PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: The Story of My Life — Hey, Old Friend!

By Harry Haun
20 Feb 2009


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The Chase-and-Gets give-and-take is physically exhausting for both actors. "I'm brain-fried by the end of the show," admitted Chase, "but I'm so fulfilled as well. Where do you get to do an hour-and-a-half-long scene? Ever? The thing is that you don't really go off stage and think about your next scene. You don't think at all this. It's just you do. Everything you ever signed up to do as an actor, I get to do in this show. I mean, literally. I get to play a kid, I get to play an adult, I get to sing.

"And talk about a full-circle journey he gets to go on! I love that Alvin gets to open up Thomas' heart. He's so closed off. I love that I get to go on that kind of journey. I don't know of another character who gets to go that far. I love doing it — especially in a musical. I also love the talking-to-the-audience thing. I've done that a lot lately in my last several shows, and I love having a direct dialogue with the audience."

Thomas, in a certain pastel way, reprises the arc that Chase made last summer as Valentin to Hunter Foster's Molina in Signature revival of Kiss of the Spider Woman.

"You know what that show did? It opened my eyes. I used to pigeon-hole myself like actors like to do — 'I'm the leading man,' blah, blah, blah, blah — and Spider Woman allowed me to feel I'm a character actor, which means we all are. We're all character actors, but we get these labels. What it did was make me realize I could do lots of other things. It got me to think outside the box, which every actor should be doing."

The two stars and their understudies (Bradley Dean and Jim Stanek) are depicted in the Playbill with their first-grade class pictures, just to remind you where the show is coming from. All four wear smiles that say, "Broadway, here we come."

"So far, I haven't geeked out to Richard," said Stanek, who'll soon understudy both roles. "I'm a huge fan. When my wife and I first started dating, I was trying to bring her into the musical-theatre world so I was singing Maltby-Shire all the time."

Strengthening the Sondheim style of the songs here are the orchestrations of Tunick, who was recently presented for induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame by Sondheim himself. The orchestrator returned the favor by making public what must be the best anagram ever made out of the composer's name: "He opens the minds."

Given his harmonious history with word-driven songs, Tunick was a natural for this show. "It approaches an aspect of the human condition that hasn't been explored very much in musical theatre," he said. "Friendship has always been very elusive."

After 40 years of Sondheim and one show by Bartram, Tunick next turns his attention to Johann Strauss (1825-99), whom he actually played — at director Harold Prince's urging — in a fleeting longshot at the end of the 1978 movie version of A Little Night Music. "I was hoping for a Best Supporting Actor nod," he joshed.

The Strauss show in question is called Paradise Found, with music by Strauss (Tunick), lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh and book by Richard Nelson. Prince has been working on it "about four years," according to Kate Baldwin, a Story of My Life first-nighter who has been part of its developmental readings. A regional theatre launch is expected. Shuler Hensley, Mandy Patinkin, Judy Kaye, John Cullum and Emily Skinner have also been connected to Paradise Found in the past.

Charles Strouse, the Broadway Strauss, was also at the opening, fresh from a heady production meeting about where on Broadway to put Minsky's next season. It could arrive as early as summer. He was gently ragging his Annie book-writer, Thomas Meehan, about how people in the Sardi's main-floor dining area have told him they have projects going with Meehan. In point of fact, Roundabout will be doing a reading in April of Meehan's show with Maury Yeston, Death Takes a Holiday.

Also in attendance, testing the celebratory ambiance, were stars about to bounce from Off-Broadway to Broadway: Tovah Feldshuh, the Irena of Irena's Vow, arriving March 29 at the Walter Kerr, and Constantine Maroulis, high from his first day of Rock of Ages rehearsals with two new recruits, Saturday Night Fever's James Carpinello and Kiss Me Kate's Amy Spanger. "We start previewing on St. Patrick's Day," relayed Maroulis, "and we will open April 7 at the Brooks Atkinson."

Other first-nighters: Pat Schoenfeld, Bernadette Peters, Phyllis Newman, Joan Rivers (back from L.A. pushing her two new books: "Murder at the Academy Awards" and "Men Are Stupid . . . and They Like Big Boobs"), Rue McClanahan, conductor-arranger John McDaniel, producer Eric Krebs, critic Howard Kissel with Louise Kerz Hirschfeld, Charlotte St. Martin and Claudia Shear.

Numbering among the Bartram and Hill supporters were director Susan H. Schulman (who will helm their next show, Clara's Piano, about the love triangle formed by Johannes Brahms and Robert and Clara Schumann) and Lynn Ahrens, a BMI alum who served as Bartram's mentor. The latter was beaming like a mother hen when she said, "It's so sad. This is the next generation rising up to destroy us!"

Malcolm Gets and Will Chase at the curtain call of The Story of My Life
Malcolm Gets and Will Chase at the curtain call of The Story of My Life
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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