of his own making), Bloomie imposed draconian carpool measures to reduce the number of cars streaming into the city.  Unfortunately, the exact details of those measures were not communicated to the cops on the ground, and massive confusion (and more traffic nightmares) were created.

With bridges and tunnels closed, city workers, required by Bloomberg to return to work, did so by car, causing unbelievable gridlock.

In none of these instances has Mayor Bloomberg admitted that he made any mistakes;  instead, the city government was simply dealing with problems which had to be "tweaked."

Meanwhile, my lone TV station continued to show tragic images of the devastation done by Sandy, and the lack of progress in providing assistance to the storm's victims.  The images being shown looked like a post-apocalyptic world, which, at long last, leads to this week's Dance Party.



You wanna pee? You gotta pay.

Mayor Bloomberg reminds me of Caldwell B. Cladwell.  Don't recognize the name?  He's the antagonist, villain, and showiest role in the most unfortunately titled musical ever to hit Broadway, Urinetown. 

 

John Cullum as corporate tycoon and political manipulator Caldwell Cladwell.

That title was so problematic that nowadays, when the show is produced in high schools and community theatres, it is sometimes called You're In Town.  But the title is appropriate for this cynical satire, which concerns a post apocalyptic society where water is scarce, and in order to conserve it, drastic measures are taken. 

Little Sally and Officer Lockstock
provide Brechtian commentary.

The show is an unusual mix of snark and heart, distastefully placed outside a public urinal, where all must pay to pee.  The romantic couple in the story both die, this is not your typical Broadway musical.  The piece moved from the New York Musical Fringe Festival to Off-Broadway to Broadway over the course of a few years, but was never a blockbuster.  The subject matter and the characters were just too unlikeable.

Hunter Foster leads a revolt among the inhabitants.  It does not end well.

The milieu of Urinetown reminds me of the electrically deprived sections of New York City in Sandy's aftermath.  This clip comes from the Tony Awards, and features Urinetown's hero, played by Hunter Foster. 

Don't fall in love with our romantic
leads.  They don't make it.

The number itself is a little bland for a rabble-rouser, but I guess it must have been the most commercially accessible of the songs.  It certainly would not have inspired me to dash out to buy a ticket to the show, in fact, I've never seen a full production. (But you have to love a musical number which includes a tied-up hostage.)  If life were a musical, this might be the song which the inhabitants of the under-served victims of Sandy might use as their anthem.
I've heard that the creators of Urinetown are working on a prequel, explaining how society degenerated. Perhaps it will be ready for next year's hurricane.

Friday Dance Party: Hurricane Sandy Dumbrowski

Considering how much I dislike the musical Grease, it's alarming how often the subject of that piece shows up in these pages.  When Jeff Conaway died a while ago, he inspired this Dance Party.  I also wrote about Grease when I saw the Olney Theatre production a year or more ago.  In both those entries, I mentioned that I earned my Equity card while appearing in Grease, so I guess it holds a certain place in my heart, though not for its artistry, which is minimal. 

"Alone At The Drive-In" is one of the nicer tunes in Grease, but was removed for the film to make way for a new ballad for John Travolta, appropriately called"Sandy".

The bullying of nerdy Eugene creates comic fodder in Grease.

I disagree with its message that "fitting in" with a popular crowd is motivation enough to completely change who you are.  In fact, this may be the only hit musical to feature bullying as an acceptable activity.

Grab those cigarettes and leather pants, girls, if you want to fit in! This film role turned Olivia Newton-John into a movie musical star, but only until we discovered she could not act.  Xanadu, anyone?

(But Grease is still a lot of fun to be in.  It's just not much fun to sit through...)

Perhaps inevitably, though, the show reappears on this week's Dance Party.  As everyone in the country must know by now, Hurricane Sandy is rumbling up the eastern seaboard, and everyone's getting all excited, particularly in the two branches of my current life, DC and NY.  Both cities are preparing to get hit with what they are calling Frankenstorm. 

Adrienne Barbeau and
Barry Bostwick went on to
lively careers.

I'll be watching Frankenstorm from my window on the 29th floor.

Well, the leading lady in Grease is Sandy, a sweet and sensitive character who is bullied into conforming to a stereotype in order to survive high school.  Nice message.  A year or so ago, as Hurricane Irene invaded the mid-Atlantic, an extra-special Dance Party (on a Saturday!) appeared in these pages, honoring the musical which bore her name, so why not continue that mini-trend and showcase the musical in which Sandy becomes a hoodlum?

The clip below is the longest to have appeared on the Dance Party, clocking in at 12 minutes of so, but it includes a medley of all those fun songs from the score.   

Ilene Kristen, the original Patty, went
on to a long career in soaps.

