Holiday in the Flesh

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Twenty-five years ago this holiday season, I literally dropped out of the original cast of “Cats,” which had opened two months earlier. As Gus the Theatre Cat, a role for which I subsequently received a Tony Nomination, I swashbuckled through an operatic pirate-ship sequence that ended with my walking the plank (landing unseen on a mattress nestled in an escape net suspended a few feet above the stage floor).

On the night in question, one of the two stagehands helping me out of the net swung me too far out and my left foot hit a 2-by-4 support strut. By the time I limped offstage, in character, of course, a hairline fracture had raised a lump the size of a small egg. I walked on crutches for 10 days and was out of the show for a full three weeks, just before the first Christmas at the Winter Garden.

With the stage manager’s consent, I spent the final week healing in the warmer climate of Key West. To keep my voice in shape, I brought along my concertina, the instrument I’d taken up during my San Francisco street-singing years, prior to landing on Broadway. I strolled carefully through the verdant streets, my limp diminishing daily. The first afternoon I could manage the walk to Mallory Square, I discovered that sizable crowds gathered there within the hour before sunset to watch the storied green flash. The waterfront buzzed with hippie craftsellers and entertainers — remember 1982? The crowds were not only large but also openhanded.

With street performing in my still recent past, I couldn’t let such an opportunity slide. I returned the following day with concertina in tow, put its carrying case on the ground before me and ran thru my old San Francisco street repertoire, naturally including “Funiculi Funicula,” which at my first “Cats” audition had wowed both Trevor Nunn and Andrew Lloyd Webber. I sang four or five tunes, drawing an appreciative audience, then the sun dropped into the sea and the crowds began to disperse.

As I was counting up the take, a long-haired, red-bearded, gap-toothed young fellow came up to me and said, “Wow, man, you’re great, you oughta be on Broadway.” Immensely tickled that the universe could actually have handed me this setup, I looked him straight in the eye and said, “I am.” He shook his head as if unable to absorb the reply, and walked off in silence.

I remembered this episode during the recent strike when not just one actor but almost all of Broadway missed a few performance weeks. It’s no fun to have a gift and be barred from offering it. The city lost a lot more money than I did. At least my fracture qualified me for Workmen’s Comp, not to mention the take from Mallory Square, but it also lost — temporarily this time — something less easily quantified.

Nietzsche once wrote that enchantment is the precondition of all dramatic art. Eagerness is a close second. The eagerness of live performers draws upon and amplifies the eagerness of the audience. Broadway at its historic best represents the pinnacle of that exchange, an exchange that salaries, royalties, and ticket prices can only approximate. Twenty six years ago “Nicholas Nickleby” stunned New York with its unprecedented $100 price tag, but only minutes into the production it was abundantly clear that the audience would get more than its money’s worth.

The reciprocal flow of energy and delight between stage and auditorium is an experience that movies and television have no way of matching. It takes a lot to make it available. An unremarked infrastructure delivers the audience to their seats at curtain time, and an equally unremarked set of technicians, wardrobe staff, stage crew, etc. delivers the production to its “places” call. The strike made it clear that disharmony among any of the components can derail a performance as effectively as a hairline fracture.

In this season of gift-giving it’s interesting to think about the kind of gift it takes injury to hinder. It’s the gift of aliveness, the gift of being openly and actually present to one another in the flesh. The artists, laborers, and entrepreneurs whose partnership built Broadway into a globally admired name did so by creating a uniquely collaborative enterprise, up close and personal. Theatre has always been the fruit of a zestful but ungainly marriage, drawing its DNA from both art and commerce. Its practitioners have a way of working out their problems, as in any successful marriage, face to face.

The strike is over, the shows are up and running again, in less time than it took me to return to my feline junk pile and plank-walking. In quick succession three wonderful new plays (plays, mind you) have added fresh lustre to Broadway’s crown. Of course, not even “Cats” was forever, but at least for now, the gift exchange is going strong.

Mr. Hanan is an award-winning actor, singer, and playwright. His first novel, “Scarpia’s Kiss,” is waiting in the wings.


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