It seems like only last week I had posted a column about how Los Angeles needs its own Miscast type of show. And it was only fifteen years ago that Susan Grace, whom many people know for her weekday Grace Notes e-mails covering theatre, came up with the idea of doing a unique cabaret presentation of Broadway songs. Now both our dreams have come true. On Sunday afternoon at Upstairs at Vitello’s, Susan is the producer (and also a performer) of Twisted Broadway, a unique benefit for the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund.
What is Twisted Broadway? Susan explains.
“I have this bizarre fascination with taking songs out of context,” she reveals. “Just because I love the fun of it. When I was auditioning for theatre in New York, I would bring songs into my coach and thought of them out of context and thought that wouldn’t that be a hysterical concept for that show I was auditioning for. I would read lyrics and think about them out of context. It worked for the audition world as long as it worked for the character. That was my wheelhouse in New York and I had a 70% callback rate for Broadway shows. So I knew it was working.”
Ms. Grace was reticent to give specific examples on the record (and what she told me off the record was quite funny), but let me try my hand at it based on what she told me. Keep in mind, I’m thinking of this for a Twisted Broadway show and not as an audition song. If a young girl were to dress up like Annie, but instead of singing “Tomorrow” or “N.Y.C.” she performed “My Friends” from Sweeney Todd.
“These are my friends
See how they glisten
See this one shine
How he smiles in the light
My friend, my faithful friend
Speak to me, friend
Whisper, I’ll listen
I know, I know
You’ve been locked out of sight
All these years, like me, my friend”
It kind of gives it a perverse and different spin on a song sung to knives soon to commit murder. Mind you, what Twisted Broadway offers is far more believable for what an actor might audition with and also more in line with what the character might actually sing. There’s a reason Susan Grace is producing this show and not I!
Grace reveals she’s got a stack of them at the ready. “I have now about seventy. I always knew that it would be hysterical to do a benefit where it would be an incredibly irreverent way of making a difference. Then Miscast came in New York and now Broadway Backwards, but nobody is doing what I’m doing – as far as I know. It’s not gender bending, which is great for Miscast. I’d love to do more than one. This is just the first. The cast, according to [director and performer] Ilene Graff, is having a blast coming up with twisted interpretations for their songs.”
The cast she refers to includes Rena Strober (Les Misérables), Kevin Spirtas (The Boy from Oz), Barrett Foa (Avenue Q), Cynthia Ferrer (Elf), Ashley Fox Linton (Les Misérables), Carla Renata (The Life) and more. Susan Grace was on Broadway with The Kiss of the Spider Woman.
As for making this event a fundraiser for the Time’s Up movement, Grace says it was watching this year’s Golden Globes that triggered her. “Not that I hadn’t heard of Time’s Up, but they were going on and on and I thought that was the key for us. It’s a fresh new cause. I happened to have had two experiences with sexual abuse and I understand it and I thought this was my time.”
There have certainly been stories about inappropriate behavior in the theatre, but it hasn’t been, so far, as pervasive as stories from film and television and classical music. Does Grace think it just doesn’t happen as much in the theatre?
“I’m not aware of it being more prevalent in the theatre world,” she says, “but I wouldn’t say it’s not. I came from the corporate world. Neither of [my experiences] were really horrible at all, but one was in the corporate world before I was in this business and the other was in this business. They were in the 70s and 80s and women didn’t talk about it then – you just didn’t. It was Mad Men and you just took it. Everybody I know is so open now about everything, but I haven’t personally heard of a lot of experiences in the theatre world.”
In order to realize her dream of Twisted Broadway, Grace had to set up her own company: Theatre LA Cares.
“Theatre LA Cares is a new way to make a difference in the Los Angeles community and I want to do it differently and shake things up. As much as I adore Broadway Cares and The Actors’ Fund, every benefit out here is for the two of them. I wanted Theatre LA Cares and Twisted Broadway to change the face and be fresh and irreverent and all the things not every benefit is.”
Susan Grace is now wearing multiple hats as performer, producer and philanthropist. Before we ended our conversation I asked if her Stephen Sondheim was correct in Sunday in the Park with George when he said in “Putting It Together” that “art isn’t easy.”
“Of course. It’s very true. But the idea is to make it look easy. You want to go to a benefit or show and it just looks like maybe they had one rehearsal and it was brilliant. You don’t want to see the sweat and how it works. My job is to make it look effortless for everyone involved.”