[caption id="attachment_2464" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Rob Ashford and Kathleen Marshall"][/caption]

A six-degrees-of-separation segment underlined the pass-it-on mentoring that goes on in the profession — "Mr. Abbott" begat Hal Prince who begat Michael Bennett, etc.

The assemblage was treated to a sampling of the song hits heard on Broadway in SDC's founding year of 1959. Staged by Kathleen Marshall (who was minus three at the time) and Rob Ashford (who managed to log up six weeks in '59), the ditties were delivered by Stephen Buntrock, Raul Esparza, Montego Glover, Cheyenne Jackson, Debra Monk and Jill Paice — showstoppers from Gypsy, Once Upon a Mattress, Redhead, Jamaica, My Fair Lady, Take Me Along, Goldilocks, West Side Story, Juno, Fiorello! and Flower Drum Song — and, during the strutting Gyp Watson vamp from Destry Rides Again, major dramas on the Main Stem were remembered: A Raisin in the Sun, The Visit, A Touch of the Poet, Rashomon, Epitaph for George Dillon, A Majority of One, et al — obviously, SDC picked a prime year to come into existence.

—Harry Haun