By Seth Rudetsky
14 Aug 2007

I told her how fierce I thought her roller skating is in Xanadu, and she told me she's notoriously uncoordinated. She was Penny Pingleton in Hairspray and revealed that after the Tony Awards Marissa Jaret Winokur told her that she TiVo'd the Tonys and watched their performance of "You Can't Stop the Beat" and she loved how crazily klutzy Kerry looked. Kerry was horrified to admit that "You Can't Stop the Beat" was the one number in the show where she thought she was making Penny look like an amazing dancer. She thought Penny's journey in the show was from klutz to cool and culminated in her amazing dancing during the finale. Ouch. That may have been her subtext during the number, but her text was clankstress.

In terms of the roller skating in Xanadu, she flat out told the director (Chris Ashley) that she wouldn't be acting til the end of the rehearsal period. So much of her comedy is physical, and she said that she needed to spend her rehearsal time becoming comfortable with what her body was doing on those 80's skates. She told me that she'd come home from rehearsal almost every day and cry. Thank goodness Chris let her mark the first three weeks of rehearsal because I saw the show, and her skating is roller disco-perfect and her performance hysterical.

On Thursday Anthony Rapp came to the Chatterbox, fresh off the heels of his triumphant return to Rent. I asked him about all those Rent-heads out there and if there was any inappropriateness. He said that the only indecent proposals he ever got in fan mail were when he was on Broadway playing Charlie Brown. Disgusting? You decide. Actually, I will. Yes. He also said that he's talking to a producer about doing a show with music based on his fabulous book "Without You"! Yay!

Of course, we had to talk about his teen film hit "Adventures in Babysitting." He screen tested for it, but the producers felt that due to the success of the Molly Ringwald teen films, his blond hair would remind audiences too much of Anthony Michael Hall. So he screen tested a second time, and this time they dyed his hair red … with permanent dye! If he hadn't gotten the film, I'm sure watching the red hair color grow out wouldn't be a devastating daily reminder of the film he didn't book.

I asked him how cool the premiere was and how popular he became in his high school because he was one of the stars of a Hollywood feature film. He told me that (a) nobody in his school cared, (b) there was no premiere and (c) he went to see it in his local Cineplex and had to buy his ticket. Ow, ow and yowtch.

This week I'm excited to see some Fringe shows (especially the laugh-out-loud Kelly Kinsella's Life Under Broadway, which I saw last year at the Ars Nova and loved) and also slightly terrified to have my costume fitting for The Ritz at William Ivey Long's studio. I finally have to put on that towel. Did they have love handles in the 70's?

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(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.)

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