So much to catch up on, but I’m going to make this column a highlight reel of what it was like sailing from the U.K. to Spain, Portugal and The Canary Islands with a bunch of Broadway lovers and musical theater stars! Yes, I just got back from Seth’s Big Fat Broadway Cruise and I’ve got lots o’ stories.

But let’s start before the cruise! The passengers that arrived in London early joined me in seeing my pal Andy Nyman play Max Bialystock in The Producers in the West End. It was so great! The production is wonderful and I especially flipped out because Andy found so many new hilarious moments! I know they are new because I worked on the original production, which I’m just now realizing was 24 years ago! Wowza, time flies when you’re aging horrifically. In terms of my Producers experience, I joined as the assistant conductor after the show had played out-of-town but before previews began on Broadway. So I was there very early on.

I got hired as a sub for Phil Reno (the original keyboard player and associate conductor) and I also conducted the show many times as well. Because I was there almost every week for years, I know the show really well and it was so much fun to see new hilarious bits! Get thee to London ASAP….or not that ASAP since it just got extended to fall 2026. Werk!

Andy also got us entry into this old-school show biz club called “The Club For Acts And Actors” that is kind of like combo of The Friar’s Club and Joe Allen’s. All of my passengers who saw the show got to visit there after the performance which was so due of Andy’s kindness.

The next day, James and I met Andy and our friend Emma Kingston who is currently starring as Elphaba in Wicked in the West End. Holy cow, Emma is so fantastic! Here is some B-roll of her singing “Defying Gravity.” Spot the phenomenal vibrato on all the high Fs (De-FY-ing gravity). So good! 

Any to the hoo, we then went to Southhampton and soon the cruise officially began. The first concert I did was with the fabulous Charlotte d’Amboise. Charlotte and were talking about her long run as Roxie in Chicago. Turns out, the powers-that-be originally wanted her for the role of Velma! Charlotte was frustrated because she knew she was a Roxie, but she couldn’t get an audition. She finally accepted the audition for Velma…but brought all the Roxie material with her that she secretly got from someone else. She handed the music to the pianist and launched into the song “Roxie." She was soon stopped and they asked her to sing Velma’s opening number, “All That Jazz.” Charlotte did the ol’ “’All That Jazz’? I don’t know that song at all! I was sent all the Roxie material.” Yep, she completely lied…. But it paid off! They let her use the material she was “sent,” and soon offered her the role of Roxie. 

That was in the late '90s and she’s still playing the role on Broadway whenever they need her! And holy cow, she is fantastic! 

She ended our concert with “Music and The Mirror” from A Chorus Line. Our stage wasn’t as big as a Broadway stage, but it wasn’t as small as the apartment (!) we once used when Charlotte and I were doing a political fundraiser. Take a gander (filmed by Julia Murney!).

Since I had asked Charlotte about auditioning, I discussed auditioning with my next cruise star, David Bedella. First, we began by talking about him doing Smokey Joe’s Café on Broadway for years. He was an understudy and did not enjoy it at all. After he left the show, he vowed never to be an understudy again. 

Well, cut to: His partner at the time got a gig in London and David moved there with him. David didn’t know whether he’d be allowed to perform in the U.K. but found out he could, indeed, audition and work there. Of course, nobody there knew him so he’d be starting from scratch. That could have been a negative, but it actually freed him because no one there had a pre-conceived notion about him. David’s roommate in the 1990s was the multi-talented Jessica Sheridan who was in Liza’s Steppin’ Out tour that played everywhere, including Radio City. David remembered how Liza would walk onstage and her subtext was “Aren’t you all lucky! You’re going to see me perform and we’re going to have THE best time!” 

David decided to audition with that attitude. He went to an open call for Miss Saigon, gave it the ol’ Liza confidence, got a callback, and finally, his (new) agent was told by Cameron Mackintosh that David would be playing the Engineer in six months! However, because Cameron felt David needed time to prepare, he wanted David to understudy the role for six months. David told his agent that he had made a vow to never understudy again, and he turned it down! Yes, David turned down a job offer from Cameron Mackintosh! I was so impressed that he stuck by what he knew was best for him. It easily could have backfired and he could have stayed unemployed, but the amazing ending is; he wound up getting cast in a show that began in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and then transferred to London…and won him his first (of THREE!) Olivier Awards! Yes! 

He played Satan in the opera Jerry Springer and became a West End Star. And never understudied again! Take a gander at his face off with Jesus Christ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

P.S. We were also talking about onstage injuries, and David told us about the time he was playing Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show and had a super quick change. He would change and then run like a lunatic to another area backstage and all the crew knew to stay out of his running area. Until, one night, there was a new crew member who didn’t know and David crashed into her while he was running and BROKE HIS NOSE! It was bleeding up a storm, but David felt “the show must go on” and he went on to sing his big Act Two ballad, while bleeding! He sang and kept wiping the blood from his nose throughout but knew it wouldn’t look terrifying to the audience because he was wearing red gloves, so no one would know it was blood. 

Well, it not only didn’t look like blood, but it apparently looked like something else because, after the show, one of his friends praised him for playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter as a coke addict! Brava?

My other concert starred Liz Larsen’s and, of course, featured all of her signature high belting and hilarious stories. One of my favorites included when she was auditioning for a musical and the subject of a previous revival came up. Liz laughed and mentioned how everyone thought the director of that revival was horrible. The man auditioning her replied, calmly, “I was the director.” Uh-oh. Liz did an immediate cover-up and stammered, “Director!?!?! OMG! I meant the producer! Everything about that production was so cheap and tacky!”. The man then replied “I was also the producer.” Liz then gave up and, spoiler alert, did not get the gig.

We also talked about her first Broadway leading role in Starmites and how so many things went wrong. First of all, Liz was the lead and she got sick during previews, necessitating her understudy to go on. Unfortunately, her understudy ran to make a quick change and bumped into one of the pillars backstage (not since David Bedella?). Her understudy wound up coming out for her triumphant final scene with blood dripping down her face. The experience was so traumatic that she fled the production and Liz had to come back before she was healthy. 

The next devastation that happened was the "deluge curtain" came down. A deluge curtain is a wall of water that separates the stage from the audience and is set off in case there's a fire. Unfortunately, it came down for no reason, and it completely flooded the pit. All the music got soaked in the pit and became unreadable. This happened in the days before people used computers to write out music, so they had to close the show (!) until the score was completely hand re-written. Finally, Liz said that a shaman (!) was hired to rid the theatre of its evil spirits. For real! At one point, he wanted everyone in the cast to figure out what animal they were. He informed everyone that he would say the name of an animal and the actor would raise their hand and tell him if they were that animal. Liz kept her hand down because none of the animals felt right. The shaman would say "snake," someone would raise their hand and the shaman would point and intone, "You are an earth creature who is one with the ground and can strike with great strength. You are strong, silent and steady." A tiger? "You are always in control and choose to show your power only when necessary." 

Finally, he was nearing the end and he called out, "A Thunderbird." Liz thought, "That sounds cool…and my mom had a Thunderbird when I was a kid. That's what I am!" She raised her hand proudly, and he pointed to her and said, "You fly recklessly into the sun and then plummet to earth… and die." Wonderful!

Instead of flying into the sun, Liz was nominated for a Tony Award for The Most Happy Fella and I’m assuming the shaman is still looking for a gig.

Charlotte, Liz and I spent so much time shopping....

...and laughing!