Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:02 Welcome to Chicago Musician. I'm your host, Shawn Stengel. I'm introducing a new feature that I'd like to call 'Cadenzas'. These will be solo ventures, just me talking on a topic or telling a particular tale from my life. Or a political rant that may or may not be up your alley, but let's give it a whirl. Maestro!
Speaker 1 00:00:32 Welcome to Cadenza #1. In classical music, a cadenza is a point in a concerto where the orchestra stops and the soloist does a solo completely on his own. Sometimes improvised sometimes written out, usually based on the themes of that movement. So what I'd like to do with my Cadenzas here on Chicago Musician is take a theme or a particular story and wax poetic, or rhapsodically, or monotonously depending upon your tolerance level for my voice on that theme for a hot minute or two. Today's theme I'm calling The Tour From Hell. I've told bits and pieces of this story for a lot of years now, cuz it happened in the relative infancy of my professional career or, as you'll hear, my barely professional career. The production in question was a non-equity, non-union tour of The Phantom of the Opera: the Play: with Music. That was its full title. And obviously its whole reason for being was to leach off of the popularity of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera that, at the time, was relatively new and hugely popular in New York.
Speaker 1 00:02:19 And it wasn't even the Maury Yeston Phantom of the Opera, which exists for many of the same reasons, and many regional musical theaters have done that version of it since it was available and Broadway was not. And the story of the Phantom of the Opera was in the public domain by now, meaning any copyrights had long expired and anyone and their mother could write a version of the Phantom of the Opera and pretty much everyone and their mother did. And The Phantom of the Opera: the Play: with Music seems like it was written by someone's not-very-talented mother.
Speaker 1 00:03:05 How did I then manage to secure a cherished place on a tour of this hotter than hot property, The Phantom of the Opera: the Play: with Music? A little background is called for. When I first came to Chicago, I was in a hit six-person musical at the Apollo theater called Pump Boys & Dinettes The show was a big hit in Chicago, running almost five years. And I did the last three years of that. Over a thousand performer as LM, the loony lothario of the grease pit. In the show, I sang, I played the piano, the accordion, the high-hat, I tap danced in red cowboy boots, and was a comedic actor. It was a ball! And it's worthy of a Cadenza of its own. . . how I got there and all the stories involved with that long-running show. I'll definitely do that in the near future. But here was the problem: I did the show for three years, but when the show was over, I basically had no professional connections in Chicago. I had worked with the same 15 or 20 people, from actors to producers, for three years in Chicago, but for no one else. So I was having a lot of trouble getting a job.
Speaker 1 00:04:44 And after probably half a year, my friend Lucia said, 'My friend John is doing this tour and they need a keyboard player. Would you be interested?' And I'm like, well, tell me a little bit more about it. (At least a couple of my several listeners will have already noticed that I'm only using first names in this saga and yes, I am doing that to protect the innocent and the inept. And we will feature a lot of both in this tale of whoa, horror and drama.) So, The Phantom of the Opera: the Play: with Music. . . What is it? Who's running it? Who's involved? Well, here's what I remember. The producer was a guy named Vince and everyone said basically he was Phoenix mob. Okay, great! Vince and his main sidekick, the company manager-ish guy on the road. . . We'll call him Jimmy for this story.
Speaker 1 00:06:04 Jimmy's main qualification was he had previously been a Chippendale dancer. Fantastic! The show was directed by a not unknown New York director. I'll call him George. He'd done mostly regional and smaller non-equity shows, but he he'd done some stuff. I honestly do not remember who wrote the music. It was some mix of classical music and some original tunes. I cannot remember any of them. (I've had to block some of this from my memory for self-preservation and my own dignity within my own head at a certain point.) But someone wrote some original music. And then there were tape track of the opera scenes for Carlotta, the diva. And they were actually orchestra tracks, but I've blocked a lot of that out. Now, there were some talented people in this production.
Speaker 1 00:07:17 I honestly cannot remember who was the Phantom or Raoul and I'm sure they'll thank me for that later. There was a lovely young lady named Greer who played Christine, very talented and nice. I met Andy who is still a friend of mine. He was hired to be the first keyboard player and be the music director on the road after he took over from John, my friend's connection. . . my connection to the show. He wasn't gonna travel with it. So Andy and I were the band, it was a band of two. I was keyboard two. He was keyboard one. The rest of the cast. . . you know, it was non-equity, so it was spotty. It was uneven. There were some talented people. . .the Carlotta was a major talent. She had a beautiful voice and she could act. But some of the people in the chorus wouldn't have been cast in my high school production of anything.
