Theater Geek

by Mickey Rapkin

  This was the era in which Beginners Showcase thrived. Andy Halliday, now a New York City performer and director, was a camper in the early 70s. He recalls a female counselor blissed out on LSD coming home late one night dressed in a devil’s costume, presumably borrowed from the camp’s costume shop. Standing atop a stairwell, this she-devil cackled, hurling a five-foot plastic pitchfork at a young girl’s head. There were other staffing issues. The camp’s owner hired a veteran performer (once a chorus boy in the Broadway production of Blossom Time in 1919) to teach exercise classes on the lawn. This man, well into his seventies, lived in his own house on a hill overlooking the camp, where he’d often invite young boys up to take baths.

  It was chaos. The appeal of any training program is that it’s a safe environment to make mistakes. But not so at Beginners Showcase, where tickets were regularly sold to the public and the camp’s productions were reviewed by the local newspaper. And reviewed harshly! In 1970, Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Busch’s best friend was cast as Og in Finian’s Rainbow. “He was the most neurotic, vulnerable kid,” Busch says. “He had asthma. He was adopted. And this asshole from the Lake Sunapee Bugle—or whatever the paper was called—referred to him as too effeminate to play a leprechaun. A gay slur in the newspaper. At fourteen!”

  Oddly, these newspaper clippings were read like tea leaves by the camp’s staff. In that same 1970 review of Finian’s Rainbow, the writer for the Daily Eagle singled out the performance of a chorus girl, Roberta Dent, who was apparently burning with talent: “It was not long into the first act when the audience started to notice a young girl in the chorus with large black eyes … who had a large voice for such a little girl. She had no lines to read in the first act but her singing and her enthusiasm came through. By the time she appeared in the second act and had some lines to read and solo singing, the audience could not get enough of her. This girl, Roberta Dent, will bear watching.” Two weeks after that review appeared in the newspaper, Roberta Dent was asked to star as Sally Bowles in a Beginners Showcase production of Cabaret.

  “She was plucked out of the chorus line,” Busch says. “A star is born!”

  But the troubles at Showcase were not limited to newspaper reviews (or gay slurs, or the sexual exploits of the staff, or LSD for that matter). In 1974, two or three days into the summer—the same summer Nixon resigned—Bob Brandon disappeared from camp. No explanation was given. Months later he surfaced, armed with a new plan: he was moving Beginners Showcase from New Hampshire to Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where the camp would operate under a new name (never a good sign for a business), Berkshire Showcase. Beautiful new buildings were under construction! he raved. Not surprisingly, two weeks before the campers were due to arrive, in June 1975, that plan was abruptly scrapped. “Something about permits,” says Peter Green, who worked at Showcase at the time. Bob Brandon scrambled to find a new location, ultimately renting out a property in Windham, New York—a full three hours from Great Barrington. Which, by the way, is how a camp called Berkshire Showcase opened in the Catskills.

  Todd Graff (who later made a cult film called Camp based on his summer theater experiences) was a camper that first summer in Windham, where he was joined by future notables including Jeff Blumenkrantz (the original Broadway company of Into the Woods) and the culture critic Douglas Rushkoff. Todd describes the facilities in Windham, mockingly, as “this clapboard old Pepperidge Farm kind of structure.”

  “There was a scabies epidemic that first summer,” Todd says. Worse, the water smelled terribly of sulfur—so much so that the children often opted to bathe in a nearby creek rather than hold their nose in the shower. (You’d see them walking down the road with bottles of shampoo in hand.) There were other concerns. The boy’s dorm was not equipped with fire escapes, and after a routine inspection, the fire department shut the building down. “Rather than bringing the dorm up to code,” Todd says, “Bob Brandon had the scenery shop build wooden fire escapes and attach them to the building.”

