By Stephen Mosher (Guest Writer) . . .
The Moshers were living apart. Separated by life, Juana and three of her kids were in Texas, dealing with weighty family matters, while John and his teenage son were in Zürich, settling into a new job, a new school, and on the hunt for a new family homestead. All would be reunited in a matter of months but, for now, evenings for John and his thirteen-year-old boy were relegated to restaurant dinners followed by the father doing Dun & Bradstreet work at a hotel room desk and the son doing homework, sprawled across a twin bed. One night, John, without looking up from his work, said, “Liza with a Z.” The boy, a proud devotee of Liza Minnelli, looked at the radio, then at his father, and said, “No, Daddy, that’s not Liza With A Z.” John said, “Yes, Stevie, that’s Liza Minnelli.” The boy listened for a moment. He thought his father was naming the song, which anyone would know was not “Liza With A Z.” This was a song he had never heard before. “I want to wake up in the city that doesn’t sleep to find I’m king of the hill, top of the heap.” Well, whattaya know? It was Liza Minnelli. And the song was good, it was really good. It was exciting, it was tuneful, it was quite beautiful. He waited until the recording was finished to hear what the announcer would say.
“Das war Liza Minnelli, die New York, New York sang.”
To this day, I am still impressed that my Texas-born, country-bred, redneck, conservative, former Marine, businessman father could recognize Liza Minnelli’s voice on the radio.
It was fall, 1977, and New York, New York was in all the movie theaters. In between the time that school let out and the time when my father came in from work, there was an entire world of hours, waiting to be filled up. A trip to the picture show was merely a matter of francs, and, as a lone child with a father who trusted him to be responsible, I had been given plenty of pocket money and could fill those hours any way that I wished. And I wished to fill those hours at the picture show, seeing New York, New York over and over. I loved Liza Minnelli, and had ever since my Mama had introduced me to her work, at the age of ten. I loved the era in music, in fashion, in dance. I loved the camera work and the weird, crazy script, and everything else about New York, New York, including the soundtrack, the double album of which I bought, even though my record player was in storage, waiting to be unpacked when we had a new house in our new hometown. I did not know that New York, New York was a bad movie. I didn’t know for years until I was a grown-up and read up on the reviews and audience reactions to the movie, upon its release. Even when people told me it was a bad movie, I didn’t listen because I didn’t care: New York, New York was a part of the fabric of my youth and had my loyalty. It has my loyalty, to this day.
I was surprised, though, when I read it would be a Broadway musical. If so many people had really said the film wasn’t good, for all these years, why make it into a play for The Great White Way? Those are expensive. What sort of gamble was this going to be? Then I heard: it was the final (no, really, the final) Kander & Ebb musical that would go to Broadway. The play would discard the movie storyline, keeping only the K&E songs and the names of the leading characters. The production would focus on the lives of a set of post-war New Yorkers, how they live, how they dream, how they survive, how they thrive. Ok, thought I, that sounds good, thought I, I can live with that, thought I, and I prepared to see the new play. Only when the play opened, people began to tell me their opinions. “It’s ok.” “It’s too long.” “It never quite comes together.” And with each opinion, I got further and further away from seeing the play. See, I had forgotten the cardinal rule, the one big sin, the thing you don’t ever want to do: never listen to anyone else’s opinion. Make your own.
One day I was at my desk, editing an album review for my job at an entertainment reporting website. The review was for the New York, New York cast recording. The more I read of the review, the more I felt I should see the play. I called up the cast album on Spotify and listened to it. I listened to it every minute of every day for five days. And at the end of five days, I bought a TDF ticket to see New York, New York on Broadway. I asked my husband if he wanted to join me and he said no, he didn’t want to spend the money, I should go without him. On July 1st, I entered our home sometime between ten-thirty and eleven pm, and my husband said to me, “How was the play?” And I burst into tears.
“It was like someone sat down and said, ‘Let’s write a musical just for Stephen Mosher’.”
When I was living in Switzerland, obsessed with show business, I found a theatrical haven, The Stadttheater Bern, where they did American musicals translated into German. The first one I saw there was On The Town, re-named for the Swiss audiences as New York! New York! How’s that for a coincidence? At this theater and others that I attended in other cities, I had the opportunity to see American musicals and recreations of Balanchine ballets set in the New York of the 1940s. The first time I saw West Side Story onstage was at Stadttheater Bern. My trip to New York, New York was a reminder of the musicals and ballets that nourished my soul during those teenage years. Susan Stroman captures, perfectly, the excitement of the era, and of musicals past set in the magical place that is New York City.
