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ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: House and Garden — and the Broadway Flea Market
By Seth Rudetsky
28 Sep 2009
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Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson
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| photo by Matthew Blank | A week in the life of actor, musician and Chatterbox host Seth Rudetsky.
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As some of you may remember, last January, after looking for more than a year, I finally moved to a new apartment near Riverside Park. Yes, we had to lay out a ton of money for the security deposit/first two months rent, brokers fees (there were two brokers to pay) and the movers, etc., but since I stayed in my last apartment for ten years, I didn't mind dealing with the expense/headache because I knew I wouldn't be doing it again for many years. The "good" news is, we've just discovered that we have to find a new apartment. That's right, less than a year later, I'm back on Craigslist. I'll save the reason why as per my lawyer's advice, but suffice it to say, a bedroom has to have a window to be legal and you can't live somewhere that literally has no certificate of occupancy. So, we have to move. And by we have to move, I mean me, our dogs, Juli and James' mother who just sold her house in Texas and moved in with us. Perfect timing. So, I've spent the last week looking at apartment after apartment.
[AUDIO-LEFT]
First I saw the three-bedroom duplex whose living room had a five foot grate on the floor through which you could have a clear view of the bedroom downstairs. It's exactly what I need for when I want to pull a Norman Bates… AKA dress up as my mother and spy on someone sleeping.
Then I saw a three-bedroom with a back "garden" that had plenty of dirt to plant in…completely covered in concrete. Then I went to the same block again with another broker to see an apartment with a garden that I was assured was not paved over...and he showed me the same apartment! "Sorry...I never actually looked at the garden." Then I waited on 76th Street for a broker who never showed up and didn't get my messages because she wasn't carrying her cell phone. Who walks around without a cell phone? Is it the early '90s again? Today, I saw a garden apartment that was actually a four-flight walk-up. I guess overlooking a garden is the same thing as having one. The only good part was, James and I strolled around midtown right afterwards and found ourselves on Equity Lane (9th Avenue). You can't walk two feet down 9th without running into a Tony nominee. James and I had a lovely chat with Stephanie J. Block and Michael James Scott and then met up with Gavin Creel and Andrew Kober from Hair. Andrew told us that during the matinee, right after his song ("My Conviction") when he's dressed up as Margaret Meade, the big flip in the front of his wig collapsed and all that hair covered his face. I nodded sympathetically, but inwardly thought, "That's nothing compared to the Chitty Chitty wig debacle." I was chatting with Julie Barnes (who understudied Truly Scrumptious) and she told me that one day she was on for Truly and while she was in the car with the children, her wig fell completely off. That wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that she couldn't get it on again unless she left the stage and had someone pin it all back and she couldn't do that til the end of the scene. So, she was forced to sit there and play out the scene wearing just a crazy wig cap, (which made her look like she was bald with black netting covering her head) while the children implored their father to marry her because she's so "beautiful." Torturous.
Over at Sirius/XM, I interviewed Benny and Bjorn from ABBA who were in town for a concert version of their show, Kristina. They told me it was based on a Swedish book. As a matter of fact, they told me it was based on "Sweden's most famous book." Unfortunately, that's like saying it's based on "the best-known song from Metro." I asked them about the phrase from "Gimme Gimme (A Man after Midnight)" that's used in Madonna's "Hung Up" and they said she called them and asked if she could use it. I couldn't get from them whether Madonna made the call herself ("Hey, it's Madonna) or if she had someone like Lourdes placed the call first ("Hi. My Mommy wants to speak to you."). Regardless, they didn't say yes right away. Bjorn said they wanted to hear the song first before they agreed to let her have the phrase so she flew to Sweden (!) and presented it to them. Of course, that's the amazing thing about living in Europe. You can hop on a plane and two hours later be in the Swiss Alps. Whereas, if I hop on a plane, two hours later I'm in the heart of Cleveland. And, PS, I'm not joking. This weekend I'm actually flying into Cleveland because I'm going to do an auditioning master class along with my Deconstructing Broadway show at my alma mater, Oberlin College. Go to sethrudetsky.com if you wanna come see it! Continued...
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