Hello from a Celebrity ship between Puerto Plata and Miami! I’m not on one of my signature Broadway cruises. If you can believe it, my husband James Wesley and I won this cruise when we were playing the slot machines on one of our previous cruises. So, this cruise is just a vacation! It’s a different feeling to be on a cruise and not running to sound check or spending dinner with a table full of Broadway fans having a heated discussion about who was the best Mama Rose. (I will forever love the brilliant Betty Buckley who I think has never been surpassed.)
Side note: I got to visit with Barry Manilow last year in Palm Springs (we met when I was an assistant music director in Harmony in the late '90s) and he told me in no uncertain terms that the character is “Madame” Rose. He reminded me that she is never referred to as “Mama” Rose in the entire show. I love a pop icon who is also a major Broadway fan!
P.S. You probably heard that Barry was diagnosed with lung cancer. The good news is I texted with him, and he is now out of the hospital and is going right back out on tour. Yassss! I am such a fan of him as a person and as an artist. Firstly, he is hilarious! One day he walked into Harmony rehearsal and said, “Clear! Living legend coming through. Living legend coming through.” Hi-lar! Secondly, he has incredible musical chops. And I don’t mean just his playing, arranging, and singing, but also his beautiful composing. And I love someone who does something well and knows it. Once, during a concert, he was talking about a melody he wrote and he asked the audience, “Remember melodies?” Exactly! James and I did a Concert for America in New York and Barry kindly volunteered to perform. He was so amazing! Here he is singing a stunning song he wrote with Bruce Sussman after a wonderful speech by the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Back to the boat I’m on! James and I are loving this vacation cruise, and we are gearing up for our next work cruise, Seth’s Broadway Cruise to the Caribbean. We set sail in February and Playbill is presenting. That one is already sold out, but you can join us in July for our cruise all around Iceland! James and I did a Playbill cruise to Iceland around 10 years ago and loved it so much so we are so thrilled to go back. Norm Lewis, Ari’el Stachel, and Emily Skinner will be joining us for concerts with me, the end-of-the-week variety show etc.
Out of those three, I’ve known Norm the longest. We met when he moved to New York in 1989 and I had just gotten out of college. He auditioned for the Equity/Non-Equity production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat that I was music directing at Candlewood Playhouse. He was cast as Rueben (“Those Caanan Days”). I was obsessed with his voice then and I still am today. As a matter of fact, I just put together a concert at Carnegie Hall for Molloy University, featuring lots o’ stars, and Norm was one of the very first I asked because of my obsession level. Norm did a tip o’ the hat to how we met because his audition song for Joseph was “Before The Parade Passes By.” Even though it’s written for a woman, it’s actually a great song for a guy to sing. I called him out on it at his audition because the sheet music he brought was literally from his high school choir! It was written out for soprano/alto/tenor/bass. What the hell? Are we having auditions in the cafeteria?
Regardless, years later, he reclaimed that song by having the brilliant Joseph Joubert create an incredible arrangement. We closed Act One at Carnegie Hall with Norm singing it, accompanied by me on the piano. Oh, and also the 65-piece South Shore Symphony conducted by Aaron Grandy. It was so amazing!
Norm made an appearance in Act Two to sing from Les Mis. Coincidentally, the very first person I had booked for this concert was the wonderful Will Swenson. So, I had Will and Norm in the same concert. Not one, but two Javerts! I wanted to do “The Confrontation,” so, I told them before the concert that we were going to sing it, but I would surprise them as to who would be forced to sing Jean Valjean. When they came onstage in Act Two, I told the audience the story about Norm getting cast for the first time in Les Mis. He was cast as Javert, but one of his agents got confused by the two leads having a J in their name and for days Norm thought he was Jean Valjean! So, because he had spent time thinking about playing that role (25 years ago) I thought he would have the upper hand on how to sing it. I was wrong. He told me point blank onstage that he didn’t know any of the lyrics, so I pulled them up on an iPad and followed him around onstage so he could read them.
Oh! I also had Erika Henningsen in the concert and, because she had played Fantine, I asked her to come out and recreate her role. Spoiler alert: She dies right before the song. However, I had to recreate it, Jenna Russell-style. Jenna Russell is a British star (who was nominated for a Tony Award for playing Dot in the revival of Sunday in the Park with George) and when she played Fantine, she decided to do a unique death, dying with her eyes open. Of course, Fantine doesn’t get wheeled offstage right after her death. She has to lay there while Valjean and Javert fight it out. So poor Jenna had to keep her eyes open for that whole song! I asked Erika to match Jenna’s eye muscle ability. In summation: Erika was slumped on the piano with her eyes agape, I was running after Norm with an iPad, Will was adding signature comedic choreography, and I hightailed it to the piano and added a stripper ride-out to the last note.
End of story: Carnegie Hall hasn’t invited me back. Here is a clip leading to where I insisted they “sass up” the ending.
Speaking of Erika, before she was a wide-eyed French cadaver, she did a beautiful version of “Meadowlark.” Watch!
