Okay, here's a story I'm fairly sure I haven't told here. In late 1998, the hottest ticket on Broadway — the one scalpers were getting actual scalps for — was a revival of the musical Cabaret. It was directed by Sam Mendes, co-directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall and it starred Alan Cumming as the decadent and bizarre Master of Ceremonies. Getting seats to it at the time was nearly-impossible and the time in this case was when my dear friend Carolyn and I were going back to New York for a business/pleasure trip. It would be pleasure for her and a mix of business and pleasure for me.
Naturally, we wanted to see Cabaret on that trip. Here is a commercial that was made for it much later in the run when to get tickets, all you had to do was phone Telecharge and have your AmEx card handy…
But also naturally, I did not want to spend umpteen kazillion dollars for tickets that would, at best, put us in the back row of Studio 54, which is where the production was doing eight shows a week. Fortunately, I thought I might have an "in" to get house seats. In case you don't know what they are, they're real good seats which are sometimes available, often at the last minute, for face value. You generally need to know someone important who's associated with the show to get them.
On this trip, we also wanted to see a revival of the show Little Me, which originally starred Sid Caesar but in revival, it was starring Martin Short. I had a friend in the cast and I called and asked her if she could arrange for house seats to see her in Little Me. She said, "No problem."
Then I asked her if there was any way on God's Green Earth she could arrange for me to purchase house seats for Cabaret. She thought for a second and said, "I'll ask Rob." She was referring to Rob Marshall, who was the director of that revival of Little Me…the same Rob Marshall who, as you'll note above, also co-directed and choreographed the revival of Cabaret.
And ask him, she did. The next day, she called and said it was all arranged — for the date I'd requested — Little Me on the Wednesday evening of our trip, Cabaret for the following Friday. I just had to go to the shows' respective box offices, show I.D. and pay for the tickets. I knew from past experience I should do that as soon as I arrived in New York and not wait for those evenings. The longer those tickets sat in the box office, the greater the chance someone who worked in that box office would take a bribe or crib them for a friend and we'd wind up in worse seats.
On the Sunday before those dates, Carolyn and I flew to Manhattan and checked into my favorite hotel there. Monday morning, I had a lunch appointment with an editor at a comic book company for which I was writing. As we left the restaurant, I asked him, "Do you mind if we make a slight detour to Studio 54 so I can pick up some tickets they're holding for me?" It wasn't that far out of the way so he said, "Fine with me." We went to Studio 54, I told a man behind a window who I was, he found the tickets he had for me…
…and he said, "Wow. You must know someone."
I paid face value for the tickets — I think they were $75 each — and I took them over to the seating chart to see why he said what he said. Cabaret, as you may know, takes place in a night club in Berlin during the Nazis' rise to power. At Studio 54, management had taken out the first few rows of theater-type seats and replaced them with the kind of tables and chairs one finds in a night club, which more or less put the occupants into the show. My tickets were for AA1 and AA2 — two of the four seats at the front table. The best seats in the house.
When the gent in the ticket window said, "You must know someone," he was wrong. I got those great seats because I knew someone who knew someone. The director of a show would, let's face it, have access to the best house seats.
Later that day, I stopped in at Criterion Center Stage Right. That was the name of the place in which Little Me was playing. I picked up and paid for our tickets for Wednesday night. They were also great seats but nowhere near as hard to get as any seats for Cabaret.
That was a good show and we saw some other good shows on that trip. Friday night was our last night in Manhattan and I didn't tell Carolyn in advance where we'd be sitting for Cabaret. When we got to the theater, I handed our tickets to the lady at the front door. She looked at them and said, "Wow. You must know someone."
Then we went in and I handed the tickets to a lady who was seating people. She looked at the tickets and said, "Wow. You must know someone." Then she led us to the front table where two young men were already seated in AA3 and AA4. As soon as we sat down, I turned to them and I was about to say, "Who do you know?" but before I could, one of them said to me, "We paid $700 each. How much did you pay?"
I stammered out, "Oh, not quite that much."
The first act was quite wonderful — most deserving of all the praise this production had received and its four Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical. The second act was equally wonderful but between them, there was a moment with a bit of silly tension.
During the intermission, one our tablemates said to me, "I wonder which one of us Alan Cumming will pick." I didn't know what he meant so he explained, "Before the second act starts, he comes out and chats with the audience and selects a woman from the front to dance with him briefly. Then he selects a man to also dance with him briefly."
The other gent said, "And usually, he picks them from this table. That's one of the reasons we sprung for these seats."
And then the first one told me, "The other night, he picked the man sitting right where you are…and it was Walter Cronkite! A friend of ours who was here than night told us!"
That was an interesting revelation. I didn't think Carolyn would mind the honor but I sure would. As I've probably said somewhere here on this blog before, I am not the worst dancer in the world but I'm certainly in the bottom two. Even being picked by a lady to dance with would have been unbelievably awkward and embarrassing. Being picked by the androgynous emcee of the Kit Kat Club…well, that could easily be the most humiliating moment of my life. And believe me…my life has had some pretty humiliating moments.
There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The lights came up for Act II and Alan Cumming came out and began talking and dancing around…and then he strolled over to the table next to ours and selected a lady — one he apparently knew — to dance a few steps with him, ballroom style. He returned her to her seat and then he sashayed over to our table to select his next partner. He headed straight for me…our eyes met…
…and I think he saw the look of sheer panic in my retinas. He gave me a look that I took to mean "Don't worry" and moved instead to the gent seated to my right. They waltzed a bit, the show proceeded and after it was over, Cummings' male dance partner told us that brief moment was one of the great thrills of his life…well worth the $700 at least.
On the way out, Carolyn told me she would have paid twice that to see me selected. And I told her that the next time we came to New York and took in some shows, I was going to skip the house seats and get tickets way in the back.