track 54: light my candle

I’m pretty sure that the first time I heard about Jonathan Larson’s musical, Rent, was while sitting in a waiting room while my mom had a doctor’s appointment somewhere in South Miami. That week Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega were on the cover of Newsweek. I read the entire article and the story was so compelling. I continued to hear & read more and more about the show. I pre-ordered the cast album. When I got it and heard it I was so deeply moved. It was love at first listen. I shared my enthusiasm with Lisa, who became equally obsessed. In fact, she scored some awesome posters. Mine is still on the door of my room back in Miami.


So excited were we that we actually made plans to travel to New York to see the show on March 13, 1997. My mom & Dave joined us and it would be our first trip to New York City. Of course this meant flying. I hate flying. Even though at that point, I’d only flown one time (well twice) from Miami to L.A. and back, but that had been enough. I don’t think I felt any better when they showed a trailer for our in-flight movie, Michael, featuring the song “Goin’ on up to the spirit in the sky…”
It was quite a shock stepping out into the March weather. It was in the 30s and in Miami, it had been 80-something. I got used to it eventually, and even liked the cold. The hotel we stayed in was the Ameritania on 54th & Broadway, right next to the Ed Sullivan Theater, where they tape the Late Show with David Letterman.



We were a bit freaked out because as we walked into the hotel, we saw a bare lobby that was stripped of anything except for an abandoned counter. The reason we got such a cheap deal is because they were renovating the hotel. We couldn’t check in till 3 (my mom thought it was because they were still renovating our room) so we left our luggage and walked to the Hard Rock Café on 57th street. I was disappointed that among the memorabilia they didn’t have any of Courtney Love’s ripped stockings or an empty bottle of Tori Amos Red Hair Dye.



When we went back to the hotel we were led through the bar that adjoined the empty lobby where a temporary check-in counter had been set up. Our room was on the second floor and, as mom suggested, they were still renovating that floor. In fact, the bellhop had trouble finding our room because there was no number on the door yet. A few minutes later Lisa called to let us know that she’d been there for a few hours. We met up with her and headed across the street for dinner, probably to a TGI Fridays. Then we walked 13 blocks down to the Nederlander Theatre for the show. We were in the fourth row. It was… well…

An e-mail I sent out at the time:
“The performance was incredible! I don’t know if it was a particularly exceptional night for them (Timothy Britten Parker – Steve – mentioned something to that effect) or if it was just the excitement of my first Rent experience, but the energy was amazing. I really cried so much, mostly tears of joy, I think, just from being there… Anthony Rapp… is like a bundle of energy or something, I swear! We saw Darius De Haas as Collins (he was so great) and Mark Setlock as Angel. As we left the theatre, I was debating with Lisa about how to pronounce Gilles Chiasson (Squeegee Man)’s name and I noticed that she had the oddest look on her face, so I turned around to see him looking over at us with a smile. He corrected us. Then I went to drop some money in Daphne Rubin-Vega’s bucket (they were out collecting money for Broadway Cares after the show) and told her that I came all the way up from Miami to see the show. She was incredibly sweet and I shook her hand and can honestly say that she made this gay man turn into a pool of mushy goo. Outside, I spoke with Timothy for a bit and he was super nice – the only person I remembered to ask to sign my Playbill, actually.” D’oh!!! “When Adam Pascal came out everyone went crazy… I took a photo of him and Lisa (I actually said Say cheese!)” double D’oh!! “Fredi Walker was chatting with some women when finally Anthony came out and was pretty much bombarded. He noticed a button that I was wearing… I kinda fled, but Lisa kept telling me that he noticed me as soon as he walked out, that he kept looking at me and that he seemed like he wanted to talk a little more. My head hurts from hitting myself over and over again for my stupidity!!! Could have flirted with cutest boy from Rent… aaargh!!!”