The event is the annual Gypsy of the Year Award, and the full original Broadway cast was invited to open the show. The performers are aging and grey, and you'll surely recognise Barry Bostwick, Adrienne Barbeau, and perhaps future stage director Walter Bobbie.

The original New York cast opened Off-Broadway, but the show was deemed Tony-eligible as it was produced under Broadway level contracts.  It received seven nominations, and lost them all.

Ah, those Magic Changes which happen as we age:

The original cast reunited in 2011 to perform this week's Dance Party.

The annual Gypsy of the Year competition is one of the premiere fundraisers for Broadway Cares / Equity Fights Aids.  In this clip, you will see the 2011 gypsies, as well as the Grease original cast.  I wonder if any of these kids were realizing that they were dancing and singing, side by side, with their futures.  Talk about a Halloween Horror!  To kill some time while Hurricane Sandy rages on, enjoy:

Friday Dance Party: Rita's Looks

This was one of the sassy looks which caused people to remark on my mother's resemblance to Hayworth.

Though a huge musical film star in the 40s and 50s, Rita Hayworth has never been on my radar much, I'm not sure why.  She was one of the top stars of the Golden Age of Musical Film, and she holds the distinction of being the very first person to partner, on film, with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. 

Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles play
matador. What could go wrong with
THAT marriage?

She had a complicated private life, with multiple marriages, including one to Orson Welles, another to singer Dick Haymes, and even one to a Muslim prince.  She struggled with alcohol abuse, which was, in her later life, exacerbated by what we now recognize to be Alzheimer's.  But in her prime, she was highly regarded as a dancer, voted one of the top film stars for several years running, and she is considered one of only two superstar pinup girls during WWII (the other, of course, was Betty Grable).

WWII Pin Up Girls Gable and Hayworth sent a lot of Yanks to the latrine for a lot of yanks.

Hayworth's birthday was this week,  the day before my mother's birthday, which was yesterday.  This coincidence is the real reason Rita has popped up on my radar so unexpectedly.  I've been thinking a lot about my mother this week, as often happens this time of year.  In her later years (that is, in the years I knew her), my mother was often told she resembled Juliet Prowse (I wrote about that a while ago, when Juliet had her own Dance Party).  But in my mother's earlier adult life, back when she was in her 20s and early 30s, she was often told she resembled Rita Hayworth.

Here's Rita.

Here's my mother.  There is a resemblance.

This week's Dance Party comes from 1942's You Were Never Lovelier, which contains several swell pas de deux featuring Hayworth and Astaire (in his later years, Fred revealed that Rita was his favorite dancing partner).  This number reminds me of a couple of times when I danced with my mother. 

These publicity stills were taken during my mother's trip to
Cuba (pre-Castro, of course), part of her duties as the first
Apple Blossom Queen of Hendersonville, NC.

There was the time when my mother taught me a triple-timestep in the kitchen of our house in California, and another time when the family was having a farewell dinner for me (I was moving temporarily to Utah);  that night, before leaving for the restaurant, my mother and I danced a jitterbug on the living room carpet.  These are just a couple of memories which have resurfaced in my brain this week, and since both of these memories are at least 30 years old, I'm thrilled that I still have them.

 

Here is the clip which triggered those precious memories.  Happy Birthday, Mom.

Friday Dance Party: Why Does He Have To Throw Like That?

The only baseball game I might attend is one which Al Hirschfeld would cover.

Forget the VP Debate.  The big news around the DC Branch this week was baseball.  Apparently, the Washington Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles are both still alive in their respective divisional playoffs, giving rise to hopes for what locals are calling a Beltway Series. 

Gwen Verdon does not star in this
week's Dance Party.

Catchy title, I guess, but not appropriate.  Washington has a beltway surrounding the city, so does Baltimore, but never the twain do meet.  If anything, a playoff series between the two teams should be called a Parkway Series, named after the Baltimore/Washington Parkway which connects the two cities.

And that is all I have to say about baseball. 

The boys from this week's Dance Party

I have no interest in competitive sports of any kind, and if I did, baseball would be waaaaaaaaay down the list. I still have crummy memories of my father dragging me to Atlanta Braves games, in hopes of getting me interested in some kind of sport.  Sorry, Dad, didn't happen.

But with baseball fever gripping the region (at least until tonight, when both teams are predicted to lose their respective games), it's fitting that America's Pastime take center stage on the Friday Dance Party. 

I love this caricature of Applegate in
Damn Yankees, created for my college chum
John Dantona, who is currently playing the role.

Damn Yankees, of course, immediately pops to mind, as baseball figures heavily in that story, but the musical has appeared twice in these pages: go here to see the most recent revival's showstopper, and go here to see yours truly in the most self-indulgent Dance Party ever.  So, we're tired of the Yankees, let's go to Little League instead.

Our clip comes from Falsettos, the musical from 1992 chronicling the complicated family dynamics of a gay man, his wife, son, and lover, plus the wife's second husband and a pair of lesbians from next door. 

