ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Tony Thoughts
By Seth Rudetsky
Cry-Baby ladies Alli Mauzey, Tory Ross, Carly Jibson (middle) and Elizabeth Stanley with Seth.
A week in the life of actor, musician and Chatterbox host Seth Rudetsky.
*
First, let's discuss the Tonys. And by "discuss", I mean have a one-sided discussion (see: my childhood with my mother). I loved how there was so much Broadway on the show! And all of it was actual performances from shows, not headache-y medleys with people I don't want to hear sing them.
A major highlight for me: Patti LuPone winning and dishing the fact that she hasn't been up there for 28 years. Regardless of whether she should have won for Anything Goes or Sweeney Todd , the issue for me is how few musicals she's been in! Anything Goes was in 1988 and Sweeney Todd was in 2006. What's with the 18-year gap! Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters and Betty Buckley are three of our greatest Broadway stars; they need to be on Broadway constantly! If Will Ferrell can make ten films in the last six months, they can each do one Broadway show a year.
Secondly, I loved seeing In The Heights on the Tonys because, not only do I love that show, but I totally heard my friend Andréa Burns (who plays Daniella) get entrance applause!
Advertisement
And finally, can we please talk about Cheyenne Jackson's performance. His voice was out-of-control
perfect ! The placement, tone and vibrato was flawless. I was doing my SIRIUS radio show at the time and right after he sang, my sister, Nancy, called me and said, "Cheyenne sounded amazing. His face is stunning and his body perfect." She, of course, had to follow it with, "And Seth, to be blunt…you'll never be him." I didn't ask her to be blunt! It reminds me of that amazing moment in the movie "Happiness" when Jane Adams is standing in a kitchen while her relatives laugh. Her sister says, "We're not laughing
at you, we're laughing
with you!" and Jane says, slightly bewildered, "But I'm not laughing."
Wednesday night I went to see Cry-Baby with James (my BF) and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I thought the cast was so talented. Harriet Harris was hilarious as usual. I loved when her granddaughter, who becomes a bad girl, said that she kicked a policeman in the b***s and Harriet corrected her with, "Scrotum." Then on Thursday, I had four ladies from the cast on the Chatterbox: Tory Ross, Alli Mauzey, Carly Jibson and Elizabeth Stanley. First I asked Carly how she got discovered. She was 17 and performing in her Michigan hometown and an agent happened to be there (the opposite of "Waiting for Guffman") and got her an audition for "One Life To Live". Her family couldn't afford the plane fare, so her mother drove her to New York. She auditioned for the part and…Kathy Brier got the gig. But then she auditioned for Hairspray and…got a call back. And another one. And another one. Let's just say eight call backs. She thinks it's because she was 17 and they wanted to see if she could be consistent. She and seven other Tracys would have to do super aerobic things and sing at the same time to see if they had the stamina to sing and dance. I did that same thing to the girls on the Legally Blonde reality show last week and told everyone that I stole the idea from Marissa Jaret Winokur because she told me that the year before she played Tracy, she spent every day jogging on Peter Scolari's treadmill (she was living in his house) while singing the score. Carly said the idea came from Jerry Mitchell and it really helped her do Hairspray because even though she was in the best shape of her life, every night she would stand panting backstage and say, "I don't think I can do this." I asked Carly if it was difficult to be so young, yet star on Broadway (she was 19). She said it was great because she didn't know anything. One night someone told her, "Ben Brantley is coming to the show" and she was like, "Cool! Who's that?"
Then I chatted with Tory Ross who plays Hatchet Face. Her first big gig out of high school was doing the national tour of The Producers playing the roles Kathy Fitzgerald originated (homeless woman, ugly showgirl, Lesbian techie). On her first day of rehearsal, she remembered her training at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and made a "bold choice" which they're always telling you to do. They didn't tell her that it could lead to being supremely yelled at. She was learning "The King of Broadway" where Max Bialystock is talking to street people about how he's gonna make a comeback. She played a homeless woman that he makes out with and at one point, her head was in his crotch while he sang a rhythmic phrase. Every time he hit an accent, she bobbed her head in his crotch. Mel Brooks got up and started yelling at her, "Who do you think you are? This isn't your show! You're in the ensemble! No one knows who you are!" That's four ouches! She thought she was gonna get fired and didn't know anybody in the cast who could comfort her so she spent the break crying hysterically on the phone with her mother saying, "It's over before it began!" But, the powers that be got her a ticket for the Broadway show so she could watch Kathy do it and, essentially, copy her. Tory said that now she and Kathy are good friends and, starting soon, they're both going to be in 9 to 5 together!
Then I got to chat with Alli Mauzey who was brilliant as the crazy stalker girl. I asked her about her worst audition she'd ever had and she said that it was for On The Town in L.A. She was going in for the role of Lucy Shmeeler, the character who's supposed to have a cold. Alli said she really wanted to feel like she had a cold during the audition so she put some toilet paper up her nose to stuff it up and some wax in her ears to block them up. She could hardly breathe or hear, just like a real cold. Unfortunately, after she read, the director started giving her notes and she was too mortified to take the wax out of her ears so she literally spent the whole time saying, "…What?" Shockingly, she didn't get it.
Alli was also the stand-by for Glinda in Wicked on Broadway and one of the rules for a stand by is that you don't have to be at the theatre every night, but, in case you have to go on quickly, you can only be five blocks away. Well, turns out, she lives four blocks away so she literally got to spend every night at home in her living room, watching TV. And getting a paycheck. Wow. Doing nothing but getting a Broadway paycheck. I thought that was me in The Ritz .
Finally, I spoke the gorgeous and fun-nee Elizabeth Stanley who plays the good girl gone bad. She wanted to be an opera singer while she was growing up and said she was a total opera snob. Her friends would say, "I love Mariah Carey!" and she would shake her head knowingly and whisper, "She is going to ruin her voice." Of course, if anyone heard Mariah's last album, they'd perhaps deem Elizabeth a soothsayer. Mariah's four octave range has morphed into four half-steps. I don't know if she, a la the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music alums, made the bold choice to stop belting and go for more of a studio sound, but as one of the Dynamites from Hairspray once said to me, "When she stopped belting, I stopped buying." True 'dat! Bring back the sustained F's, the octave riffs and the whistle tones ASAP.
While majoring in opera at Indiana University, Elizabeth switched her interest to musical theatre. Her first big gig was the non-Equity tour of Cabaret where she played the elderly Fraulein Schneider. Hmm…maybe I should turn non-Equity so I can finally do The Gin Game . I remembered loving Elizabeth's performance as April in Broadway's Company last year and asked her if she got to meet Sondheim. Turns out, he came to their first performance in Cincinnati and she was totally intimidated and couldn't speak to him. They all went out to a bar afterwards and Sondheim was sitting next to her. She whispered to her friend to make a funny face so she could take a picture of him, but in actuality, she was taking a picture of Sondheim. So now she has a picture of Sondheim in profile with her friend making a "funny" face next to him. Raul Esparza warned her not to be devastated if Sondheim gave her notes, because he only gives you a note if he thinks you're good. Elizabeth had based a lot of the April character on the fact that she was an airline stewardess: very pert and precise. After he saw the show, Sondheim told her that April is more like a someone who's perpetually stoned, even though she's not. Elizabeth tried a totally new interpretation that night, and even though she was terrified to change it so dramatically, it worked! Continued...