We spent Friday sightseeing and hunting for that infamous Deborah Gibson CD But before that hunt began, Lisa & I decided that we had to see the show again before the weekend was over. Lisa tracked down tickets, but only individual ones, for Saturday. I had to see the matinee because my flight was leaving at 6:30. Lisa got herself a ticket for the 8:00 show. My mom & Dave did their own thing that night as I had plans to meet up with some friends: Shawn, who had come down from Massachusetts to meet me and Miki, who came in from Jersey with Andrew, another Ani DiFranco listee. They met us at our hotel and we first headed back to the Nederlander to pick up our tickets. Unfortunately, when we got there it was 8:30 and the box office was closed. We went outside and found that Andrew had disappeared. He had snuck into the theatre. A few minutes he came out with a shit-eating grin. He had seen a bit of “Light my candle.” We headed 10 blocks back up to Ellen’s Stardust Diner. The wait staff sang. Someone did “You light up my life.” The fries sucked. It was my newest definition of hell. We decided to try to crash an after-party for a screening of Drunks, being held rather ironically at Bar 6. An excellent place to celebrate a movie about a group of alcoholics. The point was to catch a sighting of Parker Posey, who was my favorite person in the world that year. No dice. We ended up meeting up with Miki’s friend Adam and going to this Friends-like coffee shop, The Big Cup, on 8th & 22nd in Chelsea, until Lisa & I were so dead tired that we headed back to the hotel.



On Saturday morning, we went to Rockefeller Center and watched people skating as we had breakfast. Lisa & I bought Yankees baseball caps(?!?) and then we went to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the one sight my mom really wanted to see. We checked out of our hotel at noon and moved our stuff to Lisa’s room at The Crowne Plaza on 49th & Broadway, where she was staying the rest of the week for a convention she was working. While Dave and mom went to do their own thing, Lisa and I wandered around the Theatre District before my matinee started. It was just as amazing. For the matinee, Darius played Benny and Mark Leroy Jackson played Collins, making Jesse L. Martin the only original cast member that I didn’t get to see. (At least not until a decade later, when I was living in New York and waited behind him at New Andy’s Deli on 18th street, buying a soda during my lunch break.) I didn’t have time to stick around after the show, but I did say hello to Timothy again, who was collecting money for Broadway Cares. No Anthony Rapp sightings, much to my heart’s dismay.



I would never in a million years have thought that I’d eventually be living in the city that seemed like such a gigantic adventure back then. Since then, I’ve seen two different touring productions of the show and you know that when I watch it, I’m probably lip-syncing every single line. And, yes, I have the movie on DVD. Even though it is definitely flawed. What saddens me is that as much as I still love Rent, I find that it’s harder for me to really believe in what it has to say. When the show debuted it was inspirational, almost a religion. Now I find myself as a cynical thirtysomething, rolling my eyes at some moments, thinking it’s a bit of a rose-colored fantasy. This thought makes me sad and I have to say that listening to the cast recording this morning makes me think that maybe I can feel that optimism once again. That period of my life, the initial experience of Rent and especially that weekend was one of the most incredible experiences in my life & I'm so glad I got to share it with the people I love the most.

next time: where do i put this fire? this bright red feeling?

track 33: music of the night / track 34: all i ask of you

In the summer of 1993, something very strange happened. How? I don't remember. How did I get turned on to Barbra Streisand? I know that my mom had the Guilty LP and I remember liking it, but that was almost a decade earlier. I also know that this was around the time that Mike Meyers was doing his "like buttah" sketch on SNL. Perhaps I just read a good review of her new album, Back to Broadway and decided I needed to introduce myself to showtunes and be one with the music of my people. Regardless of why, I picked up the CD and was enchanted.



Her voice was gorgeous and the music drew me in completely. I didn't know a lot of the songs she sang, but was intrigued by the stories that they told. As a kid I really loved movie musicals, I remember listening to the soundtracks to Grease and Annie more than I remember seeing the actual movies. But Broadway was a complete unknown to me.

My favorite song from Back to Broadway was a duet with Michael Crawford, "The music of the night." I'm sure that I had heard of Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Phantom of the Opera, but this was the first song I had heard from it and I was quite mesmerized.