  Which begs the question: Where were the parents? Well, Todd Graff recently found a photo of himself in a production of Cabaret from the 1970s. He was fourteen years old. The show was directed by “a lesbian studies major,” Todd says, and she created a role specifically for him: “I was the emcee’s boy, and I was dressed in women’s clothing and a dog collar. The emcee would walk me around the stage, and I’d sit there at his feet, gently stroking his thigh. That was my part.” What disturbs Todd most about this photograph is that his mother took it. Shouldn’t she have been concerned? “Oh, she was like, ‘He’s having a good time! So what if he’s dressed in drag and a collar and leash and he’s stroking another boy’s thigh,’” Todd says. “It was such a different era.”

  Berkshire Showcase may have had a new name, and a new home, but it was operating under the same old troubled leadership, and its days were numbered. Bob Brandon would sit in the camp office dodging phone calls from creditors. “Fuck ’em!” he’d shout, in that nasal voice of his, in clear earshot of the campers. Actress Casey Williams appeared in a 1975 Showcase production of Stop the World—I Want to Get Off. The props had been rented. During rehearsal one day, she recalls strangers showing up to pry them out of the children’s hands. “Things were being repossessed all around us,” Casey says. The counselors had rental cars. “They weren’t being paid for, either. There was a truck that disappeared.”

  Panic set in among the staff. “You needed the inside scoop to know to ask for your paycheck early,” says Carin Zakes, who was a director that summer of 1975. “There wasn’t enough money to go around.” One afternoon, a woman nicknamed Mama Sally, sensing the growing unease among campers, threw on a feather boa, pulled the kids together in one of the theaters, and led them in a sing-along of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” from Gypsy. (“And that is how you make a kid gay,” says Nicky Silver with a laugh.)

  Keith Levenson, later the music supervisor for the 1997 Broadway revival of Annie, was a piano player at Berkshire Showcase. He was just fifteen or sixteen years old then, but he manages to look back on this time as an invaluable lesson. “In show business,” he says, “you’d always be working for some producer whose check you’d be afraid would bounce.”

  Jeffrey Zeiner, an acting coach in Manhattan, knew Bob Brandon well, and after all these years he finally explains the fuzzy math that led to the demise of Berkshire Showcase—which didn’t suffer for customers. “Bob Brandon took this glorious Upper East Side apartment,” Zeiner recalls. “He took all the down payments from the campers and put it into this pretentious apartment. He bought thousands of dollars of furnishings. And then he ran out of money.” (Bob Brandon passed away in 2005, nearly three decades after leaving Showcase. Over the years, he’d have several run-ins with the law—minor incidents such as passing a bad check for a couple hundred dollars—but in April 1985, he did manage to make national news as the subject of a tabloid-friendly case, in which a disgruntled mother allegedly hired him to dress up as Tickles the Clown and plant a cream pie in the face of a Fairfield, Connecticut, school dean. The Associated Press headline: COUPLE ACCUSED OF SENDING IN THE CLOWN, BRIBING HIM.)

  Showcase would not survive the summer of 1975. But there were so few arts camps in the country at the time, and most of those were dedicated to music. What would happen to these kids? Where would they go if Showcase closed?

  Jackie Ferber was the camp director at Berkshire Showcase during the summer of 1975, and she knew just how dire the situation was even before the props were repossessed. That summer, Jackie—famous for her pink lipstick and deep tan—invited her good friends Carl and Elsie Samuelson up to visit. The invitation may have started as a social call, but it turned into a lifeline. The kids have to be fed, the counselors have to be fed, and there’s no money, she told Carl and Elsie.

  Carl was a jack-of-all-trades, a graduate of New York’s DeWitt Clinton High School and then City College, who’d wanted to fight in World War II but was stationed in Virginia. In 1960, he and his
wife, Elsie—hardworking folk of Bronx stock, who’d met on a blind date—moved to New Rochelle with their two daughters, ages seven and eight, in tow. “My mother didn’t even drive at the time,” says their daughter, Cindy Samuelson. When Jackie called, Carl was working in construction, overseeing projects in New Jersey.

