Jewish Thighs on Broadway

I was down in Orlando from Christmas through Saint Patrick's Day, doing seven shows a week as Aldonza in "Man of La Mancha." I had Star billing for a favorite role in a favorite play, it got me out of New York for the winter, I was making good money, and I hadn't worked a non-showbiz job in over fifteen years.

I was in Hell.

A promising relationship with a guy who was willing to work around my odd proclivities had been put on hold for ten weeks, while I had my first experience with Dinner Theater. You know the movie, "Soapdish," with Sally Field? Those scenes of Kevin Kline as Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" at a Florida dinner theater don't quite capture the true hideousness of the genre.

Night after night we were mercilessly heckled by elderly drunks, who sprayed masticated meatloaf with the obscenities. My tender ballad, "What Does He Want of Me?" was punctuated by crashing crockery and frail old dames summoning the waiter. Sometimes, the genius of our work was too much for them: on more than one occasion, the performance was halted just long enough for the Rescue Squad to resuscitate and cart away a fallen spectator.

Adenoidal British theater historians on PBS tell us that this was very likely the way performances ran at the Globe during Shakespeare's day. So much for four hundred years of human progress.

I was the only out-of-towner, imported from the Big Apple to authenticate the producer's claim of "Top New York Talent." Never mind that the top New York talent was off in Los Angeles, starring in sit-coms. I was the Big Draw for this production. As such, I was given the full "Star" treatment, which consisted of lodging at a Days Inn on the Interstate, use of the company Pinto, a gasoline card and, every evening before the show, all I could eat at the BROADWAY'S BEST! Dinner Theater Buffet. I could eat a lot.

My leading man was something of a local institution and a real putz. Somewhere between sixty and the grave, he had the remains of a truly lovely voice and an odor somewhere between Old Spice and old hamburger. This relic was incredibly vain and dumb as a brick. He arrived late to rehearsals, refused to learn his lines, and made up staging as the mood struck him. There were few things more revolting than the sight of his lean shanks, embroidered with blue varicose veins, parading in short bun-huggers.

The Fossil heard a come-hither in every go-yonder; he breathed on my neck and whispered suggestively into my ear for weeks.

He woke the snoozing reptile in my DNA – I had a few crazed "Method" performances during which I relinquished my frontal lobes and abandoned myself to the prehistoric thing raging in my basement. On those inspired nights I would slap and kick him in dead earnest, and spit in his face with lusty loathing. Once I drew blood – in ten weeks, this was the only real pleasure I had.

The youngish tenor who played The Priest, a cosmetologist by trade, resembled Joel Grey as the Master of Ceremonies in "Cabaret" – that was just his street make-up. He jetée-d into my dressing room all during rehearsal week, begging to coif the liquid luster of my hair. Leapin' Leonard had the two prettiest songs in the show and sang them exquisitely. My praise engendered an invitation to his house one afternoon:

"Aren’t you lonesome, all by yourself? Time to join the parade! Life is a Cabaret, Miss Thing. Come for tea."

Bored and starved for company, I hopped into the old Pinto and drove over. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The house was right out of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, minus the Oompa-Loompas. Beyond the pink picket fence a pink stucco structure squatted under a red tile roof; each window sported a pink-and-white striped awning; gingerbread window boxes spewed fuschias. Every few feet along the front walk a pastel-printed windsock fluttered nervously.

I parked the car and was just getting out when the tiny house exploded like a piñata. A coven of elaborately gowned transvestites billowed like confetti through the French doors, twirling and crooning "Hello, Dolly" in piping falsettos. Two cruiserweights decked out, I swear to God, as Upstairs Maids pirouetted into flanking positions, hoisted me to their shoulders, and carried me with great ceremony around to the backyard.

Concealed by an eight-foot cedar fence this enclosure featured elaborate topiary, meticulously pruned into shapes of male genitalia at various stages of arousal. When I had been carefully deposited into a lawn chair, Leapin' Leonard made his grand entrance in a silver lamé body suit, featuring a brocade codpiece in front and his bare behind, behind. I assumed the codpiece was an improvised ad-on in deference to my gentility. Yeah, right. Leonard squealed, and peeled.

Thunderous applause.

My host proffered iced tea in a quart-sized beaker, and presented me to the assembly. They filed past one by one, decorously respectful.