God, I Hope I Get It!

So, here it was for 12 young hopefuls: The culmination of four years of working hard at the College of Cincinnati-Conservatory of Music. Each year, the seniors who will be graduating start in the fall to develop their own musical revue based on a specific idea and buttress it with songs that support it. “It’s their own creation,” says Aubrey Berg, chairman of the musical theater department. “They not only choose the material but direct and choreograph the show, too.”

This is not just a musical theater exercise. Come April, ready or not, the dozen come to New York to perform this showcase — twice — for an assembled group of parents and well-wishers, yes, but first and foremost, for agents. Everyone knows that if he or she snags someone to represent him or her, having a life upon the stage won’t be as wickedly difficult.

The kids come to New York with varying degrees of Cincinnati success. Some have starred in the school’s mainstage productions, such as Kearran Giovanni, who’d played Kate in the Lippa Wild Party. Others had appeared in the second stage productions, such as Jackie Vanderbeck, who’d been in Promenade. Others still had been in the university’s summer offerings, such as Blake Ginther, who portrayed Schroeder in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

But, to use a sports analogy, that was the regular season and these are the playoffs, where everyone starts from scratch. A few years back, there was a CCM student whose only mainstage credit was “Gentleman from Japan” in The Hot Mikado. But when he did the showcase, casting agents from Queer as Folk were there, desperate to find their Justin for the upcoming Showtime series. They decided they had him as soon as Randy Harrison emerged and sang a song from Floyd Collins. So one never knows, do one?

This was the 11th consecutive year that Berg has brought his graduating class to the city. For the past few, he’s booked the Westside Theatre, where I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change has been playing. “It has a perfect set for a revue,” Berg says. “I hope this show never, ever closes.”

Now the day that was once years away has finally arrived. The lobby is filled and Berg is pleased to find that many of his former students are there to support the Class of ’03. Tobi Foster, who played Cosette in the Broadway company of Les Misérables, is there to cheer on her boyfriend Blake Ginther. Justin Bohon, who was Will Parker in the recent Oklahoma! — and has both a Theatre World Award and an Astaire Award to prove it — is there for his sister, Melissa. “I’m more nervous for her now than I was for myself when I did this showcase,” he says with a smile that’s undercut by brotherly concern.

Best of all, Berg tells me, more agents than ever before are in attendance. Each is given 12 eight-by-ten glossies with résumés stapled on the back, on which these kids list everything they’ve done from master classes to local commercials. There’s a program that tells what each kid will perform and, more to the point, a slice of paper that says, “I would like to interview the following auditionees,” followed by the names of Nathan Paul Allen, Melissa Bohon, Josh Dazel, Sarah Jane Everman, Blake Ginther, Kearran Giovanni, Leo Nouhan, Will Ray, Angel Reda, Neal Shrader, Jackie Vanderbeck, and Kristi Villani. Each kid is hoping that at least one agent will be impressed and circle his or her name, and all are praying that many will. (Will anyone break the record set by Matt Bogart several years ago, when 16 agents expressed their interest?)

The theme for this year’s revue is Mars and Venus, and its songs stress the differences between men and women. I revel in the fact that virtually all of them are show songs and even most of those that aren’t have been adopted into the fold. “Trouble,” the kids say, comes from Smokey Joe’s Cafe, and “Just the Way You Are” is from Movin’ Out. Well, why shouldn’t pop songs benefit from this greatness by association? A few years ago, the students did a revue dedicated to Off-Broadway, so imagine my surprise when I heard an Ethel Merman standard. Wait a minute, The Merm never played Off-Broadway! But then I checked the program and saw that the kids credited the song to Rita McKenzie’s Off-Broadway show Ethel Merman’s Broadway. Nice use of a loophole, no?

Today, they start with a song from the movie Anastasia. All 12 brightly sing, “Life is a road, and I want to keep going; Love is a river I wanna keep flowing; Life is a road, now and forever; Wonderful journey.” Here’s hoping they’re right. The men then sing “We Are the Boys” from Big River, followed by the women doing “All Girl Band” from A … My Name Is Alice. Then they break into smaller groups; a trio of men give a first-rate rendition of “Second Grade” from Personals, then Reda and Vanderbeck sharply perform “Best Friend” from the LaChiusa Wild Party. (Later, to show they don’t play favorites, Ginther hauntingly offers “What Is It About Her?” from Lippa’s version.)

It’s a 50-minute look at musical theater through the ages. Bohon scores with “I Cain’t Say No” from that ’40s musical and “If” from a ’50s one. Vanderbeck does the ’60s song “He Touched Me” without a scintilla of Streisand, making it a comic number, and getting laughs in the process. Villani does that ’70s song “Men” from So Long, 174th Street and nails it before Ginther and Vanderbeck render an ’80s song, “Two People in Love” from Baby, and do it so splendidly that I hope they get the chance to audition for the revival that just might happen at the Paper Mill next season. Will Ray takes us into the ’90s with the title tune of Kiss of the Spider Woman on the precise same stage where Bob Cuccioli debuted the song in New York (via And the World Goes ‘Round), and matches that now well known performer’s achievement. Similarly, Shrader and Villani do “A Stud and a Babe” from I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change and look right at home on the set, making me hope that someone connected with the long-run hit just might be hanging around and will sign them up as the next replacements. (Stranger things have happened in show business.)

And so it goes, slickly and superbly. No one makes an error (nor will anyone in the second show), as Dazel dazzles with “Proud of Your Boy” from Aladdin and Everman shines with “Running in Place” from Steel Pier. I adore that Nathan Paul Allen does “Floozies” from my beloved
The Grass Harp and afterwards, when I see him in the crowded lobby where so many huddle around the kids, I go to shake his hand for finding and choosing the song and for delivering it with the perfect insouciance. He confesses that Neal Shrader — “who has every original cast album ever made” — recommended it to him. Now I want to shake Shrader’s hand (well, I would have anyway for his nifty rendition of “The Marriage Proposal” from Falsettos), but he’s surrounded by people, and I hope that every one of them is an agent. Instead, I talk to Leo Nouhan’s parents and tell them something I firmly believe: The kid has a masculine presence that’s going to serve him well in musical theater. What a right-on job he did with “A Miracle Would Happen” from The Last Five Years. I hope to see him in that show and many more.

After an hour of lobby love, Berg calls the 12 into the theater where he delivers the news. Five agents are interested in you, three in you, six in you, and, alas, none at all for three of the kids. Kearran Giovanni ties Bogart’s record of 16 and Will Ray is only a whit behind with 15. While that’s wonderful, all the kids have to be reminded — to use another sports analogy — that this is just the first inning of the professional game. Scoring now is nothing to sneeze at, but there are plenty of frames in which the other kids will have the chance to score. We’ll see how talent, perseverance, and the most important thing of all — being in the right place at the right time — affects the College of Cincinnati-Conservatory of Music Class of ’03.

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

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