Speaker 1 00:08:29 So all over the map. So the company was probably, I don't know, 20 people? I don't remember the crew at all. So that's sort of the set up. They rehearsed the show in New York for two, three weeks. And then here's where I come into the story. I joined the show in Seattle, but they didn't come directly from New York to Seattle. They did kind of. . . they rehearsed in New York, then they flew to Seattle, immediately got on buses and bused four hours or something back east towards to Walla Walla, Washington to tech the show at a college there. They'd never seen the sets. I don't know that they'd ever been in their costumes, and certainly not in full makeup. So they're busing all the way back across the state of Washington to Walla Walla, to a university theater. They get there and they find out, soon enough, that their "tech rehearsal", the first time on the set and in costumes, will be in front of 1500 people!
Speaker 1 00:09:54 Now, I don't know if they sold tickets to this or not, but either way they were ripped off. The company basically had to do a performance as a tech rehearsal in front of 1500 people. . . horrifying! They do that one day, I believe, get on the buses and bus back to Seattle. They're setting up and rehearsing at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, downtown Seattle, beautiful old theater. This production was really not worthy of being in it, but it was. So I've agreed to go out on this tour for my $500 a week, I think, which might lure me out again these days. . . Anywho, I get to the Paramount and they're in rehearsal. George, the director, is working through some tech stuff and my friend-to-be, John the music director, is playing in the pit. I see that the set is garbage. It's, you know, like a bad high school set. And literally the chandelier, you know, in a play all about a chandelier!!! is a two-dimensional piece of painted plywood that, I believe on opening night, came crashing to the floor and then they couldn't get it back up again. And it wasn't the end of the act. So the actors had to kind of walk around it for a while. One of just innumerable amounts of embarrassment that happened in this show.
Speaker 1 00:11:52 So, they're rehearsing and I'm kind of horrified, but I'm like 'I have a job to do.' So I start learning my part and dive in. Now, part of why I agreed to take the show was my sister Wendy lives in Bellevue right across Lake Washington from Seattle. So at least I'll see my sister. And you know, I did. Unfortunately, when it came to opening night of The Phantom of the Opera: the Play: with Music, I had invited my sister and she wanted to invite some of her newish in-laws. Now these in-laws are nice people, but not really theater goers. So they had no idea what they were seeing or were going to see. But my sister, unfortunately, as it turns out, has a theater degree from the University of Washington and knows very well what she was watching. Let's just stay opening night was a travesty unlike any you'll probably ever witness.
Speaker 1 00:13:03 It was things like the lights coming up for the scene and the scene is stage right. But the lights come up stage left! And they stay that way for the whole scene cuz no one can fix it. The lead, Christine, got hit in the head by a pipe with scenery on it at some point in the show and is almost knocked out backstage between scenes, but somehow made it through the end of the show. The Carlotta at one point has a scene, she's the diva, you know, and she's telling her dressing roommate or someone something like "This is NOT an amateur production!" and the audience just roared because it WAS very clearly an amateur production. Ugh! Yeah. Pretty humbling to be a part of. Of course the in-laws loved it, thought it was great. And my sister just looked at me with horror.
Speaker 1 00:14:14 Like <laugh> 'what have you signed up for?' And I'm like, 'yeah, I know. I needed a job.' I think if memories serves, we did a couple more shows in Seattle, you know, they were still 'working on the show'. <laugh> I remember there were tales of Vince and Jimmy. (I think George, the director was out of there), but Vince and Jimmy up in Vince's hotel room doing rewrites. REWRITES!! Like that was gonna fix anything! But we would have a rehearsal and put in these changes. After the last show in Seattle, we got on the bus back to the hotel and Vince comes on the bus. And we're all just kind of stunned and horrified at what we're in and what we're doing. And he says, "Wow! Looks like we got a hit!" I think maybe the only 'hit' Vince had known before this had something to do with offing people. So that was Seattle. But in any case, it's time to get this show on the road! First stop: Portland! Ah, Portland. . . I remember you well!
