I Owe Broadway Much More Than “My Regards.”
With the news that Broadway’s 41 storied theaters will reopen at full capacity starting in September (God—and Delta variant—willing), I find myself reflecting on how profoundly the theater has informed my notions surrounding art, storytelling, talent, and human connection. And how diminished my creative purview would be without it. I’ve counted down my top 10 theatrical experiences here—and hope you’ll share one or more of yours in the comment section.
10. Ian MacNeil, SET DESIGNER, “An Inspector Calls” (1994, Royale Theater)
Director Stephen Daldry’s revival of "An Inspector Calls," reignited playwright, J.B. Priestley's reputation—revealing the play to be not simply a drawing room mystery, but a stinging socialist commentary. And much of that can be credited to set designer, Ian MacNeil. I’ve never forgotten the life-sized Edwardian dollhouse on hydraulic “stilts” that—at the dramatic climax—tipped up to empty the family’s possessions onto the rain-soaked street.
The play "has a lot of everything,” wrote New York Times critic, Vincent Canby, “but most of all, it has the brilliant restless imaginations" of Mr. Daldry and Mr. MacNeil. And my imagination (like many others, I’m sure) is more expansive for it.
“Man in Chair’ (top) taking to the skies with “Chaperone’s” cast of characters (bottom)
9. “The Drowsy Chaperone” (2006, Marquis Theater)
This loving send-up of Jazz Age musicals—in which we see the nameless “Man in Chair” put on his favorite cast recording of a fictitious 1928 musical, then watch its cast of characters come to life—was delightful. (And deserving of its five Tony Awards). But nothing in this fizzy pastiche prepared me for its tear-inducing finale. “It does what a musical is supposed to do… and helps you escape from the dreary horrors of the real world,” proclaimed the man, who then stepped into the musical-come-to-life for the first time—taking his seat next to the ditzy hostess and bumbling best man on the wings of a prop plane, and ascending into the clouds as the curtain came down.
I’m reminded now of the final moments in “Field of Dreams,” in which the ghosts of baseball’s past invite only James Earl Jones’ character (the sole believer in the true mythic power of the game) to visit a kind of “baseball heaven.” Like “Chaperone,” it makes the correlation between belief and ascension. Clearly, it was “Man in Chair’s” unwavering belief in the transcendent power of musicals that allowed him to take to the skies. And he made believers of all of us.
8. Tommy Tune, Director/CO-CHOREOGRAPHER, “A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine” (1980, ROYale Theater)
Tune—despite his 5 Tony Awards—rarely seems to be spoken about with the same reverence as fellow Director/Choreographers Bob Fosse and Michael Bennett. Yet, when it comes to visual inventiveness alone, I think he surpasses them both. In the “Famous Feet” number from Tune’s homage to Hollywood Musicals (act 1) and Marx Brothers movies (act 2), he raised the curtain only knee-high, then sent out a host of movie icons (including Astaire and Rogers, Minnie and Mickey, and the Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy Gale)—all instantly recognizable from their footwear alone.
I’m surprised to find no record of it online. But with the number so vivid in my mind 40 years later, I don’t need one.
Gravediggers (at left) before a depiction of London as an inhuman hive.
7. hAROLD PRINCE, DIRECTOR, “Sweeney Todd” (1978, URIS THEATER)
Long before the immersive experiences of “Cats” or “Fuerza Bruta,” Director Prince transported us to 1890’s industrialized London with a few brilliant strokes of stagecraft—greeting audiences with an enormous curtain depicting London as a giant hive, then tearing it down as a deafening factory whistle signaled the inhumanity to come.
6. ZOE CALDWELL, “MEDEA” (1982, CORT THEATER)
I was 19, and at the dawning of my life as an adult theatergoer, when I saw Zoe Caldwell’s Medea. Her effect on my notions around creativity, connection, and how I view talent are lovingly recounted in my post, “From A to Zoe: Remembering Zoe Caldwell”, written on the occasion of her passing in February 2020.
