Monday
nights in the city are a strange kind of animal. Some part of you resists the
thought that the weekend is over and wants to party on. Another part wants to
just sit back and do nothing. Well, luckily there is just the right place where
both needs can be satisfied and that is On
The Spot, the show where talented singers meet on stage with brilliant
improvisation actors. Producer Nathan Armstrong picks the hottest young talent
in town while the co-author of the show and it’s director, Patrick Reidy, keeps
his improv group of 4 to 7 “on their toes”. “We’d like to think of it as we are creating a
family”- says Nathan. I truly felt like a part of the family and even got to
chat with some of its members.
As I
walk into the Broadway Comedy Club on Monday night, the first people I see are
the singers stumbling nervously from foot to foot in anticipation of their New
York debut. Tonight On The Spot features eight graduates from The Citrus
Singers, a 3-year music and performance program in Citrus Collage, California. Carlene
O’Neill, Delia Trear, Edward Little, Julia Iacopetti, Kelly Grandmaison, Kylie
Molnar, Steven Federoff, and Taylor Barbata; their brief visit to New York is
packed with sightseeing and going to the theater but they are used to intense
schedules as the group tours a lot domestically and internationally.
Kylie Molnar. Photo by Asya Danilova
“In the
last three years I have gone to Germany, Check Republic, and China. And in four
days I am going to Philippines and China again to perform with the Citrus
Singers and to do a Broadway review!” – Kylie Molnar shares with me excitedly while we are
waiting for the house to open. The energy of a bright eyed, perky musical
theater lover is doubled by the thrill of just being in New York. I can only
imagine how it feels for the singer to see a Broadway musical on stage for the
first time. Well, actually I don’t need to imagine as Kylie is radiating the
contagious joy after seeing Something Rotten, Matilda and Fun Home. She is
going to see She Loves Me the next day, she said: “I love Laura Benanti so much,
I’m gonna die”!
This
great energy and love for the musical theater supported by Kylie’s talent made
her performance that night electrifying. To be honest, all eight singers were
really good. Each of them prepared the song without any idea of what’s going to
happen. The director of On The Spot
and one of the improv actors, Patrick
Reidy fills me in: “Tonight there are eight singers, usually we have four
that do two songs each. And they pick
their songs and the actors can’t know what they are. We will just sit there and
listen for the lyrics and emotion and something from it will inspire one of the
four of us for a scene. And hopefully that scene is funny”.
Tonight
Patrick directs three other actors besides himself: Meg Reilly, Chris Catalano
and Andrew Del Vecchio. To stay in tune with each other, the actors meet for a
couple of hours a week and practice; this is what the “rehearsal” process for
improv is like. When asked to define the role of director in an improve,
Patrick says the following: “There is no script. But you are still using the
same set of skills: the characters, the plot and the story, so I think you need
to have a little bit of a director brain to be an improviser. So the other
improvisers definitely have a lot of say in what happens in the story and I am
there to help control it as well. If anything needs a firm director’s grasp on
it I can literary jump into the show and steer it in the direction that I think
will work best for everybody and will bring up all the characters and show them
in the best possible light”.
With
ten years of experience as an improv actor and the support of his stage-mates,
Patrick can turn even the saddest song upside down and make you laugh hysterically
a moment after you were nearly sobbing at a touching piece of a musical
theater. “Some of the songs that they bring in are so sad and we are sitting
there thinking: how can we make anything funny about it, - the improviser says,
- But in reality no matter how dark and depressive our lives get sometimes,
there is always a sense of humor in there that keeps us going so that’s kind of
what we go for. The drama is necessary to have a big laugh, to take a step back
and enjoy the fact that you are still here”.
Improv actors before the show. Photo by Asya Danilova
Before
the show I briefly meet Nathan Armstrong,
the producer and co-creator of On The
Spot. He nervously adjusts his cufflinks while giving the last instructions
before the public will flood the cozy cabaret. As he told me later, “99% of
being the producer is just to put out one fire after another, dealing with all
kinds of crazy situations, trying to be the calm one in the room as everything
else is crumbling around you. But for that one percent when things are right
and it’s your show up there, and that’s what you have envisioned, that one
percent is one of the greatest feelings”.
Nathan
also admitted that he was particularly nervous that night because his show was
hosting students from his Alma Mater; he himself was a member of the Citrus
Singers. In the honor of them he sang the opening number and, oh my, did he
transform! All of a sudden a business looking guy lights up with the fire
coming from within and fills the room with his gorgeous voice. The applause hadn’t
even stopped yet as Patrick, Meg, Chris and Andrew took the space to improvise
a story about two Jersey Boys coming to study in Hogwarts. The audience met these
characters again in a couple of other sketches. The evening also gave birth to
such individuals as a gay cave man, a dog who had thumbs, a girl who makes the
world fade away when she yodels and many more.
Andrew
Whitbeck, playing the piano, was rocking it. Andy Scannell, technical director,
was working the lights, which, besides creating an atmosphere, is an important
narrative tool as Andy is the one who “cuts” the scene namely by doing blackouts.
Even the bartender was almost dancing between the tightly packed tables without
being destructive. I was amazed by how well harmonized, not only the performers,
but also the backstage people are.
Patrick Reidy and Nathan Armstrong announce the house rules to the singers.
Photo by Asya Danilova
I
was looking forward to Kylie’s performance, as during the short interaction
with her before the show I already became a fan. As she sang “Cute boys with
short haircuts” from Vanities, I
truly felt for the heroine even tough I have no idea what the musical is about.
For a few minutes I got carried away to the world of girl’s heartaches and
witnessed an entire story in miniature. I had a chance to experience something
that Kylie said to me earlier: “I don’t think it really matters where you get
to perform as long as you get to perform. It can be on a Broadway stage or it
can be in a coffee shop. You are performing for people who care and if they are
there to watch, they are there to watch. What kind of a performer are you if
you don’t make them feel something no matter where you are”.
Improvisers,
as per usual, turned the story upside down. That was one of my favourite
moments in the show when the strongest emotional tension was immediately
followed by the biggest laugh. “Cute boys with short haircuts”, which felt like
a page in a young girl’s diary was turned into a scene of an audition for the
part of a “boy with a short haircut” for Law and Order. And this is the beauty
of On The Spot, the mixture of
emotionally charged musical theater and down-to-earth timely humor.
The
melting of these two elements creates a completely new narrative. When I asked
Nathan if the song of the musical theater loses its sense when put out of
context, he answered the following: “Some numbers are very contextual so in
order really to understand it you have to understand what’s going on before and
after that. But what I think we are trying to do is to create that before and
after outside of what it was originally intended. What we are really doing is
creating a new story for these songs to be a part of”.
Nathan Armstrong finally taking a breath after the show.
Photo by Asya Danilova
On The Spot is a great show to see on a
Monday night for both musical theater and improv comedy enthusiasts. Even if
you don’t think of yourself as either, like myself, come share a laugh, maybe a
couple of tears and a drink with your New York theater family.
On The Spot is happening every Monday at
8pm (doors open at 7:30pm) in Broadway
Comedy Club - 318 West 53rd Street, New York. For more information and tickets
visit http://www.onthespotnyc.com/home.html
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