The City That Doesn’t Sleep

Okay, we all know the schedule. Broadway shows play Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8pm, with matinees on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2pm, and Sundays at 3pm.

Well, most of the time, that is. There are those Monday performances for Chicago, Phantom, Rent, and Millie. But one of the best-kept secrets of New York theater are those maverick performances that occur here and there. For example, Intimate Apparel plays at 7:30pm, and Lynn Nottage’s play and Viola Davis’ performance are worth skipping dessert to get to the Laura Pels Theatre a half-hour earlier than usual. The heavenly concert production of Finian’s Rainbow does Saturday matinees at 3pm, while Tovah Feldshuh continues to astonish in Golda’s Balcony on Wednesdays at 3pm. So if you’re running late and 2pm comes and goes on those days, you can still see a great show.

And if you’re running late for a Sunday matinee at 3pm, well, there’s always a 4pm matinee of Italian-American Cantos by Anthony P. Pennino by the Soop Theatre Company. Take it from someone brought up in this culture, Pennino gets the details right. When he makes the point about his relatives taking more of an interest in people whose surnames end with vowels, I recalled my mother telling me that “Don’t bring home any girl whose name doesn’t end in ‘a,’ ‘i, or ‘o.'” Just to irk her, I brought home Barbara MacNamara, a girl I didn’t even like. But I did want to take advantage of the loophole.

“Food is everything,” proclaims more than one character, and I remembered those many holidays when the relatives and I sat at the dinner table at 12 noon and didn’t get up until 8pm. I was amused at references to the Baltimore Catechism, which many of us had to learn in Catholic school. I can still see that picture of a bride and groom on their wedding day, headlined “This is good” — right next to a picture of a girl becoming a nun, headlined, “This is better.” Yes, Italian-American Cantos brought me back to those days when “Mamma Mia!” was an expression and not a musical. Yet even those who have no experience with or any interest in Italian-Americans will find Pennino’s play a potent night in the theater, because its story of family in chaos is one with which many will identify.

Then on Monday night at 6pm. I went to see Bravo: On with the Show. The cable TV network, working with Camp Broadway, really did something wonderful here. They scoured the country to find 54 talented kids whom they’d bring to New York. The selectees then met artistic director Tony Parise, choreographers Sue Delano, Justin Greer, and Alee Reed. Three days, they rehearsed and rehearsed, all for this showcase where they sang and danced to their hearts — and certainly our hearts — content.

But here is the best part. Bravo didn’t rent an Off-Off-Broadway black box, but went first-class in allowing the kids to perform at the Imperial, on the same stage where Hugh Jackman gives his future Tony-winning performance. When I lived in Boston, I bemoaned how high-school basketball players got to play their championship tournaments at the Boston Garden, where the NBA’s Celtics played, while high-school actors competing in the Massachusetts Drama Festival weren’t at the Shubert, Colonial, or Wilbur, but in the far less impressive John Hancock Hall. Bless Bravo for spending the bucks and dignifying what these kids do.

“But that’s not all they did,” said Silvana Clark of Bellingham, Washington, whose daughter Sondra was in the show. “Bravo gave $1,000 to each high school that produced a participant. And they even picked up the tab for Sondra, my husband and I to fly to New York and stay in a hotel.”

“Which,” said Sondra’s daddy Allan Clark, “gave me the chance to see Rent, which I liked, 42nd Street, which I loved, and Little Shop of Horrors, which — well, let’s just say the plant was something.”

So were the 54 kids. After an overture that included such evergreens as “Broadway Baby” and second-hand show tunes as “On Broadway,” out they all bounded, from age 10-18. To establish their geographic spread, they sang “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “Big D,” “Shuffle off to Buffalo,” and the newest city song, “Good Morning, Baltimore.” Joining them was Bravo queer guy Jai Rodriguez, who did a standard (“Ohio”) and an obscurity (“Arkansas” from Big River) before going on to emcee. “You’re going to be amazed what they learned in three days,” he said, and already we knew he was right from what we’d seen in that opening.

Okay, truth to tell, some kids were better than others. Much better. A few kids stood, to paraphrase Sally in Follies, “in the middle of the floor, not going left” when they should have — and going right when they shouldn’t have. But these gaffes were very few and amazingly far between. For the most part, the kids, put into four groups of 13-15, were terrific in their numbers. One bunch did a spirited de Mille “Kansas City” before the choreographer turned it into an unfortunate hip-hop session. Another crew displayed stage combat, before doing a suite of dances from West Side Story. Then there was a Chorus Line tribute where the kids did “One,” and while many of them did pop the hat, they seemed to have earned the privilege. Rodriguez then played Zach, but the question he asked of the kids on the line were, “What do the arts mean to you?” Some of the answers were amusing, such as the one from the lad who claimed he got into musicals because he was so impressed with Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West (whom he then cannily captured in imitation). Others were poignant — especially when a girl told of playing Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. “Only a few people came,” she admitted, “but if it helped one person get over prejudice, then it was worth it.” How nice, too, to hear kids mention that they wanted to grow up to be Julie Andrews, Bernadette
Peters, and Sutton Foster. Lord knows there are many worse entertainment heroes they could have.

After playing homage to vaudeville with a few sketches (including the Duck Soup mirror bit), all 54 kids came out to do “Lullaby of Broadway,” and then a toe-tapper that had been written just for the occasion. “On with the Show!” the kids sang, in a lyric that also included the word “Bravo!” Hey, I can’t think of another instance of product placement that has ever been as well deserved.

So there’s theater all over New York at odd times if you go looking for it. It all reiterates that we are indeed in “the city that doesn’t sleep.” Not, by the way, “the city that NEVER sleeps,” as Sinatra sang it in his now-legendary rendition of “New York, New York.” And have you ever heard the rumor that at the recording session, a pianist Jeanette Burmeister pointed out the mistake to Ol’ Blue Eyes, who took her correction as an insult and broke her fingers?

********************

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