Theater News

Sunday in the Houseman With Shows

Filichia gets to see three different shows at one theater when he spends the day at the John Houseman.

Robert Clohessy and Matthew Arkin had cell phone troublesin the Filichia-attended performance of Rounding Third(Photo © Bruce Glikas)
Robert Clohessy and Matthew Arkin had cell phone troubles
in the Filichia-attended performance of Rounding Third
(Photo © Bruce Glikas)

I don’t know that I’ve ever before seen three productions in one theater in one day, but that’s what I experienced Sunday at the John Houseman on 42nd Street. And how were the shows, you ask? To which I must answer, “None of your business.” The first one, Richard Dresser’s new comedy Rounding Third, is in previews, and the second two were excerpted staged readings of shows that weren’t open to review because they were just getting their stage feet wet at the 15th Annual Festival of New Musicals. That’s the annual September shindig held at both the Houseman and the nearby Douglas Fairbanks Theatres, sponsored by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre.

Still, at each of the three shows, events happened of which I can speak. First play first: Dresser’s concerns two Little League coaches whose own sons are on their teams. Don is a real hard-ass who demands that his kid win at all costs, while Michael just wants his son to have a good time. How intense is Don? Well, he tells the (fourth-wall) team that no one is to carry a cell phone even if his parents wants him to because Don doesn’t want to hear ringing at an inopportune time.

And wouldn’t you know it? Right then and there, a cell phone went off in the audience. Give actor Robert Clohessy credit; he incorporated the accident into the action and ad-libbed to let the “kid” know in no uncertain terms how furious he was with him. Of course, the audience laughed and applauded warmly. During intermission, I said to my buddy Robert Armin, “Sometimes there’s God so quickly.” But he pooh-poohed that for he suspected that the all-too-convenient ringing came from a cell-phone that had been planted in advance. Any of you who go to see Rounding Third, would you let me know if indeed this is a planned part of the action?

Even the cynical Armin, though, believed that what happened in the second act wasn’t planned. You see, one of the reasons that Don makes such a big point about the kids not having cell phones is because Michael owns one that constantly rings, what with his boss always calling him. So, at a climactic point deep in the play, off went Michael’s cell phone — and he couldn’t find it. He seemed so upset about it as he emptied one pocket and then another, all the while crying, “I can’t find it!” Finally, it dawned on us that it wasn’t just Michael who couldn’t find his cell phone; it was actor Matthew Arkin who really couldn’t remember where he put it. He looked under the bench and in the equipment bag, as did Robert Clohessy while Arkin ad-libbed like crazy, hoping that the errant phone would show up somewhere on the astro-turfed set.

Finally, he yelled directly to us beyond the footlights, “Does anyone have a cell phone?” Though we roared with laughter and applause, one of us did have the presence of mind to throw one up there. (You may ask, “Why didn’t Arkin just mime that he was holding a cell-phone to his ear and leave it at that?” But you’ll understand why that could’t be a solution when you see Rounding Third.) Soon after John Q. Audience Member helped, out comes stage manager Babette Roberts with a cell phone so the guys could continue. That prompted Clohessy, whose back was turned when the audience member threw his phone onto the stage, to try to find the owner of that phone. After a few long seconds of looking in the wrong part of the house, a different audience member decided to take it just so the show could go on. Here’s hoping the original owner got it back at the end of the show! Anyway, you don’t get something like this on your Quasar or at the Quadriplex; only live theater’ll do it for you, and the audience again gave out with that warm and forgiving applause that showed they loved the humanity of it all.

Only 90 minutes after Rounding Third wrapped up, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Festival began. Since 1989, the organization has sponsored this two-day exhibition of new works via staged readings. They’ve included Little Ham (1989), Captains Courageous (1990), Ruthless (1991), Heartbeats (1992), Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller (1993), After the Fair (1994), Paper Moon (1995), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1996), Songs for a New World (1997), The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (1998), Summer of ’42 (1999), and Lizzie Borden (2000) — all of which went on to productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, or beyond.

