Stephen, Shoshana, and Donna, OH MY!

Sydney is just under 16,000km from New York City, and if Luisa can’t be on Broadway, then you must bring Broadway to Luisa! And fortuitously for me, Broadway well and truly came to Australia this week. In the past 7 days, I have seen composer Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked, among many others), actresses Shoshana Bean (Hairspray, and Wicked), and Donna McKechnie (A Chorus Line, Follies, Company, among many, many other shows)!

Last Sunday found me at the City Recital Hall in Angel Place surrounded by a full-house of fellow musical theatre nerds for “An Evening with Stephen Schwartz: Festival of Broadway”. The evening was a showcase of Stephen Schwartz’s music, beginning with Godspell and ending with “the W show,” Wicked, along with a discussion between Stephen Schwartz and Michael A. Kerker, (Director of Musical Theatre for ASCAP - the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). Directed by questions from Kerker, Schwartz discussed the processes behind developing a musical, his journey to the Great White Way, what it was like to have three shows playing simultaneously on Broadway, working with Alan Menken on the Disney projects, traveling to Denmark with a commission to write a new musical celebrating the life of Hans Christian Anderson, working on a new opera, and the story behind the inspiration for Wicked. 

Hearing showtunes played by a full symphony orchestra is always a treat, and watching Liz Callaway, (another Broadway veteran, and also the singing voice of Princess Jasmine in Aladdin and the title role of Anastasia) was fabulous, but my highlight of the evening was definitely Stephen himself singing and playing his own compositions. He played early versions of “The Wizard and I”, and shared how the song, and subsequently the Wicked plot, progressed from early drafts to the version we know (and utterly love) today. The night finished with a beautiful rendition of “For Good,” with Schwartz playing solo on the piano. “For Good” is a moving ballad of friendship and reflection, and to be sitting three rows from the composer himself, was nothing short of glorious. His warm spirit and youthful sense of joy absolutely shone through, and I just melted. 

Three days later, I jetted up to Brisbane for the evening to see “Broadway to BrisVegas:  Shoshana Bean Live in Concert”. The venue was the Brisbane Powerhouse, a former power station, that has been converted into a cultural centre in the lovely suburb of New Farm. The show opened with a jazz version of “Wouldn’t It be Loverly” from My Fair Lady and not a schmaltzy Michael Buble kind of jazz, but a vocally gymnastic riffed tribute-to-Ella kind of jazz. Wow! I had chills up and down my spine all through the song - a reaction I had right throughout the concert. The following numbers, including “Down with Love,” and “My Funny Valentine”, showed off Shoshana’s vocal range and ability to seamlessly transition from swing to sultry to sumptuous. The pianist, James Sampliner, also the MD of the evening (and later I found out the MD of Legally Blonde The Musical... OHMYGOD!), was an amazingly gifted musician. The audience was as much in love with him as they were with Shoshana Bean, and throughout his dazzling and spirited solos I could not believe that the piano was able to stay in one piece or not fly off the stage from all the energy poured in through each number. 

After honouring the “classics,” Bean moved onto more contemporary Broadway composers, including Jeremy Schoenberg, Jason Robert Brown, and Georgia Stitt. Although she is well known for her Broadway showtune belting, the stand out numbers from the evening were from Bean’s own (debut) album, “Superhero”, written by Ms. Bean herself. It was amazing to see her singing her own material. It was almost as if she had stripped off a veneer (warm and beautiful as it is) to reveal her true self (equally as warm and beautiful), and it was breath-taking. Another highlight was Shoshana sharing her horrifying realisation, when she was about 13, that she wasn’t black. And so she sang a medley of all the parts she will never get to play as a white woman - ranging from AIDA, RENT, Porgy and Bess, Once on This Island, Ragtime, Children of Eden and Dream Girls. She jumped from pop to musical theatre to opera and back all within a breath. Hilariously brilliant. 

Her belting, her riffing, her legit voice, her comic timing, her melty jazz voice, her perfectly not annoying pingy musical theatre twang... oh my! I LOVED IT! Am I gushing? She was gorgeous. I floated back to my hotel room totally and utterly inspired. And what about the effort of flying up to Brisbane to be there for less than 12 hours, and enduring a 6 hour commute to work the next morning, all for one hour(ish) of musical theatre? So worth it - so worth it in fact, I’m seeing her again tonight in Sydney! WOOHOO!*

On Thursday night, I headed out to the Factory Theatre in Marrickville to see Broadway royalty Donna McKechnie perform her cabaret show “My Musical Comedy Life”. McKechnie swanned on stage, looking every bit the Broadway performer, with fake eyelashes, theatrical make up, and glitter everywhere. The script felt rehearsed and a little overstaged, and I worried that McKechnie wouldn’t be able to hit all the notes after her first number left her out of breath, but while she found it difficult to speak between numbers, her singing voice was still clear and strong. And despite arthritis and her age, she can still dance! 

A Chorus Line was the first musical I saw live, and I spent many inspired hours of my childhood listening, and dancing along, to the original Broadway cast recording. The ultimate moment of the evening for me therefore, was of course “Music and the Mirror”. The number was made all the more special by the back story of how the song came to be (it was the last number written for the show), and seeing McKechnie at sixty-nine years of age still belting it out just like that disembodied voice that has floated out of my grandma’s stereo so many countless times bought me to tears. 

*I’m home from Shoshana Bean at The Factory... what can I say?! AMAZING. I am completely and utterly inspired and excited. The past seven days have been thrilling. I want to sing. I want to dance. I want to write music. I want to listen to every musical ever written. I want to see a thousand Broadway shows. I want to live in NYC and be surrounded by all of this day and night. Thank you thank you thank you Stephen Schwartz, Liz Callaway, Donna McKechnie, Shoshana Bean and James Sampliner for traversing 16,000km of continents and ocean and bringing a touch of Broadway to the land of Oz. It has been nothing short of WONDERFUL!