Broadway, Before It Was Their Job
By ERIK PIEPENBURG
Erik Piepenburg asked several Tony Award winners to recall the first Broadway show they ever saw and to describe the impact it had on them. Excerpts from their responses are below.

Tony Award Show June 15 CBS 8 PM



Christine Ebersole
"Gypsy"
2007 — Best Actress in a Musical (“Grey Gardens”)
2001 — Best Actress in a Musical (“42nd Street”)

“Gypsy.” With Angela Lansbury. 1974. I’d just moved to New York, and I was attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I remember from the balcony I was watching it, and that’s when I saw Mary Louise Wilson. I didn’t know then she would later be my mother (in “Grey Gardens”). ... I lived on the Upper East Side across from St. Stephen of Hungary Church. I remember being so happy to be watching a Broadway show and thinking that one day I would be on the Broadway stage. I felt that’s where I belonged. That was the feeling I had. The details I don’t remember.

John Lithgow
"My Fair Lady"
2002 — Best Actor in a Musical (“Sweet Smell of Success”)
1973 — Best Featured Actor in a Play (“The Changing Room”)

I started out big. I saw “My Fair Lady” with my family, with Julie Andrews. We had tickets six months in advance. I was about 11 or 12 years old, and it was maybe 1956 or 1957. It had been running already because Rex Harrison wasn’t in it, but I did see Stanley Holloway. I remember there were two turntables, and when they transitioned into whatever the scene was that culminated in “With a Little Bit of Luck,” I saw those swirling around, creating a new set, and I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. ... I think like most people of my age: it was a big deal. It’s part of our DNA.

Duncan Sheik
"Sweeney Todd" and "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"
2007 — Best Orchestrations and, with Steven Sater, Best Original Score (“Spring Awakening”)

My first Broadway show was either “Sweeney Todd” or “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” I’m actually not sure which one it was. I guess I was with my mom in both cases. She took me to “Sweeney Todd,” and I have kind of a dim memory of a very scary kind of experience. . .“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” I think I was a little less wowed by.

Debra Monk
"Equus" and "Chicago"
1993 — Best Featured Actress in a Play (“Redwood Curtain”)

The very first play I saw was “Equus” with Anthony Hopkins, and the very first musical I saw was “Chicago” with Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera. ... “Equus” was in 1975 or 1976. It was wild, with nudity and all that stuff. I was blown away by it. It was kind of shocking and titillating. It was the first time I’d seen people sitting on the stage watching the show. ... “Chicago” was also in 1975 or 1976. To see Gwen and Chita, and the orchestra onstage, all those scantily clad performers and Tony Walton’s set and that music, the lyrics, the whole thing — to see those two incredible performances was a thrill. ... The biggest impact it had was that I got to work with Kander and Ebb and work in “Chicago.” Chita has become a friend.

Joanna Gleason
'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'
1988 — Best Actress in a Musical (“Into the Woods”)

I SAW “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” with Robert Morse and Rudy Vallee in 1960 or 1961. It’s possible I saw “Bye Bye Birdie” earlier than that, but this was the one that stuck out.

We lived in New Rochelle, and my parents got a hotel room, and they made a big deal out of it. We sat in the mezzanine, and I was leaning on the railing. I could not have told you where I was or who I was. I just sat still during intermission. When I got back to the hotel, I pretty much sang the entire score to the mirror in the bathroom. It was something so arresting. It snuck up on me. . . .

Picture a 12-year-old girl who looked a lot like Mrs. Potato Head. Your eyes are funny, and you’re not allowed to wear what you want to wear, and these people onstage were fully put-together.
I thought: “This is the thing that will save me from the nightmare of the teenage girl peer-pressure thing. If I can be good at this, it’s something they can’t all do. This is a world where I can keep inventing myself and costuming myself.”

Many, many years later there was a revival of the show, and I was the understudy for Rosemary, the lead. But I never got to go on.

