The show was fun, once I got over being conspicuously alone at two tables for four, ten feet from the stage, with all those kiss-kiss kids piled up behind me at their own itty bitty tables. The fetid air was electric with excitement. Oh, all right, it was only somewhat fetid, moldering by the moment, but I’ve breathed worse. And the electric excitement is the same old brand new stuff kids discover again and again and again. Keeps us going. Especially in Show Biz. Because this was all Show Biz.

Maieutic Theater Works was producing an understudy showcase benefit for all Show Biz’s causes and all the audience turned out to be those fresh, wondrous show biz kids full of theatrical expectation, longing to belong, coming to support ten understudies who were going to get their own names up front, their own stories of stage disasters, their own shine time. Heady. You could see it before things began, coming up the tacky stairs to the club, ganged with twenty-somethings passionately waiting to get in, every one utterly showbiz, explosions of delight and embracement. One young thing had obviously not seen any of the many she flung arms about, serially, seemingly in decades, which was a mite dubious since she couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Bliss, bliss, bliss.

Katie Adams	Julie Reiber

Katie Adams and Julie Reiber, both delicious, both understudies in Wicked, bursting with good spirits, giddy, ad-libbing as fast as they could as co-hosts, broke the ice and Katie was first of all to perform. Totally winning. Screams of joy from the blatantly biased audience. (Which, of course, went on all night, after every joke, after every song, after every sassy story, after every boldly sober song, after every boldly slutty number, it was charming. What an audience.) They introduce Jeff Edgerton, wonderfully dry and droll. “You’re paid not to perform”, he observed, blessedly not splitting an infinitive. Hidden depths there. The dithery would-be witches return with an insane anecdote of a recalcitrant levitator – it makes witches fly – which had ground to a halt and crashed behind Julie when she was singing. She remembered the major piece of wisdom she was given for a stagecraft crisis: “Sing your face off!” Which she did, as she brandished her broom and pretended to fly. “That’s Broadway?” Katie had muttered.


Michelle Lookadoo

They introduce Michelle Lookadoo who understudies half a dozen critters in The Little Mermaid. Lookadoo is new to Broadway. She thinks she’s pretty and talented. She’s not. She is drop dead gorgeous and monumental but she hasn’t found that out yet. She’s hired as a dancer (If you’ve seen Mermaid you know how peculiar that is), demonstrates a couple of fouettes, then sings bewitchingly. Even with the Broadway Edge. Every one of these performers, men and women alike, has the Edge. They learn it; it is demanded of them even though they have fine, sometimes beautiful voices. The Edge cuts through the fetid air of Broadway houses. But then, mikes are added anyway, mostly with musicals, and the Edge becomes the Buzz Saw. Go figure.

Astonishments continue. Shaun Taylor-Corbett (In The Heights) blows us all away with his spectacularly lucid and insightful take on the intro song to that show. Tony Chiroldes, also from In The Heights, follows, strong, wonderful. Together, they sing a duet from Paul Simons’ distinguished failure The Cape Man, “There is an Ocean” and simply overwhelm us. Whew! Then, deep change of pace: Kimberley Dawn Neumann (A Chorus Line) appears, utterly assured, perfectly gowned, a knockout with all her miles evident adding to her allure. Hairbreadth, last minute stories of going on as Cassie. Hell, she IS Cassie. The witches introduce Justin Brill (Rent). So good, so confident. He is followed by Kate Pazakis, a conundrum, an outrageous belting clown and then in a flash, wistful, fragile. Last on the bill, David Spangenthal (Beauty and the Beast), clearly a youthful leading man with years of polish, breaks off his Beast torch song, ”If I can’t Love Her”, to recount the agonies of singing out his heartbreak while his costume harness was trying to castrate him. He kept on singing, only he wasn’t singing his face off. Horribly funny.

What a show. All of them, the young and the not-so, all with stars in their eyes. But then, their audience was equally afflicted. I rushed back to my parking garage through the empty streets knowing I was late. How late? The garage had closed. It was worth it. Had a couple of stars in my own eyes.