5. BETTE MIDLER, “HELLO DOLLY!” (2017, SHUBERT THEATER)
I refused to be blinded by the hysteria that greeted Midler (and made “Dolly” sell out faster than any other show in Broadway history)—hoping to experience the performance on my own terms. 4 years later, it remains the one I find most difficult to put into words. That Dolly’s silent 3-minute deconstruction of a roasted chicken at the Harmonia Gardens was worthy of Chaplin could be attributed to Midler’s lifelong honing of comedic talents. But how to explain the joyful tears in my eyes as the curtain came down. I can only chalk it up to that rare alchemy between performer and audience. To “Magic.” And true magic—by its very nature—can never be fully explained.
4. Jennifer Holiday, “Dreamgirls” (1981, Imperial Theater)
Holiday’s performance as Effie White is so monumental, it’s impossible to think it almost never happened. Conceived as a vehicle for Nell Carter, the show (then called “Big Dreams”) was workshopped multiple times, with Effie’s death at the end of Act I turning off both Holiday AND Carter (who returned briefly before leaving again for her NBC sitcom, “Gimmie A Break”). It was only after Director Michael Bennett dramatically expanded Effie’s role (desperate not to lose Holiday again) that contracts were signed. And history made.
Watch the 1982 Tony Awards telecast with the camera only inches from her face, and Holiday’s performance can seem monstrous and grotesque. But what I experienced in my 8th-row seat was that rarest of theatrical communions. I wasn’t merely transfixed. I was transformed.
“I sing because I’m free,” intones Holiday (in a concert rendition of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow”)—a fitting characterization of her “Dreamgirls” performance, whose unbridled ferocity seems to border on possession. Over-the-top? Hell, yes. And I’m sure many found it grossly indulgent (my actress-mother among them, who thought Holiday did her vocal instrument no favors by singing with such recklessness eight times a week). But she did. Night after night. And I will never forget it.
3. “LENA HORNE: THE LADY & HER MUSIC” (1981, NEDERLANDER THEATER)
I still remember the smell.
Horne’s aversion to air conditioning, which she pretended to blame on her boss (“Mr. Nederlander ain’t got no money”), allowed the stage lights to warm her own personal scent (a mix of perspiration and perfume) in a way that infused the entire theater—as if her performance wasn’t intoxicating enough!
Losing her husband, father, son, and best friend (composer Billy Strayhorn) all in the same year had left Horne in a kind of grief-imposed retirement—until friend Alan King urged her to end her performing career properly. Booked for a four-week engagement at the Nederlander Theatre, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music was extended for a total of 333 performances (the longest-running solo performance in Broadway history) and earned her a Special Tony Award. Watch her Tonight Show appearance from the time and it’s no surprise that the seductive, devilishly funny Horne leaves Carson completely and uncharacteristically charmed.
What surprised—if not confounded—was the voice. Even the most trained or gifted singer must make concessions to age—but not Horne. No longer the purring ice-queen, she possessed a sonorous depth, raging vibrato, and ability to hold notes that—at 65—seemed almost otherworldly. It wasn’t that Horne hadn’t sounded like this since her 20s or 30s. She never had.
Borne out of devastating loss, and the freedom and forgiveness that comes with age, Horne’s performance did not signal a return—but a rebirth. Having once adopted an aloof pose that said, ''You're getting the singer, but not the woman,'' audiences now got a Lena who had never really existed before. Had she stayed in retirement, Horne’s now fully-realized talent would never have been heard. Her artistic triumph never celebrated.
I’m forever grateful to have had the chance to do both.
Click to hear “From This Moment On” from “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music”
2. “THE HUMANS” (2017, Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre)
A seemingly innocent look at a daughter hosting Thanksgiving dinner at her Chinatown apartment, The Humans proved to be a terror-tinged catalog of familial feelings and failings. With its subterranean lower level hinting at heaven and hell, Stephen Karam’s examination of the “horrors of ordinary life and the love we need to counter them” (Chicago Tribune), undid me. And its haunting effect was no less powerful when I returned a month later.
It remains the most affecting experience of my theater-going life.
