PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: Lestat: Sir Elton Takes Wing
By Robert Simonson
26 Apr 2006
Hill's innocent Nicolas was likewise rewired and rewritten. "The character was very dark
and depressed most of the time out there. Now, he's a very joyful, really wonderfully light in
the play, and those are the roles I love playing. They've made him now more like me so
it's easy for me. I cried like a baby at curtain call. Six months of hard work, and this is my
first Broadway show, and it's such a great group of people to work with—it just hit me."
Much of Act I is moved by Lestat's attempt to find peace for Nicolas with a possible
panacea from a vampiric Buddha named Marius, who doesn't enter the picture until the
closing moments of the act—suspended in the air, a la Elphaba's "Defying Gravity" number.
"If you're listing All-Time Top-Ten Broadway Entrances, this is one of them," asserted
Michael Genet, who fills that bill (and harness), satisfying the audience that insists
vampire musicals be airborne. When asked how he does it, he pleaded "pixie-dust," but,
when pushed a little more, the trade secret emerged: "They have me strapped in six ways
from Sunday." And, yes, it is scary: "After they cast me and we were in rehearsals and
they told us what we were doing, then they asked me at the eleventh hour, 'Are you
afraid of heights?' Luckily for me, I wasn't." And for them, too, it should be added.
A punster ambushed Panaro on his way into the party and asked if he needed a good
steak. The actor growled or groaned appreciatively—then proceeded to give a serious
response: "I've been laying off the meat, actually, lately. During tech, I did this Master
Cleanse. I fasted a few days and detoxed my system so I'm in this healthy-eating mode."
Otherwise, the entrance was pure Panaro-with-panache, looking lean, mean and, thanks to
pre-ripped bodice, curly of chest-hair—the look of a fully, and freshly, worked matinee
idol. He started in that idiom—as Marius in
Les Miserables—and now he spends half a
show hunting for Marius. "I know, isn't that kinda weird? I thought of that because my
mom and dad are here tonight. They saw my premiere as Marius in
Les Miz in Boston,
and I thought, 'I wonder whether or not they are making that old connection tonight.'"
His golden tenor pipes are given a good workout in Lestat, and one of his best ballads is
one of the last songs to arrive—"Right Before My Eyes." He called it "beautiful Standard
Elton. When he sent me that song, I just about flipped out because I already had 'Sail Me
Away,' which is a great 11 o'clock number. To have two big songs like that is a real gift."
Physically, the show is a StairMaster in overdrive for him. "I kinda always describe it as:
You get on the train, and you gotta go for the ride. There's no getting off.' I thought I
worked hard in The Phantom of the Opera. I work probably four times as hard in
this—because I never leave the stage. I joke with everybody. They say, 'How's the show
going?' I say, `Great.' I'm playing Evita Peron.' Seriously. Y'know, it's like you change
your clothes on stage. You barely leave the stage, but—I have to be honest—I love it."
Carmello should be so blessed. She's the dynamo of the first act and then spends most of
the second act returning to room temperature. You half-way expect her to storm on stage
with Sara Ramirez's Spamalot showstopper, "Whatever Happened to My Part?"
"It's very active at the beginning," she admitted, "but it's only the first act so I have a lot
of downtime. Sometimes I exercise, sometimes I do sewing projects, sometimes I make
phone calls, sometimes I read. Tonight I was curling my hair, getting ready for the party.
It depends on the night. It's strange for me to have so much time off. I'm not used to it."
Does she find the whiff of incense about her role a bit unsettling? "No, once she's a
vampire, they become soul mates more than mother and son. I think of them more as
buddies—buddies who kiss on the mouth. Anne Rice has created this amazing world of
Rules for Vampires. All bets are off, once you're in that world. It's all up for grabs."
Throughout all of this, Carmello's self-effacing husband—Gregg
Edelman—was on the sidelines playing Norman Maine/Mr. Mom, wrangling their two
young children and beaming proudly about his wife's celebrity. But he sees a couple of
working-actor weekends ahead. In a few days he heads for Northwestern University to
celebrate the jubilee (75th) anniversary of its musical-theatre revues; main order of business
will be the induction of composer Larry Grossman into its Hall of Fame. The following
weekend (at 3 PM on May 6 and 7), he will join Judy Blazer, Mark Richard Ford and
Megan McGinnis at the Museum of the City of New York for a cabaret written and
directed by Michael Montel, inspired by the museum's new exhibition, "On the Couch:
Cartoons from The New Yorker" and pegged to Sigmund Freud's 150th birthday. The
program features songs from Lady in the Dark and On a Clear Day You Can See
Forever—y'know, psychiatric musicals. Lestat might make a suitable case for treatment.
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The cast gives their opening night curtain call.
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
