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This is the second week of 2012. Wowza! Remember when the year 2000 seemed a long way off? And, quite frankly, remember when we were dreading 1984? Now my focus is taken off the next scary year and my main dread is the next jukebox musical for fear that it might contain only the oeuvre of Juice Newton. And thus ends my stand-up act. Anyhoo, this week was chock full of fun interviews. I re-started Seth's Broadway Chatterbox at Don't Tell Mama after a one-year hiatus, and I interviewed the cast of Lysistrata Jones. Unfortunately, they had just gotten their official closing notice. I say "official" because they had the heads-up the day after opening. There was a cast meeting and the producers told them that they would definitely stay open…if they sold out every single show Christmas week. Of course, the cast said they looked into the audience at their next show and saw 35 people. (Not really 35, but you get it.) It's one of those mystifying things where a show can get a great New York Times review and still not sell tickets. I asked Douglas Carter Beane why they chose to open the show in the winter, which is a notoriously hard time to keep a show running, and he said that it's impossible to get a theatre in the spring. Lysistrata Jones had actual people for producers whereas theatre are being requested in the spring, according to Doug, "by Disney and General Motors."

For those who've done a Broadway show, we know that when a cast is forced to assemble onstage for an "important meeting" with the producer, it's usually a horrible sign indicating imminent closing. Unfortunately, almost everyone in the cast was making their Broadway debut, when the producer called the meeting after Christmas week, one of them thought, "Yay! We're being told the show's gonna run forever!" They said that the first sign that perhaps it wasn't going to be a happy announcement was the fact that the theatre was freezing and the producer was dripping sweat. The cast had so many talented people, and Josh Segarra was so funny during his Chatterbox interview. He talked about the show having so much basketball choreography, and how the balls continually flew into the audience, especially during its summer Off-Broadway run. Josh said that most of the time when a ball came at someone, they would catch it. But some people in an audience forget basic life skills, and they would just literally stare at the ball in horror as it approached and eventually hit them. After the show, he'd see people who got hit by the ball and say, "I'm sorry…," followed by a muttered, "…but you're an idiot."

	Josh Segarra and Jason Tam
	photo by Robb Johnston

The end of A Chorus Line features a kickline to "One" that is supposed to symbolize the chorus line going on forever. There's no actual ending to the kickline, the lights dim to a blackout as they kick. Well, Jason said that one night the lights didn't dim. So, they were all forced to just kept kicking. Endlessly. Well, not all of them. He seems to remember Broadway vet Charlotte D'Amboise (Cassie) realizing it was going to be endless and making the smart choice to simply stop. Perhaps the audience thought that her character took the "don't pop the head" advice many steps further and ceased moving any part of her body. Brava subtext.