1. bRETT SHER, DIRECTOR, “SOUTH PACIFIC” (2008, Vivian Beaumont Theater)
That the simplest piece of stagecraft should top my list attests to the extraordinary power of theater. There on a bare, black lacquered stage, as “Some Enchanted Evening” built to its climax, Director Sher slowly pulled back the stage floor to reveal the orchestra—its sound swelling as the honeyed glow from the music stand’s lamps uplit actor Paola Szott’s face. And it wrecked me.
As the show continued, I remained stilled. Overwhelmed as much by the poetic simplicity in crafting such a moment as the moment itself. And I doubt a month has gone by that I’ve not thought back on it.
Honorable Mention (iN NO SPECIAL ORDER)
Wilson as style icon, Diana Vreeland
Mary louise wilson, “Full Gallop” (1996, Manhattan Theater Club)
From “Tru” to “Mark Twain Tonight,” the chance to spend a fictional evening with one of history’s most colorful characters is always fun—and few were more colorful than Diana Vreeland. Ensconced in her red lacquer-walled apartment following her very public firing from VOGUE, Wilson (also the play’s co-author) perfectly captured DV’s audacious gestures and pronouncements. “The French have to exercise their jaws so much and the insides of their mouth just to get the words OUT. Say ‘Bonjour’ and see what your face does. Now try ‘Hi.’”
LMAO.
“This is soup,” explains Trudy the Bag Lady
Lily Tomlin, “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” (1986, PLYMOUTH THEATer)
Tomlin embodied numerous characters in her search, including Trudy the Bag Lady, who imagines a group of aliens as her journeymen—and takes them to the theater near the play’s end.
Trudy: My space chums find it hard to grasp some things that come easy to us, because they simply don't have our frame of reference. I show 'em this can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, "This is soup." Then I show 'em a picture of Andy Warhol's painting of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. I say, "This is art."
Trudy (near the play's end): I forgot to tell 'em to watch the play; they'd been watching the audience! Yeah, to see a group of strangers sitting together in the dark, laughing and crying about the same things...that just knocked 'em out. They said, "Trudy, the play was soup...the audience...art."
Ken Watanabe and Kelli O'Hara in Lincoln Center’s 2015 revival
“Shall We Dance,” “The King & I” (1977, 1986 & 2015)
I’ll bet anyone $100 that they can’t watch this number performed and NOT feel joy. Unleashing the emotions felt between Anna and the King in a way dialogue alone never could, “Shall We Dance” is as good an argument as any for the musical theater form’s existence.
Click to hear Casandra Wilson’s slow, swinging rendition of “Shall We Dance.”
Pamela Isaacs (right) with Lillias White in “The Life.”
Pamela Isaacs, “The Life” (1997, Ethel Barrymore Theatre)
Remembering her promise to “Save a little money every day, never let the magic slip away”—even as her dream of escaping “the life,” with her pimp/boyfriend DOES slip away—Isaacs (playing the aptly named “Queen”) gave this rather sanitized look at prostitution its heart and heft. And had me returning a 2nd time to simply hear that clarion voice again.
Imogene Coca, “On the Twentieth Century.”
Robin Wagner, Set Designer, “On The Twentieth Century” (1978, St. James Theatre)
In this slapstick musical comedy that finds an aging actress, an over-the-hill director, gangsters, and a religious fanatic traveling on the famed Twentieth Century Limited, Wagner (with Director Hal Prince) turned to the movie maker’s tools to heighten the drama—sending a miniature train across the stage as if in a long shot, then “cutting” to a full-size locomotive seeming to barrel straight towards the audience—with the bible-thumping Imogene Coca (shown) plastered across its front. Brilliant!
Listen to “The Post-Pandemic Future of Broadway and Movies” (a discussion with the Schubert Organization’s Chairman & CEO, Robert Wankel) on “Here’s the Thing” with Alec Baldwin.
“On Broadway,” a new documentary from Academy Award®-nominated director Oren Jacoby, shows how Broadway led NYC’s last great rebirth and can again. Click here for info on virtual screenings (starting September 10th), or visit kinomarquee.com/film