By Tom Nondorf
Question: What have you been up to?
Q: Are the concerts going to be exclusively Christmas songs?
Q: How excited are you about the Birdland performances in particular?
Q: Billy Flynn in Chicago. Has your knowledge of him as a character increased since the first time you played him?
Q: Some questions from memory lane… Tell me your recollections of working with Reba McEntire in Annie Get Your Gun.
Q: What are your thoughts involving the "ill-fated" Alan Jay Lerner/Charles Strouse musical, Dance a Little Closer that was one of your early Broadway shows?
Q: What about Grand Hotel. A happier experience?
[Chicago plays the Ambassador Theatre, located at 219 West 49th Street… The "Christmas Mornings" shows at Birdland happen on Dec. 12-13. Birdland is located in Manhattan at 315 West 44th Street. For reservations call (212) 581-3080 or visit www.BirdlandJazz.com….And, the "Christmas Mornings" CD is available online at www.kritzerland.com. You can listen to song samples there as well.]
HITHER AND YON: HOLIDAY EDITION
Okay, happy holidays, be safe, and until next year, you will find me listening to "Now Is the Caroling Season" by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians and "This Christmas I Spend With You" by Robert Goulet. Vinyl only of course. What holiday LPs shaped your experience? Drop a line and let me know!
Tom Nondorf can be reached at tnondorf@playbill.com
03 Dec 2009
NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
Brent Barrett photo by Aubrey Reuben
Brent Barrett — Kansan by birth, now in New York performing in Chicago, traveling to and from L.A. and Vegas and generally jet-setting to wherever his skills are required by theatregoers — granted us a chat regarding his new Christmas CD, which he will be celebrating at Birdland in just a few days. One of the most well-traveled performers, Brent majored in music at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh, earning a spot in the chorus of 110 in the Shade, which further earned him something called "the bug," and he was hooked on musical theatre ever after.
Brent Barrett: Well, you know, I've been a little busy. Running around, going in and out of Chicago here and going to L.A. to record, doing a lot of concerts, and I just got back from Palm Springs last night. I was doing a concert out there, and I've got a couple of concerts coming up here at Birdland on the 13th and 14th of December for my CD, "Christmas Mornings."
Barrett: Mostly, yeah. We started putting the program together, and I think we're going to do virtually all of the album. We're going to use piano, bass, drums, guitar and reed, so we're going to re-create the sound from the CD. There will be a few songs that are not necessarily holiday-themed, but certainly fitting within the spirit of the holiday.
Barrett: I'm very excited. I haven't done anything in New York since I did a cabaret act maybe ten to 15 years ago up at the Triad. And I've just been kind of putting it off and putting it off and when we decided to do the CD, I called Jim Caruso [who runs the Broadway at Birdland series], and I said, "Hey Jim, do you have a couple of nights in early- to mid-December when we could do the CD release concerts?" and he arranged that. I'm really excited because I think it's one of the best rooms in town for the performer and for the audience.
Barrett: Well, it's a live performance, so you never know exactly what's going to happen. For me, I'm much more comfortable if I chart it out, but you leave yourself room for spontaneity if somebody says something from the audience. I haven't done a lot of these as far as solo cabaret concert evenings, so I'm still getting comfortable with the genre. But I do enjoy it. And the thing about Christmas for me, it was always about the music. I couldn't wait for the holidays to come around so I could get out all the old LPs, and we played the same ones over and over again every year. Once we got our stock of six or eight records, those were the records we played every year. So it holds a special place in my heart.
Q: What albums in particular shaped your love for Christmas music?
Barrett: When I was growing up, Firestone would put out collections of Christmas music. There would be Burl Ives, Johnny Mathis, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams doing "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year," Johnny Mathis doing "Marshmallow World." Those were the songs I couldn't wait to play over and over again.
Barrett: Oh yeah. You do a role for a while, and it's so rare that you get the opportunity to come back to something again and again. And there's a comfort level that naturally seeps in over the course of time when doing a role again. With any live theatre, everything morphs as it goes along. And right now I'm having a ball. It'll be interesting. Ashlee Simpson-Wentz is coming in the beginning of December, and as with any new Roxie, it's a whole new experience again. So I'm looking forward to that, and it looks like at this point that I'm going to be there until the end of March.
