Our Vintage Years – Venting and Voyaging

Some of our greatest pleasures have been the live theatre / concert performances we have seen over the years.  And we have captured these through hundreds of programmes and a number of autographed A5 theatre posters (called WindowCards in the trade).  Both programmes and show posters have lived in our craft / office room in the bungalow, with the showposters framed and on display.  But sadly downsizing as we move on means that we need to lose the physical media but the memories will live on and in fact do often recur in our casual chatter.

For the purpose of this blog, where I just wanted to highlight memories based on the showposters, I have taken pics of them in situ – not the best pics as light reflects in the glass of the frame, or the casual Christmas lights still strung around the room hang unevenly – but that’s the way we see them today and the way we will remember them.

I start with Hello Dolly starring the wonderful Bette Midler and the funniest man in sitcom and theatre – David Hyde Pierce.  A truly wonderful show full of colour and energy and with all the songs that we know and love.  But the moment I remember most is at the end of one of the most energetic song and dance pieces, Bette Midler leant against the proscenium wall and broke “the fourth wall” speaking directly as Bette to the audience just to say how glad she was going on holiday the following day because that number was so exhausting (that’s not quite the language she used 😉 ).

Next up – Lend Me A Tenor – a show we saw on Broadway – not sure if it ever came to te UK – directed by one of our finest actors, Stanley Tucci, and with a star cast including Tony Shalhoub (we loved Monk!) and his wife Brooke Adams, as well as Anthony LaPglia and Justin Bartha (Riley in National Treasure).  One of these laugh a minute shows – great fun.

We move on to Next to Normal – a heart breaking musical –  which we have seen both on Broadway and in London.  It’s about the loss of a child and how the family copes with it – all in different ways.  The Broadway production will last in our mind – it starred Alice Ripley as the Mom – and she shed real tears during it.  It’s so painful that you have to ask yourselves just how the actors can perform it night after night.  Joy loved it so much that she went back to see it again the following day.

Then On The 20^th Century – a revival of a musical comedy starring one of our absolute favourites Kristin Chenoweth – boy does she have a vocal range.  To be honest we had mixed reactions to it – it was not Pam’s favourite, but Joy and I really enjoyed it.

We skip along the wall to what was then a new musical If/Then starring another superstar, Idina Menzel – another of our favourites.  This was about choices – what if I did this then here’s the consequence, but if I did that then here’s the other consequence – similar to the movie Sliding Doors.  We saw it twice on Broadway because we loved it so much – the second time was the Sunday afternoon last performance – the writers were there as well (Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey) – a truly wonderful show – there has been much talk of it coming to London, but that never happened – and honestly wouldn’t be the same without Menzel.

Taking a break on this wall walk round for a minute – part of the pleasure we have had with this over the years has been stage dooring – perhaps a bit nerdish – but we have had the chance to make friends from the stage fandom, and to meet and perhaps chat with the performers.  This even goes (sorry no photo or poster, just a memory) to meeting the late Marvin Hamlisch strolling away from London’s Royal Albert Hall where he had just been musical director for an Idina Menzel concert.

But we move on again to the show where I had the chance to get a glass of beer on stage before the performance which was set in an Irish bar.  This was Once, a stage musical version of the movie of the same name – we thought the movie was a bit drab and a bit of a dirge – but the show really came alive.  The male principal was a chap called Steve Kazee and he was excellent – but the real memory comes from the time that he generously gave to some aspiring theatre kids in the stage door crowd – they just wanted to know about his experience and thoughts on getting on in show business.

Next up is It Should’a Been You – a musical comedy starring the lovely Sierra Boggess (the original Broadway Ariel in Little Mermaid) – she was the reason we went.  A genuinely funny comedy about a wedding and the differences between the families.  Also starred the great Tyne Daley (Cagney and Lacey), Harriet Harris (Frasier’s agent Bebe) and Edward Hibbert (also from Frasier). 

Time to move on to Rent, one of the longest running Broadway shows (12 years), with songs that you still hear today – can you remember how many minutes in a year?  We saw it on Broadway with most of the original cast – many of whom went on to greater things.  It’s based on La Boheme but is all about the impoverished young artists under the shadow of HIV/Aids, set in Lower Manhattan’s East Village.  The real tragedy of Rent was that the man who wrote the show and the songs / music, Jonathan Larson, died suddenly the day before opening day.  Rent was quite significant in our life – one of those musicals that was both tragic and uplifting at the same time.  And it was one of those strange Stage Tribe evenings when we’re sitting towards the back of the stalls and a girl comes over and says “Are You Joy?” – this was a young girl of similar age from Kansas who had been in the same online group as Joy and knew we were going that evening.  She was there with her Mother and we chatted at stage door after the show.  It was a bit of a manic stage door that night.

And now, perhaps the biggest theatre event in our family’s life – Wicked – I don’t even know how many times I have seen it (high teens?) never mind how many Joy has.  I describe it as a bit of a waterfall moment for us – not only was the show wonderful but also the cast over the years starting with Idina Menzel who we saw in it in London (the stage door queue went right round the block that night from front door to back door of the theatre) – and we started to follow the careers of many of the cast through a multitude of different shows and concerts.

 We’ve even been on official behind the Wicked  scenes tour in Broadway, and had a private backstage tour just before the Saturday matinee –  shared with Hope, daughter of American friends – Joy got to try on one of the cast’s coats, and we had the lights on Glinda’s bubble switched on for us as we stood on stage beside it.

Perhaps the fitting finale to this meander through some of our memorabilia is this little poster from The Green Elixir Mixer – a New York supper club concert with a number of performers from Wicked who had played Elphaba or Glinda – Joy didn’t see it – she was back in the UK – we went with American friends – and at the end I got the cast to give a video shout-out to Joy.

OK – hopefully you’ve got a bit of an insight into our passion for theatre – tbh, I have no idea how many shows we have seen – many London trips of course, many Broadway evenings – even seeing seven shows one week as well as being in the crowd on tele at Good Morning America. Many shared with North American or Irish friends.  And it kept coming back to Wicked – we’ve seen it in a number of different cities (sometimes giving us an excuse to spend time in that city).

Till the next time.

Allan