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[0:06] Patrick Oliver Jones: Last month, Closing Night went live at 54 Below here in New York City, exploring the songs and stories of the Marquis Theatre with Broadway performers and singers, many of whom had performed in shows at the Marquis, and some of them even joined us on the podcast last season.

[0:26] Patrick Oliver Jones: There was Lisa Howard from 9 to 5, E. Clayton Cornelious from Wonderland, and Leah Horowitz from The Woman in White.

[0:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: They were joined by Diego Prieto, Nadina Hassan, and Jonathan Shew, as well as Tony Nominee, Jane Summerhays from the original Me and My Girl production, and also John Bolton from Damn Yankees and Paper Moon.

[0:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now you'll actually be getting a bonus episode in May about Paper Moon, a musical that was set to come to the Marquis in 1993 with a sign out front of the theater and everything.

[1:01] Patrick Oliver Jones: But it closed out of town before making its way to New York.

[1:05] Patrick Oliver Jones: And so with this great collection of singers and me hosting the event, I wanted to let you hear these stories and songs for yourself.

[1:13] Patrick Oliver Jones: You can also watch the concert on YouTube, and you'll find a link to that in the show notes.

[1:50] ♪ Musical number: "I Am I, Don Quixote" — performed by Diego Prieto ♪

[4:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: Thank you, and welcome you all to Fifty Four Below. My name is Patrick Oliver Jones. I'm an actor and a podcaster, and last year I had the first season of my podcast Closing Night, which was all about the shows that have come and gone from the Marquis Theatre, some quicker than others.

[4:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: And so tonight we get to tell stories, we get to share songs from some of these shows. So walk with me. This is gonna be my little perch for the evening.

[5:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, the show that you first heard, that of course was from Man of La Mancha, which originally opened in 1965, starring the legendary Richard Kiley. He would go on to do the show again in revivals in 1972 and 1977.

[5:17] Patrick Oliver Jones: But the revival that happened in 1992 at the Marquis Theatre is the first one without Richard Kiley. That one starred Raul Julia in his very last Broadway show, and pop star Sheena Easton making her Broadway debut.

[5:32] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now there was a big lawsuit that happened, but I'll tell you more about all that in just a moment. First, we need to get the big elephant out of the room, and that is that the Marquis Theatre itself actually started, well, it started in what was infamously known as the Great Theater Massacre of 1982.

[5:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now that's when the original Helen Hayes Theatre, the Morosco, the Bijou, the Aster, and the Gaiety were all torn down in order to make way for the Marriott Marquis Hotel and Theater. I know people are still booing about it, right?

[6:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, the demonstrations reached a feverish pitch in March of 1982 as Joseph Papp, who was the founder of the Public Theater, he along with stars of stage and screen like Christopher Reeve, Liza Minnelli, and Susan Sarandon, stood shoulder to shoulder with demonstrators outside the Morosco Theatre, and they were determined to stop the wrecking ball from destroying the five theater buildings and prevent this huge hotel complex from being built.

[6:38] Patrick Oliver Jones: But despite their exhaustive efforts, including legal battles that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the demolition became inevitable. And over the next four years, the Marriott Marquis and Hotel, its theater, they were slowly built.

[6:53] Patrick Oliver Jones: And it took time, but slowly the Marriott Marquis reached out to the Broadway community and began to repair its standing among the theater folk. And then finally, in August of 1986, the first show at the Marquis opened called Me and My Girl.

[7:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yes, yes. It's a classic British comedy about the cockney gent who unexpectedly inherits a noble title, and then he has to navigate the humorous clash between his down-to-earth roots and the aristocratic world that he's been thrown into.

[7:26] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, over in London in the West End, the revival of this 1937 musical had been a huge hit. It won two Olivier Awards, including Musical of the Year and one for its lead actor, Robert Lindsay, who would also star in the Broadway production.

[7:42] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, during the Broadway rehearsals, I found this very funny. There was one very earnest cast member who approached one of the producers, Alex Armitage. And he was a bit confused, and so he asked about the hygiene problems of the aristocrats in their intimate areas.

[8:03] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, Armitage was kind of puzzled by this, and he said, "Well, what do you mean?" And said, "Well, some of the characters in the musical keep saying, 'Watch a cocks, watch a cocks.'" Armitage, who was British himself, he had to explain, "No, no, no, no, they're not saying to wash anything. No, it's basically a very customary Cockney greeting."