A little show called Thoroughly Modern Millie got its start at NAMT(Photo © Joan Marcus)
A little show called Thoroughly
Modern Millie
got its start at NAMT
(Photo © Joan Marcus)

Which of this year’s elite eight will be so lucky? The shows were written by Tony-winners (Princesses by David Zippel), Oscar-winners (Ballad of Little Pinks by Alan Menken), venerable pros (Harold and Maude by Tom Jones) and tyros (Sarah, Plain and Tall by Laurence O’Keefe). There were shows with original scores (such as Two Queens, One Castle by William S. Hubbard, Thomas W. Jones II, Jevetta and J.D. Steele); one that borrowed vintage songs (Swing Shift, for which David Armstrong, Michael Rafter, and Mark Waldrop have been tweaking the ’40s tunes); and one for which a single person wrote the book, music, and lyrics (Matthew Sheridan’s The Ambition Bird). Meanwhile, composer Joseph Thalken was quite busy, for he not only had Harold and Maude but also Was, which he wrote with Kleban Award winner Barry Kleinbort.

Really, if you’ve never attended this festival, put in your PalmPilots now to find out about it next year. Granted, those connected with the industry are admitted first, but there is a line of wait-listers who almost always get in. It’s fun just to hang around outside before the shows — for there was Wayne Bryan, who told me that he’s going to be doing the Midwest premiere of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at his Music Theatre of Wichita next season, and there’s record producer Bruce Yeko, who said that we just might see a studio cast album of that 1970 musical Georgy come out in February, starring Twiggy and Tony Randall.

As always, I flipped a coin twice to decide which shows I’d see first. Ballad of Little Pinks (tails) won over Sarah, Plain and Tall (heads). Pinks is an adaptation of a Damon Runyon tale; you may know its 1942 movie adaptation, The Big Street. The musical starred Frank Vlastnik, the beloved Snail with the Mail from A Year with Frog and Toad. Here, he was a bus boy who loves a woman fancifully nicknamed Your Highness (Sarah Jane Nelson). Michael McGrath, the Drama Desk nominee from Swinging on a Star, played a ne’er-do-well, so intent on showing fury that, when he turned a script page, he almost slapped it into submission. There was Lee Wilkof, about to open in Four Beers but still taking the time out to help his wife, librettist-director Connie Grappo. Nice to see that the couple’s experience with the ill-fated Florida production of Little Shop hasn’t precluded their working with Alan Menken once again.

The actors who sat behind them spent most of the time following their scripts, but every now and then, one of them glanced upwards with a look of admiration to the performer who was giving out with a socko rendition of a song. A seated Wilkof could be seen tapping his foot in rhythm to many of the tunes his castmates sang. And there was Marion Adler, Menken’s new writing partner, giving out the stage directions (and occasionally mouthing a word that one of her cast members was saying). It was a bare-bones reading, so when the “arr-OO-gah” of an automobile horn was needed, there were Wilkof and David Brummel to make the sound. Like all of the performers, they only had one week of rehearsals, but you’d never know it.

Afterwards, I flipped another coin and, this time, Princesses (heads) beat out The Ambition Bird (tails). It’s a musical version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess — a story that Andrew Lippa is also musicalizing. (Of course, he’s used to adapting a property that someone else is doing simultaneously.) But here, lyricist David Zippel had an idea that TV writers Bill & Cheri Steinkellner and composer Matthew Wilder embraced: This isn’t just a straight adaptation of the Burnett tale but the story of what happens when a very exclusive girls’ high school stages A Little Princess.

Julie Halston played the prim and proper teacher, a far cry from the stripper she’s currently playing at the Shubert. This was an abridged reading, remember, and couldn’t be longer than 45 minutes, so there was Halston saying, “Imagine me playing the piano here, only not nearly as well.” Then she acknowledged musical director Lynne Shankel, who did the honors for her. Tom Wopat, who played one of the student’s fathers, also sped up the action by saying, “I sing a terrific song here, ‘What Matters Most,’ which you’re not going to hear.”

What Wopat’s character — a big Hollywood star — does wind up doing is directing the kids’ show. In order to make his cast empathize with the woebegone characters, he asks the girls, “Can you remember a time in your life when you were cold and hungry?” And there’s a long pause, for none of these coddled princesses have ever suffered for a second. By that point, I’d been in the Houseman for five of the last six hours, but I was still awake enough to give a big belly laugh at that terrific joke.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]