  Touring Berkshire Showcase, though, this builder from the Bronx had a shocking epiphany: he wanted to take over the theater camp. “I can’t let this place go out of business,” Carl told his family. And what started as a casual conversation over dinner soon grew heated. “My mother and I looked at him and said, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding,’” recalls Debra Samuelson, the elder of Carl and Elsie’s two daughters, who had just graduated from college at the time. It wasn’t just that Carl, an entrepreneur at heart, lacked camp experience (though he had worked at a day camp once). He’d never worked in theater before. He was a fan, and certainly appreciated the arts. He and his wife took their daughters to see Zoe Caldwell in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie on Broadway, and to see other serious dramas over the years. “But we didn’t have much money,” Debra says. “If I saw one show a year over Christmas, that was it.”

  Cindy, herself an artist, had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a BFA. She knew the types of people her father regularly dealt with in the construction business, and she had an appreciation for the very different folk he would soon encounter. She turned to her father: “Do you really want to get involved with theater people?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Week One

  IN A HEARTBEAT, RACHAEL SINGER WILL STAND BEFORE THE just-unveiled cast lists, so in shock that her command of nouns and verbs will break down completely. She will stare dumbfounded at the names up on the wall, making sure she’s read the type correctly. She will once again trace her finger across the page, from left to right, from her name to that character’s name. Rachael’s face is blank, gone white suddenly, and she takes a step back, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “I’m not,” she says, trembling. “I’m not!”

  Of the nearly three hundred campers here this morning—this third day of camp, the day the cast lists will be posted—some ninety-three have never attended Stagedoor Manor before. These are the faces to watch. One wishes to stand beside these newbies just to bask in the reflected glow of their unabashed, unironic joy.

  The shows will be announced today, in an elaborate pantomime known as the Reveal. And the entire camp crowds into the lobby. White, stackable plastic chairs cover every inch of carpet, and as Konnie Kittrell appears onstage, the tension—thick as the humid summer air—mounts considerably. The anticipation is suffocating. Mercifully, she and the camp owner begin on schedule, shouting, “What time is it?” To which the kids reply, “It’s showtime!”

  One by one the directors emerge. Jeff Murphy, an educator and Liza Minnelli impersonator in the off-season, is joined onstage by his music director, who is busy theatrically eating a piece of pie. A ripple of recognition passes through the campers (who know a Sondheim reference when they see one). “In the Elsie Theater,” Konnie shouts, “Jeff Murphy will be directing Sweeney Todd!”

  And it’s deathly quiet again. Chris Armbrister, the camp’s program director, who has an MFA from the University of Alabama and dresses exclusively in Hawaiian shirts, appears from stage right, walking on tiptoe, leading a pack of staff members around the lobby. “Shhhh,” he says, pointing off stage left, beckoning his band of merry men to follow him … “Into the woods!” Each of the thirteen directors will have a chance to introduce his or her show, performing a short skit, a juggling act, whatever they’d like, really. The Reveal is meant to be entertaining, but it serves a secondary purpose: it gives the individual staffers a chance to demonstrate their personalities. So if a camper winds up cast in something as obscure as The Utter Glory of Morrissey Hall, when they desperately wanted to be in Les Misérables, their excitement for that show’s director—and his juggling act—might just cushion the blow.

  Rachael Singer, Harry Katzman, Brian Muller—they’ve milked their sources dry and already guessed half the shows. Just one thing catches them truly by surprise this morning: for the first time in Stagedoor Manor history, this session the camp will produce fourteen shows, instead of the now-customary thirteen. “There were so many kids interested in dramas, we had to add a show,” Konnie announces. She wasn’t feeding them a line. At that very moment, a director was on a plane from the West Coast to Loch Sheldrake to direct the World War II drama Cry ‘Havoc’, a last-minute addition to the program.

  Finally, it’s official: Stagedoor’s first Sondheim festival will include Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, and a revue, Side by Side by Sondheim. Rounding out the rest of this session’s program is Children of Eden, The Who’s Tommy, The Drowsy Chaperone, The Children’s Hour, Grease, The Young and Fair, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Cry ‘Havoc’.

  And then it happens. The smallest kids are dismissed first, taking off in a sprint. Rachael is pushed aside by a pack of rugrats. Kids are screaming around her. “I’m in Tommy!” “I’m in Drowsy!”

