The Ensemblist

“Previews,” the penultimate episode of the season, premiered on May 7th, 2012. It was written by David Marshall Grant, and directed by Robert Duncan McNeill (another weird Star Trek connection: Robert McNeill played Lieutenant Tom Paris, also on Star Trek Voyager! So weird….I wonder what the connection is….). The viewership was up from the previous week, being seen by 5.72 million viewers. Thank goodness.

Since this episode included Bombshell’s first preview, we heard snippets of all our favorites by Shaiman and Whitman: Let Me Be Your Star, The 20th Century Fox Mambo, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking, and a reprise (finale?) of Secondhand White Baby Grand. One newcomer to the original Smash catalog was (get ready for it) the titular song of Smash! sung in its entirety by Megan Hilty and Katherine McPhee. Two covers in this episode were Kurt Weill’s September Song, sung by Anjelica Huston, and Donnie McClurkin’s Stand, sung by Leslie Odom Jr. and Katherine McPhee.

The first preview of Bombshell and while Derek doesn’t want to jinx it he thinks the show is in pretty good shape! But Bobby the Soothsayer tells us: ““You go out of town and all hell breaks loose.”

He’s right, as Derek and Rebecca continue to canoodle, even after Karen tells her that Derek is seeing Ivy. Michael Swift is back in the show, arriving at the theatre only to be greeted by Julia’s entire family. But despite the backstage drama, the show goes on.

In a never-before-seen number, Ivy and Karen lead the female ensemblists in a number that feels wildly reminiscent of 9 to 5 (down to use of a mustachioed Marc Kurdish.) All in all, the show goes well but ends to crickets instead of wild applause. 

What’s the problem? Ellis hits the nail of the wig-prepped head, saying “It’s Rebecca. She’s good and all but she’s not landing any of the numbers.”

When Ivy finally confronts Derek about his dressing room antics, he tells her “Rebecca needs my attention, and I’m giving it to her. Is there any other approach?” (Spoiler alert: there is.)

After accepting Dev’s second take at a marriage proposal, Karen comforts Rebecca about the first preview audience’s poor response to the show. But as she is confiding in Karen, Rebecca has an allergic reaction to her smoothie and gets sent to the hospital. 

With previews for the weekend cancelled, but the creative team is plotting about their game plan if Rebecca doesn’t recover in time. The understudy, Karen, hasn’t had any time on stage, but Ivy knows the whole show. Yet, neither gets the chance when it is announced that Rebecca recovered. 

And yet while the drama seems high, it all seems to absolve by Sunday morning when Sam gets the entire Smash family goes to church! Wrongs are absolved, sins are forgiven and Karen unexpectedly leads a gospel number. But after the service, Rebecca calls Karen to say that even though she’s not going back into the show and that the production will have to crown a new Marilyn after all! 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just yesterday, the Broadway League announced an extension of its shutdown through June 7. One of the causalities of this is Beetlejuice, which was scheduled to close June 6. That disappointing news means that the production has already played its last performance on Tuesday, March 11.

Cast member Elliott Mattox was gracious enough to join me on the phone to talk about how he heard the news and how he is grieving a show he didn't realize has already ended. Here's our conversation...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A decade after Sunday in the Park with George won the Pulitzer Prize, a new musical exploded on the scene in a way the theatre community hadn’t seen since A Chorus Line. RENT, with music, lyrics & book by Jonathan Larson, was presented at New York Theatre Workshop in January of 1996 before quickly making the jump to Broadway that April, where it won four Tony Awards and the 1996 Pulitzer Prize.

For many theatre artists, including ourselves, RENT was a formative part of their creative identity. Like South Pacific, How to Succeed and A Chorus Line, RENT spoke to a specific part of life in America at the time it was written - ticking every box in the Pulitzer committee’s requirements. RENT’s impact lasted far beyond the show’s 5,123 Broadway performances- this little show about a slice of life in Manhattan’s East Village has been presented all around the world, and twice on film. 

At its debut, RENT felt like a completely new kind of storytelling, something that hadn’t been seen on Broadway in at least decades, but perhaps ever. But RENT’s connection in its spirit and staging to the Broadway musicals that paved the way for it may surprise you.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That’s right - host Jackson Cline heads Off-Broadway for today’s episode! When he was doing my initial research for this series, many of the examples of queer representation that I found interesting happened to be produced off-Broadway. However, due to timing, he sadly made the choice to cut all of that from our history episode. He thought it’d be fun to dig deeper into those shows while in quarantine. Here’s the result!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Tech” premiered on April 30th, 2012. It was written by Jason Grote & Lakshmi Sundaram, and directed by Roxann Dawson. Sadly, viewership dipped back down even despite the surge from the previous week, amounting to a mere 5.34 million.

