Well, dear readers, Kritzerland at Sterling’s 64 was a wonderful evening, and certainly the best of our young performer shows. The kids all stepped up to the plate and were wonderful, and the audience ate them up. As I said in my opening patter: I love working with kids – they’re fun and smart and they never say, “Why do I cross over there” and “Sorry, I don’t play results.” They listen, they take direction, but I always insist that they make the direction work for them, not to copy. Anyway, since it’s one of the few Kritzerland shows at which there was not one critic, I hereby offer my completely unbiased biased review.
The show began with You Gotta Get a Gimmick from Gypsy. We had two eleven-year-olds and a ten-year-old, and it was hilarious and brought the house down. Hayley Shukiar did Mazeppa – she played the trumpet and everything and what a little bundle of dynamite she is, and cute as a button. Hadley Belle Miller was Electra and yes, she lit up like a Christmas tree. Adorable. And little Emilie Lafontaine was Tessie Tura who does it with finesse – she was just grand doing her little ballet stuff. What a great way to start the evening.
Hayley and Emilie came back later to duet on the great Gypsy cut song, Mama’s Talkin’ Soft, which they did a great job on.
Landen Starkman did a terrific job with his two songs, both by Stephen Schwartz – the first, New Kid in the Neighborhood was from Captain Louie, the second was his soaring version of Out There, which Schwartz wrote with Alan Menken.
Jaidyn Young was great – first on a put-together of In My Own Little Corner and Impossible from Cinderella and then in a duet with Brooke Besikof, Unsuspecting Hearts from Carrie.
Brennley Brown did beautiful work, first with her sensitive rendition of Stop and See Me from Weird Romance, and then closing the show brilliantly with The Life I Never Led from Sister Act.
Sami Staitman scared the pants off everyone with Another Hundred People – they all thought she was really going up on the lyrics and it was really uncomfortable and funny, which is what we wanted because in reality she wasn’t going up at all – it was the lead in to the Sondheim parody song Another Hundred Lyrics by Lauren Mayer. It went over like gangbusters and stopped the show cold. Then she did a song from the show we did together, Welcome to My World, for which she’s nominated for a Robby Award for Best Actress in a Musical. She did my song Let Me Sing and it, as always, was very touching.
Brooke Besikof – aside from the duet with Jaidyn on Unsuspecting Hearts, which they both shone on, I gave Brooke one of my all-time favorite cut songs from a show – the beautiful Pink Taffeta Sample Size 10 and she just did a wonderful rendition that was very affecting
Jenna Lea Rosen came on and tore the house up with her first song, a cut song from Side Show called She’s Gone, and then she once again stopped the show with the title song from Rags.
Oliviana Marie (the daughter of musical director Tom Griep) did great with her two songs – the first from Daddy Long Legs called The Secret of Happiness, and then with the very fun song My Mama Says No, No.
Hadley Belle Miller also stopped the show with her solo – the first and maybe the last time an eleven-year-old will ever sing When You’re Good to Momma from Chicago. At the stumble-through it was the one song that wasn’t working at all for me. It wasn’t her fault, but seeing her do it I realized we hadn’t let the audience in on the fun and the point of why we were doing it. So, right after that run-through I wrote some one-liners and adjusted one lyric and poor Hadley had to learn that in an instant, which she did. And it did the trick and transformed it into something really sly and funny, and she did a great job with it.
Tom Griep accompanied them all beautifully. We had a filled to the rafters house (sold out and then some), and I was just so proud of everyone. Lots of wonderful comments after. In attendance were neighbors Tony Slide and Bob Gitt, Kay Cole and her ever-lovin’ Michael Lamont, Adryan Russ (her first time at a Kritzerland show not being a co-producer), Doug Haverty (his first show as co-producer), Grant Geissman and his ever-lovin’ Lydia, along with his mom – they’ve become regulars recently, and my new friends from Jerry’s Deli, also their first time at the show – D.C. Fontana, one of the writers on Star Trek the original series, and on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and her ever-lovin’ Dennis Skotak, who’s does special effects and I mean for very big films including Avatar, Titanic, The Abyss, The Terminator and many others. Shelly Markham was with us, and my old pal Dorothy Collier was there – I haven’t seen her in close to forty years – she looks great. Her husband, the wonderful actor James Best, passed away recently. We will have some videos this week, and folks will be sending me some photos. I’ve only got one so far but it’s really cute – here I am with adorable Emilie Lafontaine.
Afterward, we tried to go to Little Toni’s but since our show was early it was six when we tried to go and it was jammed there with the dinner crowd. So we all headed over to Jerry’s Deli, somewhere I really did not want to go. I think we had close to thirty people there, maybe more. But it was fun. I’d only had an artichoke, so I was hungry – I had a cup of chili and a turkey sandwich with no fries or onion rings.
Prior to that, I’d only gotten six hours of sleep, waking up at eight and getting out of bed forty-five minutes later. I futzed and finessed the fourteen pages from the previous day’s writing – quite a bit of that to smooth out, with the usual cuts and additions. Overall, though, I was pretty pleased with it. I didn’t really have time to do much new writing, maybe a page. Then I got ready and moseyed on over to The Federal for sound check. They’d had a morning event in there and it had just wrapped and it took forever to get those creeps out of the room – at least three announcements were made that they had to clear for the next show and literally no one would leave – we finally had to get security involved and they were out just ten minutes before we had to begin our sound check. And then we had our show, which you know about.
After I got home from the meal, I wrote about seven or eight new pages, and will try to do at least two more before I go to bed later.
Today, I’ll be up by ten and since it’s a holiday I have nothing to do but write. I’ll definitely finish the final chapter at some point today. I think I have at most about ten more pages to do, and maybe not that many. That was to be the end of the book, but the other night one of those wonderful out of nowhere gifts came to me about an addendum for the end and it’s just what I felt the book was lacking and it’s kind of a perfect way to end it and hopefully I’ll write it well. That will probably be about four to six pages long. I’m also thinking about a couple of supplementary things that would be fun, if it’s not too much work. I’ll eat at some point, and I’ll go to the mail place as I haven’t been there since last Tuesday.
Tomorrow, I have some business to take care of in the morning. If I haven’t finished the book, I will, and then I’ll print out the pages and get them to Muse Margaret – it will be over 100 new pages for her. I am, of course, praying she’ll like it, and of course if she has things that don’t work for her, I’ll fix and adjust those things. The rest of the week is meetings and meals and getting the book ready for Grant Geissman’s loving touch. He has a really good and fun idea for the cover, too.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, futz and finesse, write, eat, hopefully pick up packages, write, write, and write. Today’s topic of discussion: What five things from your childhood that are MIA would you like to see come back? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy and proud of our young performers for making Kritzerland at Sterling’s 64 such a memorable evening.