By Seth Rudetsky The first show that Lin-Manuel really identified with was Phantom of the Opera. He said, "It knocked me out. It was about an ugly songwriter who can't get girls. That was me!" My favorite Phantom story happened many years ago. At the end of the show, the Phantom sits down in a chair and covers himself with a sheet. The young ballet dancer tiptoes towards the chair and pulls off the sheet…and he's gone! All that remains is his mask. However, during one unfortunate matinee, the device that helps the Phantom escape from the chair didn't work. Apparently as the ballet girl tiptoed over, The Phantom started frantically whispering from underneath the sheet, "I'm still here!" Perhaps she thought he was practicing for a Follies audition because she ignored him, pulled off the sheet and revealed the Phantom, sitting impassively. Awkward. And…curtain. I'm sure the audience was like, "What the-? Why didn't he just kill her?"
I asked Lin-Manuel who was playing the Phantom when he saw it, and he didn't know! I was outraged that he didn't keep his Playbill and pour over it every night like I did when I was a kid. However, he countered me by saying that he did keep the program from when he saw Lion King, and he recently checked it. Turns out the Simba he saw was…Chris Jackson (!), who's now starring in In the Heights! PS, Chris was first cast to play Benny because he's so light-skinned he can look Latin. At that point, the character was a Latin heartbreaker, and the plot was about whether he was good enough for Nina, but producer Jeffrey Seller told Lin one day that Chris is so well-spoken and charming he's actually more interesting than the character he's playing. So, instead of Benny being a lothario, Lin changed the character to someone who's an outsider, made him black and Benny essentially became Chris.
When Lin-Manuel was a teenager, he got a class assignment to teach a book to his fellow students. That assignment turned into the first musical he wrote. It was not a book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Laura Esquivel. It was Chaim Potok's "The Chosen." He had the class perform it, and by "perform" I mean that he recorded himself singing all the songs and had the class lip-synch to his voice. Hmm...Narcissist or visionary Barbra Streisand? You decide. Some sample lyrics:
(This is after a character gets hit in the eye with a baseball)
20 Oct 2008
That dirty Hasidim! I don't really need 'em! I know I could beat 'em...if my eye weren't in pain. Who's ever rhymed Hasidim with a triple rhyme? Actually, who's ever rhymed Hasidim? The first draft of Yentl?
PROBABLE PHONE CALL TO ACTOR PLAYING LINCOLN
LIN-MANUEL: Hi, I saw Avenue Q last night.
ACTOR: Wow! Did you like it?
LIN-MANUEL: Yeah, it's great. You should see it today.
ACTOR: But they only have a matinee today and we have rehearsal.
LIN-MANUEL: (Samantha Stevens-style) Well…
Lin met Tommy Kail in Wesleyan, and he became the director of the show. Lin said that Tommy was integral in the creation of the show because of his dramaturgy. For instance, the opening of Act Two happens after Nina and Benny spend their first night together. Lin said that every song he wrote for them sounded like an eighties Pat Benatar power ballad. One day Tommy suggested that Lin make the song a Spanish lesson, and suddenly "Sunrise" poured out.
I asked about the song "Breathe," which I love. He said that Andrew Lippa heard the score and told him he noticed that all of the songs were in 4/4 time. Lin was very defensive and thought, "I love how all the songs are in 4/4." An hour later he was like, "Wah! All of the songs are in 4/4," and that's when he decided to write "Breathe" in 3/4. I'm sure after Sondheim saw it, he was like, "Why aren't any of the songs in 7/16?" but hopefully Lin will continue to ignore him. Speaking of which, when Lin-Manuel was nominated for the Tony, he wrote a sassy rap but only practiced it in the shower. He got so thrown during his speech when he mentioned Chris Jackson and got applause that he totally forgot the rest of the speech. He wound up "free-styling" as we say in the hip-hop business, and he came up with the most memorable part of his speech. He suddenly said. . .
Mr. Sondheim, look! I made a hat! Where there never was a hat! It's a Latin hat at that!
Speaking of Sondheim, Lin is in charge of translating the West Side Story songs into Spanish for the upcoming revival! Not all of them, FYI. So far, just the Sharks part in the "Tonight" quintet, "I Feel Pretty" and "A Boy Like That." He literally got to go over to "Steve's" house to talk about how to do the lyrics. There are Spanish translations out there, but some parts are good and some are clanky, so they want Lin to do a new version. For instance, Sondheim said that some versions of "I Feel Pretty" translate as "I Am Pretty," which is not correct — especially if it features the Maria I saw do it in community theatre.
Lin-Manuel also just put up the final episode of "Legally Brown: The Search for the Next Piragua Guy," and it has a great twist ending. I'm obsessed with how mean all of my improvs were as the "vocal coach." During my on-camera interview I say with a big smile, "Norm Lewis! Oh my God! When he sang…you know, 15 years ago….he was fantastic" It's all on my website, www.SethRudetsky.com.
Finally, I saw the Barbara Cook/Audra McDonald benefit on Sunday night. It was for an organization that gets people out to vote, but just in case there was any doubt as to whom the two ladies were supporting, there was an Obama action figure doll on the piano, and Audra changed the lyrics in "Blue Skies" to "Blue States"! It was totally sold out, and they sang up a storm. At one point Barbara said about Audra, "It's not fair that she can sing like that…and look like that!" Then later on, Audra said, "Barbara, I'm gonna say in front of everyone what I was gonna tell you backstage. When you dance during your songs…you're so sexy." Finally, I thought, a Broadway benefit with some lesbian subtext! And a May/December romance angle. Near the end, Audra announced that she wanted to sing a song about America that she's sung before and feels was prophetic when it was written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. She then brought out Brian Stokes Mitchell, who joined her for a thrilling rendition of "Wheels of a Dream" from Ragtime. The audience went crazy, prompting my mother to ask me, "Why don't they bring back Ragtime?" I glared and told her to be quiet. But now I must ask, "Why don't they bring back Ragtime?" It's such a moving show with a fantastic score.
OK, everyone. This coming Friday night I'm doing a benefit for The Children of Armenia Fund (which helps bring education to Armenian children) with Andrea Martin and Bill Irwin and Cirque Du Soleil! Visit www.coafkids.org for tickets. And on Saturday, I'll be performing my show, Deconstructing: The Good, The Bad and the Headache-y at the Singer Symposium. Go to www.SingersSymposium.com for details. And, on Thursday at the Chatterbox, I'm going to have the great Karen Morrow!!!!! I've been trying to get her on my show for years but she's always in L.A. Thankfully, she's in town because she just performed in Scott Siegel's Broadway Originals at Town Hall, and she'll be at my show Thursday at 6 PM. Whenever I have a party at my apartment, I pull out her Ed Sullivan performance of "I Had a Ball" and people become obsessed. It's one of the best-sung Broadway performances ever. Go to my http://www.bluegobo.com/video.php?var=10239 to watch her old-school, stand centerstage, specific arm movements, unbelievable tone/belt/vibrato performance!!!!
See you this week hopefully at one of the belt-fests!
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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" and the novel "Broadway Nights." He has played piano in the orchestras of 15 Broadway musicals and hosts the BC/EFA benefit weekly interview show Seth's Broadway Chatterbox at Don't Tell Mama every Thursday at 6 PM. He can be contacted by visiting www.sethrudetsky.com.)
