Two Steps Forward, One Step Back...

Last night in rehearsal I was yet again reminded of the extraordinary level of talent I'll be onstage with in Adding Machine.  Kelly Lester, playing Mrs. Zero, my wife in the play, once again set the tone for the rehearsal by singing a couple of duets with me.  And I use the term 'with me' loosely.  Kelly sings a song and there may or may not be someone singing with her.  If there is someone singing with her no one really notices because she's an absolute vocal juggernaut.  I told her last night she was a 'freak of nature' (in a good way).  And she is. 

Then Rob Herring took over and sang his numbers.  Rob is up for an Ovation Award this year (that's LA's version of The Tony) for his work earlier in the season on Sondheim's Sweeny Todd.  He sort of 'let loose the dogs of war' last night and blew the roof off the place.  Rob and Kelly both are that rare combination of performer that sing and act at the highest possible level.

And then Christine Horn, playing my mistress in the play, Daisy, sang her songs and had everyone weeping uncontrollably.  Well, perhaps not uncontrollably, but I think it fair to say, her voice is so beautiful everyone in the room was visibly moved.  Christine has just come off a two-year national tour of The Lion King.  She's really quite breathtaking onstage.  She possesses a remarkably pure insturment.  Quite stunning, really.

And then I sang.  Or rather, I croaked through my stuff.  I told Angie last night after rehearsal that it's really joltingly clear I'm not in the same league as these guys, vocally speaking.  Fortunately, the piece is written that way, sort of.  And I stress 'sort of.'  My character has a buttload of stuff to sing, so it's not as if they can carry me. 

Toward the end of the play, I have a couple of musical segments to warble through.  I've spent so much time working on my big number, Zero's Confession, that I've neglected the other stuff to a certain extent.  Yesterday I worked on those later numbers here at home, singing them through about 112 times.  Naturally, once I got to rehearsal and started singing them it was as though I'd never heard them.  Oy.  Very frustrating. 

So I left rehearsal last night in a snit.  At myself, that is.  Alan Patrick Kenny, our unflagging musical director, is being terribly kind and encouraging toward me and my efforts.  He assures me there's nothing to worry about...yet.  Ron Sossi, our director for this astonishing piece of theatre, has clearly taken a calculated risk by casting an 'actor who sings' rather than a 'singer who acts.'. 

There's nothing to do except re-double my efforts today.  Back to the drawing board.  I reminded myself last night that the reason I took this role initially was because for the first time in years I had serious doubts as to whether I could even DO the damned thing.  I'm so used to being the 'hired gun' on a play, that I've almost forgotten what it's like to struggle with the material.  Well, last night it became clear to me all over again that this material is not within easy reach.  I'll be perfectly honest...I'd forgotten what it's like to be scared. 

Rehearsal starts today for the film version of my play, From the East to the West.  Following that, I'll be back at work on this music.  I'll do it and do it and then do it again.  Repitition is indeed the soul of art.  I will learn to sing every single note of this score as though no one has ever sung it before.  I shall 'compose it on the spot' as Alan says.  I will work as hard as I can and if that's not enough I'll work harder.  And if all else fails, I'm close to the 405 and I can always just step in front of a big truck.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Blocking Rehearsal.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Blocking Rehearsal.: "Blocking rehearsal last night. Generally speaking, one of the more tedious nights of the rehearsal process. Last night didn't feel that w..."

Blocking Rehearsal.

Blocking rehearsal last night.  Generally speaking, one of the more tedious nights of the rehearsal process.  Last night didn't feel that way, however.  Ron Sossi, the veteran director and Los Angeles theater legend, is helming the piece.  Ron probably wouldn't appreciate being called a 'Los Angeles theater legend,' but he really is.  He's also, thank heavens, an incredibly astute director. 

Before the opening readthru of the script, the table rehearsal, Ron said something I liked very much.  He said, and I'm paraphrasing, "When I was younger I used to plan a show out meticulously; blocking it on paper, finding the beats, doing all the paper work that they teach in school these days...now I just kind of throw everything up against a wall and see what sticks."