Original cast of Falsettos

Composer William Finn won the Tony, as did the show's co-librettist and director James Lapine, but none of the performers you see below took away a trophy. 

Stephen Bogardus and Michael Rupert
as the lovers at the center of Falsettos.

Michael Rupert, the most nasally leading man in Broadway history (and I'm including Nathan Lane!) lost his award to Gregory Hines in Jelly's Last Jam, and his leading lady, Barbara Walsh, lost to Hines's costar as well.  Falsettos itself was nominated for the Big Prize, and lost it to that crowd-pleasing piece of fluff, Crazy For You.

Despite its small cast size and catchy score, Falsettos isn't revived as much as many other musicals.  It had a relatively short life on Broadway, but it remains well-respected, if seldom produced (at least, professionally).  AIDS takes center stage in the second act of the show, which dates the material considerably, but taken as a heartfelt, sometimes rueful examination of a certain kind of modern family, it still has something to say today.  And Finn's score contains some soaringly beautiful tunes, several of which have lived on in cabaret settings.  Singing actors love his songs.

This production was offered by the now-defunct Ganymede Arts in DC, directed by my old South Carolina buddy Jeffrey Johnson.  I wrote about seeing this particular production here;  it is the only time I have seen the full piece.

It's not by coincidence that Falsettos arrives here today, as this week also contained International Coming Out Day, and the 14th anniversary of the murder of Matthew Shepard (on the 10th anniversary of that horrific hate crime, I wrote about it).  So, mixing gay days and baseball plays, enjoy this week's Dance Party:

Theatre Droppings: Jacques Swell

Don't be fooled by the straw hats and jaunty expressions. This Brel spends its time investigating the darker side of the human condition. 

While in the DC branch, I popped across the river to Alexandria, to catch the critically acclaimed musical revue, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.  I have not had a positive opinion of this piece in the past.  The only other production of it I have seen was years ago, at Olney Theatre, where the four-member cast was doubled, and a giant wheel was placed on the stage as a set piece. 

This Olney production with an expanded cast left me cold.

Olney Theatre itself was large, and the show seemed to be overwhelmed.  I came away from that production with a feeling that Brel's music is cold, distant, and uninteresting, and assumed it must be better in its original language.

The current production at MetroStage has changed my mind about the piece.  There is nothing more exciting to me than to see actors standing still onstage, and telling a story. 

Nastascia Diaz knows how to deliver
les chansons.

It takes a strong performer to be able to hold an audience's interest under these simplistic circumstances, and the four actors in this show more than hold their own.  Though I am not personally acquainted with any of the four performers, I have seen all of them onstage in previous productions.  They have found a terrific showcase in Jacques Brel...

There are several interesting group numbers in the piece, but the show is primarily composed of solos, all of which showcase the cast to great advantage. 

Sam Ludwig as Tobias in
Sweeney Todd.

I've seen Sam Ludwig several times before, but he was unrecognizable underneath his substantial 1970s moptop.  He delivered strong choices in his numbers, including "Statue" and "Next".  Bayla Whitten's "Timid Frieda" was memorable, as was her second act dress, which wins the award as best costume in the show. 

Bayla Whitten and Sam Ludwig

Natascia Diaz has spent a few years becoming a bit of a headliner on DC musical stages, turning in memorable performances at Signature and here at MetroStage.  She comes off as the most international of the bunch, delivering several of her songs in French and Dutch. 

Bobby Smith

Bobby Smith has carved a substantial reputation as a strong character singer in local musicals, with an emphasis on comedic roles, but here, he displays a terrific dramatic side with "Amsterdam" and "Songs for Old Lovers."

Bobby Smith, center, is best known around town as a comic musical actor, as seen here, as Rooster in Annie. But this Jacques Brel displays his dramatic chops.

You've never heard of any of these songs, have you?  Neither have I;  Jacques Brel himself became internationally known on the strength of only one smash, "If We Only Have Love," which is delivered here as the show's grand finale. Our composer is one of those folks who is internationally known on the basis of a large catalogue of mostly unknown works.   

Composer Jacques Brel recorded his own
songs in French, but his music attracted
singers as diverse as Ray Charles, John Denver,
Frank Sinatra, and the Kingston Trio.

Brel's music has a decidedly pessimistic slant;  judging from the almost 30 songs in this show, he never met a disappointment which he could not put to music.  There are very, very few moments of uplifting optimism in Jacques Brel..., which probably reflected his own view of the world.  According to the program notes, Brel finally gave up on modern life and retired to a tropical island, where he died in 1978 at the age of 49.

MetroStage's promos are fooling
you. Their show displays few smiling
moments.

Thanks to fine productions such as this, though, his music will live on, particularly among actors who can tell a story of depth while singing.  MetroStage's cast meets this challenge.