By Seth Rudetsky
14 Dec 2009

My mom came to the show and loved it. She recently got back from visiting her brother in Florida. She, of course, mortified herself on the airplane. Before she got on the flight, she was online at the ticket counter and lamenting to the blonde woman in back of her that she has trouble getting her bag in the overhead compartment. The woman said that she'd help her. Cut to: my Mom did "early boarding" and as soon as she got on, a nice gentleman helped her get her bags up. As my mom was sitting and reading, she saw the blonde woman get on board so she put down her magazine, pointed upwards and said with a smile, "A man helped me put my bag up." Well, she did say it to a blonde woman, but, typical of my mother, it was not the woman who offered to help her. It was a total stranger. So, essentially a blonde woman got on a flight and as she passed down the aisle, an older woman smiled and started babbling nonsense like a two-year-old proud of her first trip to the potty: "A man helped me put my bag up." And the woman kept walking.

On Friday, I went to see the Chelsea Symphony play Aaron Dai's "The Night Before Christmas" narrated by Charles Busch. I love the piece because the music underscoring the poem is not the happy, fun music you'd expect. It actually has the essence of a scary Hitchcock movie. It makes you realize how terrifying it would be if you heard sounds on your roof in the middle of the night.

Charles was fantastic, of course, and afterwards I was chatting with him and the subject of theatre message boards came up. I told him that I haven't read them in a year and he said that he'll go on one, get sucked into the nice comments and then will be devastated by the occasional horrifyingly cruel ones. Finally, he called AOL and spoke to a representative who sounded like he was located in a majorly Southern state. Charles asked if there was a way to block a website and the man told him that you can block a type of site, but not one in particular. The man asked why he wanted it blocked.

CHARLES: Well, because they write terrible things about me.
MAN: Then why do you read them?
CHARLES: (pause). You're obviously not in the theatre.

	Jack Plotnick

Speaking of theatre, Jack Plotnick was in town this week and we did our show, Mortification Theater. He has a tremendous following for his character Evie Harris whom he developed years ago and was then one of the stars of the film "Girls Will Be Girls." Part of the show we did last week featured Evie's Christmas act and begins with Evie singing wrong lyrics and then saying one of my favorite lines:

EVIE: (Enters singing) It's the most happiest time in the world! Merry Christmas everyone! And for those Jewish people in the audience (sincerely) Merry, Merry Christmas."

Jack and I were talking (again) about his college production of A Little Night Music that I wrote about last week, and what I didn't know was that all the time he wasn't onstage performing, he was backstage with Natascia Diaz, rehearsing a scene for their acting class. And by "rehearsing a scene," I mean "laying a curse." The scene they did time and again was from…Macbeth! And they weren't playing side characters who never utter the cursed name. No, Jack was Macbeth and Natascia was Lady Macbeth. They said the name you're never supposed to say in a theatre over and over again. Surely that's just a superstition, right? Well, by the weekend of the performances, Jack (who played Henrik) completely lost his voice, Natascia (who played Petra) got so ill she thought she was going to die and Eileen Kaden (who played Charlotte) was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Shakespeare's still got it!

OK, tonight I'm seeing Ann Harada's BC/EFA fundraiser called Christmas Eve with "Christmas Eve" with great performers like Raul Esparza, John Tartaglia and my good friend Paul Castree. Then I'm rushing uptown to the Minskoff theatre for the Broadway in South Africa fundraising concert featuring cast members from Rock of Ages, Wicked and many more. I'll be hosting the live auction part, so come by and see fabulous belting and then be prepared to fork over those bucks for some amazing items like tickets to the Oprah Winfrey show! Go to BroadwayInSouthAfrica.org for tix. And now I leave you with: Peace out!

*

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.