Snapshot is an irregularly-scheduled series featuring reminiscences of places and experiences in my life. To read all my Snapshot posts, please click here.
Click on the images in this post to see them larger on your screen!
All Playbill™ images are from my original copies.
I visited New York City almost every year for 50 years. In that time (from roughly 1971 through 2021), I saw 15 different plays on “The Great White Way” AKA Broadway. This is Part 2 of a look at those plays, utilizing my original Playbill magazines (and some actual ticket stubs) that I’ve kept all these years. To read Part 1, featuring the first five plays/performances I saw, please click here.
Arsenic and Old Lace
46th Street Theatre (Seen August 1986)
This was an amazing production of Arsenic and Old Lace, with an all-star cast (mainly from TV) which I feel lucky to have seen. Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker on All in the Family) and Polly Holliday (the sassy waitress Flo—”Kiss My Grits, Mel!”—from Alice) played the batty Brewster sisters (Abby and Martha) in this revival of the classic 1940s play that featured Boris Karloff as Jonathan Brewster, the maniacal serial killer who resembled … Boris Karloff. In this version Abe Vigoda (Barney Miller) played Jonathan, William Hickey (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) played his “assistant,” Dr. Einstein), Tony Roberts played the lead, the only “normal” Brewster family member, baby brother Mortimer. I’ve always loved the Frank Capra movie version of this play, which starred Cary Grant as Mortimer, and the original actresses from the Broadway production. There was, however, a heart-stopping moment in this play on the day I saw it: The set was the Brewster family home, showing the living room and a flight of steps that cast members ran up and down on a regular basis, especially crazy brother “Teddy” (who thought he was Teddy Roosevelt, and was always charging up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War). At one point Jean Stapleton ran up the steps and tripped at the top and basically did a face-plant. The entire cast and audience gasped as one until she got up and continued, shaken, but hey … even for Edith Bunker, the show must go on. This was a wonderful play and I loved seeing it.
The Nerd
The Helen Hayes Theatre (Seen April 1987)
I really remember next-to-nothing about this play, other than the fact that it starred Mark Hamill (that space movie thing), Peter Riegert (Boon in Animal House), Robert Joy (Ragtime, the movie, and—most recently—Julia on HBO, about TV chef Julia Child), and TV star Patricia Kalember (Sisters and Thirtysomething). Hamill was a visitor who wouldn’t leave and the other people tried to get rid of him. I remember one scene where they cut open an apple to watch it turn brown and he thought that was the most fascinating thing ever. Pretty sure I wanted to see it just because of Hamill and Riegert; Hamill also appeared in the Groucho role (Gordon Miller) in a revival of the play Room Service, a Marx Bros. movie a lot of people hate, but I love, even though it’s not really a Marx Bros. movie. Gary Burghoff (Radar on M*A*S*H*) replaced Hamill in the role. It ran for over 440 performances from 1987-1988. Plus … “Directed by Charles Nelson Reilly” (pictured above with Hamill)?! Where did he find the time to get away from The Match Game?
There’s quite a gap here, almost ten years. I don’t recall (I know … I say that a lot in these posts) whether I didn’t visit New York much in that time or if I just didn’t go to plays while I was there. Probably both.
Inherit the Wind
Royale Theatre (Seen March 8, 1996)
This one I do recall! I flew into New York City on a little book-shopping expedition and landed to a city encased in ice. It was a day or two after a big ice storm, and most of the sidewalks were caked with it, and it was at least an inch thick in most spots. I’ve always loved the movie production of Inherit the Wind, directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, and Gene Kelly. This revival was put on by the National Actors Theatre, a company created by Tony Randall, which produced plays from 1991 until Randall’s death in 2004. This version starred George C. Scott as Henry Drummond, Charles Durning as William Harrison Brady, Anthony Heald as E. F. Hornbeck, the muckraking reporter, and a very young Paul Dano as a school student. The story was based on the Scopes Trial in the 1920s, which came about when a teacher brought up evolution in a Tennessee school.
The interesting thing about this particular play was George C. Scott was involved in some kind of scandal with his personal assistant, and Tony Randall—the founder of this acting company and also in the original Broadway version of the play in 1955 (seen above, far right)—filled in for him! I remember Randall coming out before the play started and apologizing for Scott’s absence (he was “sick” … not sure if Tony meant a physical illness or something else), and he would be taking over the role of Henry Drummond (based on famed attorney Clarence Darrow). I seem to recall him reading from the script, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and the battle between him and Durning was great. This is another play I was very lucky to see under kind of historic circumstances. It only ran for 45 performances (with 42 previews) from February 1996 into April. I saw one of the early preview performances. I’m not sure if Scott’s troubles played a role in the brief run of this show, but I’d bet yes. Scott did appear—with Jack Lemmon—in a 1999 TV movie version, which is available on Blu-ray. There was also a 2007 revival of the play starring Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy.
The Cocoanuts
The American Place Theatre (Seen October 26, 1996)
Evidently I went to New York City twice in 1996, about six months apart. I was living in Pittsburgh then, so it was a relatively quick (one-hour) and cheap flight up and back. I remember this one because it was the sixth game of the 1996 World Series and the New York Yankees were playing the Atlanta Braves at home in Yankee Stadium. The Cocoanuts was, of course, a revival of the George S. Kaufman and Irving Berlin 1920s play which catapulted the Marx Brothers to fame. An actor by the name of Frank Ferrante had taken over the role of “Henry W. Schlemmer,” the Groucho role and I had never heard of him before. Every time he appeared on stage, he ad-libbed something new about the Yankees game—a score update, a comment, whatever—and I started to realize, this is what it must have been like to see the Marxes on Broadway 70 years earlier, ad-libbing their way through a show. Less than a year later, I would meet Ferrante in person at the home of the world’s biggest Marx Brothers collector in New Hope, PA, and now—30-some years later—Frank still remembers me when I show up at his Frank Ferrante’s Groucho shows every few years (I’ve seen him in San Francisco, Escondido, and Solana Beach within the last 15 years or so). The Cocoanuts played 165 performances and 22 previews. It was revived in 2018 as part of the Virginia Theatre Festival, once again starring Ferrante (the pic above, far right, is from the 2018 production).
Oh, and the Yankees won the World Series that night. I escaped back to my hotel before Times Square went bananas.
Miss Saigon
The Broadway Theatre (Seen October 11, 1997)
I was dating a young woman named Liz at the time and we were very on-again, off-again—never a good sign—so I decided to take her to New York City for a weekend just to prove to her what a bon vivant, jet-setter type of guy I was. (Editor’s note: HE WAS NEITHER) This was kind of the big Saturday night thing I promised her (I’m such a nice guy and I had A LOT of credit cards; both those things have changed, HA-HA) and I remember very little about the play itself, other than it was a love story/musical that took place in Viet Nam and was “inspired” by the opera Madame Butterfly, and—oh!— they “crashed” a helicopter on stage during it, which was kind of a big deal. This was the original Broadway production, which ran from 1991 into 2001; it’s about to have a revival in July and August at the Crucible Theatre.
Coming soon: The final chapter with Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, The Addams Family with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth, an Americanized version of The 39 Steps, a lackluster Chaplin, and an absolutely amazing cast in The Front Page, the last play I saw on Broadway.
innocent-bystander.com 
Leave a comment