|
|
 |
ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Lane and Len
By Seth Rudetsky
03 Mar 2008
 |
|
Nathan Lane and Seth Rudetsky at the Chatterbox.
|
| photo by Christie Ford | A week in the life of actor, musician and Chatterbox host Seth Rudetsky.
My friend Tim emailed me a link saying, "Did you see the stuff about your birthday on TalkinBroadway?" I was so excited, and when I clicked the link it went to a post where someone had written, "Wow! The sexiest sixty-year-old I've ever seen." Ha ha. Tim had "hilariously" sent me to a link about Bernadette.
I decided to have a little get-together on Saturday night. Friday night at 11 PM, my buzzer sounded. Juli had gone to bed two hours before so I tiptoed through the dark living room to the intercom. "Hello?" I whispered. "Seth Rudetsky!" I heard from downstairs. "It's Norm Lewis! Happy Birthday!" I buzzed him and confronted him on the staircase, me in my pajamas, him covered in snow. "Uh…the party is tomorrow." Norm claimed his email said it was tonight. What? I guess I could have told him that he was right and invited him in to sit with me in a depressing, dark living room and talk nonsense…but I already saw The Homecoming and had no intention of re-creating it in my own apartment. He went home and then I checked my email. I found one from Cheyenne Jackson saying, "Sorry I missed your party last night." What is it with Broadway stars and the calendar!? Anyhoo, it wound up being a great little soiree, and I felt so highfalutin' because I ordered a big plate of sushi. Around 11, my boyfriend James asked if I would order a pizza. He's from Texas and did not ever grow into enjoying the big city taste of sushi. I rolled my eyes and asked what I was gonna do with all the leftover pieces of pizza, and he assured me we could eat it for dinner the next night. Cut to, I ordered the pizza begrudgingly — it was gone in two minutes flat, and I'm writing this column surrounded by an almost full platter of negihamachi and salmon skin rolls. Turns out, Broadway don't go for highfalutin'!
Now, that last story brings me to last week's Chatterbox. Around two weeks ago, I did a performance of Celebrity Autobiography with Matthew Broderick and asked him to do my Chatterbox on the 28th. He was very sweet and agreed readily. He told me to check in beforehand to double confirm. Of course, I waited 'til the night before and left a perfunctory message on his assistant's voice mail. She called me back in a panic. Matthew had to go to L.A. at the last minute and couldn't make it back to N.Y. to do my show. Ah! It was sold out, and I didn't want BC/EFA to lose out on all that money. I had to get a replacement whom the crowd would adore just as much. I thought of The Producers and remembered how much fun I had with Nathan Lane at my Sirius interview recently. I called his assistant, Andrea, and she told me that he's doing a reading all day long and starring in November at night. In other words, he's too busy/tired to do anything extracurricular. She said she'd ask him anyway, and 20 minutes later called me back in shock and said "He'll do it!" How amazing is that!?! I showed up at Don't Tell Mama's and Nathan immediately said, "I don't wanna talk about the stuff we did before. Ask me other stuff." Uh-oh. I'm old school. I thought the show was frozen. I'm used to going through a celeb's career from start to finish, but he said we should do it differently...and go backwards. Didn't he know Merrily We Roll Along flopped? I was panicked…but it wound up being an amazing/hilarious show.
First we talked about the Marc Shaiman/Scott Whitman/Terrence McNally musical, Catch Me If You Can, which is the reading he's doing right now. He said he's done so many readings of it that he now feels like he's doing a revival, but he thinks the show's gonna be great. He's playing the Tom Hanks character from the movie, and hopefully he's ixnaying the "I'm not Tom Hanks because I'm doing a Boston Accent" Boston accent. Which now leads me to the first section of this article. At one point, I had my cell phone onstage to check the time and I said, "Do you want to see a picture of my boyfriend James?" Well. He went on a five-minute tear about how every week I have to mention "my boyfriend James this" and "my boyfriend James that" and how I always pepper it with "his daughter Juli." Nathan made it clear that yes, he's got it: I have a boyfriend. Then he asked if James is the first boyfriend I've ever had. Hmph. I wanted to tell him that he was exaggerating and that no one else is bothered by it until I saw the entire audience nodding in unison. Well. I will simply say that sometimes James comes up as part of a story I'm telling and I don't want new readers to look at it and say, "Who is this random James person that Seth is talking about?" Hence the moniker, "my boyfriend James." But, I know that when the public speaks (or in this case, yells at you), you must listen. So from now on I will simply write James' name without a precursor or simply list him as my BF.
Nathan also told me a Doug Henning debacle that he hadn't told me before. They both did the musical Merlin, and one night Doug was regaling him with magic-gone-awry stories. Doug was doing a Vegas show, and the final act was turning his wife into a tiger. Doug finished the trick, but noticed that the chain attached to the tiger…was broken! He said that the rest happened in slow motion. The tiger started prowling towards the audience, who then began screaming. Also, since it was a New Year's Eve show, it was packed with celebrities. This took place in the seventies, so I'm imagining an audience filled with hysterical Loni Andersons, Bonnie Franklins and Gabe Kaplans. Doug grabbed onto the tiger's chain and started yanking the tiger backwards. The tiger turned and started to advance on Doug. Suddenly, the tiger leapt on top of him…and licked his face. I, of course, thought that was adorable, 'til Nathan explained that tigers clean their food before they eat it. The tiger then put Doug Henning's entire head inside his mouth!!!!! Doug was so petrified that he fainted and because what the tiger considered prey suddenly seemed so limp and odd, it let go of his head. Doug told Nathan that the next thing he remembers is waking up in his dressing with Bob Hope standing above him saying, "That's the best finale I've ever seen!"
Also this week, I interviewed Len Cariou on my Sirius radio show. Len is from Canada and in 1969 made his Broadway starring debut in Henry the Fifth (King Henry V) … or as he called it, show biz-style, "Hank Cinq." He said that right before he opened in that show, he was called in to audition for Applause to play Lauren Bacall's love interest. He was a fan of her work...which is weird because usually actors can be competitive if they both have the same vocal range. He got the role of Bill Sampson and remembers that when they did the gypsy run-thru of Applause, a nice man with glasses perched on his head approached Len after the show and said, "I think you're one of the best leading men I've ever seen in my life." Ron Field, the choreographer, ran over to Len and told him that pleasant gentleman was…. Hal Prince!!! That compliment would pay off later. Len was nominated for a Tony Award for his part in Applause but said that he would have been embarrassed if he had won because he didn't have that much to do in the show. Attention, Tony voters: Let me say for the record, I will not be embarrassed if I am nominated and/or win a Tony for my four lines in The Ritz. I hope I've made myself clear. Continued...
Contact Us | Advertise | Privacy Policy
Send questions and comments to the Webmaster
Copyright © 2008 Playbill, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
|
|
|