[Okay, so in writing this blog I'm adapting something I had written almost a decade ago. I tend to use the stuff I had originally written as a springboard and rewrite. So if something I wrote made me cringe, it usually stays in the past. But it must be noted that at the end of my bit about Back to Broadway and before the bit about Phantom I quoted the following lyrics:
close your eyes
start a journey through a strange new world
leave all thoughts of the world you knew before
close your eyes
let the music set you free...

Right. Cheesy. Let's never speak of it again.]



I soon bought a compilation of Andrew Lloyd Webber music called The Premiere Collection, which opened the floodgates to collecting all the Andrew Lloyd Webber stuff that I could. My very favorite was, of course, The Phantom of the Opera. It was just dark and spooky and wildly romantic enough to be perfect for me. I remember listening to the Sarah Brightman and Cliff Richard version of "All I ask of you" on repeat play. The fact that all of this started to happen during the summer of 1993 was perfect timing, because Phantom was on tour and coming to Miami. I got tickets for my mom and I to see it on November 11, 1993. I found out later that she was really worried that she'd hate it. She loved it. I loved it. It was the beginning of our fandom of musical theatre and over the next few years we would see any Lloyd Webber show that came to South Florida: Cats, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and even got Dave to go with us to see Sunset Boulevard. I don't care what anyone says, I love Sunset Boulevard. We also saw Miss Saigon and of course, eventually, Rent, both on Broadway and on tour. There's something so tremendously exciting about being in the audience for a musical, for any sort of live theatre, actually. It's one of those things that I wish I could have done, being a stage actor. There is an energy, a chemistry between audience and performers, that is unlike anything else I've ever experienced. Raúl Esparza, my future husband, says something that I thought was really profound in the documentary film ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway. He talks about this small chunk of Manhattan, the Theatre District, and about the fact that every night at 8:00 all of these amazing artists are taking the stage, putting on a show and how it's sort of magical.

When I moved to New York in 2005, I never thought I'd be able to afford to see a Broadway show. Luckily, I've gotten to see a few. Most of them were musicals. Some were just spectacles (Wicked). Some of them had bona-fide Broadway Legends (Patti LuPone in Sweeney Todd) or legends-in-the-making (Kristin Chenoweth in The Apple Tree and Audra McDonald in 110 in the Shade). I loved two so much that I saw them twice. (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Sunday in the Park with George) One became my favorite new musical and then disappeared (Grey Gardens). Then there were the plays, which I generally chose for the actor starring in them: Julianne Moore & Bill Nighy in The Vertical Hour, Jane Fonda in 33 Variations, Laura Linney in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Ralph Fiennes & Cherry Jones in Faith Healer, Bradley Whitford in Boeing Boeing, Lee Pace in Guardians and Raúl in Speed-The-Plow.

Regardless of what I'm seeing or the reason why, every time I get to be in the audience for a show, I feel incredibly lucky and completely happy. And all just because I picked up a random Streisand album. When my mom visited around Mother's Day one year, I surprised her with tickets to see Phantom on Broadway. It was such a different experience for me, having gone to these other shows in the city to suddenly be in the Majestic Theatre, which seemed so huge compared to the other theatres I'd been to. The audience was full of tourists wearing t-shirts and shorts and I was astounded to hear people talking through the performance. But even though I'm not the huge Lloyd Webber fan I used to be (I blame discovering Sondheim), I was still hypnotized by the show, the grandeur of the sets - the spectacle. More importantly, my mom was thrilled. I think it's the best gift I've ever given her.



Along with discovering musicals, I was also inspired by Back to Broadway to listen to more Streisand. When I go for something, I tend to go completely, so the next thing I bought was the box set, Just For The Record.... It was a fantastic way to introduce myself to her older music and it guided me towards her early career, when she sang standards and still had a sense of fun to her music. Not to mention leading me to finding one of my all-time favorite films, What's Up, Doc?, a screwball comedy she starred in with Ryan O'Neal and my beloved Madeline Kahn. I even ended up converting my dad into a Streisand lover and whenever we take road trips, her CDs are a must-hear. The studio recordings she's made since Back to Broadway has felt a bit stuffy, too serious. It's only in the live ones that her sense of humor tends to peek out. But let's not even mention Meet the Fockers.