Front of House: Observations from a Decade on the Aisle (17 page)

Winter Garden Theatre

Ghosts of future past: walking into the Winter Garden Theatre in November 2001. Usually, going into a theater after it had been renovated was akin to meeting up with a friend who had just recovered from plastic surgery: you could see the changes, but they weren't all that drastic. Entering the Winter Garden in the fall of 2001 was much more like seeing a friend who had gone through a full-face transplant, grown out his hair, and changed his name. The shell of the theater was the same, but everything inside was radically different.

The Winter Garden was dark for a full year after
Cats
closed for a top-to-bottom renovation. I'd stopped by in the middle of the spring and had been allowed to peek into the orchestra level; at the time the entire auditorium had been gutted. Now it had all been spackled back together in a shiny new configuration. The place still had a new-paint smell.

Most of the regular ushers were gushing over the changes. Where there had been only a few stalls in the ladies' restrooms, there were now many. The signage was better. The bar at the back of the orchestra had been rebuilt with shutters, so the bartenders could count their stock during the show without disturbing anyone or being disturbed. The bar and restrooms on the mezzanine had been entirely separated from the auditorium and the designers had created a warm, lush lounge area. It wasn't hard to imagine curling up on one of the lounge's banquette seats with a good book between shows. The ushers’ room upstairs had been totally renovated, too. It was still way too small for anyone to congregate there, but the room now had a thick carpet, fresh paint, new lockers and a curtained changing area.

What was most striking about the Winter Garden, 2001 edition, was the fact that it resembled…well…a normal theater. I wasn’t used to that. The French doors that led from the lobby to the orchestra were still there, but the feline junkyard had been replaced by a very conventional stage, a very ordinary orchestra pit and orderly rows of seating. The only reminders of
Cats
' long-term tenure that remained were a few plaques here and there in the lobby.

I was sent over to
Mamma Mia
now and then as a sub, much as I'd been initially sent to
Cats
years earlier. My love for the staff there hadn't abated, and I was thrilled to learn that an usher I liked had been hired as one of the stage doormen. Seeing his smiling face when I reported to work was a pleasant surprise.

Mamma Mia
didn't appeal to me at all. The only things I liked about it were the performers themselves and the beautiful set at the end of the second act. I was roughly the same age as the protagonists, but their world was completely alien to me. It was like
Rent
again, almost. I was looking at what was supposed to be my generation, but it just didn’t compute on any level. I couldn't even begin to understand the appeal of marrying so young, and even though I actually had something in common with the character of Sophia — I’d never met my biological father either — I couldn't fathom her desire to have a complete stranger walk her down the aisle. The entire tradition of being given away baffled me to begin with. And as much as I might have enjoyed ABBA's music, I couldn't understand why anyone would ever want to pay hundreds of dollars to hear it performed in a jukebox musical. For that price, one would expect to see the real ABBA.

As one of the other ushers said, though, perhaps I was thinking too much. In their words,
Mamma Mia
was intended to be a cupcake for the soul. It was neither meant to be profound nor to make any sort of political or social statements; it was simply supposed to be fun. It wasn’t
my
type of fun, but that didn’t make it any less valid. I hated theater snobs, and I needed to avoid being one. I tried to keep that in mind as I cheerfully brought ABBA fan after ABBA fan to their seats. If theater was about entertainment, and
Mamma Mia’s
audiences spent the night clapping, singing along and dancing in the aisles, the show was obviously effective.

My work at the Winter Garden also seemed out of place. At any other theater it would have been a regular day at the office, so to speak, and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. At the Winter Garden, though, it was bizarre that things were so normal. Since I was no longer guarding the aisles, dodging performers dressed in cat costumes, or ushering patrons to their seats backstage, I was at a loss to know what to do with myself. There were no more tires to sit on at intermission; no more Mistoffelees beads to hunt. When I saw patrons dancing in the aisles during the curtain call, I had to bite back an urge to return them to their seats. In the
Cats
days they might have collided with the performers who ran down the aisles, and I would have immediately had to pull them back. In
Mamma Mia
everyone stayed firmly onstage and it wasn’t an issue.

Even sadder, I realized: I wasn't going to be ambushed at the end of intermission anymore. I closed the curtains on my side of the orchestra with dejected finality, knowing that my dancer friends weren't going to pop out from behind them at any minute.

And then I was hit with a wall of sound; a huge, overpowering crash of electric guitars, bass, drums and keyboards. I jumped straight up in the air and retreated to the side of the orchestra, holding my hands over my ears.
Mamma Mia
had the sort of sound system that one usually finds at rock concerts, and I'd been standing right by one of the massive stacks of amplifiers when the band started playing. The regular ushers stood at the back of the room, laughing at me.