[8:26] Patrick Oliver Jones: So, Cockney phrases aside, though, American audiences and critics loved Me and My Girl, and the show ran for three years and surpassed 1,400 performances. And to this day, it is the longest running show to ever play at the Marquis Theatre.

[8:42] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, that Broadway production was also nominated for 13 Tony Awards in 1987, more than any other show that year. And one of those Tony nominees is here with us tonight. Please welcome to the stage Jane Summerhays.

[9:15] Jane Summerhays: Good evening. Well, in 1980, no, no, I'm not singing yet. She's got things to say. I've got a gab first.

[9:30] Jane Summerhays: In 1982, I rejoined a company of A Chorus Line at the Schubert. And you know, the Schubert, the Schubert Alley runs from 44th to 45th. You all know it. Okay. The Marriott Marquis was going to be built at 45th. And of course, the Schubert's on 44th. And the stage door is like right in the middle, maybe a little closer to 44th.

[10:04] Jane Summerhays: And I used to take a cab, get out at 45th, and walk up to the stage door. And on a matinee day, the sun would be streaming down Schubert Alley. Well, they started building the Marquis. And I watched the sun disappear floor by floor by floor until it was obliterated. I mean, it was still white, but you didn't get that streaming sun.

[10:39] Jane Summerhays: And the fact that five theaters had been raised to the floor didn't help my disposition toward it at all. And I said, "This is a nightmare." You know, and it's like a lot of cement and all of this, and I said, "I can only imagine what the theater is going to be like." Well, guess who opened the first show?

[11:06] Jane Summerhays: And I have to tell you, the theater is a divine place to work in. They had problems in the beginning, like the sewage fumes were coming into our dressing room and that kind of thing, but we always had a hallway. And they forgot to build dressing rooms on the second floor. My dressing room had a huge window out into the third floor lobby. They put up a partition. But other than that, once the kinks are worked out, the theater itself, it's one of the largest seating capacities at 1,611 seats, and it felt so intimate, and we had a ball, and I loved every minute of it.

[11:58] Jane Summerhays: Now, Me and My Girl, I played Lady Jacqueline Carstone, and I was betrothed to Sir Gerald Bolingbroke. Now, the Earl of Hereford in his youth had married a girl from an unsavory neighborhood, and they had a son who became named Bill Snibson. And he kind of disappeared. The Earl, let's move fast forward. He passed, and they had to find an heir. When I found out that the heir had been found, I dumped Gerald right away and set my cap for Bill Snibson.

[12:50] Jane Summerhays: Now there was a number toward the end of the first act that I did with Robert Lindsay, and it was on a huge couch. Now we don't have Robert Lindsay, and we don't have a couch, but we do have two stools, and we have Patrick Oliver Jones coming back from a morning ride.

[13:24] Patrick Oliver Jones: Pleasant ride, my lord.

[13:26] Jane Summerhays: They ought to give that horse a seatbelt.

[13:29] Patrick Oliver Jones: Oh, Bill.

[13:31] Jane Summerhays: You and I are soulmates.

[13:39] Patrick Oliver Jones: Then you ought to slap my face.

[13:41] Jane Summerhays: Oh, Bill, it's useless to resist.

[14:32] ♪ Musical number: "You Would If You Could" — performed by Jane Summerhays ♪

[17:07] Patrick Oliver Jones: All right, all right. So after that, now we get to the first production that I ever saw at the Marquee, which was the one and only Broadway revival of Damn Yankees in 1994. Now the production starred Victor Garber, who was also Tony nominated for his devilish portrayal of Applegate, and then there was the wonderful Bebe Neuwirth as the sultry Lola. Yet this revival is probably most remembered for being the Broadway debut of famed comedian Jerry Lewis, who took over for the role of Applegate. Now, at the time, he was paid $40,000 a week, which, and a percentage of the box office, which was the most ever for a Broadway performer to be paid. That's about $82,000 in today's dollars. Yeah, inflation, right? Now, to tell us about Damn Yankees, here is our next singer who also made his Broadway debut in the show, John Bolton.

[18:15] John Bolton: Hey everybody. Okay, when I was a kid, and I'm sure many of you had that. We didn't have the internet, and your only access to Broadway was the Tony Awards once a year, which I recorded on my JCPenney recorder that you had to press, record and play at the same time. And one year, late 70s, early 80s, my parents gave me this gorgeous book of it was by Martin Gottfried, the Broadway musical book. Yes, you know it. Yeah. And what's on the cover of that book? A Chorus Line. A gorgeous photograph of the company of A Chorus Line. And it goes like the cover, and then the spine, and then the underside. And I had that book, and you'd put it on the shelf, and I stared at it all the time. And right on the spine was one of the dancers.

