THE HISTORY, HYSTERICAL HAPPENINGS
& HAPPINESS THAT SPELL “BROADWAY”

Broadway musicals feature a parade of talent which, like time, marches on. Sometimes it seems that parade of pizzazz passes by pretty quickly, but the talented stage veterans who were guests at Backstage Babble on July 7 at 54 Below didn’t seem to have lost their step as they stepped back in time to revisit and reflect on their roles. Speaking of time marching on, that also happened for the host of this series of live shows, Charles Kirsch. The programs are an outgrowth of his same-named podcast that has had 250 – count ‘em, 250 — installments. It began when he, the ingratiating interviewer, was a theatre-admiring adolescent adding to his notable knowledge base. Fast forward and you’d find the seemingly rapidly aging guy — now 18 — who’d been finding acceptance among the Great White Way’s stars getting the news of his acceptance as a student at Harvard University. Should a writing assignment there be the traditional composition “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” it’s doubtful that any classmates’ paragraphs could tell of times talking with Tony Award winners and directing and producing concerts at a major New York City nightclub. This program of tales and tunes found the gracious, loquacious, vivacious emcee at his beaming best.

Lane Bradbury

Have we mentioned that time marches on? The beloved musical Gypsy, currently entertaining Broadway audiences again, as it has in all of its five — count ‘em, five — revivals since its original production 66 years ago, and one of Backstage Babble’s participants was in that 1959 cast. Lane Bradbury, who created the role of Dainty June, sang the score’s “Let Me Entertain You.” And she did indeed entertain with that brief sample and a story about how she incurred the director’s unrelenting complaints and pressure pertaining to a prop’s proper placement. (She sometimes forgot to move the teapot on the table out of the way and the director’s overblown reaction was very much a tempest in a teapot.) The Memory Lane that Lane Bradbury marched through was just one of many treats in the pleasing parade that nobody rained on. This and other selections from classic musicals of the 1940s and ‘50s were also represented, with appearances by performers who were in later productions of them on Broadway (or elsewhere):

Meg Bussert, charming with Camelot’s “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood”; Sally Murphy gracing Carousel’s “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’”; Simon Jones, the Henry Higgins du jour for a remembrance of My Fair Lady (although, alas, he had more than a little memory trouble with the words, and he didn’t really sink his teeth into the material for a knockout performance, he offered quite an anecdote about how a collision with a stagehand knocked a couple of his teeth out); and the star who’d led the revival of The Music Man, Craig Bierko, brought to Backstage Babble the rabble-rouser from that show, “Trouble,” evidencing no trace of trouble with that tricky, long number.

Nadie Duncan, Annie Golden, Jenna Lea Rosen, and Aeja Barrows

But the years represented went beyond those mid-20th-century decades considered Broadway’s “Golden Age.” One sample – speaking of that G word – came from spunky Annie Golden, having fun with the teen-oriented 1964 hit “Leader of the Pack,” packing in a lot of energy into the number that provided the title for the rock and roll revue the ageless dynamo appeared in 40 – count ‘em, 40 — years ago. She bounded onto the stage clad in a leather jacket, mini-skirt, and high boots. and in the company of back-up singers.

Penny Fuller

Backstage Babble takes its name from a song in the musical Applause, and two of its stars were on the bill, although neither sang from that score, instead giving nods to other musicals they were in, with touching treatments. Penny Fuller honored the legacy of composer/lyricist William FInn, who passed away this year, with, appropriately, “The Music Still Plays On,” which she introduced in off-Broadway’s A New Brain in 1998. And Len Cariou chose the moving “There’s Always One You Can’t Forget” from Dance a Little Closer (1983).

Len Cariou

Original cast member of Nine, Karen Akers, was fully in command and fully in character as the protagonist’s wife with “My Husband Makes Movies.” (Alex Rybeck, her regular music director, ably took over the keyboard for this.) Another performer with a pick from a show she’d appeared in was Sara Gettelfinger, with the intense “Daddy’s Girl” from Grey Gardens. Also on the bill was Janine LaManna, grabbing a chance to sing Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Whoever You Are, I Love You” from Promises, Promises. No, she wasn’t in that musical, but was in a revue of that writing duo’s work where the tender piece had been assigned to her until it was eliminated, much to her chagrin. She aced it this night.

Michael Lavine’s polished piano work was, as needed, splendidly sprightly or – for ballads— rightly restrained, and he chimed in a bit on a couple of showtunes. He got another break when Steve Ross ticked the ivories – and the audience’s fancy – and sang with joyful Jim Brochu, as the latter got to revisit “Go Visit” from a musical he directed in concert form. The Kander & Ebb treat is chipper advice to pay a call on “your grandmother” and comes from the senior citizen-centric 70, Girls, 70.  As for those lively performers in this terrific evening who are technically seniors, bravo! – and let’s hope they don’t aspire to retire or tire of a “Let me entertain you” mindset soon, even as time marches on.

photos by Ron Fassler

Backstage Babble Live!
54 Below, 254 W 54th St
played Monday, July 7, 2025
for more shows, visit 54 Below

NOTE: Due to our reviewer being unable to attend this show in person, this write-up is based on viewing the video recording of the event; many programs at this venue are live-streamed to allow more people who can’t “come to the cabaret, old chum” to experience the next best thing to “being in the room where it happens.”