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V.J. John Bantay rules at SBNY’s "Musical Mondays" and performer/songwriter Peter Yawitz revels at Don’t Tell Mama. Also: What’s up with the replacement casting of Broadway shows lately?

Sammy Williams in a clip from A Chorus Line as seen at SBNY
Sammy Williams in a clip from A Chorus Line as seen at SBNY

The Bar is Alive With the Sound (and Sight) of Musicals

If you love to watch clips of musical numbers in the company of a gaggle of fellow show queens — err, buffs — you have a few options: (1) go to one of the public screenings at the Museum of Television and Radio; (2) have a bunch of friends over to your lovely apartment in order to show off items from your own collection and those of your well-connected friends; or (3) get yourself to “Musical Mondays” at SBNY, a.k.a. Splash, the popular bar located at 50 West 17th Street in Manhattan.

“Musical Mondays” is a treasured tradition at the bar, and V.J. John Bantay has been in charge of the proceedings for about four years now. “I come from a musical theater background, so going to Splash for ‘Musical Mondays’ was always a great treat for me,” says Bantay, whose credits as a performer include Broadway shows, national tours, and regional theater. (He was in the Broadway revival of The King and I with Donna Murphy and Lou Diamond Phillips and, that same season, was also in the second Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! with Carol Channing.)

John Bantay
John Bantay

Bantay selects all kinds of clips to show on “Musical Mondays,” from the readily accessible (“Turkey Lurkey Time” from Promises, Promises as performed in the movie Camp) to the rare (Lauren Bacall, Penny Fuller, Harvey Evans and company in “But Alive” from the television production of Applause). “Splash has a library of material that’s pretty extensive, and then I have a whole bunch of my own stuff,” he says. “Once my friends found out that I was doing this, they started to contribute. There’s always a tremendous response. We start at 8pm and end at 11:30, and a big crowd begins to form around 7:30. It’s like people coming to a show.”

What have proven to be some of the most popular clips at SBNY? “Right now, if I don’t play anything from Wicked, I’ll get attacked,” says Bantay. “I’ve got three or four different clips from that — from the Tonys, the Today show, ‘Broadway on Broadway’ — and if I don’t show them, I definitely hear about it!” Other crowd favorites include three famous numbers from movie versions of Broadway musicals: “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl, “America” from West Side Story, and the “Rich Man’s Frug” from Sweet Charity.

Mostly because the bar doesn’t charge admission to “Musical Mondays,” Bantay doesn’t fret over any rights issues that may be involved in showing these clips. “We look at it as a big commercial for Broadway,” he says. “We feel that we’re serving the community and educating people who might not know about musical theater. I have young kids run up to the booth and ask, ‘What was that clip?’ I look at them like, ‘How young are you? How can you not know what that is and be gay?’ It’s great to play the classics for those guys.”

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Peter Yawitz
Peter Yawitz

Smarter Than the Average Lyricist

Many people agree that, over the past few decades, there has been a certain dumbing down of theater, movies, and TV shows, and also of the audiences for such entertainment — though it’s unclear which situation is the result of the other. Yet there’s still quite a bit of intelligent, witty fare out there. Example: the hilarious lyrics of performer-songwriter Peter Yawitz, whose show at Don’t Tell Mama is a winner.

Yawitz’s comic sensibility is spot on. “A lot of the songs came out of stories that I’ve told for years,” he says. “‘Talk Like a Guy’ is one of them. I’d been telling this story about going to my wife’s class reunion and just being shunted to the side. Eventually, I turned it into song lyrics: ‘At my wife’s class reunion, like dutiful lackeys / The husbands are dumped / I’m with bald guys in khakis.’ Another source of material is my job; I’m in management communication, so I’ve spent a lot of time with corporate executives, and one of my daily fun things to do is to scribble down some of the clichés that I hear all the time. When I teach a business writing class, I give what I call a cliché Bingo board to the people in the class, and I thought that idea lent itself pretty nicely to a song: ‘So net net, vis-à-vis, all these key take-aways / Here’s some mindshare you won’t find deep in your old Roget’s / Just push the envelope next time that you liaise.'”

