THEATER WOW: A NEW YORK CITY MOMENT

On Thursday night Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman and friends helped a packed house at Marie's Crisis to fly, fly away.

About four in the afternoon yesterday I saw a notice in the Facebook group for Marie’s Crisis that as a way to kick off Pride, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who together have created such work as Smash, Hairspray and the currently-Tony-nominated Some Like it Hot, would be taking the piano from 9-10pm and performing some of their hits.

The tiny basement West Greenwich bar, which is the only queer musical singalong piano bar in New York City (or anywhere else that I know of), is often quiet early in the evening, and when I arrived early around 6pm things seemed pretty normal. Which is to say, wonderful in its own very specific way: one person sitting almost alone at the piano delivered a performance of “Maybe Next Time” from Cabaret that was so personal and true it felt like a blessing. Meanwhile someone else had transformed the back corner of the bar into their own personal make-up station.

As is often the case at Marie’s, even though people were drifting in slowly over the course of the evening, while the regular Thursday pianist Alex Barylski led the group in an incredible range of songs—Great Comet, Bridges of Madison County, Lion King followed one right after the other—somehow it was as thought the bar filled up suddenly when none of us were looking.

And then Marc and Scott appeared at the top of the stairs beaming, Shaiman in a green-striped short sleeved shirt and cargo shorts, Wittman in a deep blue sports coat with a floral splash of saffron from his pocket square. As Shaiman took the piano he explained that the summer after he got his GED at age 16, he and some friends stopped early one evening in Marie’s. Seeing no one at the piano yet, Shaiman sat down and started playing. And the owner, who was sweeping the floor “just like in a black and white movie,” heard him and immediately lran across the street to the Duplex, where Scott was directing a show. “The piano player was so bad, I called him Mittens,” Wittman said. That’s how Shaiman and Wittman first met. Working as a piano player at Marie’s became Shaiman’s first job.

Shaiman is one of those people who has the kind of infectious grin that says “Can you believe how crazy great it is that we’re here?” And no matter whether it was the whole group singing or a soloist, Wittman was always quietly mouthing the words, like a proud parent watching their child step into the spot after months of practicing with them. To say the two charmed the room is an understatement.

Over the course of the hour they spent at Marie’s, Shaiman played songs from many of their shows, including delivering a sweet performance of the opening of Some Like It Hot. (Personally, I cannot begin to tell you how excited I was when he did “They Just Keep Moving the Line” from Smash. From the looks on Shaiman and Wittman’s faces, I’m not sure they realized just how much love there is for that show and that song.)

After Shaiman revealed the wild set of coincidences that led to his lifelong collaboration with Bette Midler—he was sitting at the back of a rehearsal studio while Midler worked with a new band; when she asked them spontaneously to play “No Gesturing,” he was the only one who knew the music, Wittman also shared one of their personal mottos: “D.D.H.D.: Dreams Don’t Have Deadlines.”

Special guests also joined the two at the piano. Vocalist Shayna Steele, one of the Dynamites in the original cast of Hairspray, led the crowd in “Welcome to the 60’s” and later dropped a fiery “Ride Out the Storm” from Some Like It Hot.

Broadway legend Annie Golden, rocking the universe in knee length leather boots, climbed onto the piano and sang “Good Morning, Baltimore,” with the crowd bringing the gorgeous harmonies of the chorus parts.

Shaiman revealed that Golden had actually sung the part of Tracy Turnblad in the original demos for the show. He also told the story of their first thoughts about that song. “Scott said Tracy should look out the window and be like the beginning of Oklahoma, ‘Oh what a beautiful morning.’ She sees rats on the street and to her, it’s oh what a beautiful morning.”

In the high point of the evening, Broadway star Shoshana Bean—who had also been in the original cast of Hairspray—took her own perch on the piano in a white Oxford and blue jeans and sang an absolutely stunning “Fly, Fly Away” from Shaiman & Wittman’s Catch Me If You Can. (You can check out the video here.)

As she sang this soulful song of a mother pining for her son to finally feel a sense of freedom, tears unexpectedly started rolling down my cheeks. To find ourselves in a dark little basement bar with twinkling rainbow lights on a random Thursday night receiving this kind of crazy great moment of beauty—what were the chances?

When Bean finished, my friend Scott leaned over to me and whispered, “That is a New York City moment.”

And it really, really was.

Happy Pride, everybody.