Jeff Whitty
'Cats' and 'Angels in America'
2004 — Best Book of a Musical (“Avenue Q”)

MY first Broadway show was “Cats” in 1993. I went by myself to TKTS to get tickets. I walked out of it trying to convince myself I loved it, that this was what Broadway was. It was 11 years into its run, and maybe it was as energetic as it could be, but it wasn’t my kind of show.

But the real story is the second show I saw a few days later, “Angels in America,” which made me disappointed by “Cats.” That experience has been the mother ship of why I write for the theater. I can almost tell you scene by scene what my responses were because it was so transformative.

Adriane Lenox
'The Wiz'
2005 — Best Featured Actress in a Play (“Doubt: A Parable”)

EACH year the drama department of my school in Tennessee would come up to New York and see shows just to get an idea of how they do it. We’d go back and try to get close to that level. I remember specifically seeing “The Wiz” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Lincoln Center. . . . This was my senior year of high school or the first year of college. I can’t remember. “The Wiz” wasn’t on the list of shows to see, so we had some free time, and I went by myself. I sat all the way at the top. . . .

A few years after seeing these shows, I had an opportunity to audition for “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” I flew myself up to New York and sang “Ease On Down the Road” as my up-tempo number. It was completely wrong for that show, but it showed my range.

Elizabeth Ashley
'Sweet Bird of Youth' and 'A Far Country'
1962 — Best Featured Actress in a Play (“Take Her, She’s Mine”)

I SAW Geraldine Page in “Sweet Bird of Youth” in probably 1959 and later saw Kim Stanley in “A Far Country.”

They rocked my world. I had never seen anything like it. I was one of those kids who was never in community theater. I didn’t know if theater was what I wanted to do, but I wanted to try and find out. . . . Geraldine Page’s performance was like what happened when you saw Brando for the first time. It was so viscerally real. You knew what the character was thinking.

Edward Albee
'Jumbo'
2005 — Lifetime Achievement
2002 — Best Play (“The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?”)
1963 — Best Play (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”)

THE first Broadway show I ever saw was in 1935. I know I was about 6 years old, and I don’t think I’d even been the 26 miles it took to get from Larchmont to New York City by then.

The show I saw was at the old Hippodrome Theater — a wonderful space, as I recall it — and it was a musical starring a small elephant and Jimmy Durante. It had a score by Rodgers and Hart, and it was called “Jumbo.”

It had in it such songs as “My Romance” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” It probably hooked me on theater, but I’m sure the hook was the small elephant.

Walter Bobbie
'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'
1997—Best Direction of a Musical (“Chicago”)

MY first Broadway show was “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” maybe in 1964. I came in to New York from college in Pennsylvania for the World’s Fair. It was at what is now the Richard Rodgers Theater on 46th Street. It had musical staging by Bob Fosse, and as it turns out, the first Broadway show I directed was “Chicago.” I remember sitting there — I practically had to be held down in my seat — and I had never seen anything like it. That day it was clear to me that I wanted to come back to New York, and theater was what I wanted to do. It was transforming.

David Hyde Pierce
'Zorba'
2007 — Best Actor in a Musical (“Curtains”)

MY first Broadway show was “Zorba” in the late ’60s, with Herschel Bernardi as Zorba in the original cast. My memories of the show are very vivid. I remember the opening vamp, a Greek theme that stuck with me so much. . . .

We took the train from Saratoga Springs. I went with my mom and dad and brother to a matinee, and we had lunch at a Greek restaurant, and I remember Dad ordered egg lemon soup. We sat in the orchestra. I had to be at least 8 or 9. . . .

I thought I was going to be a musician. I never thought I would be on Broadway. And I never thought that my first Broadway show would be a Kander and Ebb musical and that I would later be in a Kander and Ebb show.

Joel Grey
'Death of a Salesman'
1967 — Best Featured Actor in a Musical (“Cabaret”)

WHEN you’re in the company of a phenomenal actor, theater takes on a mythic and deep meaning, sort of like a religious experience. I find that when the curtain comes down and I can’t get up from my seat, that’s the touchstone. That happened in 1950 when I saw “Death of a Salesman” with Lee J. Cobb. I remember I could not get up from my seat. People were leaving, and I was still there.