April 2011 Archives

The 25th annual Easter Bonnet Competition -- the result of six weeks of intensive fundraising by 52 Broadway, Off-Broadway and national touring companies -- raised a whopping $3,706,085 for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The grand total was announced at the end of the competition at the Minskoff Theater on Tuesday, April 26, which featured songs, dances, sketches, and elaborate, custom-made bonnets from 17 of the participating shows.

The company of La Cage aux Folles took top honors for bonnet presentation, while The Addams Family was runner up. The special award for bonnet design went to Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. Here are some images from this fabulous event.

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The terrific opening number, a Glee spoof, was directed and choreographed by Shea Sullivan.

It was no big surprise that "Spider-Man" made an appearance at the start of the show.

Spidey gets up on his feet!

Natalie Joy Johnson, "in her Easter bonnet...."

Robin Williams, star of Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, did a hilarious stand-up routine...

...and then helped present that company's award-winning bonnet, created by Moira MacGregor-Conrad and Tree Sarvay.

"You live on Avenue Q!"

The company of the long-running Off Broadway show Freud's Last Session offered a delightful Gallagher & Sheen-esque number.

A takeoff on RuPaul's Drag Race, courtesy of The Lion King.

Some Lion King beefcake.

Fun with The Addams Family's Pugsley (Adam Riegler) and Lurch (Zachary James).

Officer Lockstock and Little Sally, back on board for the Easter Bonnet show!

The company of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert gave us "Priscilla, Queens of Burlesque."

Christie Brinkley and the company of Chicago: "If Looks Could Kill."

Although Tom Wopat is probably still best known as the co-star of the wildly popular 1979-85 TV series The Dukes of Hazzard, he has 10 Broadway shows to his credit -- six of them within the past 10 years. He's currently co-starring as Frank Abagnale, Sr. in Catch Me If You Can, playing papa to Aaron Tveit. His recent endeavors include some stellar nightclub work, an appearance in the Broadway Series at The Town Hall, and a terrific new album titled Consider It Swung. On Monday, May 2, he'll join Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Michele Lee, Maurice Hines, Cheyenne Jackson, Kelli O'Hara, Christine Ebersole, Gregg Edelman, and other notables at Carnegie Hall for a New York Pops gala celebrating the legendary Bob Hope. Somehow, Tom recently found the time to talk with me over coffee at a diner on Eighth Avenue.

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BROADWAYSTARS: Hey, I just walked by the TKTS booth and there was a young woman in a stewardess outfit, handing out flyers to Catch Me If You Can.

TOM WOPAT: Good! It's a fun show. It may not be a critic-pleaser, but it's a crowd-pleaser. The house was full for both shows on Wednesday.

STARS: When I saw the show, Frank Abagnale was in the audience, signing autographs at intermission. Have you had much opportunity to speak with him, and if so, what did he tell you about his dad?

TOM: Two main things. First of all, his dad was a straight shooter. He did drink some, but he didn't teach his son to be a con man. His son did what he did as a result of situations he was put in, beginning with the breakup of his parents' marriage. [Frank Jr.] told me, "I found myself in divorce court, and the judge asked me, 'Who do you want to live with, your dad or your mom?' I couldn't make up my mind, so I left." Everything that happened after that was all about a kid doing what he had to do to survive: He wrote bad checks, he pretended to be a pilot and rode in planes all around the world. I mean, it's definitely not the default setting for most people in that situation.

STARS: What was the rehearsal process like for you?

TOM: I always like to work from the outside in. First, I look at how my character affects the others around me. Once I've learned what I have to do physically and vocally, then I can building an internal life for the character.

STARS: Speaking of internal lives of characters, you were excellent in Glengarry Glen Ross.

TOM: Thanks. Similar situation: I found out who I had to be in the show, and then I realized, "Oh yeah, I know this guy. I'm from the Midwest." There were a lot of people who said they didn't recognize me in the first act, and it's not like I was wearing a false nose or anything. That show changed my career. Up until then, I had been playing musical theater leading men for a while, with a certain amount of ability. Then my agent asked me if I would be interested in doing this play, and with the lineup they had for the cast, plus Joe Mantello directing, I had to do it. All those personalities -- Liev Schreiber, Alan Alda, Gordon Clapp -- it was amazing. Some of them got along great, some of them didn't, but Mantello made it all work.

STARS: Do I remember correctly that, at one point years ago, you and your Dukes of Hazzard co-star John Schneider were both on Broadway at the same time in separate shows?

TOM: Yes, he did Grand Hotel while I was doing City of Angels. We've shared some roles over the years; I think he's probably done a Curly somewhere, and I know we've both done Harold Hill. As a matter of fact, we did a show at a casino up in Niagara Falls in January, and we did a dueling version of "Trouble." We also did an arrangement of "Baby, It's Cold Outside." I rewrote the lyrics a little. Guilty as charged!

