so i'm on layoff, and i get this e-mail. in short, it asks if i'm free for the next week to sub on hairspray at the cape playhouse. a show i've always wanted to do but never gotten the opportunity to play. turns out that brian usifer, the same guy who helped me get dreamgirls, passed my name along since he knew i'd be on a break. knowing that i've got several weeks off spread out over the remainder of the tour, i figured i should jump on this and make back some of the money i would have made had the tour gone to dc as scheduled. so on saturday morning, i jump on a train to providence, switch over to a bus, and i'm out on the cape that night watching the show. i'd be playing a key 2/key 3 split book. the show was meant to run for 2 weeks but got extended another week, and the MD, jesse vargas, had a gig back in the city. so chris littlefield slid up to be key 1/conductor, and i became the new chris. great cast - lot of broadway talent (chris sieber was edna) mixed with up-and-comers that actually knew a lot of the dreamgirls cast. like i said, i watched the show on saturday, had the off day on sunday, rehearsed with chris monday afternoon and played my first show monday night. nothing against dreamgirls, but it was a blast playing another show after so many months. the atmosphere was electric, and the cast and crew welcomed me with open arms.
i'd only been on the cape once, and that was for a field trip back at harvard for only a matter of hours. so this was my first true trip of merit to the bicep of massachusetts, and it was quite quaint. single-laned roads, spotty cell and internet service, quiet beyond belief. i stayed at the kingfisher motel with many of the cast members. in fact, a few of them, like marsena and shelese, had done the same tour that kim and talitha (ensemble girls in dreamgirls) had, and others (cedric, paige and more) knew jarran...pretty much, i felt right at home pretty quickly. and believe it or not, some of them just couldn't get enough of the show and were planning to do it elsewhere right after this run closed (randy, the guy who played seaweed, is in houston for four months and liz, or traci turnblad, was heading to papermill). perhaps the best small world moment came from susan jacks. she played the gym teacher/penny's mom/other miscellaneous roles in the show and had actually done the full monty last summer with milton craig nealy, who is our marty. elaine stritch was also in their production, and susan shared some hilarious stories about her.
the theatre itself is in dennis, mass and has been around for several decades and always does a summer series that is quite the hit for locals. right across the street is the scargo cafe, where cast, crew and patrons alike go for a drink after the show. and boy, i had quite the time at the scargo. before going to harvard, i had no qualms eating, say, campbell's proclaimed new england clam chowder. but after four years of the real deal in college, i haven't had...correction, i refuse to consume clam chowder unless i'm in the northeast. the seafood at scargo was to die for - shrimp, scallops, lobster, the clam chowder, everything. and on top of that, they had lobster mac and cheese. needless to say, i'm not 169 anymore. but 174 still ain't bad. 8-show week with consecutive doubles on wed and thurs, which felt odd since i'm used to doing doubles on the weekend with DG. the week flew by pretty quickly, and i really had a great time. two really awesome late-night memories at the kingfisher. tiffany topol serenaded us on the ukulele with her angelic voice one night. she brought two of them with her and played them both with ease. so yeah, i'm calling you out, cate. hurry up and learn how to play your uke. and then on the last night, a lot of us stayed up all night and went skinny-dipping outside at 4am under the stars. hadn't seen that many boobs, i mean, stars in a long time. got on the bus at 9:30 sunday morning, got back to new york after an eight-hour, traffic-laden excursion, repacked and before i knew it, i was on a plane to charlotte.
so the airport in greenville, sc is tiny. therefore, in order to get all of us on one plane, company management flew us from laguardia to charlotte, then bussed us to greenville. i remember thinking last monday morning that i had spent way too many hours on a bus the last two days. greenville was quaint, but definitely a spot where a week was long enough to be there. stayed at the westin on main street, and the other company hotel was the hyatt, a few blocks up main. between the two hotels right on main, the town wasn't that bad. decent selection of bars, restaurants, shops, whatever...but after leaving that little 8-block strip of main, greenville didn't have much to offer. the peace center was unfortunately pretty peaceful throughout our run, because there were quite a few empty seats. but those who did show seemed to have a good time. it was the end of my first stint as conductor, and although it will be fun to play the show once again in san francisco, i will miss being on the podium. sam is coming back for our 5-week run in san fran before leaving again for the rest of the tour. which now has an end date.
john breglio, our producer, surprised us on opening night. it turns out that the show is really struggling financially. whether that's a result of us being in a recession, poor marketing to the black community, excessively high ticket prices or some combination of those and other unforeseen complications remains to be seen. what we do know now is this: since the producer cannot pay back his investors and is on the verge of launching other DG productions around the world with foreign casts (south africa and london next year and potentially brazil and elsewhere soon after), he has to make changes to the american schedule. we were scheduled to go to naples in january, and there was talk of possibly rebooking dc or going to toronto in late jan/feb. well, none of that is happening now. instead of building an entirely new set, he will ship our set to johannesburg in january in preparation for their march opening. after their six-month run (and proposed profits), he then intends to bring the show, based on theater availability, to broadway. if that doesn't work, he may take the american company to paris or through europe for a tour of indeterminate length until he finds a broadway theatre. highly unlikely that he'll get the majority of the cast and crew back for something that far down the road, but he remains optimistic. so our tour is definitively closing in detroit on jan 2. going back to when i started rehearsals in early october, that'll be 15 months of great, solid, steady, lucrative, fun work that will hopefully set me up for equally, if not, more exciting work in the future. so i really can't complain, despite it being upsetting that after dangling broadway in front of our noses for the entire run, that isn't happening anymore. but i'll continue to enjoy all the curveballs that seem to be thrown our way while the run is still going...
