By Harry Haun
30 Nov 2006

She heaps praise aplenty on Doyle's sure and subtle style of directing. "John is amazing. I would say most of the scenes are a blend between what we would find and what he would find. He never told us something was good or bad. He kept telling me to do less, do less, and I'm a very frenetic kind of person, and he was right. The more still I was, the better response inside. He's like the dream director where he guides you and you don't even realize it. I call him ‘The Actor Whisperer,' like ‘The Horse Whisperer,' because he can tell you in a very gentle way what he wants done and push you beyond what you thought you could even do. In my opinion, that's a great teacher as well as a great director."

Buterbaugh seconded that emotion. "You can't go wrong with John Doyle. What he pulls out of an actor is just phenomenal." The karate scene is the first sketch out of the chute and is crucial in establishing the tone for the fun to come. "It's a hoot to do, but the pressure is on with that scene because you're basically setting up the entire evening."

He admitted the double harness of actor and musician chafed at the outset. "It was like spinning several plates, but, as time went on, I can't conceive of doing the show any other way now. The trumpet and trombone are so much a part of the character that to part with them seems wrong. It's like not having an arm or leg if you don't have those instruments with you. I was a brass major in undergraduate school so I've been playing many years. I put it down for a while, but you pick it to get the chops warm. It comes right back."

Barbara Walsh, wielding some mean orchestra bells throughout the evening, displays Broadway authority and bravery galore by following Elaine Strich's kind of iconic, Tony-nominated role of the predatory Joanne — a role that includes a song Stritch has whiskey-rasped into her own personal anthem, "The Ladies Who Lunch."

"I just love her to death," Walsh said of this very tough broad she is playing. "I love the company. I love John Doyle's work. It's been a truly collaborative experience, and the role is amazing. It's a very rich role. I'm having a blast. Kind of a big deal for me."

On opening night, she locked her lustful gaze on Bobby and held it for a small eternity before asking him a very direct question, which was greeted with a raucous laugh in the audience. "That horselaugh was a friend of mine, actually. He loved the show. I think he heard the text new and just lost it. It was a great little communal moment. Live theatre."

Amy Justman, who plays Susan and the piano (most crucially, relieving Esparza so he can really sing out on his closing number), has been tickling ivories since she was three in Long Island.

Another who betrays a piano proficiency, giving Walsh excellent backup for "The Ladies Who Lunch," is the actor cast as Peter. "Most of the time I make my living as a musical director," said Matt Castle. "Playing the piano is key to what I do for a living. I haven't played bass since college. I've played it for many years in life, but I haven't played it for a long time. I'm thrilled that, of all the shows I might make a Broadway debut in, it is this — in a Sondheim show, in a play with this group of people, in a play where everybody's a principal, in a play that is so beautifully written. In all ways, it's winning."

The possibility of homosexuality as a reason for Bobby's protracted bachelorhood is lightly touched on in a restored scene with Peter. "I don't know the exact history of the scene," admitted Castle. "I think it was written in 1970 and just not included in the first production. I think it would have been more of a red herring. What's interesting about it historically, doing in 2006, is people have been asking for the last 36 years — not asking, people have been insisting that the problem with the play is that Robert really is gay. Is that a comment on the times, on the writers, who knows what? That scene doesn't answer the question positively whether Robert is gay or not, but it does answer it positively that that's not his problem. His problem is in the heart. It's not in the gonads."

Systematically, director Doyle has gone through the show eliminating musical Buttons — and, with them, audience applause. Only three numbers in the first act permit a chance to cheer, and Kelly Jeanne Grant, who is part of the trio socking over "You Could Drive a Person Crazy," gets one of them. She explained the director's reasoning: "He said in a Shakespeare piece no one stands up and applauds a brilliant soliloquy. As brilliant as the soliloquy may be, we're used to seeing plays as a throughline because it's about telling the story. He feels musicals should be the same way in that he follows the story as opposed to applauding certain moments. He threw that out as an idea of why the clapping in some places is eliminated — to not interrupt the flow of the story."

In addition to understudying Esparza and executing a funny pot-dabbling scene, Fred Rose juggles a cello, an alto sax and a tenor sax. "John's rehearsal style makes it a lot more possible than you would think to do all that stuff together," he contended, "because you just do it all together from Day One. Playing the instrument and walking with it and singing just becomes the same as learning your lines. The cello I studied in school and I got a degree in it, and then I didn't play for about 10 years, but I did a production here in town of Cabaret that involved a lot of instrumental playing as well, so that got me to playing the cello again, and I've been playing steadily ever since."

First-nighters included Angela Lansbury (the crown jewel of any opening), David Hyde Pierce, League leader Charlotte St. Martin, Maxwell Caulfield and his deah Juliet Mills, novelist Dominick Dunne (on a three-month leave of absence from Vanity Fair to finish his new novel), Michele Lee (in a stunning white pants suit), Ben Vereen (in a regal African "top hat"), 44x10th proprietor and virginal showbiz investor Scott Hart, publisher Glenn Young, Leslie Kritzer (who will be doing two more nights of Patti LuPone at Les Mouches at Joe's Pub Dec. 8-9 before heading into Legally Blonde — as a brunette), Michael Cerveris (the former Sweeney, the future Kurt Weill in LoveMusik May 3 at the Biltmore), Lee Grant and Thomas Meehan.

Melissa Errico and hubby Patrick McEnroe treated themselves to one of their first nights out since the birth of their Victoria seven months ago. Errico and Esparza have been pals since she was Dot to his George during the Kennedy Center series of Sondheim shows a few years back. In a few weeks (Dec. 11-12 at 7), she will ease back into the performing saddle, making her solo Birdland debut with a show called then & now.

Linda Hart, attending as a guest of her old Hairspray producer Tom Viertel, said she's snagged herself a series on the West Coast, called "The Winner," which will hit the Fox fan as a mid-season replacement in January and February. Already six episodes deep into it, she's loving the work. "I play Rob Corddry's mom — in a very Gracie Allen way," she trilled. "I died and went to Actor Heaven. You work four and a half days a week. You make more money in one day than you do all year here. A friend of mine called me the other day and said, 'Linda, you've done nine pilots, none of which made the air. You must be so elated that this is going to be on television.' And I said, ‘You know what? I'm still back at the guard gate saying, 'Good morning, I'm Miss Hart.'"

Angel Desai, who "long ago gave up hope of ever playing the violin in public," inherited Pamela Myers' Tony-nominated role of Bobby's free-spirited sprite girlfriend Marta — and the powerhouse showstopper that goes with it ("Another Hundred People").

Of the dozen new faces introduced in this Company (eight cast members and four understudies), she had the strongest reaction to making her Broadway debut: "It's not quite real because it's way too fabulous. It's my dream come true so, to say that and to have it realized is much more surreal than you might realize. I don't say that facetiously. It is an actual dream of mine, and it happened. I feel — blessed doesn't really cover it."