I'd been ambushed at the end of intermission. Some things just never changed at the Winter Garden.

Majestic Theatre

There are different types of Broadway shows. There are the ones that are absolutely, positively obscure. The only people who remember them are those who worked there. There are the productions that are short-lived but legendary, like
Carrie
or
Frankenstein.
The fact that
Carrie
only ran for sixteen previews and five performances on Broadway, but has since been revived all over America by high schools and professional theater companies alike, almost redefines the term “cult favorite.” I knew someone on Broadway that actually had the
Carrie
logo tattooed on his arm. On the other side of the coin, there are shows that have respectably long runs, win awards and are initially received enthusiastically, but subsequently drop into the abyss, only to be remembered by theater geeks.

And then there are the blockbusters. They’re the shows that are part of our collective consciousness. When characters sing random lines from these shows on sitcoms, almost everyone gets it. Most people recognize some of the songs, costumes and scenery, even if they’ve never seen the whole thing on stage.
Annie
is one of these legends; I would say that
Grease
is another.
West Side Story,
certainly. Much of the Rodgers & Hammerstein catalogue.
Cabaret. Show Boat. Wicked. Cats,
too, since “Memory” has had its own nine (hundred) lives.

We can’t forget
The Phantom of the Opera.

As the cliché goes,
Phantom
is a cultural and theatrical phenomenon. As of 2015 the Broadway show has been open for
twenty-seven years
; the London production is even older. The last original cast members have left the show by now, but there were some who held on for over two decades. Those actors went from youth to middle age, watched children grow from infancy to their high school graduations, and outlasted the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union, and the Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. presidential administrations. There is one usher who has been at the Majestic since
Phantom
’s opening night; in an interview it was noted that she has seen the show over nine thousand times. Some of the actors now performing in
Phantom
weren’t even born when the show opened in 1988. It has become Broadway’s version of
The Mousetrap.

There’s really no way to forget about
Phantom,
either. It’s parodied on TV and online, and the iconic mask appears on murals and store decorations. A national tour is still wending its way around the United States, so
Phantom
show posters sprout up now and again in various cities. It was in Las Vegas for a while.

On vacation in Los Angeles in 2006, I went to a showing of
The Nightmare Before Christmas
at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. During the walk-in, a musician played a classic Wurlitzer organ in front of the stage. My face began to twitch when I realized he’d segued into a medley of “Music of the Night” and “All I Ask of You” from
Phantom.
I could run, but I couldn’t hide.

Phantom
was the first Broadway show I worked for the Shubert Organization, as a sub in 1997. It was also the last Broadway show I worked at all, in 2010. I spent about six years as a regular with the production. Between 1997 and 2004, I also subbed at
Phantom
countless times. It had one of the largest ushering staffs on Broadway, and they always needed subs to fill in.

I also visited on several occasions as a fan. A woman who frequently took my bus knew the Phantom’s makeup artist, and once she arranged for me to go backstage and meet the Phantom at the time, Howard McGillin. I didn’t say much to him; I simply grinned like the star-struck idiot I was at that moment. On the way out we had a brief tour of the stage, and someone snapped a photo of me standing in front of the chandelier. The same woman arranged for me to buy a
Phantom
show jacket.

It always sort of bothers me that
Phantom
is viewed as a love story by many. There’s a romance between Raoul and Christine, certainly, but between Christine and the Phantom? No bueno. And yes, I know I’ve just incurred the wrath of the thousands of
Phantom
fangirls and boys out there, but hear me out: the man is a violent, manipulative stalker. I completely agree that at the outset he’s a misunderstood, sensitive genius, but the moment he starts murdering, stalking and kidnapping people, my sympathy goes out the window. One really can’t excuse that.

In the original Gaston Leroux book the Phantom is known as Erik; that name is never used in the Broadway show. Erik is far more evil villain than dashing leading man, and Christine is terrified of him. She explicitly says that she’s afraid of what Erik will do to her. The Phantom’s only two saving graces are his musical talent and the fact that he offers up some truly funny, sardonic comments in certain scenes.