He wasn't just whistling Dixie.  That's what we did last night.  I love that.  Try this, try that, discard that, keep that, give this moment a chance, try it a different way, etc.  Love it.

Years ago I did a play called The Dropper at a new play festival in the south.  Good play, actually.  Written by Ron McClarty.  In addition to myself, there was an actor in the cast that was 81 years old.  I loved sitting and talking to him for hours and hours.  He had been a stage actor all his life.  He'd worked with everyone, including Sir John Gielgud once.  He said that on the first day of blocking the play he was doing, Gielgud said to the cast, "I wouldn't bother writing any of this down.  Everything will change in a week or so.  And don't bother writing that down, either, because it will change yet again before we open.  In fact, if I were you, I'd ignore me altogether for awhile."  I kind of got that feeling from Ron last night.  He steadfastly refuses to 'set' anything.   He's been doing this a long, long time and he clearly understands something I tell my students all the time, "There is no right or wrong in the theatre, there is only what works and what doesn't work."

I also appreciate his complete lack of 'offstage drama.'  You can't be in this business as long as he has and still take everything so seriously.  I'm reminded of a story of Hitchcock working with Kim Novak on a film.  Ms. Novak had apparently been taking a few classes at the actor's studio with Lee Stasberg and was becoming quite uppity about her 'art.'   Now, Kim Novak, even at her best, was nothing to write home about.  So there was a moment in the filming when Hitchcock asked her to walk from the door to the table.  She refused to do it.  Said there was no motivation to do so.  Said she could only do it if Hitchcock explained her intentions to her.  So Hitchcock allegedly pulled her aside and said, very softly, "Kim, dear.  It's only a movie."

That is precisely the vibe Ron Sossi gives off as a director.  And personally, I couldn't be happier about it.

Tomorrow rehearsals start for the filming of my play, From the East to the West.  Shooting commences next Thursday.  Nice.

See you tomorrow.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: The First Plateau.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: The First Plateau.: "An eye-opening rehearsal last night, to say the least. This is my 112th professional, Equity production as an actor. And over the course o..."

The First Plateau.

An eye-opening rehearsal last night, to say the least.  This is my 112th professional, Equity production as an actor.  And over the course of those shows I'd like to think (although sometimes I'm not so sure) I've learned some things.  One thing I always wait for in the rehearsal process, and it nearly always happens, is what I like to call the 'first plateau.'  It usually happens about two weeks into rehearsal (for non-musicals, usually a little earlier).  This is when the cast has a rehearsal that finally gives everyone a glimpse of what is possible.  It's a heady feeling.  This is what happened last night. 

One of my co-stars in this piece is a remarkably talented actress named Kelly Lester.  She, like myself I'm surmising, has a long history in this silly little business.  And in this play, she, too, has a brutally long and complicated song.  Her major song comes at the top of the show, right out of the gate.  Mine is about halfway through.  So when the curtain metaphorically goes up, the first thing the audience will see and hear is Kelly.  And as anyone who's done musical theater can tell you, it's crucial, absolutely crucial, to knock 'em out immediately. 

Kelly's song, even more so than mine, I dare say, is a combination of impossible range, intensely complicated rhythms and complex counting on the part of the actor.  Kelly came in last night and hit it out of the park on the first swing.  During the break I told her, completely sincerely, "You've just set the bar impossibly high for the rest of us."  I meant it.  It was a dazzling display of virtuoso talent.  Even Alan (Alan Patrick Kenny, our encyclopedic musical director, himself unbelievably talented) normally somewhat subdued during rehearsal, was whooping with excitement.  I am not, at least vocally, involved in the first number, so I only had to sit and listen to it.  Our ensemble nailed it right along with her.  Alan has said a couple of times in this process thus far, "Musical theater at it's very best must appear as though the actor is composing the score 'on the spot.'"  Well, that's what it looked like.  It is, and will be, a tour de force for her.  I often tell my students that a play is only as good as its weakest actor.  I hope I'm not getting ahead of myself here, but I honestly don't think we need worry about that with this piece.  There simply are no 'weak' actors. 

