ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: The Rosie Cruise, Part I
By Seth Rudetsky
17 Jul 2007
I asked her about college and she said that she got into NYU, but got offered Jerry's Girls, so she left. She regrets it, but if she hadn't done that tour, we wouldn't have the fabulous recording of her doing "Wherever He Ain't" and "Look What Happened to Mabel." Listen to it when you can. She holds the last "Ma" of "Mabel" straight tone and then adds vibrato. Perfect. Carol Channing was on that tour and heard Andrea complaining about always having to sing "Tomorrow" or, as she called it, '"The T Song." Carol sternly told her that although Leslie Uggams (who was the other lead) is a great singer, she doesn't have a signature song, so Andrea better appreciate how lucky she is that she does. Carol has a point, but I'd be curious to know if she's ever seen Leslie's "rendition" of "June is Bustin' Out All Over" on YouTube because she certainly makes it her own.
Anyhoo, Andrea also said that Carol would get wigs on 14th Street and ask Andrea to cut them for her ("to look like Madonna"), and Carol would love Andrea's shoes and frequently buy the same ones for herself … but in a size 10. Size 10? You know what they say, big feet, big…um, range? And by "range," I mean scanning the entire bass clef. Also, Andrea was always miffed that in every publicity shot, for some reason Carol looked younger than springtime and Andrea looked like ye olde hag. Carol's advice? Always wear something nautical. Looking around the ship's lovely Spinaker lounge, I realized that Andrea's story was informative and timely. Wait a minute… didn't Barbra always wear a sailor top in all her photos in the 60's? She had the nerve to steal Carol's look and film role!
Andrea talked about playing Fantine on Broadway in Les Miz and having to come back as a boy on the barricade in Act Two. She said that at one performance, she was eating a giant bag of M&Ms backstage and put them in her pocket before she got on the barricade. She got shot, and because she had friends in the audience, she did an incredibly dramatic death that involved flailing her body upside down on the barricade. Of course, clackety clacking out of her pocket came pouring a myriad of multi-colored M&Ms. The good news for my musician peeps was that because the stage was raked, the orchestra suddenly got a ton of M&Ms raining down on them, which no doubt provided some much-needed carbs to get through the last half hour of the show. That was one of the many times she was written up to Equity. Some of the others were during Annie when they had in the contract a clause saying you couldn't go in the sun and get tanned. She got around it by using a tanning cream that made her orange (which she said looked brutal with the red dress). Another time, she found poppers backstage. She didn't know what poppers were, but nonetheless poured them on an orphan's pillow. She put the pep in Pepper that night!
Sunday night, my good friend Jason Little, who won best actor in Minneapolis for playing Hedwig, belted out some songs from Hedwig. My favorite part was at the beginning of "Tear Me Down" where Hedwig normally name-drops the city he's in (When I first saw Jason do the show in the Midwest, it was "Don't you know me Twin Cities?"). On the boat, Jason hilariously used the literal nautical location of where we were to start the song. He strutted out and shouted, "Don't you know me Greenwich Mean Time Starboard naut 38?" Amazingly awkward.
After his songs, Jason got a standing O, and we all rushed down to see Sandra Bernhard. I've always been a fan of hers ever since
Without You I'm Nothing. And I had the privilege of telling her . . . that morning while waiting to get my signature hot cereal with the abundance of brown sugar. Her show was great. She began with "And I Am Telling You" (seriously!) and did a whole riff on Angelina Jolie. My favorite part was when she commented on Angelina constantly carrying her kids everywhere ("Has Maddox
ever walked on the ground?").
All right, I've been writing forever, and I'm only up to the first full day on the cruise, so I have to continue this tomorrow. I'm off to rehearse for the NYCLU benefit I'm doing tonight at The Skirball Center and I've got to find something nautical to wear.
(Seth Rudetsky is the host of "Seth's Big Fat Broadway" on SIRIUS Satellite Radio and the author of "The Q Guide to Broadway." He has played piano in the orchestras of 15 Broadway musicals, and he can be contacted by visiting www.sethsbroadwaychatterbox.com.)