And I just found out, like last week, from a friend who was in the original at our house upstate. I was like, who is that on the cover? You did the show. Who's that? They said, why that's Jane Summerhays. She's gone. I'm a magician. She's over there. So I got to meet Jane Summerhays tonight, and I'll tell you what, the 15-year-old kid in me is schwitzing right now. It's like she's Miss Broadway. Okay, so yeah, um, I got to join the company of Damn Yankees very early on their run, and every night Victor Garber would do this amazing song, The Devil's Song, hence the Red, and I hope I do it justice. I just loved being one of the baseball players, one of the guys up there, doing that great Rob Marshall choreography with just some lifelong friends up there. I was so happy to be there. Um, just my very first Broadway show. So here we go. This is Those Were the Good Old Days. Richard Adler, Jerry Ross, Golden Age, Damn Yankees.

[19:57] ♪ Musical number: "The Good Old Days" — performed by John Bolton ♪

[25:32] John Bolton: Thank you, Applegate. All right, this next show is actually one of the most popular and successful shows that came out of the Marquee Theatre, a spunky show called Thoroughly Modern Millie. Now it's about a flapper fish out of water in the jazz era of Manhattan that won the 2002 Tony Award for Best Musical. And it made a star of a then unknown Sutton Foster, who had been elevated to the lead role of Millie Dumont after two other actresses exited the show during its out-of-town tryout in La Jolla. Now the show marked the Broadway debuts of Cheyenne Jackson, Gavin Creel, among others, and to sing one of the ten original tunes that was penned for Millie by composer Janine Tesori and lyricist Dick Scanlan, here is Jonathan Shew.

[26:34] Jonathan Shew: Wow, how do you follow that? Wow. Uh, thank you for the intro. Uh, this song takes place when Jimmy finally realizes he is in love with Millie. However, in true boy fashion, he sings.

[26:49] ♪ Musical number: "What Do I Need With Love?" — performed by Jonathan Shew ♪

[27:54] ♪ Musical number: "What Do I Need With Love?" — performed by Jonathan Shew ♪

[30:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, over the past two decades, movies have increasingly served as a source material for musicals. Tootsie, Beetlejuice being two recent examples at the Marquis. However, one standout is Nine to Five the Musical. Yes. Based on Dolly Parton's hit song and film from 1980, Dolly would go on to write new songs for the musical. Patricia Resnick would adapt her screenplay into the musical's book, and Robert Greenblatt was the lead producer. Now, none of these had ever done a Broadway show before. This was their Broadway debut. And it took them a while to find their leading ladies, but ultimately they landed on Alison Janney, Stephanie J. Block, and Meghan Hilty led a new cast of this highly anticipated production. Now, Nine to Five opened on Broadway in April 2009, but it only lasted four months.

[31:30] Lisa Howard: So, Nine to Five was an amazing experience. Um, we really did get to work hand in hand with Dolly Parton, and she is everything you want her to be, right? What you think of her, that's what she's really like. She's never not done to the nines. I never saw her in, you know, tennis shoes and her hair pulled back. She was always nails, heels, full beat. Which I mean, you gotta admire that, right? And she was so sweet. She would, you know, during tech, she'd be like, hey y'all, I made fudge, you know, and there'd be treats in the back. It was just really great. And um, I played Missy Hart, the boss's ditzy wife, and I understudied Violet, played by Allison Janney. But, however, I'm not singing her song tonight.

I am singing uh the 11 o'clock number of the show called Get Out and Stay Out, sung by the incomparable uh Stephanie J. Block. And we really would, you know, you do stuff backstage, and you're you know, getting ready for the next scene, but I mean, at least I know I did. Every time she opened her mouth and would sing, you would stop and listen. And it was amazing every night. And um, one of my favorite things is, and you can listen for it in the song. Um, there's a little bit of the melody of Nine to Five in one of the sections of the song, which I love that little nugget that's in there. We'll have to listen for it. Listen for it. All right, so this is Get Out and Stay Out from Nine to Five.

[32:20] ♪ Musical number: "Get Out and Stay Out" — performed by Lisa Howard ♪

[37:46] Lisa Howard: Now I wanted to take a moment. The lady that you're hearing behind the piano is Nissa Kale, so please give it up for her. She's been doing such a great job rehearsing with all, and so uh very grateful for all the work that she put into tonight's performances. All right, so let's get back to this. Now we're at 2005, the only original musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber to have played at the Marquis. Now the genesis of The Woman in White musical can be traced back to a candid TV interview that Lloyd Webber gave in 2002 when he was uh he admitted the fact that he was just seeking out new ideas. You know, he would kind of hit a roadblock, he was seeking out new ideas. Well, fans just peppered him with all these ideas, but one stood out, and that was an adaptation of the novel written by Wilkie Collins in 1860 called The Woman in White.

