A-mah-zing? A-mah-zing!

Saturday night, I brought mom to see Seth Rudetsky's Deconstructing Broadway at a very small and obscure theater space in Highland Park. Let me say right here that my mom is usually up for pretty much anything, and is typically willing to come along when I say things like "I'm getting tickets for (fill in the blank)! Mark your calendar!" The exception to this, when mom puts her foot down with a firm hand (tip of the hat to YOOOOUUU, Louise Rennison!) is German Opera (unless of course Renee or Bryn are involved) after the massive suckfest that was Lyric's Die Frau withoutzen einen shadow. I've dragged her along to see Patti (on many occasion), Audra McDonald, Kelli O'Hara, Betty Buckley, most recently Sutton Foster, etc etc etc and she's loved all of them. So thanks, mom!

Back to Seth. This teeny tiny theater space was so ill-lit and unmarked that we drove right by it. Damn, downtown Highland Park is DARK in the evenings! We drove right by it and went on for a while, trying to find an address on one of the buildings. We turned around, and I saw a (small) sign with Seth's face on it. Sometimes it is a good thing to be reallyreallyreally early, as I tend to be. It was a totally random crowd - mainly (older) North Shore Types who all seemed to know each other? The people who sat in front of us were greeted, no joke, by practically every person who came in. The space was small - it sat (maybe?) 100 people. They advertised their next show - some You Tube "sensation" that I'd never heard of before, and had no idea why anyone would pay good money to see her? She looked awful. Is there something I am not getting? The rest of the audience was in stitches over the preview of her "show".

Anyway, I had seen Seth do his deconstructions on You Tube, and I also read his Playbill columns almost religiously. On a whim during a trip to NYC a few years ago, I picked up his novel "Broadway Nights" - so I was looking forward to seeing him do his thing live. I didn't quite know how to explain the show to my mom or really to anyone else before seeing it. Now that we've seen it, I will do my best to elaborate. Deconstruct the deconstructions, as it were.

Seth is a musician and an actor and a lover of all things broadway. He's interviewed all the broadway stars on his sirius xm radio show, and has worked with a bunch of them too, so he's got amazing stories. He explained to us what "belting" is, and how singers use their head and chest voices. He demonstrates, with the use of recordings and videos, with hilarious results. In the show, he compared Patti singing a phrase of "Rainbow High" (A-mah-zing!) from Evita with Madonna from the movie (also A-mah-zing in a total trainwreck can't look away kind of way), singing the same phrase (specifically: "I'm their SAVIOR, that's what they call me..."), some of the Brady Bunch variety hour (HA!), Cher singing West Side Story (OMG, that was on TV??), Aretha Franklin giving some funk to "I dreamed a dream" from Les Mis (for real!), lessons on riffing, psychic deconstructing, and the final lesson, AP Deconstructing. The biggest laugh of the night went to an audience member for mispronouncing the word chutzpah. Seth looked shocked and and said something like "You're in Highland Park and you don't know how to pronounce this word?!" Good thing the audience was friendly, or else poor Gary the Audience Member would have been left to the same fate as the poor von trapp kid who hit a clam on the "La" syllable (Seth's guess was that the rest of the cast was so mad at his awful singing that they all converged on him and ate him).

I (rather geekishly) brought my copy of Broadway Nights with me and had the chance to ask Seth to sign it after the show. Hooray!