  Rachael, dressed in a black cotton dress, finally makes her way up to the glass. She nervously twists a hair tie in her hand as she stands in shock before the lists. She expected to be cast as the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods, a role comfortably in her range, both vocally and stylistically. But she wasn’t cast as the Baker’s Wife. Nor was she cast as the ingénue, Janet van de Graaf, in The Drowsy Chaperone. Physically, Rachael didn’t fit the part, she acknowledged that. But Janet is a tap-dancing role, and Rachael has excelled in those before at Stagedoor.

  Instead, she stares at the list, confused, desperate to block out the commotion around her as she scans the names one last time. Gasping for air, she finds the words, whispering almost under her breath: “I’m Mrs. Lovett?”

  If the prospect of an eighteen-year-old Mrs. Lovett doesn’t at least put a smile on your face, pull up a chair. Because Lovett may be the most demanding role in the Sondheim canon, distaff or otherwise.

  Sweeney Todd is the story of a British barber banished to an Australian prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Fifteen years on he escapes, returning to London in a frantic search for his wife and daughter. Early in the show, he stumbles into Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop, where a decrepit woman bakes the “worst pies in London.”

  This Mrs. Lovett, she’s obsessed with Sweeney Todd (real name Benjamin Barker). Always has been, always will be. So much so that when Barker was deported—for what was meant to be a life sentence—she kept his razors tucked away in a closet. You know, on the off chance he might escape. Lovett is so drunk on this man that when he returns to London, starts calling himself by the name Sweeney Todd, and quits cutting hair—choosing to slit throats instead—she doesn’t just stand by her man, she concocts an ingenious plan to dispose of his victims: She’ll bake the cadavers into pies. Angela Lansbury originated this role on Broadway in 1979, and murder she wrote. With her soft-boiled eyes peeking out from beneath a wig of orange yarn, it was like watching a real-life crazy person on stage, armed with a rolling pin and bleached flour.

  That Lovett is really an acting piece makes Rachael Singer an unorthodox choice. At Stagedoor, she’d excelled in shows like Me and My Girl and 42nd Street—both tap dancing roles. Yes, she diversified in 2008, playing the title role in Aida. But that part calls for all the nuance of Steve Urkel. No one expects depth and character from Aida. They just want that Nubian freedom fighter to belt the crap out of Elton John’s schlocky score and get off the stage.

  In the fall, Rachael would begin her schooling at Boston Conservatory, trading four years (and nearly $240,000) for a possible lifetime of rejection. But first Konnie wants to test her, to see how she might do serving up, as Sondheim wrote, “shepherd’s pie peppered with actual shepherd on top.” “It’s Rachael’s last summer,” Konnie says. “And I want to challenge her.”


  Ten minutes after the cast lists went up, Rachael was seated in the camp’s Elsie Theater (a 300-seat proscenium and perhaps the most prestigious space on grounds) clutching the Sweeney Todd script in her hands. She’s turning the pages, but doesn’t seem to be reading the words. It’s the fear settling in.

  Rachael Singer in the title role of Elton John’s Aida, clutching the captain of the Egyptian Army. Radames (Daniel Fuentes).

  And it must be said: Rachael Singer struggles from minute one.

  The daily schedule at Stagedoor Manor is as follows: Breakfast at 8:30. Rehearsals start promptly at 9 A.M. Lunch is followed by two classes (maybe master acting, stage combat, ballet), then an afternoon recreation period and yet a third class. After dinner, each cast convenes for an additional two-hour rehearsal ending at 8:45 P.M. A nighttime activity—a movie, a dance—is on offer before campers are due back in their rooms for a 10 P.M. curfew. And then it begins again the next morning.

  In a private lesson with Sweeney Todd’s music director, Justin Mendoza, Rachael wraps her five-foot-tall frame tightly in her sweatshirt, as if the atomic neon fabric might protect her from the challenge ahead. They are working on Mrs. Lovett’s entrance, a song called “The Worst Pies in London.” The song does not sit naturally in the sweet spot of Rachael’s voice. And she stumbles through it, switching from chest voice to head voice indiscriminately. When she sounds too pretty, Justin cuts her off.