STARS: Did you have a good time in Sondheim on Sondheim last season?

TOM: It was a great experience working with Stephen. He schooled me on "Finishing the Hat," which was like a graduate course. Watching and listening to Barbara Cook on a daily basis was incredible, and it was exciting to work with Euan Morton. I find him an amazing talent. He sings like an angel -- and I don't generally like tenors.

STARS: The New York Pops salute to Bob Hope sounds like it's going to be really special. What a cast! Do you know Michele Lee?

TOM: Sure. I know everybody.

STARS: Did you ever work with Lansbury?

TOM: Yep, I did Murder She Wrote. I remember that when we got to the big denouement of the episode, where she tells who the murderer is and how he did it, I stood right next to the camera so she could act to me -- and then they put the cue cards right in front of my face, so she couldn't see me at all. It was hysterical.

STARS: Will the Pops concert be your Carnegie Hall debut?

TOM: No, the first time I worked there was in 1996, with the Cincinnati Pops. This Bob Hope show is going to be fun. There's talk of a camel outfit.

STARS: I'm sorry...?

TOM: A camel outfit. Ostensibly for myself and Gregg Edelman, for the "The Road to Morocco." I'm a little worried about that. But I'm a big Bob Hope fan. How can you not be? He was an icon.

STARS: Tell me about your cabaret work and your new album. When was your last club act in the city?

TOM: December 27, at Birdland. I'm going to be back there on June 20. The album is a combination of standards, pop tunes, and originals. One of the originals is by me, and one of the other songs is "50 Checks" by Shaiman and Wittman, which used to be the basis of Catch Me If You Can. It was cut from the show, but it's going to be on the cast album as a bonus truck.

STARS: It seems like you work constantly. Do you have any projects lined up, other than your return to Birdland?

TOM: I did a workshop of a musical called SCKBSTD. Have you heard of it? They just did it at Virginia Stage Company with Bob Cuccioli. There are some really great songs in it, by Bruce Hornsby.

STARS: Maybe that will be your 11th Broadway show. I didn't realize that you were a replacement in I Love My Wife, and that was actually before The Dukes of Hazzard.

TOM: Yes. The show opened in '77 and I went into it in '78, with a guy named Larry Moss. We kind of held the spots after the originals left and before The Smothers Brothers took over. When they went into it, the show became 15 minutes longer from all of the shtick.

STARS: You must have been pretty young for the part.

TOM: I was 26, about 10 years younger than Jim Naughton. I came to New York in the fall of '77 and I was on Broadway in June of '78. On my opening night in I Love My Wife, [producer] Terry Allen Kramer came up to me and said, "You look just like Jim." I think I got the job because I fit the costume.

STARS: Did you do musicals in high school?

TOM: Yes, in Lodi, Wisconsin. We did Where's Charley? I played the romantic lead, not the guy who dresses up. I also did Damn Yankees, as Joe. I always played the leads. But I'm not the lead anymore, dude. I'm the dad.

[For more information on Tom Wopat, or to purchase his CDs, go to tomwopat.com].

Not content to rest on the success of Wicked, one of the biggest hits in Broadway history, Stephen Schwartz challenged himself by writing an opera. Séance on a Wet Afternoon, based on the 1964 British psychological thriller that starred Kim Stanley, is about to have a run of performances at New York City Opera in the wake of its well received world premiere production at Opera Santa Barbara last year. NYCO will also salute the composer with Defying Gravity: The Music of Stephen Schwartz, an April 21 concert of his Broadway and film songs that will be headlined by Kristin Chenoweth, Raúl Esparza, Victor Garber, and Ann Hampton Callaway.

Last week, I spoke with Stephen about the challenges of writing opera and the differences between that art form and musical theater, a fascinating subject which he subsequently discussed with a panel of esteemed colleagues in a City Opera-sponsored public event at the Gershwin Theater on Sunday, April 10. Here's what he had to say.

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BROADWAYSTARS: You must be so busy, Stephen.

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: I'm a little bit busy, yes. How are you?

STARS: I'm well, thanks -- also busy, trying to see all the shows that are opening. But I'm looking forward to the panel discussion "Opera or Musical Theater?" I really want to hear what you, John Kander, Adam Guettel, David Henry Hwang, and Rufus Wainwright have to say on the subject.

SS: It should be very interesting. As you know, Rufus has written an opera that had its premiere in England, and City Opera is going to do it next season.

STARS: In composing Séance, was it difficult for you to write in a way that the text could be heard and understood when sung in a large opera house with an opera-size orchestra?