The next 'plateau' will probably occur during the sitzprobe, which is German for 'sit and sing.'  That has been my experience, anyway.  We'll continue along on this current path, working at this high level of expectation, that is to say, and I suspect the next time we all jump to a higher plane will be when the orchestra is present and we all hear the fullness of the score underneath us.  That day is always tremendously exciting.  I remember the second time I did Camelot I did it with an orchestra of about twenty-five musicians.  We were all in an acoustically perfect rehearsal hall in Pennsylvania and when the music (remember, we had been used to working with simply a piano) and the strings swelled beneath us, it was a little bit of magic.  Always works that way.  I've done a play called 1940's Radio Hour a total of six times around the country.  That play, as the title would suggest, is all about jazz/swing music from the forties.  The first time the cast works with the onstage full orchestra, complete with swinging brass, it's electric.  Every single time. 

So, we're finally off and running.  Off and flying, actually.  The rest of the evening went well, too.  I was even a little happy with my massive number, Zero's Confession.  There are still spots in the song that concern me deeply (there are two moments in which I'm compelled to sing high Fs...and by the time I get to them they are, well, just not there) but I have some ideas.  I mentioned to Alan last night that I'd like to 'negotiate' with him about the spots in the song that I can emotionally express without actually singing.  He smiled and said, "Okay."  I think it will be up to me to demonstrate whether they can work or not. 

So, finally, a rehearsal yesterday I didn't walk away from in angst.  I knew it would happen, I just didn't know when. 

See you tomorrow. 

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Attacking the Script.

Last Tango in Los Angeles: Attacking the Script.: "There are fleeting, secret moments during the rehearsal of this play in which I think to myself, 'This play is not do-able. At least not p..."

Attacking the Script.

There are fleeting, secret moments during the rehearsal of this play in which I think to myself, "This play is not do-able.  At least not professionally."  Now, of course, that's just silliness, but I still think it.  I was privately thinking it last night in rehearsal.  The music, so dense, so exacting, that to envision taking it to the next step, that is, memorizing it and making dramatic choices and being comfortable enough with it to play inside the music itself, just seems incomprehensively distant.  Again, I know this to not be true.  But knowing something and feeling something are two different things.

Years ago I played 'The Chairman' in a musical called 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' based on the Charles Dickens' unfinished novel.  Later, I believe, the actual name was shortened to simply DROOD! (with the exclamation point).  I remember thinking the same thing about that piece.  In fact, the author of that piece, Rupert Holmes, astonishingly, even writes in the notes for the play that The Chairman will, in fact, 'go up' on his lines at some point during the run and it would serve everyone well, if a 'handsomely bound' manuscript be kept within easy reach on stage so that he might grab it when he 'goes up.'  I have seen that unlikely notation in no other play I've ever done, before or since.  And yes, that character certainly has a massive amount of lines.  I was doing the musical with some real powerhouse musical-theater actors: James Barbour, Mitch Kantor, Jennifer Piech, Paige Davis, and I believe, if I remember correctly, we had a ridiculously short amount of time to mount it, something like three weeks.  We took the advice of Mr. Holmes and did, in fact, make a script available on stage.  And sure enough, about three or four weeks into the run, I 'went up.'  There is another character onstage at all times along with The Chairman, ambiguously named The Stage Manager.  He had the 'handsomely bound' manuscript in front of him.  I remember just going blank at one point, adlibbing a bit, furiously searching my brain-files for the next moment, finding nothing and then simply turning to the actor playing The Stage Manager and saying, "Yes, well.  Pray, tell me, what, exactly, er, did Mr. Dickens have in store for us next?"  He quickly fed me my line and we were off again.  A few years later I actually met Rupert Holmes in New York and had the opportunity to thank him for that piece of written advice.  He said, "Yes, well, we learned it the hard way ourselves when George Rose did it on Broadway.  Strangely, he always went up in the exact same place as you." 

