ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: (Almost) Sailing On
By Seth Rudetsky
17 Mar 2008
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Composer Alan Menken.
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Sigh. I'm sitting in my apartment with just my sweet doggie to keep me company.
James (BF), Juli (his daughter) and my mom (neurotic) are all on the Rosie O'Donnell rFamily Vacations cruise (for gay parents, their families and friends, www.rfamilyvacations.com). I wound up getting the MTV Legally Blonde reality series, and we don't finish filming 'til Tuesday. The production company is kindly flying me out that afternoon to Puerto Vallarta where I'll meet up with the Holland America ship. What's annoying is that when James and I first planned the trip, we decided to fly to the West Coast early so we could enjoy San Diego. That decision backfired on me because even though the ship didn't sail 'til Saturday, everybody left on Thursday. Sigh.
The first night on the boat is the show called Broadway Belters, and it was a fabulous line up. It's so weird putting it all together and then having it happen when I wasn't there. Kevin Chamberlin sang "Solla Sollew" from Seussical, (beautiful song), Shoshana Bean sang "The Wizard and I" into "Defying Gravity" (brava on the vocal chops), Julia Murney and Gavin Creel sang the fabulous Baby duet "What Could Be Better"… which reminds me of the moronic-ness of my sister, Nancy. I was on the phone with her right after a rehearsal and this was the conversation:
ME: Just came from rehearsal. Gavin and Julia sound amazing on their duet!
NANCY: Gross
ME: What?
NANCY: You sort of make me sick…
ME: What are you talking about?
NANCY: I can't believe you guys are the kind of parents who would push their daughter into show business…
That's right…she thought I said that Gavin and Juli sounded amazing on their duet!! What possible duet could be for a 30-year-old man and a seven-year-old to funk out to?!?!
James sang "Who Am I?" from
Les Miz and related it to seeing some junior high school boys near Juli's school making fun of a kid for being gay. He didn't know whether he should say anything, but then, "Who Am I"-style, decided to tell them that he was gay and their words hurt not only the boy they were making fun of, but the elementary school kids who were near. For more details on the cruise, go to his website at GayDadsUSA.com.
The only "good" news is that apparently the seas were rough, and I would not want a repeat of what happened in Alaska in 2006. Actually, why don't I set the record straight and tell everybody what really did happen in Alaska because contrary to what Cyndi Lauper says, I did not throw up!
It was the week of the '06 summer cruise and the night of the comedy showcase. I was the host; there were three comics, and Julia Murney was going to end the evening singing the hilarious Andrew Lippa Wild Party song (first sung brilliantly by Alix Korey) "Old Fashioned (Lesbian) Love Story." Around a half hour before the show, the boat started rocking. I am easily nauseated (see my reaction to "From Justin to Kelly") and was a nervous wreck. Julia came up to me at "places" and said that people were already leaving their seats to go back to their rooms because the rocking is making everybody sick/terrified. She said we should just cut the last song. But I said, "No, no, no, (tip o' the hat to Amy Winehouse) I'm seeing this show through to the end." I did some stand-up (and by "some," I mean the same jokes I've been hauling out for ten years) and went backstage while the first comic performed. Well, if you don't know, let me tell you that a good way to not be seasick is to look at the horizon. Unfortunately, the backstage not only had no view of the horizon, it had no windows! There was no way to get a sense of where you were. The only way I could feel not disgusting was to lie completely down. So, that became my routine; intro a comic and then immediately run backstage to lie down. I would get up 30 seconds before I had to come back onstage to minimize nausea. Cut to, I stood up because I was told that the last comic was about to end, but she wound up going on for a few more minutes. Uh-oh, no horizon. I really began to feel sick. But I decided that I made it this far, I was determined to hear Julia belt the end of that song! I came out onstage and introduced Julia. She started making her way up from the audience and I sat down at the piano. Suddenly, I felt my stomach start