Although Yawitz generally confines himself to writing lyrics only, to the music of such folks as David Friedman, Dick Gallagher, and Peter Lurye (who also collaborates on some of the lyrics), there are exceptions. “I wrote both the words and music for ‘New Man, Part II,’ which is the finale of the show,” he says. “I’m not a musician, but I had a melody in my mind, so I went to my musical director Matthew Ward and I sat at the piano with him. I sang it and Matthew transcribed it. I was really self-conscious about it — but, after all, Mel Brooks did the same thing for The Producers!”

What led to all of this? “I had dropped out of business for a while and had done some musical theater performing,” says Yawitz, “but it just didn’t work with my life. I had a couple of small kids and it wasn’t the right time. I’ve always entertained in my own way — as an auctioneer, a storyteller — and I’ve always written parody songs. About four years ago, I started putting things together and contacting people like David Friedman, whom I’ve known for a long time, and Peter Lurye, who’s an old friend of mine. Then I got connected with Dick Gallagher. I’ve really enjoyed collaborating with such good people, and the response to the show has been great. People have told me that they enjoy it because the songs are different and literate and original.” If you’d like to hear and see for yourself, you can catch Peter Yawitz in action at Don’t Tell Mama in A New Man on Monday, September 13 at 6:30pm and Sunday, September 26 at 5:30pm.

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Brooke Shields(Photo © Joseph Marzullo)
Brooke Shields
(Photo © Joseph Marzullo)

Re-casting About

Is it just me, or have there been some very strange choices in the replacement casting of Broadway shows recently? Well, I don’t think it is just me, because a lot of people seem to be talking about the choice of Brooke Shields to replace Donna Murphy in the Wonderful Town revival. Aside from the fact that the role of Ruth Sherwood in this 1953 Bernstein-Comden-Green musical seems far from a perfect fit for Shields in terms of physical appearance, type, etc., there’s the question of how her casting is going to go over in terms of box-office receipts. The show has been struggling for some time, to put it mildly, and Shields is not exactly the sort of hot-hot-hot star whose presence can be expected to give it a financial shot in the arm. My own two cents: Megan Mullally would have been phenomenal in the part and would have sold tons of tickets, but I suppose she’s unavailable right now due to her Will and Grace filming schedule. (Mullally previously worked for Wonderful Town producers Barry and Fran Weissler in Grease! I wonder if they even considered her for Ruth? On the other hand, would she have wanted to work for them again?)

Another odd piece of casting, if not as odd as the one noted above: Richard Kind as Richard Dreyfuss’s replacement in Sly Fox. Now, please don’t get me wrong: I think Kind is an incredibly talented performer, and some friends of mine who saw him as Foxwell J. Sly during the few weeks that he played the role said he was fabulous. I was delighted to hear that Kind will be taking over as Max Bialystock in The Producers in January — and, before that announcement was made, I was telling everyone I know that I thought he would be a terrific replacement for Alfred Molina as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. But Fiddler and The Producers are shows that do not necessarily require hugely famous and popular stars to in order to sell enough tickets to keep running; this is clearly not the case with Sly Fox (or with Wonderful Town). Why the producers thought that bringing Kind into the show along with such other folks as Carol Kane, Larry Storch, and Richard Libertini would revivify a financially floundering production is hard to fathom. (By the way: Wouldn’t Kelsey Grammer have been great as Sly? And can you imagine the ticket sales that his casting might have generated?)

It’s no news flash that some shows sell themselves while others require major star casting. Credit the producers of The Boy From Oz for ultimately realizing that there was no point in trying to keep that show running after Hugh Jackman’s departure unless they could find a star of equal wattage and talent to replace Jackman — a near-impossible task. A couple of months back, I was amazed to read Jai Rodriguez’s contention in two separate interviews that he had been “in discussions” with the producers to take over the role of Peter Allen in the show. I mean, really! If Rodriguez were to do a Broadway show with the rest of his “Fab Five” colleagues from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, that might create a box-office stampede. But to cast him as the lead in a star vehicle like The Boy From Oz, in a role for which he would have been totally unsuitable? Let’s just say it’s for the best that this never happened — and let’s hope that, in the future, producers may avoid embarrassment by re-casting their shows with great care.