Hello, everyone. Pardon me if I yawn up a storm as I type this. I played my last Betty Buckley Broadway By Request show on Saturday, and it was fabulous. It also went L-A-T-E!

Betty took a lot more requests in honor of it being the last show, and I got out of Feinstein's at 1 AM. And, because Daylight Savings Time began that night, it was actually 2 AM. PS, since when do we "spring" ahead before the aforementioned spring has even begun! When did that madness start!?!? I had to drag myself out of bed on Sunday morning to go to Sirius to meet Doug and Jenn Smith, who were the high bidders on the Actors Fund auction to co-host my radio show with me. It's the third year they've won, and I love doing the show with them. They live in Austin but come to New York and see tons of show at least once a year. They saw Betty's show on Saturday night and Jenn said that when she was young, she wanted to be on Broadway and was constantly listening to "Mem'ry" and trying to belt the D flat to the E flat ("Touch me! It's so easy…") along with Betty. Jenn thought that you had to be able to sing that if you wanted to be on Broadway, so she finally concluded she could never be on Broadway. It wasn't until she got older that she realized that it was actually very unique that Betty could sing that and not everyone on Broadway can do it. I told Jenn that if she had grown up listening to Lauren Bacall, she'd probably be on Broadway today.

Betty had some special guests during her show throughout the week. First was Louise Quick who was Bob Fosse's assistant during Pippin. She came up onstage and danced the "Manson Trio" from Pippin and the audience went crazy. My mom was there that night, and she was blown away by it. My mom said that a lot of times you see supposed Fosse-style dancing and it almost seems a caricature of his style. But, she said, when you see what it really was, you then understand why people called him a genius. I agree. It's not just about "hitting all the marks" and executing it perfectly. Even though Fosse choreography was very precise, there was still freedom within it that seems to be lacking in some re-creations. I think, perhaps if you saw my rendition of "Steam Heat," which I danced at age 15, you would understand…why I have no right to comment on dancing.

Then, one night at Betty's show, Ann Hampton Callaway was spotted sitting in one of the front tables. Ann is a brilliant singer/composer who was Tony-nominated for her performance in Swing! Betty called her up and asked her to do one of her improv songs. If you've never seen this, you can't imagine how amazing it is. Ann takes phrases and words form the audience and then makes up a song featuring them. She decided to do a song about the show so she asked the audience to describe how they felt seeing Betty. People offered words like "tingling" and "diva." James Lapine was there and added "gobsmacked," and I, of course, put in "she's still got it!" Betty herself added the phrases "Ann Hampton Callaway is my friend" and "Seth Rudetsky's on the ball." Ann wrote it all down and wrote a fabulous song using the words and phrases and making it all rhyme. Seriously. After the show, I told her that I hear new music all the time and her off-the-cuff improv is a million times better than some stuff composers work on for years. I begged her to write an actual musical and she seemed intrigued. Ann, if you're reading this, get to it! If you don't know her work, go to AnnHamptonCallaway.com and enjoy.

At the Saturday 8 PM show, Alan Campbell, who played Joe opposite Betty's Norma Desmond in Broadway's Sunset Boulevard, was called onstage. Alan remembered one show where someone had a heart attack during Act One and was in the aisle being tended by his wife. The ushers were creeping down the aisle shining the flashlights low because they were too scared to interrupt the show! Betty saw what was happening, and she was the only one not scared to stop the show. She broke character and asked for the house lights to be brought up so the paramedics could come. They took the man to the hospital and the show resumed. Then, during Betty's curtain call, she announced that he survived! Of course, the audience went crazy. Alan also fondly remembered when his wife, Lauren Kennedy, left the show. Lauren was the first ensemble member to leave and Alan said that during "As If We Never Said Goodbye," Betty turned away from the audience and played the end of the song to Lauren! It was Lauren's first Broadway show, and she has never forgotten how special that moment was. Although I wonder if the audience thought, "Hmm…what is the special relationship Norma has with that blonde script supervisor character standing third girl from the left? Ah…perhaps Norma sees her younger self and is trying to warn the lass not to make the choices Norma has made… for it will only end in betrayal and murder. Yes! That must be it. Brilliant foreshadowing. Leave it to Betty Buckley to bring out a subtext no one has thought of before. BRAVA!!" Alan followed that story by telling us that throughout the show, his character is constantly trying to get away from Norma so he never got to sing Betty a love song. He turned to Betty who was sitting in the audience and sang an over-the-top rendition of "Only You" that was fantastic!

The last show featured Howard McGillin, who's currently playing The Phantom on Broadway. He recalled doing Drood with Betty and told us about how, at the end of the show, the audience would vote on who was the killer. Each actor had his or her own song to sing, which would explain how and why they murdered Drood and, of course, every actor always wanted the chance to sing an extra song on Broadway, so there would be some competition between the actors to be chosen. Late in the run, Loretta Switt took over the role of Princess Puffer and thought that she wasn't getting voted the murderer because she wasn't in the big banquet scene during Act One. So, she decided to stand outside the window of the dining room set during the meal when everyone sang "No Good Can Come From Bad." She stood in back of the window making menacing faces, but soon realized that there wasn't a light cue in back of the dining room window so the audience couldn't see her…and therefore not vote her the killer. At the next performance, she showed up again…but this time held a flashlight underneath her chin. Problem solved! And she still wasn't voted the killer.

Howard ended by singing "A Man Could Go Quite Mad," which was thrilling for me because I spent my last two years in college listening to him sing it on my walkman…and there I was, playing it for him. So cool!

I began the week at Feinstein's playing for the massively sold-out Cheyenne Jackson show. He is the whole package, people. So good looking, really funny and a great set o' pipes. He told the audience that people get his name wrong often and he's been called things like "Chad," "Cherokee" and recently, bizarrely, "Albuquerque." I also ended the week playing his show: In the audience last night was Broadway's head gypsy, Harvey Evans, with one of his best friends, Barbara Cook. Cheyenne kept slipping in-and-out of PG-13 language and at one point, went further and let the F-word slip. I played a little of "Til There Was You" to remind him who was in the audience and he was mortified. He apologized and said he would refrain from saying the F word in front of Barbara Cook. Everyone laughed and suddenly we heard a voice call out from the audience, with the signature Barbara Cook placement.

"Cheyenne!"
"Yes, Miss Cook?" he said, tentatively.
"Don't worry. F**k is fine."
Wow! Marian the Librarian dropped the F bomb! And the audience went crazy.  Continued...