Barrett: If anyone was born to play Annie, it was Reba. She was just amazing. Even at our first rehearsals, I was watching her and I was going, "This is going to be a very special time." And it was. If you're not in the country music world, you have no idea how rabid those fans are. We came out of the stage door, and I could not believe every night, there were hundreds of people waiting for Reba. They're very dedicated, very loyal. But she is just wonderful to work with.
Barrett: It's very bittersweet because we had such high hopes for the show. But I think the fact that Alan wrote it, did the lyrics and the directing, I think it needed another eye out there. Some music, some of the songs were wonderful. I think it would be interesting for somebody to take the show, Encores! or something, and kind of rework it and see if there's something that you can actually do. The week before we opened, Alan gathered the company around because they were going to make changes, and we were all very excited because [we thought], "Oh, good, maybe we can try and resurrect the show." And then they changed what amounted to about two lines of dialogue, and we kind of looked at each other and said we might get a week out of it, but we only got one night.
Barrett: When I look back on all the shows I've done, I really have been very fortunate to have done some really wonderful shows, productions, and worked with some great people. With Hotel I traveled the world with Liliane Montevecchi for two-and-a-half years, and it was fantastic. The thing about this business is, if you're lucky enough, you make it what you want it to be. You can either see spending six months in London as six months away from home or you can just revel in the fact that you've got six months in London. And I tend to be the latter, just diving into whatever situation I'm in and going with it and making the best of it.
Some good stuff early this month to check out. The Taxi Cabaret at The Theater at St. Peter's, 619 Lexington Ave, Saturday, Dec. 5. Featuring the book, music and lyrics of Peter Mills and performances by about 40 of his closest friends. Call (212) 352-3101 for information or look for the Taxi Cabaret on Facebook…Also, Dec. 5, The Triad hosts Bawdy!, a bit of cabaret raunch featuring Brad Loekle, Terese Genecco, Lavinia Draper and host Jesse Luttrell. Go to www.triadnyc.com for more sordid details…Sunday, Dec. 6 at 7 PM, The Complete Theatre Company's Winter Reading Series presents Life-Changing Tomatoes, wherein "four friends observe birds, tomatoes, and the transient nature of love" while camping at an outdoor music festival. Steven Alexander, Meredith Edwards, Andrea Swenson, Tristan Howard, Douglas DeFalco, Brewster McCall, Elizabeth Carena and Alyssa Ritch make up the cast. That's at the Richmond Shepard Theatre, 309 East 26th Street, between 1st & 2nd Aves. Check out thecompletetheatre.com for more info…Then, Monday, Dec. 7, F.O.L.M., that's Friends of Leading Men and great dudes, Jeff Denman and Marc Kudisch open as The Holiday Guys at The Gotham Comedy Club. Check out the Facebook site if only to see the poster for this thing. The show will run Mondays at 7 throughout the month. Gotham Comedy Club is at 208 West 23rd Street. Dan Lipton is on keys. Go to gothamcomedyclub.com to nail down a seat…If you are in Los Angeles on Dec. 13-15, try to get in to Aimee Mann's Christmas show, if at all possible. This is her fourth annual and will only be in L.A. this year. Sad for us elsewhere, but it is a great night of songs and fun featuring a wild cast of folks. Shows will be at the Largo on 366 N. La Cienega. For tix and general info call (310) 855-0350…Don't forget Michael Feinstein and David Hyde Pierce at Feinstein's at Loews Regency all month long, including Christmas Day. Check the calendar at feinsteinsattheregency.com…On Dec. 14 at 9:30 PM, New York City Christmas, a benefit concert at Joe's Pub, will offer Lynne Shankel's fresh arrangements of yule songs featuring leading men Raul Esparza, Chester Gregory, Andy Karl, Tyler Maynard and Constantine Maroulis (plus a collection of theatre divas — hello, Orfeh, Sierra Boggess, Sally Wilfert and Sherie Rene Scott). It's to celebrate the new Ghostlight/Sh-K-Boom CD of the same name; proceeds go to ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty). Visit joespub.com for reservations, or sh-k-boom.com for the recording…Lastly, from Dec. 5-20 at the Gallery Players in Park Slope, Brooklyn, catch the NYC premiere of Christopher Durang's Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge featuring Douglas Rees, Doug Plaut and Greg Kalafatas. Go to galleryplayers.com for directions and details.
THE LEADING MEN: Burstein and Barrett
Q: How meticulous are you when it comes to prepping for your shows? Do you like to fly by the seat of your pants a little bit or do you pretty much want to know exactly what you're going to do every step?