And, when the songs ended, because she had added a high note during rehearsals, I asked her to try the ending one more time with the additional High E. Take a gander:
P.S. Santino Fontana was also in the concert and, because he starred in the film Frozen, Erika begged to sing “Love is an Open Door” with him. She was so thrilled to do it that afterwards, Santino took an onstage selfie with us!
As I mentioned, Ari’el Stachel is also coming on #SethsBwayCruise to Iceland. I just became friends with Ari a few months ago when I got involved with his fantastic play Other, produced by LaChanze. The show finished its Off-Broadway run in December, but I know there are a lot more venues coming up! You should definitely be able to see it if you haven’t yet. Other is about Ari’el’s struggle with accepting who he is: a Yemeni Israeli Arab Ashkenazi Jew. The play is both hilarious and moving because, holy cow, he struggled. He was still a kid after 9/11 and, because of how he looked, his schoolmates started calling him Osama. He switched schools and, early on, when he was on the basketball court, a Black student connected with him assuming that he was Black…so Ari pretended to be Black for a long time! I don’t want to spoil any more, but the show is so fantastic. It’s so interesting to know that even though he was so wonderful in The Band’s Visit, and won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, he was still struggling with extreme anxiety.
I can’t wait ‘til he does my Broadway cruise because I love his voice so much (the flexibility!!). Here’s his sexy song from The Band’s Visit, “Haled’s Song About Love.”
However, Ari’el and I had such a hilarious mishap recently. I logged on to do a Zoom interview for a TV show with a great female host, and when I got on, Ari was finishing up his interview. We were so happy to see each other and Ari wanted to tell the host (her name is Doug) that I was involved with Other, but because it seemed she had taken out her earpiece, she didn’t hear him when he kept calling her name. And he called her name aI. Finally, he gave up, logged off and I began my interview with Doug. I always think it’s so cool when people have unique first names and I’d never met a female Doug before. I thought it was very Michael Learned (The Waltons!) . Doug interviewed me and I signed off by gushing, “P.S. I love your name!” Well, a few minutes letter, I got a sweet email from the producer telling me how much the host loved doing the interview with me. To be more specific, the email said that “Kristy” loved doing the interview with me. In other words, her name isn’t Doug. I then realized that because we were on Zoom, she must have been using the Zoom account of someone named Doug.
So, let me reiterate what happened: I came on the Zoom and saw the host in the top left corner and Ari’el on the bottom square. Ari got excited and wanted to tell the host that I was involved with his play, Other. So, over and over again, he kept trying to get her attention by yelling, “Doug! Doug! DOUG! DOUG!” Instead of me thinking, “Wait. Her name is Doug? Really?” I assumed that because he had just finished his interview, she must have introduced herself as Doug. I didn’t question, I simply accepted. Then I did an interview with her and ended by saying, “By the way, I love your name.” I’m sure she was like, “What does he ‘love’ about the name ‘Kristy?’” As soon as I realized, I sent a text to Ari. Here is the exchange:
My third performer on my Iceland cruise is the fantastic Emily Skinner! Having Norm there will make it a Side Show reunion...and I include myself in that reunion because I was the assistant music director for the very first reading and the first workshop! I was then unceremoniously replaced on the second workshop. #StillResentful
Anyhoo, Emily starred opposite Alice Ripley on Broadway in the original production of Side Show, and they are both responsible for one of the best Tony Award performances…that almost fell apart! Here’s the story.
Side Show closed in January 1998. Months later, it received Tony nominations for Best Musical with Emily and Alice nominated jointly for Best Actress in a Musical. Because the show was one of four best musicals nominated, Emily and Alice were asked to perform. Alice told me it was surreal and very emotional to be back in the costumes and wigs after sooo many months. There was joy to be performing, but also sadness the show hadn’t lasted longer. That night, the music began for their performance on the Tony Awards. As they walked towards each other all those emotions collided inside Alice. Suddenly, instead of singing her first phrase, “What have we done?” she went directly to her second phrase, probably because it spoke her real-life subtext, “I’m scared, Daisy.” Uh-oh! In that split second moment, Emily had to decide what to do. She couldn’t skip to the second phrase and hope the orchestra would catch up, but the orchestra was pre-recorded! So instead of answering “What have we done?” with “Lost our men…” she sang, “We’ve lost our men,” trying to make it sound like a new thought. You can tell Alice is like WTF at first because there is a slight delay but then she realizes she needs to continue the first phrase and at the last minute gets in, “Closed a door,” and Emily quickly answers with, “Opened more!” Then Alice sings, “I’m scared, Daisy,” again, but this time, it’s at the proper moment in the song and soon the number is off and running! And OMG, it winds up being such an incredible performance. It reminds me of what Anika Larsen (who is coming on #SethsBwayCruise next month to the Caribbean!) always says, “Being professional doesn’t mean you don’t make mistakes. It means you know how to recover.” And holy cow, do they recover. Watch!
For more Side Show stories and shenanigans, come join me, Ari’el, Norm, and Emily in July on Seth’s Big Broadway Cruise to Iceland.
Peace out!
