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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: Glory Days — Bleacher Seizure
By Harry Haun
07 May 2008
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Stephen Booth, Adam Halpin, Jesse JP Johnson, James Gardiner and Nick Blaemire, and Eric Schaeffer
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | Youth must be served — but a Broadway musical? That's right, Mr. Ripley. Believe it or not, a rambunctious quartet of mid-20-somethings laid siege to Circle in the Square's stage on the Sixth of May and established their own Broadway beachhead.
At the curtain call, there was something movingly unguarded and open about their smiles, which seemed to be coming in the express lane directly from their hearts.
And there was more where that came from — more rowdy youths, more disbelieving smiles — when four other guys in suits and ties joined them for bows. These would be the understudies and the show's creators — songwriter Nick Blaemire and book writer James Gardiner, who decided their generation had something to sing about.
Drinking in all that radiant reality, you could see that they were all telling the truth in their Playbill bios: Adam Halpin (Skip) notes simply this is his "Broadway debut." Steven Booth (Will) raises him one: "Broadway debut!" Jesse JP Johnson (Jack) "is so stoked to be making his Broadway debut!" Alex Brightman (Understudy) "is thrilled to be making his Broadway debut with the best boys on the planet" — he names names — and Jeremy Woodard (Understudy) "is beyond thrilled to make his Broadway debut." From this point on, officially, all of them are Broadway actors.
The lone veteran among these Broadway babes is Andrew C. Call, who hates to be called Andy but gladly agreed to play the role of Andy, a macho jock wannabe with no discernible athletic skills. Call made his Broadway bow, however briefly, in High Fidelity and is technically on a three-month leave of absence from Cry-Baby where he stands by for title player James Snyder. Blaemire is also in Cry-Baby, providing doo-wops for an evil barber-shop quartet, but he took the night off because his heart was five blocks uptown from the Marriott Marquis pulsating at Circle in the Square.
There was a ninth man on stage, joining the youth on parade — an old guy of 45 named Eric Schaeffer, who turns out to be their director, mentor and coach. He has spent the last three years steering this project from embryo to Broadway. It was in one of Schaeffer's two-week summer seminars on musical theatre at the Kennedy Center that Glory Days was sparked — you could even say spanked — into existence.
Blaemire presented to the class a song he had written, inspired (or, more precisely, inflamed) by a bitter bust-up with a close friend. He spent his Maryland teens in a pack of four, all football rejects with a theatrical bent. Two of them are currently understudying on Broadway — in Chicago and Xanadu — and the third is an actor on the West Coast. All were in attendance on opening night, and Blaemire, in his Playbill bio, dedicated the show "to my three best friends, Brian, Ryan and Zak."
Taking this autobiographical cue, Gardiner concocted a plot where four friends reunite at the football field they were never allowed on — to assess the damage done by one year of college at different schools. It turns out to be irreparable, especially when one of their number announces he's gay. There is much running up and down the bleachers, emotively sorting it all out, but, ultimately and poignantly, the news fragments the friendship into four distinct pieces, and they go their separate ways.
"It's a plot mover," conceded Johnson (a.k.a. Jack the Gay) later during an interview. "The main thing about my character is just to show the guys he's the same. He's the same friend he always was, only now he has grown up. I really admire his honesty, his coming out to them. It's funny how simple the show is. Something like this is very real, and their reaction to it is very real, whether we're talking about this generation or the ones before. Everyone can relate to this particular situation."
Opening night, for him, "was a blast, but then every night is the same. It's always just having fun. The energy is awesome. I feel very blessed to have had this opportunity.
"I have dreamed about being on Broadway my whole life. Ever since I was three years old, this has been my dream. My mom has videotapes of me being, like, 'I want to be on Broadway!' I did my first show when I was four. I told my mom, 'When do I get paid?' My family always calls me and says, 'Jesse, you're living your dream!'
"My parents are actually coming for Mother's Day. I want to have a very personal time with them. It's my little brother's birthday tonight so he's here. I thought it'd be a special night for him. Looks like I know how to throw a birthday party, right?"
In the same state of ecstasy was Halpin, the Army brat who goes off to college with a flattop and comes back with long flowing blonde hair looking a lot like Anne Heche.
"Tonight was an amazingly overwhelming but beautiful experience," admitted Halpin. "We wanted to treat it like any other show, like any other night, but it's so special because there was such a comforting audience out there. You stay in the world of the play for 90 minutes, and then you gotta go out and enjoy yourself. It's been a wonderful day, and we're all so happy to be telling this story in New York."
His favorite moment is the coda at the close of the play where he and Will are left to pick up the pieces of their shattered friendships: "We sit there on the grass with our legs crossed like young kids, just talking about growing up and how we're going to be able to make this through and I've got to convince him that everything's going to be okay. There's such a calm in that conversation between the two of us. You don't really see much, just, relaxed conversation very often, and it is so nice just to do it." Continued...
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