SS: That aspect of it wasn't a huge challenge, because I was very aware of trying to achieve that. Consequently, as I was writing, I was trying to be careful as to where and how I set things in order to achieve comprehensibility. It's still harder to do that in an opera than in a musical, let's face it. We will have supertitles at City Opera, despite the fact that the opera's in English. But many people [in Santa Barbara] told me that they were able to understand most of the text, and they just needed to check in with the supertitles every now and then.

STARS: Most musicals today are very heavily amplified, and the performers use body mics, so if the balance is off between the singers and the orchestra, that can be easily corrected by the sound engineer. But it's a different situation in opera.

SS: Yes, absolutely. Traditional opera is meant to be performed unamplified. Of course, there are some contemporary operas -- by John Adams, for example -- that were written to be performed with amplification. But I was trying to be traditional at least in that sense, and to write a piece that was not going to be amplified -- though we may have to subtly amplify the kids, just because they don't have as big voices. I found I needed to approach the music so that it wasn't a constant bed of sound with the voices sitting on top of it, which is kind of what one does in musical theater or pop. In writing an opera, you have the music swell up, then recede, and then swell up again. You leave troughs, if you will, for the vocals to sit in. Obviously, I listened to what other operas composers had done. It's not as if I invented this technique.

STARS: When I interviewed you for Opera News last year, we discussed how in opera, sometimes, there can be a very purposeful emotional disconnect between the music and the words that you rarely find in musicals.

SS: Oh, sure. That's part of what's really fun about composing an opera: The music tells its own story. In musicals, what the characters are saying is generally reflected in the music. If they're joyous, the music is joyous; if they're angry, the music is angry. There's not a lot of attempt to provide subtext in that way. I even scrolled through the Sondheim shows in my mind. He has a lot of subtext in his lyrics, but really, how often does the music tell a different story than the words? Rarely, and that's not in any way meant to slight him. It's what we all do when we're writing musicals.

STARS: We also talked about the fact that whether or not a piece is through-sung isn't the major determining factor as to whether it's an opera or a musical.

SS: It's interesting, trying to define these things. So many of the British musicals are through-sung yet they don't really feel like operas, and it's hard to put your finger on why. Even The Phantom of the Opera. It's through-sung, it has repeated motifs, some of it is written for opera-style voices. Yet it's clearly a musical, not an opera.

STARS: Because the recurring themes are not developed in the same way?

SS: Right. I would say the same holds true for Wicked. I used a lot of motivic writing there, but not in the same way as in Séance. In a strange way, it seems to me that the closest thing to opera among the British musicals is Chess. Even though it's clearly pop, there's more of an operatic approach to the way music is used there.

STARS: There are so many hybrids, if that's the correct term. The Light in the Piazza has lots of spoken dialogue, but to me it feels much more operatic than Les Miz or Phantom.

SS: Yes, because Adam Guettel's song forms are less traditional musical theater and more sort of aria-esque and operatic in their structure. The fact is that the lines are getting blurred. Look at The Light in the Piazza on one hand and something like Dead Man Walking on the other. Dead Man Walking is clearly an opera, but it has a kind of musical-theater storytelling thrust because Terrence McNally wrote the libretto. I was just at a performance of Armida at the Met, and as the audience was leaving at the end, I heard someone say, "Well, with opera, you pay no attention to the story, you just listen to the music." That's the rap on opera, but it doesn't have to be that way. Opera is an extremely useful form for telling a story. I also saw Tosca recently, and now that I've written an opera myself, I admired even more how well that story is told. There's not an ounce of fat in Tosca. Everything in it serves the story.

STARS: The City Opera premiere of Séance is going to be one of the major musical events of the spring, and it sounds like the Defying Gravity tribute will be as well.

SS: I can't tell you much about that because they're deliberately keeping the details secret from me, which is fun. I did help them get the four stars, since they're friends of mine. But after that, the City Opera people basically said to me, "Just show up. We would like you to sing a few things at the end, so please be prepared to do that. Otherwise, unless you really need to know, we want to surprise you." I think there will be some opera segments in addition to the songs from the shows, and I've heard rumors about a couple of surprise guests, but I don't actually know what's going to happen.

STARS: In a recent interview, you were asked if you'd like to write another opera, and you said, "I'm just trying to survive this one." But if you were to face the challenge again, do you think you might write something with a great role for Kristin Chenoweth? After all, she trained to be an opera singer. And she was supposed to do an opera at the Met a few seasons ago, but that fell through.

SS: Oh! That's an interesting idea.

STARS: Just a thought. Anyway, thank you for talking. I'll be at the second performance of Séance. Best of luck with the premiere.

SS: Thanks. This whole experience has been an adventure, as you can imagine, and it continues to be.

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[For more information on the New York City Opera production of Séance on a Wet Afternoon and the tribute concert Defying Gravity: The Music of Stephen Schwartz, click here.]