Songs this week mainly featured non-Smash properties: we got an opening montage set to Cole Porter’s “Another Op’nin’, Another Show” sung by Christian Borle, and a cover of Rose Royce’s/Mary J. Blige’s song, “I’m Goin’ Down,” sung this time by Megan Hilty. The other two songs we heard were snippets from tech that we heard in previous episodes: “History is Made at Night” and “The 20th Century Fox Mambo.”

It’s “another openin’ of another show” for the company of Bombshell. The company makes the journey from New York to Boston for the show’s pre-Broadway tryout. The Ensemblists are joyously rolling their roller bags through Grand Central Station, Linda the stage manager is ushering costume racks into the dressing rooms. 

With the first preview two days away, the show is… not ready for an audience. Derek is on the verge of having a stroke, with the show’s technical elements barely coming together. 

The number one rule of tech is: nobody has any time! Derek doesn’t have time to tell Rebecca that her leading man has quit the show for a TV pilot. But when she hears that Eileen is thinking of bringing Michael Swift back, Julia gives an ultimatum: she can have Michael or her on the production but not both. 

Rebecca admits to Karen that she’s nervous about performing Marilyn for an audience. For the first time Derek seems to direct, telling Rebecca to “use her star power” in her performance. But he uses and abuses his own star power, giving her shoulder massages that lead to a dressing room make out session. 

Ivy goes through her own emotional rollercoaster, starting with Derek saying he loves her before standing in for Marilyn, to being relegated to changing Rebecca’s gloves and listening to her and Derek make out from outside her dressing room.

Jessica says “No civilians during tech. We’re in the middle of a war. They don’t get it.” Dev comes up anyway, and while out at a romantic dinner admits proposes to Karen. The following is the verbatim conversation between Dev and Karen after he pulls out the ring:

DEV: “Will you marry me?”

KAREN: “Marry you?”

DEV: “Yeah, it’s not all that crazy, is it?”

KAREN: “Of course not, I just don’t know what to say.”

DEV: “Say yes.”

KAREN: “I’m in tech.”

DEV: “...is that the same thing as a yes?”

KAREN: “I’m sorry, Dev. I’m just under so much pressure now. Tech is so crazy.”

DEV: “It’s sounding more and more like a no.”

KAREN: “It’s not a yes or a no. It’s I’m in tech.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the Coronavirus pandemic has raged across the country, national tours have been some of the first productions to fall victim. One of those is the national tour of Miss Saigon which unexpectedly closed, cancelling almost four months of upcoming performances. Company member Adam Roberts spoke to us about how he heard the news and what he's doing since he found himself unexpectedly unemployed. Here's our conversation...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to bring together five of the most experienced and storied ensemble actors working on Broadway today before a live audience at BroadwayCon. We talked about the shows they originated and the characters they’ve created, but also the disappointments they’ve felt when a show closed. While actors Tracee Beazer, Afra Hines, Kelvin Moon Loh, Barrett Martin and Bret Shuford have each influenced the legacy of musical theatre, they’ve also been a part of shows that just didn’t gain traction with Broadway audiences. I figured with their experience, they must have some perspective about how to handle the disappointment of being in a Broadway flop. Here’s our conversation…

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since South Pacific, we’ve had two more musicals win the Pulitzer Prize: How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Fiorello!. But in 1975, a new musical came on the scene that would truly change musicals for the next fifty years.

A Chorus Line. Without question, this show changed how ensembles were written, cast and perceived by audiences. Opening on Broadway in 1975 after a sold-out run downtown at the Public Theatre, it ran an unprecedented 16 years at the Shubert Theatre, as well as tours and companies around the world before coming back to Broadway in 2006.

On this episode, we dive into the legacy of A Chorus Line - how exactly it took the ensemblist experience and made it so universal, and how it became one of the most popular and best loved musicals in history.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

South Pacific changed how ensembles were used even further, by individualizing each character, even those in the ensemble.

There were certainly been musicals in those 18 years with ensemble step out features, as anyone who has played Gertie Cummings in Oklahoma! or Mrs. Schuyler Adams in Annie Get Your Gun could tell you. However, most of the chorus tracks were still relegated to the titles of “Ensemble Singer” or “Ensemble Dancer” (and rarely ever both).

That’s just one of the reasons why South Pacific was so revolutionary. Based on James A. Michener’s book Tales of the South Pacific (which, coincidentally, won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) the New York Daily Mirror wrote “It boasts no ballets and no hot hoofing. It has no chorus in the conventional sense. Everyone in it plays a part. It is likely to establish a new trend in musicals."

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices