On Monday June 26th it was time to turn our
attention to Act Two. The second act of a Broadway musical is usually shorter
than the first, so we were hoping that we might be able to finish staging the
act by Wednesday afternoon and do a rough run at 4pm. Then on Thursday morning
we could do fixes, run Act One again, do fixes on Friday morning and then run
the entire show at 3pm. Linda Kline would be an invited guest to critique and
give us some suggestions. Following the run, Bob, Michael, Linda and myself
would be going out to dinner.
Today would be a long day of work for me… 10am to 9pm. So I began going over Act Two music from 10am through
12:30pm. At that time, much of the cast was released for a three hour break
while two interns from the Marketing Department picked up Robbie (“Lehman”),
Rachael (“Lucy”) and myself to whisk us off to Albany to do a publicity interview on WAMC which will eventually be broadcast on “The Roundtable”. On the way into NY State, we passed through a large and dangerous thunderstorm with wind and
pouring rain, but we made it. (It happened in the area between Austerlitz and
B3, that magical stretch of road which I used to refer to as the Bermuda
Triangle of the Northeast, as it seemed many times when I traveled it to and
from Skidmore during my college years, I would hit bad weather.) The recording
session went very well and we recorded Rachael’s
song “Broadway Boogie Woogie” and Robbie's "Charm Song"- except the announcer kept erroneously referring
to it as “Charm School” which secretly amused us all. After a brief
stop at Subway to get lunch, we got back to the Levan Campus for 3:30pm.
Upon our return, we staged “Scintillating Sophie” and “The
Next Best Thing To Love” with Anya and Ross. (The former was originally called
“Scintillating Susie”, and Linda Kline revealed to us that Ed wrote it for his
friend Susan Stamberg, a well-known correspondent/anchorwoman for National Public Radio!) After an hour dinner break, we staged the opening of Act Two from
6-9pm. This includes the song “Better” which starts in a tap studio and ends up
in Ed’s apartment when his friends throw him a surprise party.
Bob mentioned to me that he sought more info from Linda
Kline regarding the reference to a character in one of his songs named Harold
with which Ed says he has an affinity. Linda replied that Ed actually wrote a
song called “Harold” that was in GALLERY and is supposed to be sung by a woman.
Bob asked Linda if we could include the song in our production, and Linda said
sure. She added that the best place for it would be in the Hillside Hospital
scene in Act One when Sophie goes to visit Ed. This visit is their first date!
(Ed ended up in a mental hospital when he was in high school due to anxiety and
other issues.) Linda sent Bob an mp3 of Ed performing the song and he loved it.
She is going to send me the sheet music soon. So our version of A CLASS ACT is
truly turning into a special production!
On Tuesday the 26th, we began with staging
“Broadway Boogie Woogie”, a song which takes place in Michael Bennett’s dance
studio when Ed auditions for Michael’s new ‘dancer project’ (i.e. A CHORUS
LINE). This song is so special to me as it invokes thoughts of Tin Pan Alley-
in fact, in sounds an awful lot like Gershwin. So to make it even better, I
arranged the song for two piano accompaniment. We are very fortunate that Ross,
the actor playing “Ed”, can also play piano. So I wrote the first piano part as
easy as possible, and I would play the second piano part which has the bulk of
the special effects of the song, like barrelhouse tremelo and glissandi up the
keysboard. When we practiced it with Rachael (her character “Lucy” sings it in
demo style for Michael Bennett), the results were pretty stunning. Bob
continued staging the act through the scenes with Marvin Hamlisch and Ed
writing music for A CHORUS LINE. We got up to the last song, “Self Portrait”, and
then it was time to quit for the day.
We picked up where we left off on Wednesday the 27th
and finished staging the act. At 11am, we began fixing Act Two from the top of the act.
After a ‘working lunch’ at Collins House (a production meeting) we continued
fixes through 5pm and then ran Act Two. It looks like Thursday will be another
early start for me. We must do some sound recording at 9am in advance of the
day’s rehearsal schedule.
On Thursday the 27th, I arrived at 8:40am in
order to be ready to record a sound file for the production to use in
rehearsal. In Act Two when Ed and Lucy arrive at Michael Bennett’s dance
studio, he is playing a cassette recording of Ed singing his composition “Paris
Through The Window” (a song we are introduced to in the BMI Workshop scene of
Act One). Such recordings were prevalent in the seventies when the cassette recorder
was invented. It brought me back to when I bought my own portable Panasonic
Tape Recorder (it was black and silver and cost $30) and cheap Certron tapes
(later, TDK and Maxell) and recorded myself at the piano! Of course, our sound
designer used a portable digital recorder. He also recorded some spoken cues we
needed.
At 10am we did another round of fixes to Act Two. After
lunch we ran Act One, stopping to do some fixes as needed. This was all in preparation
for our special guest, Linda Kline, whom we expected would attend our Friday
rough run of both acts.