In any event, this is how I feel about 'The Adding Machine' at times.  I can't quite comprehend how we're going to do this.  We're two weeks into rehearsal at this point and I'm not only still on book, I'm still struggling with the notes.  It seems no matter how prepared I think I am for rehearsal I'm still caught off-guard. 

This is not your father's oldsmobile.  Not by a long shot.

Every night on my way home from rehearsal I tell myself emphatically, 'I will NOT be caught off-guard again.'  And the next day I am.  Oy.  Very frustrating.

All I can say is 'The Odd Couple' looks very inviting right about now.

Got a call from Chad Coe yesterday, the wonderful actor that played the lead in my play, From the East to the West.  We're going ahead with the filming of that piece.  The budget is in place, finally, the equipment gathered (Chad has a lot of connections in town), the location scouting done, and now I have to do some re-writes on the script.  The play, incidentally, has been nominated for a Broadway World 'Best New Work' award.  It contains some of my favorite writing.  I'm still not satisfied with the second act, but I like it better now than I did this time last year.  When read in Chicago a few years ago, somehow the press got wind of the reading and a week later this blurb was seen in the theater section of The Reader: "The long-awaited new play from Clifford Morts is called From the East to the West.  This reporter attended a reading of it recently and can only say WOW."  Very nice blurb, but the 'wow' never took place in Chicago, much to my chagrin.  The 'wow' had to wait for Los Angeles. 

Today, it's back to the music before our next rehearsal later on.  We're attacking a huge, nine minute song I have about halfway through the show.  It's called Zero's Confession and to be blunt, it's a bitch.  It's giving me nightmares.  It's also one of the most dramatic and unsettling pieces of music I've ever heard.  I'll listen to the piano part about 100 times before I take it on tonight.  And no doubt, I'll still be surprised.   I'll still be caught off-guard.  I'll still be delighted and frightened all at once.  I'll still wonder what in hell I was thinking when I took this part.  And I'll still think this very well may be the best thing I've done in decades.

See you tomorrow.

Christie Hargrove. Rest in Peace, Old Friend.

A few days ago, my friend and college chum, Christie Hargrove, died unexpectedly on Thanksgiving eve in Nevada, Missouri, a small town in the southern part of the state.  Evidently there was a fire in her small apartment and she died of smoke inhalation.  Her beloved dog died, too. 

Christie was a little younger than I am so we didn't really mingle in the same circles in college.  But I often saw her in 'the green room' in the theater building and on opening night parties of various plays I was doing.  She was always in poor health, later in life wheelchair-bound.  We always exchanged pleasantries and she always seemed delighted to tell me what she thought of whatever play I happened to be doing.  She had a discerning eye when it came to the stage.  She never once talked about her condition or showed any sign of self-pity.  I remember her laughing a great deal.

We reconnected on 'Facebook' many years later (last year, in fact).  Facebook is good for that. 

Her last post on Facebook, a few hours before she died, was this, "I want to be kissed.  Not a peck on the cheek, but a full-fledged kiss."

She has been sending me private messages on Facebook for quite awhile now, commenting on whatever project I happened to be involved in at the time.  She wrote to me a few months ago, "Of all the people I knew back then when we were in college, I always thought you'd be the one that was going to become a star.  You were the guy everyone always talked about.  People spent hours discussing your work on stage and how different and better it was than anyone else.  I always couldn't wait to see what you would do next."

I messaged her back the following day.  "Thank you, Christy (sic).  I had my own demons to battle first, as it turns out, but things look good now.  As they do for you, it seems."

She messaged back, "I saw you once on TV and a friend of mine saw you in a play in New York.  She said you were really good."

I messaged back, "Thanks.  I was probably too drunk at the time to remember."