saturday night show in greenville. almost at the end. during curtis' solo of the reprise of 'you are my dream.' i'm muttering to myself that i'm glad we're almost at the end of a two-show day, because i'd had a long week (james harkness is leaving, and i helped to start training his replacement, grasan kingsberry. so i had a 4- or 5-hour rehearsal and a show, or two shows, every day in greenville. and that's another thing. when we finish the DG exit music, it's almost 11. another pro of doing hairspray was that it was done before 10:30 every night. i felt like i got a half-hour of my life back eight times that week. ok, back to the original story). i'm starting to dig in, because i'm conducting a huge ritard (short for ritardando, or gradually getting slower) that leads from curtis' solo into 'hard to say goodbye,' the closing number. all of a sudden, the entire house hears a snap, crackle, pop. instant darkness, save a single spot and our stand lights and probably a handful of other things. dazed and confused but not frazzled, i get the orchestra through the ritard and subsequent accel (short for accelerando, or gradually speeding up) into 'hard to say.' after, oh, about a minute or so, the lights do come back on. power surge. don't know if it was a possum. wasn't a lightning strike or anything, but something happened, and it affected a good chunk of downtown (in fact, long after the show had ended, there was no power in our hotel rooms, so naturally, a lot of us ended up at the closest bar with electricity.). but as they always say, the show must go on. unfortunately, both keyboards were zapped for the rest of the show. so there was an awkward moment during a piano solo, where i was yelling chords in the mic for matos to play on guitar. this show has been through a lot - blizzards in baltimore and columbus, earthquakes in LA, bats/thunderstorms in KC. i think the only natural disasters we've avoided are tornadoes and hurricanes. did i just jinx us?
so yeah, never a dull moment with this show. now, i'm on yet another layoff - this one was already scheduled, however. left greenville at 9:30 monday morning, bussed to charlotte, had a couple of stiff bloody marys at the bar, boarded the plane...and sat there. apparently, jfk has been doing construction on a runway all summer, which has led to lengthy delays. so we sat on the tarmac from 1 until 2:30. finally got to new york around 4. now, the pilot said that people making connecting flights should deplane first. i was in 21C and eric 21D. we're seated, as this lady rushes down the aisle, only to get stopped right between us. we mumble to each other that she must have a connector. well, she turns around, and we are instantly overcome with alcohol. this lady was drunk off her ass! i don't know how many cocktails she had had behind us, but let's just suffice it to say that it was more than a couple. obviously trapped, she starts speaking in broken, slurred belligerent english that she has a ride outside waiting for her, and that the people in front shouldn't be talking and lolligagging. she was too drunk to realize that many of the passengers on that plane were with dreamgirls. harkness simply told her that her ride would wait, at which point she got even more riled up. if you could have then seen the look on nikki's face...she looked like she was about to get fit with this drunk girl's jaw. and we all know the saying - karma's a bitch. because even though she rushed off the plane yammering with just her purse (she proclaimed to be traveling lightly), she was still waiting on the corner for her supposed "ride," as we each hopped in taxis on our way back to manhattan.
fun first night back in nyc. took a long time to plan this, but me and the boys had a roomie past, present and future dinner at shun lee near lincoln center. and we nearly had 100% of those who have ever lived in the dorm room (our apartment's nickname at 25th and 6th) present (greg was in boston). the invite was also extended to frequent couch-goers who've never actually lived there. in total, we were 9 and ran up an $800 bill. but it was the best 88 bucks i've spent in quite some time. dumplings, scallion pancakes, 2 ducks, different types of chicken. i think i sucked a lamb bone drier than any chicken counterpart in my life. and i'd never even heard of a cucumber sake-tini, but boy, were they good. pj clarke's, right across the street from lincoln center, followed and prompted us to make an almost brash decision to jump in deringer's car and go to atlantic city. instead, we went back to the dorm room and played poker, $200 buy-in. after a couple of hours, we got hungry and stumbled to the chelsea square diner on 23rd and 9th. damn good munchie platter. came back, played poker until almost 6 in the morning, and i actually came out up 33 bucks. don't know if any night this week can top that, but i'll try. had dinner and drinks with the ex last night. hadn't seen amy in a while, and it was good to catch up. we went to s'mac on the LES, and if you've been checking my blog constantly (or simply know me as a human being), you know about my unwavering love for mac and cheese. this place was awesome - highly recommend it. reasonably priced and very good. two elbows up! =) just go early if you want a seat. thankfully, we had dinner at 6, so we beat the rush. we then walked around for quite a while. went to ben and jerry's, babeland (the sex shop where she works in soho) and ended up at a bar (sala 19) back in chelsea. fun times. tonight, it's dinner at five napkin with kiernan and mac soto (the three of us wrote a musical back in college - 'hello, dali!' - and it was so much fun putting that together. i don't think i've seen the two of them in the same place since i graduated, so tonight promises to be wonderful.), thursday - mike james' housewarming on the UES, friday - hanging with knewton folk around union square, saturday - day trip up to saratoga to go to the racetrack, and sunday - buckets of coronas on the frying pan on 25th and the hudson. then it's off to san francisco for 5 weeks. got a 3-bedroom near japantown with matos and tom. it'll be my first time in SF, and it should be amazing.
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