Theater Pizzazz’s own Ron Fassler’s new book The Show Goes On: Broadway Hirings, Firings and Replacements is available now from STCK Books. A must-have for every theatre lover’s library, it may be purchased directly online at https://ronfassler.org/books.
Conducting more than a hundred interviews and extensive research, Fassler has cultivated a series of unique stories from a wide range of the New York theatre community that border on the heroic. What goes into a replacement making a role their own in the shadow of another’s highly lauded performance? What happens when an actor hops on the moving train that is a multi-million dollar production and replaces a flailing actor during an out of town tryout? How do understudies and swings miraculously go on sometimes without a single rehearsal? Answers to these and other questions are provided by way of touching and humorous anecdotes gathered together for the first time in one book.
With personal insights into the actor’s process, Fassler draws from his experience onstage as a performer as well as decades of dedicated theatergoing along and observations as a current New York drama critic. The Show Goes Oncontains stories of absurdity, backstabbing, catastrophe, decency, endurance—and that’s just A-E—and featuring players that include David Bowie, Richard Burton, Whoopi Goldberg, Anthony Hopkins, Raul Julia, Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, SHirley MacLaine, Ethel Merman, Liza Minnelli, and Bernadette Peters.
Besides writing articles and providing drama criticism here at Theater Pizzazz, Ron is an author, theater historian, and recovering actor. His first book Up in the Cheap Seats: A Historical Memoir of Broadway has been described by none other than Nathan Lane as “An utterly charming and entertaining memoir and well worth the price of admission.”
For those in New York City this Friday, December 6th at 6pm, you can meet Ron Fassler and hear stories from his fabulous new book at Shakespeare and Company, 2020 Broadway (between 69th and 70th Streets), where personally inscribed copies may be purchased.
Headline photo by Robin Weisz.