A little while later, she posted that she'd be directing a comedy for her local community theater group in Nevada, Missouri.  She wrote that she was off to auditions one night and then later posted that no men had shown up for the audition and she didn't know what she was going to do about that.  I told Angie that night I wish I was in a position to drop everything here in Los Angeles and fly to Missouri and just do that role for her myself.  She had come so far and was so excited about directing this little community theatre gig.  But apparently, a few days later, she found an actor and they rehearsed the play and it was a big success, lots of laughs.  She was beside herself with pride and joy.  And then, a little later, she posted she would directing the wonderful play, 'Harvey,' next year at the same theater. 

And to make it all even sweeter, she was scheduled to have a new surgery which would eventually allow her to have more mobility and get out of her apartment more.  By now, her health had all but made her a shut-in.  She posted on Facebook all the time, telling the world about her new laptop, the movies she was watching, the food she was making, the hi-jinx of her dog, the hope she had for the future, her frustrations with the doctors she was seeing.  I read them all.  And now and then I would even hit the 'like' button next to her posts.

Angie came into the bedroom the day after Thanksgiving.  I was laying in bed reading.  She was crying and told me that Christie had died in the night.  I put my book aside and lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Christie Hargrove.

I'm not going to even begin to write about injustices and irony and cosmic, black humor.  Suffice to say I, like everyone else, don't understand why good people are taken and bad people left behind.  An hour or so later I saw on the news that a man had kidnapped a little girl, raped her repeatedly, and kept her prisoner for weeks.  He was caught, subsequently, and now apparently is in jail awaiting a trial.  I thought, "Why not him, Big Guy?  If You needed one more, why not him?  Why Christie, a woman who never said a bad thing in her life about someone else, a woman who played the hand you gave her with grace and dignity?  If You just had to have another soul, why her?"

Now, I'm fully aware of how sophomoric my line of thought here is, theologically speaking.  Fine.  I don't give a fuck.  I'll ask again today.  Why her?

Death and loss has been an unwelcome recurring theme in my life.  My mother in 1987, dozens of friends in New York throughout the 80s to the great plague, AIDS, even more, including one of my closest friends, Robert Fiedler, to alcohol abuse and drug addiction over the years.  At the risk of cliche', I am certainly no stranger to death.

And while I'm on the subject, why not me?  God knows I spent decades putting myself repeatedly in harm's way.  For a long time, I wanted to die.  I prayed for release.  I just didn't have the cojones to do it.  So I took the coward's long, slow method and drank enough over the years to kill a score of men.  And yet, nothing happened.  Just more misery.  More life.

I think it goes without saying that that part of my life is long over.  And yet...and yet.  Every time I try to make sense of this great poker game we're in, I just get angry.  I'm angry right now.  I'm incensed over this apparently random and senseless loss. 

I've decided to dedicate my performance in this new play, The Adding Machine, to Christie in my bio in the program.  I suspect she would have loved it. The play, that is. 'Tis a small thing, to be sure.  But it will make me feel better.

Angie knew Christie better than I did.  She is devastated by this.  She is, if possible, even angrier than I am about it.

This morning I scrolled down and looked at Christie's last post again.  "I want to be kissed."  I wish I could kiss her right now.  Not a peck on the cheek,  but a full-fledged kiss.  I wish I could do that right now.

See you tomorrow.

Christmas Lights and Boxing Matches.

Today, like many others around the country I suspect, is 'take the Christmas stuff out of the garage and put it up' day.  I like this day.  I like the process.  I like the whole feeling to it.  We might have to buy some new lights because Angie thinks some of our strings are burnt out.  I don't rememeber that they have, but we'll take a look.  I feel very domestic on this day, swaying precariously up on my ladder as I string the lights around the house.  Very Ward Cleaver. 

We're cooking up a massive kettle of chili to enhance the day's Christmas spirit.  Not that chili has anything to do with Christmas, although I suppose it might if you lived in Mexico City.  Angie has a lot of ornaments, etc., from 'olden days' so I always get little anecdotes and family stories as we unpack the Christmas boxes.  I've already heard them all, of course, but I listen again patiently.  Part of her 'take the Christmas stuff out of the garage and put it up' day is repeating the stories attached to the various ornaments.