However, he’s still evil. I know that one of the themes of the show is that you should judge people by their actions and not their appearance, but the Phantom’s
actions
are unequivocally heinous. In both the book and the musical the Phantom takes the “If I can’t have you, no one will” tack against Christine. He stalks her, he threatens her and her loved ones, he menaces everyone else at the Opera Populaire, and he kills several people. He physically abuses Christine when he rips a necklace from her neck and throws her to the ground. In addition, he tries to alienate her from her friends, he holds her captive and he possibly gains her trust through false pretenses, since, at the beginning of the show, she thinks he’s the Angel of Music that her dead father promised to send in her direction. Christine’s not exactly the brightest crayon in the box.

Think about it: do you really want to bring this guy home? And no, I don’t think Christine is obligated to marry or otherwise hook up with the Phantom in exchange for her voice lessons.

Certainly, we can acknowledge that the Phantom’s disfigurement has made his life far more difficult than most, that his hardscrabble existence has contributed to his mental and emotional instability, and that he might have been able to fully use his incredible talents if he hadn’t been rejected by the world. He has a bad case of unrequited infatuation, and that’s enough to make anyone sing the blues. Still, the guy is an unstable, abusive, manipulative creep. It has nothing to do with his face; to paraphrase what Christine says in one number, the infection lies in his soul. It’s not that I don’t like a fun villain, but I always wish that people would acknowledge that he
is
a villain as well as a victim. The latter doesn’t excuse the former.

Fans of the show, at least the ones that come in costume, don’t seem to give much thought to Raoul, Christine’s actual love interest in the story. If you’ve ever read the book, you know that Raoul loses his brother during the attempt to rescue Christine from the Phantom’s lair. He gives up everything, including his title as a noble, his money and his social standing, to keep his girlfriend safe at the end of the story. He’s arrogant, but he’s never abusive, he genuinely loves Christine and vows to protect her, and he puts his money where his mouth is in that regard. Yet, he’s usually the one the fangirls hate. As Javert would say, if we were in
Les Misérables
and not
The Phantom of the Opera,
the world is upside down. I suppose that, as always, the good guys are less exciting to spectators than the ones with more checkered pasts.

Anyway. When I see people who worship the Phantom, it reminds me of folks who consider Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees to be their heroes. I especially cringe when I see children wearing the Phantom’s white mask or fedora. They’re unwittingly emulating a stalker and a serial killer. It doesn’t compute for me, but it obviously makes sense to others.

I subbed at the Majestic intermittently from the very beginning of my association with the Shuberts; I became a regular sub in 2004 and was hired as a permanent member of staff the following year. It was considered a very good gig to get. The Majestic, like the Winter Garden and the Imperial, was a plum theater; that went from one long-running show to the next. The ushers at the Majestic didn’t have to worry about their theater being closed for long stretches of time; it just didn’t happen. Where other theaters often housed productions that closed within a few months, the Majestic’s shows lasted for years. Before
Phantom, 42nd Street
had been there.
42nd Street
was such a hit that when it needed to leave the Majestic to make room for
Phantom,
it didn’t close. Instead, the show was transferred across 44th Street to the St. James Theatre, and the chorus girls and boys tap danced over to their new home in a press event.

Owing to its large capacity, good facilities and central location, the Majestic was often used for special events. It hosted the Tony Awards numerous times, way before I showed up. A performing arts college in the city used the theater for its graduation ceremonies every year.

The Majestic was also a frequent venue for public memorials for actors with Broadway credentials. Since there wasn’t a lot of reserved seating, only a skeleton crew of ushers was required for these events; the staff members were chosen on a rotating basis. Working these daytime events was entirely voluntary, but most people liked doing them. For one thing they tended to be interesting; for another, it was extra pay. I worked a number of memorials, including the ones for Bea Arthur and Tony Randall.

Memorials were always open and free to anyone who wanted to attend, and they attracted odd crowds. Many people were genuine fans who wanted to pay their respects, but we also got a lot of professional autograph salesmen and eBayers. They were painfully obvious to spot; they were the ones that hounded us for multiple copies of the program and became ornery when we didn’t comply.

The invited guests at memorials included friends, family members and former co-stars of the deceased. As usual, we just seated the celebrities, we didn’t interact with them. I can’t say that I met Lucie Arnaz, Rosie O’Donnell or Rue McClanahan, but they all walked past me at one memorial or another.

I was always heartened that these actors were able to get a final sendoff from Broadway. They had lived for and within the theatrical community; when they passed on, they were remembered fondly and with a smile. It was also a tradition to dim the lights on the Broadway marquees for a minute to honor theater personalities who died. I never actually saw this, since it happened a few minutes before curtain.

There is an old saying that there’s a broken heart for every light on Broadway. I wouldn’t doubt it even a little. It’s also true, though, that when beloved theatrical figures leave us, every light on Broadway loses a little of its shimmer.