Hello friends. Because of rehearsals for the Guys and Dolls appearance on the Tony awards, I had no time this week to have lunch with a strange and interesting person of the theater. Instead, I’ve been backstage at the Nederlander Theatre rehearsing all day long with about 30 strange and interesting people of the theater.

This will be my third time appearing at the Tony’s. When Spamalot won for Best Musical, we performed “Find Your Grail.” If you watch the clip on youtube, you will notice that my voice totally cracks on my one line in the performance: “To find the GR(voicebreak)AIL!.” In my defense, Tim Curry, who played King Arthur, forgot to say the line that had been added to the scene as a cue for the “Feet of God” (voiced by John Cleese) to be lifted in to the sky. I was taken by surprise and had to make the split second decision on the stage of Radio City Musical Hall, live on national television, whether to go back and say the line he dropped or just move on with my next line. I said the next line, but was clearly still thinking about the line that was dropped. Meanwhile, America was wondering why Sir Bedevere was going through puberty!

That’s one of the crazy things about doing the Tony’s. You have to do a special three minute and thirteen second television version of a musical number that might take four or five minutes every night at the theater. That means that all sorts of eensy-weensy cuts have been made in choreography, music and dialogue. It’s completely disconcerting to have to change minute details. Even more disconcerting is rehearsing the changes all day long, but having to revert to your original blocking at night when you’re doing the actual show. Last night during a performance of Guys and Dolls, Spencer Moses, who plays Rusty Charlie, started moving a chair to the wrong side of the stage because that’s what he’d been rehearsing all day. He caught himself before it was too late but, after doing it one way for so long, it’s a little like somebody switched up "The Matrix."

The second time I did the Tony’s, Spamalot was asked to set up the segment where the American Theatre Wing, the organization behind the Tonys, explains its function and history. They wrote very difficult dialogue for us, but fortunately our segment was pre-taped so we could mess up. We shot it on the stage at Radio City a few days before the actual broadcast. The acoustics on the stage at Radio City are legendary and, with the supplementation of microphones, the tiniest whisper can be heard in the last row. So it was just as well that when I messed up my line in rehearsal, I inadvertently yelled a colorful expletive. The fact that I had just cursed on the stage of one of the world’s most prestigious theaters was not lost on me, nor was it lost on the people from the American Theatre Wing who looked at me quite disapprovingly…

Next week I will have more to report from the Tony rehearsal front. In the meantime, have a great week, and if you have any favorite restaurants in the Times Square area that you think I should check out, let me know!