Speaker 1 00:15:54 I believe it was a Saturday. We boarded the buses in Seattle and drove to Portland. It's only about three hours away. We arrived at Portland university about noon. We were gonna do two shows, I believe at two and eight. The performance venue was their basketball arena. And when we arrived, I'm not sure if it was just then, but about then, the powers-that-be realized there was not a stage on which to perform. NO STAGE! Just a basketball arena. And so the scrambling began. I don't know how or what or why or who, but somehow they came up with a plan to build a platform stage in the middle of the basketball floor, and try to put a grid above it because of course, there were curtains. And you have to hang some lights. And there's a chandelier!!! So imagine: they're trying to build a complete theatrical stage from scratch and I'm sure the equipment didn't just 'exist' on a Saturday at Portland University. I remember vividly audiences start to show up about one. It's gonna be at two o'clock matinee of The Phantom of the Opera: the Play: with Music, and everyone's excited to see it. So imagine, when we actually did the first show sometime after 4:30, what kind of mood that crowd of at least several hundred people. . . imagine what kind of mood they were in. And then we perform this abomination to them.
Speaker 1 00:18:12 There were some unhappy people. Then we had to turn right around and do it again at 8:00 PM for the next crowd who probably met the unhappy crowd on the way out and thought, what the hell is this? So they built this stage. Andy and I. . . there's no pit, obviously. So Andy and I are sitting at our keyboards at the front edge of the stage, which is only about, you know, a three foot platform. So we're very naked. There were chairs set up on the floor and in that bank of the stands for the regular basketball arena that was full of people or a lot of people. There was no sound check because we were so late, we just plugged in things. So no sound system, obviously. I remember very clearly starting to play and I can only hear myself from the central array scoreboard about 60 feet above my head. Yeah. <laugh> uh, some delay issues there, I imagine. Another thing I remember. . . bless their hearts. . . the crew was mostly volunteers. University kids, probably theater kids. So excited to help out on a "professional" production. But they were so cute. They all made matching white sweatshirts to wear. For a theater piece!
Speaker 1 00:19:52 So you already know the lighting was shitty. They had to somehow rig a curtain. They couldn't lower anything obviously. So they had to have a curtain like for your front window, where you just had to pull it across. Of course a kid or two had to try and pull the curtain across the stage, and in the blackouts they were wearing white sweatshirts. So you could completely see them. And the curtain kept getting stuck! They couldn't get it all the way closed, and they're trying to change whatever scenery it is that they managed to use for these performances. I was truly, honestly worried about being pelted with rotten vegetables and such. Luckily we live in an age where most people, most people! don't bring rotten fruit and vegetables to the theater with them anymore, at least with the intention of throwing them. So, uh, Portland. . . we couldn't get out of town soon enough!
Speaker 0 00:21:00
Speaker 1 00:21:14 So on our little bus and truck production roles. And I imagine, in much the way that women claim to eventually forget the pain of childbirth, I somehow have blocked out a good deal of what happened over the next three to four weeks. I know we traveled around the west and performed this calamity in front of people more than a few times. Uh, I remember Boise, Idaho, Salt Lake City. It was in the west, so we must have had some monster bus rides, but I don't remember much of that. I do remember that after these four weeks, we ended up in Denver. Everyone must have had the same contract because all of our contracts or agreements were up in Denver. One night during that run, (probably just a couple evenings) after the show, we all had to go to Vince's and Jimmy's hotel suite and re-up or renegotiate our contracts to stay on the tour.
Speaker 1 00:22:50 I was desperate to leave! So embarrassed by the lack of quality control and everything else about this tour. And it's not like I didn't need the money, but I just did not wanna stay. So I had nothing to lose. I went into the room and I said, 'look, I can't stay for less than a thousand dollars a week!' and they said, 'okay, great! next!' So then I was screwed. I had to stay. A thousand dollars a week. I couldn't turn that down. I wouldn't turn it down now. . .maybe. Anyhow, I looked at the calendar and I saw, I don't know how far out, maybe three or weeks, we were somehow gonna make it all the way over to Charleston, South Carolina. I'd never been to Charleston or South Carolina at that point in my life, so I'm like, well, that seems like as good of places as any. Give them time to find a replacement for me.