contracting. I knew I wasn't pregnant…not at my age (see: Bernie Telsey's casting idea for me in last week's column. Hint: a 73-year-old). I knew I was about to throw up. I thought to myself, 'Not only am I onstage…but the show is being videotaped.' That recorded image is something I would find hilarious to play on a loop…if it was someone else! I didn't want anyone to have embarrassing footage of me to deconstruct! That's what I do! I knew I had to get the H offstage and lay down asap. I fled offstage and immediately lay completely flat. Unfortunately, this all happened while Julia was approaching the stage, and she didn't see any of it. So, she essentially went center stage, adjusted her mic, nodded to the piano and suddenly saw there was no one sitting on the piano bench. It was like the ending of Phantom, where he's suddenly not in the seat he just sat down in…except I didn't leave a mask behind. Instead, I left a knocked over microphone stand behind. Yes, not only wasn't I there, but I had knocked my boom microphone down in my haste to make it offstage, which I barely did. So all Julia saw was a microphone stand awkwardly clunked on its side and, off to the side, the bottom half of my legs sticking out from the wings, Wicked Witch of the East-style (aka Nessa Rose. Seth-a Rose?) Julia paused, turned out front and said simply, "That's the show," and the curtain came down. The next thing I know I'm at the breakfast buffet and everybody was telling me that Cyndi Lauper said I was a wuss for throwing up during the storm! Well! I see her "True Colors." I may be a wuss, Madame, but I most certainly did not throw up! I simply crawled offstage in a blind panic leaving a feed-backing microphone in my wake.
Anyhoo, I can't wait to fly to Puerto Vallarta and meet up with everybody on the cruise. I'm doing a show with my comedy partner Jack Plotnick, a cabaret with Gavin Creel, an onboard Chatterbox with Julia Murney and Shoshana Bean and then hosting the seventies show on the final night!
This week I had to pleasure of interviewing the majorly prolific and tuneful Alan Menken. Turns out, he didn't grow up wanting to be a theatre composer. He graduated from NYU as a musicologist major (please wake up after that last boring phrase) and wanted to either be a "serious" composer or a singer/songwriting pop star. To appease his parents and make it look like he was doing something for his career, he joined the BMI workshop where he met Maury Yeston. Maury recommended Alan to Howard Ashman, who was writing a musical version of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater." Even though Alan was a composer/lyricist at the time, he joined up with Howard who was writing the lyrics, book and directing. The show ultimately didn't run very long. One of the problems with the show was that it had a 14-person cast and was too expensive to run Off-Broadway. Howard told Alan that he always wanted to write a musical version of the movie "The Little Shop of Horrors," and this time they would use a smaller cast (nine people). Alan was giving me some scoop on how the show was written, and I love finding out things that seem so obvious now that didn't begin that way. For instance, when they were first writing the show, the music was very Kurt Weill/Brechtian. They played the score for people and people said, Sura-Bye-a. Whew! That was a headache-y pun/joke even for me! No one was interested until Howard told Alan that they should make this show the dark side of Grease. Alan said that Howard thought it would work if they told this dark and macabre story through bubble gum rock 'n roll. Unfortunately, he wasn't right … he was completely correct! By the way, that's a film/advertising cliche that drives me crazy. The hacky "I don't like it (What?!) …I love it!!! (Phew!!!!)" I'm always yelling at my TV, "You're lying. You do like it. You can't love something without liking it." The phrase should be; "I don't just like it…I love it." That would be honest…but also would leave out the hilarious reveal when we find out that he/she loves it. Call me when it's funny.
Alan said that Howard taught him to base his songs on specific musical models…like a Belafonte Calypso or a Phil Spector girl- group song. Alan is incredibly facile at using the model but making it his own. Speaking of models, remember when "Project Runway" was also a competition for the models? What happened to that? Are we supposed to pretend it never existed? Like New Coke? Never forget! Continued...