Yesterday I had a very productive day with our musical director, Alan Patrick Kenny.  This mammoth song I have in the middle of the show called 'Zero's Confession' is the hardest piece of music I've ever had to learn.  It went well although it's still light years away from performance.  The song, as I've mentioned before, is about ten minutes long and by the time I'm halfway through I feel like I've been singing for an hour.  But we keep plugging away at it.  One measure at a time.

We also worked on two of my 'ballads' with Mrs. Zero (played by a wonderful singer/actress, Kelly Lester).  Kelly is a 'real' singer, as opposed to me, a 'pretend' singer.  She's got an astonishing soprano voice that appears to cover something like seven or eight octaves.  The result is something akin to Beverly Sills singing a duet with Tom Waits.  Nonetheless, strange as it sounds, the outcome is really quite beautiful. 

Oddly, I'm off today.  No rehearsal.  I'm tempted to simply put the score out of my mind and attend to the Christmas stuff.  Of course, I can't do that, and long about 3:00 I suspect I'll plug this music in and start warbling along with it.

Last night I watched one of my new Netflix DVDs...it's called "ALI versus Chuvalo, The Last Round."  As any longtime reader of this blog knows, I'm an amateur boxing historian and revel in DVD footage of old heavyweight fights.  I won't dwell on this because I know that hardly anyone else is a boxing enthusiast but the DVD changed my mind about George Chuvalo, a tough, journeyman contender in the 60s and 70s.  Chuvalo, I think, was a better fighter than I ever gave him credit for.  He, like so many others - Oscar Bonevena, Jerry Quarry, Ron Lyle, Cleveland Williams, Buster Mathis - had the great misfortune to come along at the same time as Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman.  If that had not been the case I think there was a very good chance Chuvalo would have been a champion.  At least for a little while.  But, as fate would have it, he reached his peak as a fighter at the exact same time as arguably the greatest fighter in the history of the game, Muhammad Ali.  They fought in Toronto in 1966, before Ali's layoff, and Chuvalo didn't stand a chance, although he put up a good showing.  Fighting Ali at that point in his career was like fighting a shadow.  He simply couldn't be hit.  The one interesting thing about the fight, however, was that it sort of served as a precurser to Ali's later all-out wars in the 70s with Frazier and Foreman.  Up to that point no one had any idea if Ali could take a shot because, well, he was simply too fast to hit.  But at one point during this fight, Ali comes down off his toes, stops dancing, and goes toe to toe with Chuvalo.  And in the process took a few cannon shots to the head.  To everyone's surprise he was completely unfazed.  Remember, Ali was, at that point, quite possibly the most hated man in America.  Nearly everyone wanted someone to finally and forever shut his mouth.  So here it is, round 11 in a tough 15 round brawl, and Ali stops moving and slugs it out for a little while.  Unheard of.  And lo and behold, as sportswriters shook their heads in confusion, Ali outslugged a slugger.  As Chuvalo himself said, "I realized early on that I couldn't outbox him.  And then about halfway through the fight I realized I couldn't outslug him, either."  He was the first of many fighters to discover this uncomfortable fact.

Many consider Ali's fight against Cleveland Williams in the Houston Astrodome in 1967 to be Ali's greatest moment as a fighter.  And it probably was.  But this fight, a year earlier, was when Ali unwrapped perhaps his greatest gift to a shocked public: his ability to take a punch.  To the observant, five years later when he fought Joe Frazier in Madison Square Garden and took Joe's best shots right on the chin without flinching, it came as no surprise.  As the very fine boxing writer, the late Red Smith, wrote after the Frazier fight, "He proved he not only could take a punch, he could take one better than anyone in the history of the game."

And now, if you'll excuse me, my dogs, Franny and Zooey, are staring at me.  I'm trying to ignore them but they're relentless.  It's time for a walk.

See you tomorrow.

Stephen Sondheim's 80th Birthday Celebration.