Speaker 1 00:23:55 I get to see some place I wanna see and, you know, not leave everyone in the lurch. So I aimed for that. I don't know where else we played. . . We must have played in Kansas City. I know we stopped in St. Louis, but I don't know if we actually played there. But I DO know that we played at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. And the reason I remember this is because our leading lady, Carlotta, the quite talented operatic diva, was from Carbondale. And she was mortified that she was going to be seen in her hometown in this piece of absolute garbage. So she did not re-up to remain with the tour. I think she stayed maybe up until Carbondale. So calls go out in New York and they have to find a replacement Carlotta. Great, you know, it's theater, this happens. But we never saw Carlotta, the new Carlotta, except in passing like,' hi, welcome' until she was on stage doing the show with us. For her grant entrance in this play. . . we'd been playing whatever the original music was up until this point in the play.
Speaker 1 00:25:38 But for Carlotta's entrance, there's an orchestral track of Gounod's Faust, the Jewel Song. It's a wonderful, wonderful piece. So, the scene before ends and out of this blackout, you start hearing the beautiful music. And it's kind of fun to hear a full orchestra at this point, honestly, even though I'm not playing it. Then out of the darkness, you hear this beautiful soprano come in with this lovely tril.l The lights come up and she's in a glamorous costume (it was pretty nice.) And she sings the Jewel Song, famous aria. (If you really wanna hear it, track down a Renee Fleming recording where she really gloriously does it.) So our Mary. . . who, Mary Ellen? Mary Jane?? (I'm sure she hopes I get it wrong.) She had a beautiful voice and had actually coloratura technique.
Speaker 1 00:26:38 So out of the darkness, you heard this intro and this beautiful trill on a B/C sharp, and then off into the French beauty of this aria. The performance that marked the arrival of her replacement is stuck in my memory quite differently. Here's why: you hear the music of the underscore start to build and build. Then out of the darkness you're supposed to hear this stunning coloratura soprano trill. BUT the first thing we hear ever in performance by Linda, the replacemen,t is something that sounds a lot more like. . .I don't know. . . a stuck pig than a trill. {demonstrates}
Speaker 0 00:27:40 Woo.
Speaker 1 00:27:47 I looked across the pit at Andy whose face truly reflected the entire majesty of
Speaker 0 00:27:58 <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:28:01 The performance we were, <laugh> now being blessed with. And just like that, we entered the our-diva-Isn't-really-a-diva portion of our tour. Poor girl. Had really no vocal chops whatsoever. And if I remember correctly, even less in the acting category. So other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like The Phantom of the Opera: the Play: with Music? So we soldiered on. I don't even remember how we got from Southern Illinois to Charleston. Oh, Memphis. First time I was ever in Memphis. . . BealeStreet, the Peabody Hotel, the parading ducks in the lobby. . . but the rest is kind of a blur. I'm sure there were many triumphant performances along the way, but eventually we did make it to Charleston, South Carolina. And I have to say, it was kind of worth it. Really a beautiful old American city, uh, town, really. The old part, charming, wonderful food.
Speaker 1 00:29:21 I made it out to the Magnolia plantation. It was just a beautiful place (if horrible history). Unfortunately it was right after hurricane Hugo knocked down a whole bunch of trees. But tons of beautiful Azaleas blooming. . . and all the colors! Oh, and guess who I saw in person in Charleston? Why, none other than Prince Charles himself. Yeah. I was walking around the old part of town and a small crowd had gathered. So I wandered up and said, what's going on? They said, oh, Prince Charles is inside. Okay. So I hung out a few minutes and eventually Prince Charles came out and, just like every cliche you ever hear, he was of course more handsome in person <affirmative> and very short. He just worked his way around the crowd hands clasped behind his back and said, 'hello, how are you?
Speaker 1 00:30:31 Very nice. Thank you.' ( And that was a British accent for those of you who don't enjoy my Omni accent.) So that was Charleston. I was ready to go now from the tour from hell. I had really tired of trying to explain to poor audience members how this WAS the Phantom of the Opera, but not THE Phantom of the Opera. When we were in a pit or in front of the stage at intermission, people come up and say like, 'oh, we really love it, but when are you gonna sing the famous song?'
