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On a recent trip to Boston, I was delighted to learn of Standing Room Only, a weekend radio program that offers up the best of Rodgers, Porter, Sondheim, Guettel, etc. as sung by Raitt, Merman, Lansbury, McDonald, and so on. The program airs on WERS, the radio station of Emerson College, and it is hosted by Jonathan Colby, a sophomore musical theater major who has more knowledge of and appreciation for musical theater than most people two or three times his age.
An aspiring actor who was hailed for his performance as Richard Loeb in the 2005 Stoneham Theatre production of Thrill Me, Colby has hosted Standing Room Only since last August. His tastes are nothing if not eclectic; a typical program might feature selections from Gypsy, Brigadoon, Sunday in the Park With George, Jekyll & Hyde, Floyd Collins, and See What I Wanna See. There are also guest interviews; among those with whom Colby has spoken on-air are Forbidden Broadway creator Gerard Alessandrini; Michael Siberry, now starring in Spamalot in Boston; and yours truly, in connection with The TheaterMania Guide to Musical Theater Recordings, which I edited.
“The program has been running for more than 20 years,” says Colby. “I grew up in the Boston area, so I’ve been listening to it forever. When I came to Emerson, I thought, ‘I really want to do that program.’ During the summer, I heard that the host, Andrea Alioto, was going to move to New York to do the acting thing, so I thought maybe I could sneak in there somehow. For the first part of the summer, I was hosting another radio show, playing music that I knew nothing about — folk, hard rock, electronic. Then, one weekend, the producer who had taken over for Andrea couldn’t do the show, so the station manager sent out a mass email asking if anyone could cover it. I jumped at the opportunity — but that happened to be the first weekend of a production of Aida that I was assistant directing. So I had my opening night on Friday, then I did my usual three-to-six-a.m. radio show, then I did Standing Room Only for the first time at 10am, and then I had a matinee of my show at 3pm. It was very tiring!”
Apparently, Colby was a smash as the fill-in host of Standing Room Only. To hear him tell the story, “Hundreds of listeners e-mailed the station manager saying, ‘This guy needs to stay,’ so I was offered the job.” He has taken to it like a duck to water — and, as a young, straight male who worships show music, he explodes a stereotype. How did this passion develop? “My father’s a theater ed. teacher,” Colby explains. “When I was four and five, I was in a couple of shows that he produced, and I kind of caught the bug from that. I think it was my sophomore year of high school when I first listened to A Little Night Music and really started to understand the brilliance of musical theater. Then, one holiday season, my mom got me the entire Stephen Sondheim collection. I think I turned into one of those people who say, ‘All musical theater except Sondheim is crap,’ but then I began to appreciate other shows as I started to learn what his influences were.”
Colby tells me that, although he is in fact heterosexual, “the people above me at the station have made it extremely clear that they want me to be ‘gaight’ on the radio. Not bisexual, ‘gaight.’ I think they made that word up for me.” Do his friends razz him for loving show tunes? “You have to keep in mind that I go to Emerson College, which is 55-60% gay,” he says. “It’s a huge theater school, for one thing, and it’s a very liberal college. So I don’t get too many remarks — and the ones I do get usually come from actors who say things like, ‘Oh, you’re into musical theater.’ My sister is one of them!”
Those who live outside of New England and can’t tune in Standing Room Only via radio (FM 88.9) will be thrilled to hear that the program is available for enjoyment via computer; simply go to www.wers.org, then click “listen” and follow the instructions for access to the streaming audio. The show airs every weekend, Saturdays from 10am to 2pm and Sundays from noon to 2pm. “At any one time during the broadcast, we have about 10,000 people listening through terrestrial radio,” Colby says. “I can’t tell you how many listen online because we don’t track that, but I’ve heard that we have listeners in Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Japan.” When I ask him to name the most frequently requested song, I expect the answer to be “Defying Gravity” or maybe “Seasons of Love,” but no: “Strangely enough,” he says, “it’s ‘The Streets of Dublin’ from A Man of No Importance. I’m allowed to play that on the radio because, instead of ‘fucking,’ Steven Pasquale sings ‘fecking!’ ”
As much as Colby loves Show Boat (his favorite) and other great musicals of the past, he is also firmly committed to the future of the art form. “I’d like to encourage young composers who are trying to get their stuff heard to send me CDs,” he says. “I’m interested in using our show not just as a jukebox for old musicals but also to help move musical theater forward into the 21st century. I’d love to do a reading of a new show on the air, and my ultimate goal is to start Standing Room Only Productions. I get really frustrated when I see Boston theaters advertising the regional premieres of shows that were on Broadway two or three years ago. Why not do something that will go to Broadway after you do it? Be the gateway! Help shows get off their feet in Boston! That’s the way it used to happen.” To contact Jonathan directly, e-mail him at standingroomonly@wers.org.
