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ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Ship of Dreams—Part II
By Seth Rudetsky
28 Jul 2008
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Seth and Brenda Braxton on the Rosie cruise.
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Okay, part two of the Rosie Cruise!
First, let's discuss the onboard food. My version of dieting was that I never got one of the fresh baked waffles in the morning…after that small bit of self-restraint, all bets were off. I'd have delicious oatmeal with a ton of brown sugar, and thanks to a tip from Brenda Braxton, melted butter in it as well. Mmm. I was outraged, though, that the delicious chocolate chip cookies were only in the children's area of the main dining room. Rude! I had no shame about leaning my whole body over the partition that's supposed to separate the kid from the adult area and grabbing a fistful of cookies while claiming to the shocked faces around me that they were for Juli. And, no, Juli never got any from me. Why were they in one area and restricted from the other? Quite frankly, I wasn't acting out with food, I was standing up against discrimination!
Okay, we're midway through the trip at this point. I haven't mentioned the ports we went to, so let me just say they were all beautiful, but they also all rated a ten on the melanoma-inducing scale. Is there literally no more ozone? Only after St. John in Canada did I not spend the whole night checking my moles for any changes. What was really nice about the cool weather up there is that James and I were able to leave our balcony door open at night so we could hear the ocean outside. So beautiful! The only "incident" on the trip happened in Bar Harbor, Maine. A bunch of us decided to take a trolley that had a narrated tour. When we showed up, the "trolley" was actually a school bus. Interesting. We piled on and sat with no air conditioning for 15 minutes. Then we were told, for no reason, that people who had white tickets had to get off the "trolley." Of course, we had white tickets, so we got off. Suddenly, we saw an actual trolley. Yes! As we approached it to get on, the doors were abruptly shut. The driver wanted to make sure we were supposed to get on, so we were told to stand outside. It was a frosty 95 degrees, with no shade, and my mother is a ripe 76. Excellent! We finally got on and sat again with no air conditioning. Finally, the tour began. The driver started to talk on his microphone, telling us how Bar Harbor got its name. One of the other passengers who shall remain nameless (let's just say Andrea McArdle's brother) made a small joke to his friend. Suddenly the driver yelled into the mic, "This is a narrated tour, and if you talk, I'm not narrating anything!" This was after literally one minute of driving. Well, the R Family people had had it. Everyone started muttering, "What? No way!" Finally, I had a verbal fit, complaining about the no a/c, the school bus, the mass exit we were forced to make off of the school bus, etc… I don't remember what else I said, but Klea Blackhurst, who was sitting in back of me, claims that I silenced the driver by saying "And, cut!" I told her I didn't remember saying that phrase, and she informed me that I actually said it three times. This was verified by her sister. All I know is that after my tirade, a whole bunch of us got up and stormed off the bus. Very few remained… but one that did was Andrea McArdle's brother! Son of a-!
Back on the boat, I did a full hour Chatterbox with the brilliant Christine Ebersole. She talked about how her three children are adopted, but after she and her husband adopted their first, he flew to China to get their second, a baby girl. They had been trying to adopt from different places, and while he was flying home with their new baby girl, Christine got a call that there was a little boy who needed a family! She couldn't call her husband because he was mid-flight, so she said yes, and when she got to the airport, she met her husband who was carrying their new daughter, and then she told him they had to go to a different terminal to pick up their new son! They went from having one child to three in a few minutes!
Christine ended the Chatterbox by singing "Around the World" from Grey Gardens, which I'm obsessed with! (To watch my deconstruction, go to www.SethRudetsky.com). We were both a little panicked, though. Me, because it's a crazy hard piano part that I, of course, started practicing ten minutes before show time, and she because the show closed a year ago and she was nervous about lyrics. I'm sort of fascinated by what the window is before you start forgetting what you've done in a show. Like, how long will it take for me to forget the lines I memorized to understudy Brooks Ashmanskas in The Ritz? And, sometimes you don't just forget lyrics you forget whole songs! Betty Buckley loves singing "Old Friend" from I'm Getting My Act Together…, but when I suggested she do "Put in a Package," which is the opening number from the show, she stared at me blankly. Then, I started playing it for her, and the only thing she added to her staring was blinking. Of course, you have to remember, she performed that part 30 years ago, so I think that's a fair amount of time to forget something, but Priscilla Lopez told me something that happened when she was doing A Day in Hollywood… She took a one-week vacation and came back to the show refreshed. She had a great song in Act One called "The Best In the World." It had four choruses and pretty much each one began with "Papa said you're the best…you're the best in the world." Cut to; she stands in her spotlight, starts the song, gets to the chorus and sang, "Papa said…uh…um.....silence." Suddenly, from the pit she heard, in a crazy stage whisper "…You're the best!" She literally forgot the title refrain of the song! I guess it's more about your brain deciding it can forget. Priscilla went on a vacation and didn't have to think about the show, and a part of her brain stayed in that mode. So, in conclusion, you can forget a song/lyrics after 30 years or after a week at a spa.
Back to the cruise. Friday we docked in Provincetown, a town I love! I got off the boat with my mom, and we went to look for some delish lunch. We passed a restaurant with a guy standing outside, holding a menu. "Come in!" he said. "It's great food!" I checked the menu and didn't see enough vegetarian food/seafood so we ixnayed it. We wound up having a great lunch at the Crown and Anchor and afterwards started walking back to the ship. We passed by the first restaurant again, and I decided to pop in to get an iced latte from them. Well, for some reason, I couldn't open the door. Hmm…should I push or pull? Apparently neither would work because it was locked! I looked on the window pane and saw a sign that said, "Closed: Due to Imminent Health Violation." That's right! In the one hour it took us to eat at that other restaurant, the first one was shackled. And, we almost ate there! We were thisclose to being imminently violated!
Continued...
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