Speaker 1 00:31:15 And no matter if we were in Boise or South Carolina, that was the accent they used. I don't know why. Today when I'm in pits, I love sitting in the pit in intermission and talking to audience members. I'm a chatty person. I love to tell them what we're doing and ask them how they like it. But then, because I was so mortified of the product itself, I was rarely in the pit during intermission. But Andy was so lovely and gracious. He would tell the people like, well, you know, it's Phantom of theOpera, but it's a different property, a different story with different music. And, and they're like, "yeah, but when you all gonna sing the famous song?" So finally I was done with The Phantom of the Opera: the Play: with Music.
Speaker 1 00:32:13 So what did I gain from this experience? Well, it wasn't a total wash. In fact, far from it. I made some money and I really needed some money. I got to travel and see a lot of this country that I had not seen before. And you know how I like to travel! (Or you will know this eventually if you listen to Chicago Musician.) I did get the experience of the road, traveling with a show. And this would come in very helpful, as I traveled for the better part of the next decade with Broadway shows. And I made some friends, some who are still friends all these years later. There's a cliche or a saying in show business: It's not what you know, it's who you know. Maybe that's true in every business, but here's a perfect example of how it works in the business of show:
Speaker 1 00:33:15 My pitmate Andy, not too many years later, got hired to music direct Sunday in the Park with George out in Rockford, Illinois, about 90 miles west of Chicago. And he called me up and asked if I would be interested in playing that show with him. Being the Sondheim-head that I am, I'm like, sure, sign me up. So I go out to play that show. The other musician in the pit, there were three of us, was a percussionist and his name was also Andy. So I began calling them Andy Major and Andy Minor. And I became Shawn Diminished. In this show, I played synth and I programmed them, and I covered 80% of the orchestrations on two keyboards while Andy played piano, Andy Major, and Andy Minor played a zillion percussion instruments. One day when I was sitting in a dark room programming for eight hours at a time, a young lady walked into the room and said to me, after I took off my headphones, "Did you play Bobby van Huesen in The Boyfriend in Brainerd Summer Theater in 1976?"
Speaker 1 00:34:40 And I'm like, "Yeah?" She said "Cathy. I was the choreographer." Cathy would go on to play Tess in the first national tour of Crazy For You, which I also did for over a year and a half. (A quick clarification: I toured with Crazy For You for over a year and a half. I did NOT play the role of Tess. . . although I think I may have been fantastic. . . if I could tap dance! Andy Minor and I went on to play many shows together in Chicago musical theater. And eventually, when I was the music director on the national tour of Cats, I was able to hire Andy to come out and play percussion and make some real money maybe for the first time. He stayed quite a few months after I left that tour. I'm not sure what happened to him other than he helped create the percussion book on Wicked.
Speaker 1 00:35:46 And he's still playing that on Broadway! So yeah, I think he's doing all right. That's just how the connections work in this business. The lead, Christine from the tour, I hired her later to be one of the Dinettes when I got to direct Pump Boys & Dinettes out in Massachusetts. So that's the business now. I was lucky. Shortly after I left this debacle of a tour, (which is as good of an argument for why people need unions as anything ever was!) I was lucky enough to join the union and go to St. Louis and play my first 'real' tour. That was Peter Pan starring Cathy Rigby, who by the way, is a totally delightful person and really pretty much owns that role now. The Captain Hook at the time was pre-Oscar winner, JK Simmons. . . still my favorite Captain Hook of all time. The guy can sing! And we know he can act. But that's for after another six/four chord and a Cadenza here on Chicago Musician. To sum up The Tour From Hell. . . What happened to our traveling troupe of troubadors? Well, predictably, the tour ran out of money closed suddenly, stranding the entire company somewhere in Saskatchewan. Of course it did. How else could this tour end other than with an entire company stranded in the parking lot of Tim Horton's in Saskatoon??!!
Speaker 1 00:37:30 Ah, The Phantom of the Opera: the Play: with Music. . . It certainly was the Tour From Hell. But at least I got a few good stories out of it. See you again soon for another meandering miasma of a memory on Chicago Musician Cadenzas. I'm your host, Shawn Stengel.
