Apr. 1st, 2003
Sunday night Tim and I attended the 11th Annual "Broadway Sings," a benefit run by his friend Tim Shew, who's performed as Valjean, the Radio City Christmas Show Santa, and a bunch of other roles. The benefit supports children with AIDS and hosts many different Broadway performers who each sing a song. This year it included Cady Hoffman, Jose Illana (the juvenile in Flower Drum Song), Patricia Neal (who introduced a guest--she didn't sing) and many others. Getting seated was interesting--you get tickets to be seated in a row, but not any particular seat within the row since they're church pews (it was at Central Presbyterian on Park Avenue). We got there early because Tim wanted to sit as close as possible to the center. After waiting for 45 minutes (I was in high heels on a marble floor--not exactly comfortable) we got to the row and found this woman and her daughter claiming 5 of the inside seats, even though only two of her party were there. We let her have a couple of seats but not all she wanted and she retaliated by sending the usher over to try to get us to move down (i.e., farther away from the center). The usher was clearly uncomfortable (she weakly said, "Well, she wants her party to sit together") but we refused to move.
Can I just say I hate that shit? That drives me nuts at the movies when some jerkoff drapes their coat over ten seats and says they're taken. No, they're not. How do I know this? Because nobody's sitting there. Let your friends get here early if they want to sit in better seats. What really pissed me off was that we let her have a couple of seats as it was and she had to be greedygrabbygrubby and demand more.
So the show. Pretty good. Not sublime and a little too masturbatory with some of the performers. Cady was great--she sang "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" and was just so...precise. She nailed it. Susan Powell (Miss America 1981) sang "An Old-Fashioned Wedding" with some guy. She has a beautiful voice although not at all the typical pop-y Broadway style in vogue now. Another woman sang "The Life of the Party" from the Andrew Lippa The Wild Party and was also very good. I talked to her afterwards and said how much I appreciated her connection with the audience--she really seemed to be having a dialogue with us. She thanked me and said "that means a lot to me." I notice that more and more with stage performances, whether the singer is too into themselves or is communing with the audience.
I had a delightful conversation with Jose Illana. I told him how I'd seen FDS the night before it closed and told him how I especially enjoyed the last part where one by one the cast members revealed where they were born. I loved this moment in the play--it made the whole show seem so organic. You realized how much this story meant to these performers. He said "Yes! I'm so glad you got it!" Apparently the backers were dubious about that bit. We chatted some more and it turns out he's from my neck of the woods, Springfield, Virginia. We both flipped out when we realized this, and I told him I'd performed (i.e., served time) in many shows at the Lazy Susan. Just a really cool guy. It was great talking to him.
Tim's old partner, this guy named Rodney, cornered me and sang Tim's praises for quite some time. It made me a tad uncomfortable, because I don't exactly know what Tim's said to this guy. Rodney was all, "Tim's the greatest, if you're looking for this, for that, he's a straight-up guy, blah blah blah..." I don't know if I'm looking for anything. I'm pretty happy with the way things are.
Can I just say I hate that shit? That drives me nuts at the movies when some jerkoff drapes their coat over ten seats and says they're taken. No, they're not. How do I know this? Because nobody's sitting there. Let your friends get here early if they want to sit in better seats. What really pissed me off was that we let her have a couple of seats as it was and she had to be greedygrabbygrubby and demand more.
So the show. Pretty good. Not sublime and a little too masturbatory with some of the performers. Cady was great--she sang "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" and was just so...precise. She nailed it. Susan Powell (Miss America 1981) sang "An Old-Fashioned Wedding" with some guy. She has a beautiful voice although not at all the typical pop-y Broadway style in vogue now. Another woman sang "The Life of the Party" from the Andrew Lippa The Wild Party and was also very good. I talked to her afterwards and said how much I appreciated her connection with the audience--she really seemed to be having a dialogue with us. She thanked me and said "that means a lot to me." I notice that more and more with stage performances, whether the singer is too into themselves or is communing with the audience.
I had a delightful conversation with Jose Illana. I told him how I'd seen FDS the night before it closed and told him how I especially enjoyed the last part where one by one the cast members revealed where they were born. I loved this moment in the play--it made the whole show seem so organic. You realized how much this story meant to these performers. He said "Yes! I'm so glad you got it!" Apparently the backers were dubious about that bit. We chatted some more and it turns out he's from my neck of the woods, Springfield, Virginia. We both flipped out when we realized this, and I told him I'd performed (i.e., served time) in many shows at the Lazy Susan. Just a really cool guy. It was great talking to him.
Tim's old partner, this guy named Rodney, cornered me and sang Tim's praises for quite some time. It made me a tad uncomfortable, because I don't exactly know what Tim's said to this guy. Rodney was all, "Tim's the greatest, if you're looking for this, for that, he's a straight-up guy, blah blah blah..." I don't know if I'm looking for anything. I'm pretty happy with the way things are.