By Robert Simonson 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."
26 Apr 2006
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.