I ended up finally watching 'Sondheim's 80th Birthday Party' on PBS last night.  I missed it the first time it was on a few nights back but I TiVo'd it and watched it last night.  I have to say, I liked it so much I actually went back and watched parts of it again.  It is literally a 'Who's Who' of the people working at the very top of their game in the musical theatre world.

Patti Lupone has been belting it out since the mid 70s.  She sings 'Ladies Who Lunch' in the celebration and I was thinking there just aren't too many people that can sing that song right in front of Elaine Stritch and still make it all their own.  Lupone can.  And she does.  I have always wondered how Ethel Merman became such a huge presence in the theatre...yes, she could certainly belt.  But she couldn't act much and she couldn't dance and she wasn't good looking.  I answered my own question last night as I watched Lupone.  Although there is really no comparison when it comes to talent, I realized as I watched her last night how powerful it is when a personality like that is melded with a talent like that.  She is our latter day Merman.  I couldn't take my eyes from her.  Sheer force of nature.  Merman must have been something like that in her heyday. 

And of course, Patinkin sang from 'Sunday in the Park with George.'  I saw he and Bernadette Peters do it in NYC way, WAY back in 1985.  It was the second musical on Broadway I ever saw (the first being 'Dreamgirls).  Along with the Steppenwolf production of 'Orphans' at West Side Arts (I was later to play on that very same stage), 'Sunday in the Park' is the most influential piece of theatre I've ever seen.  Mandy Patinkin is one of those performers you either love or hate.  I love him.  I love his intensity, I love his 'over the top' mannerisms, I love his narcissistic presence, I love his crazy-good voice.  Mr. Patinkin has a questionable reputation in the theatre world.  Any one in this business has no doubt heard stories of how 'difficult' he can be to work with.  But I have a close friend who has done two shows with Mandy.  He tells me that he never saw that side of him.  He told me that yes, Patinkin is rather stand-offish to his co-workers, but he says it's not because he has any sort of chip on his shoulder but rather that he finally realized that Patinkin is simply acutely shy.  I understand and identify with that completely.  I, too, have now and again gotten bad report cards from fellow performers.  And I, too, have trouble opening up to actors I'm working with on stage sometimes.  Again, I adore Mandy Patinkin and his talent.  A rather over used phrase in this business is 'he has a gift.'  In Mr. Patinkin's case it is overwhelmingly true.  He has a gift.  His work always astounds me.

And, of course, Bernadette Peters.  There is a moment in the show where six or seven top leading ladies in the theatre today all sit on stage and one by one rise and sing an amazing Sondheim song.  Each seems to top the last.  Elaine Stritch ends the segment by singing/talking/belting 'I'm Still Here,' a song that has become her signature tune.  But before her, Ms. Peters sings, simply and powerfully, 'Day After Day After Day.'  She is mesmerizing. 

The special ended with what appears to be every current singer on Broadway filing to the stage and singing, en masse, 'Sunday' from 'Sunday in the Park.'  The stage is filled with performers.  It's an awesome sight.  And beautiful.  Sunday in the Park with George is my favorite musical of all time, even more so than 'Sweeny Todd,' which many today consider his masterpiece.  I disagree.  As fond as I am of 'Sweeny,' it is 'Sunday' that still raises my arm hairs today.  I did the show myself many years ago in Virginia.  It is one of my fondest memories in the theatre. 

It is very fitting that I should see this special at this time because I'm smack dab in the middle of rehearsals for 'The Adding Machine,' by Josh Schmidt and Jason Leuwith.  I have described it recently to friends as 'Sondheim Squared.'  Interestingly, I was chatting with another friend the other day and he said, much to my surprise, that 'Sondheim had ruined musical theatre.  He destroyed the beautiful melodies of Broadway.  Well, after watching this piece of genius last night I agree with him even less than I did before.  I used to say to people that Stephen Sondheim was our Mozart and Andrew Webber our Salieri.  I believe it more than ever now. 

So...Happy Birthday, Stephen Sondheim.  There is Sondheim and then there is everyone else.  When he dies, every other composer in the world moves up a notch. 

See you tomorrow.