When I was thirteen, my father took me to the picture show to see Cabaret, my first Kander & Ebb musical, and at sixteen, our next-door neighbors loaned me the cast album to a play called Chicago. In spite of a lifelong love for Jerry Herman, an adulthood adoration of Stephen Sondheim, and a dedicated deep dive into Cole Porter, the musicals of Kander & Ebb have always resonated the most within my being. The Kander & Ebb songs are all inside of New York, New York, including motifs from Kiss of The Spider Woman in “Gold,” from Curtains in “Wine and Peaches,” from Steel Pier in Alex Mann’s violin, and the straight-up repurposing of “(Walking) Among My Yesterdays” in “Light.” Songs I grew up with that had been originated by two women from my holy trinity, Liza and Barbra, are interpolated into the score of New York, New York.
My teenage years were spent enjoying one week every summer in New York City, a place where I always knew I would live and, now, after three decades in the same apartment, I can definitely say that this city is one of the loves of my life. I have seen the people in this play on the sidewalks, on the subway, in their neighborhoods, in my life. Heck, I have been these people. There is a Jewish immigrant in this play – my grandfather was a Filipino immigrant. There’s a man returning after serving in the war – my father served this country as a Marine. There are people of diversity in this play, working extra hard for their dreams, including an effete Latino whose best friend is his Mama (hello!). There is a one-time successful artist who, now, teaches rather than performs – how many of us know that person? How many of us are that person? There’s a mixed-race couple (my parents are a mixed-race couple) – a woman of color fighting the odds and an alcoholic head case. How many of us know that person? How many of us are that person?
It’s New York. New York. It is the place that we love.
And then there is the cast playing the New Yorkers. There are the creatives, whether at drawing board or light board. From David Thompson, Sharon Washington, Fred Ebb, John Kander, and Lin-Manuel Miranda down to every last person whose name fills the playbill or IBDB page, the architects of this story are all so gifted and beautiful, and all so dedicated to bringing this story to the audiences who scream at the end of every performance. Scream! They built New York City on a Broadway stage. They recreated the subway experience through choreography. They tell all of our stories, whatever our individual stories, through song and dance, through lighting and design, and all of the stagecraft that makes the theater magical. Look at Beowulf Boritt’s Tony Award-winning set and recognize the view right outside of your own window. Listen to the dialogue about dreaming and struggling and remember when you were that young and ideal. Watch Emily Skinner during the window seat scene and see how special it is when a musical theater actor really and truly knows the craft of telling a story through interspersed dialogue and song. It’s a miracle and one that will break your heart.
More than going to the theater to find something to love, I treasure the sharing of that which I will find there with loved ones. One week after seeing New York, New York, I took my husband to see the play and watched as he became increasingly besotted by Anna Uzele (after her Act Two eleven o’clock number, he whispered to me, “That’s her song, now,” and I understood). My heart swelled when Colton Ryan finished singing “A Quiet Thing” (my favorite part of the play) and my husband said (during the applause), “Are ya KIDDING me?!” I grinned full-face when he actually screamed as the bandstand rose up out of the orchestra pit. Two weeks later, I took my father to the play for our birthday and watched him sit, mesmerized and beaming, for the entire play. His face said it all but his voice rang out with a telling, “WOW” right after “But the World Goes Round” – and he just grabbed me by the leg and gasped during the song “Light,” tears in his eyes, his smile brighter than the pink gels shining on the backs of our heads. My father is eighty-seven years old, and, as we left the theater, he said, “If this is the last play I ever see in my life, so be it. Your mother would have just loved this.”
My Mama, and the love of our lives, is in a memory care facility, living with dementia. Since her diagnosis six years ago I have woken every day either sad or angry. Happiness eludes me, now, but my family helps me through it, keeps my feet on the ground and my chin up. For six weeks, thanks to New York, New York, I have smiled. For six weeks, thanks to New York, New York, I have been happy. For six weeks, thanks to New York, New York, I have loved going to the theater, again. When New York, New York says goodbye to Broadway tomorrow afternoon, I will be there for the sixth time in five weeks. I will be there to say goodbye, I will be there to memorize them, one last time, to be in the room with them, one last time, and I will be there to thank them for bringing me six weeks of joy, and, most definitely, the many years of joy that will come after their final bow.
For artists who create theater, isn’t that legacy enough?