Now, the basic plot, it's very convoluted, and I had uh ChatGPT said, give me it in one sentence. So here's what it said. Right. Walter Hartwright, a young drawing teacher, gets entangled in a fraudulent scheme after encountering a mysterious woman in white. There we go. One sentence, done. So that's basically what it's about. And of course, there's a lot of singing and that. But the London production starred Michael Crawford as the devious Count Fosco in his first West End appearance since he had done Phantom of the Opera. Now, it also starred three-time Olivier Award-winning actress Maria Friedman as Marion, who also led the Broadway production when it came here. But health issues actually forced both Crawford and Friedman out of the show at various points.

But the trooper that she was, Friedman actually canceled one of her medical leaves to come back and finish out the run of the Broadway show, which lasted 109 performances, of which only 31 featured the entire full cast on stage. Right. And one of those cast members who understood, she was the understudy for Marion, one of the cast members who kept the show going, is here with us tonight. Please welcome to the stage Leah Horowitz.

[40:13] Leah Horowitz: Oh, hi. So yeah, I understudied Maria Friedman, and uh she's actually the director of the Merrily We Roll Along. That's a big hit right now. So she's amazing. Um she really we all fell in love with her the minute we met her. She was just so warm and funny and playful, and uh I was a swing, and I also covered her, so I often watched the show from the house, and I never got tired of watching her because without messing with things too much, without you know, messing with any of the other cast members, she was just different every night while staying within the parameters of the show, but she was always so present that you didn't really ever know what she was gonna do, and she was just always so in the moment.

And uh, when you were on stage with her, she was so playful and somehow able to, in a serious moment, if her back was turned to the audience, she would be sticking her tongue out at you, making fart noises, and then she would turn around and break down in tears and have a big dramatic moment.

[41:17] Leah Horowitz: Um the song I'm gonna sing is called "All for Laura." It was kind of one of the songs that stuck out in the shows. Her big kind of an 11 o'clock number, but I think it's in the first act. Um basically, Marion and her sister Laura, her younger sister Laura, are they both fall in love with Walter Hartright, who comes to tutor them in drawing. And uh Marion and what Walter doesn't know is that Laura, sorry, this is a really complicated plot. Yeah, right. I mean, um Laura is engaged from a very young age to uh Sir Percival Glyde, who's this uh big aristocrat. Walter doesn't know that. Um Marion, because she also falls in love with Walter, kind of pushes Laura, like, no, father who's dead, father wanted you to marry Sir Percival Glyde, thinking that he's an upstanding gentleman.

Laura goes and marries him, they send Walter away, but then Laura comes back from her honeymoon. Marian can tell something is wrong, and Laura finally tells her that Sir Percival Glyde is horrible, abusive, hits her, she has bruises all over her, and uh that's when this song comes when Marion has just found out uh what's really going on.

[42:52] ♪ Musical number: "All for Laura" — performed by Leah Horowitz ♪

[46:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: All right, so now we're gonna come back to Man of La Mancha. Remember that lawsuit? Okay, here we go. So despite the musical's theme of looking for the best and upholding the ideals of virtue and honor, well, the authors of this musical have been rather discourteous to one another throughout the years, locking horns and legal battles over the show's production. You see, you see, it had been established that the rights of the show would be granted only by a majority vote of the three of them. The composer Mitch Lee, lyricist Joe Darion, and bookwriter Dale Wasserman. Well, this 1992 revival had the vote of Darion and Lee, not of Wasserman. So he filed a copyright infringement claim against them. But he lost that in court. Still, that hasn't diminished its longevity as a musical, and for our next song, Diego will be coming back as Sancho again, singing one of the more comedic songs of the show. Diego.

[47:29] Diego Prieto: Now I don't have any Broadway stories because I haven't been on Broadway yet.

[47:36] Leah Horowitz: I'm right there with you, baby. Right there with you.

[47:38] Diego Prieto: I did this show twice. Once in summer stock, and you know if you do summer stock, you don't do it for the money. So it was such an amazing experience to just be together with people who love doing theater and creating art, and this is such a magical show. And then I did a professional production in DC. Uh, and we had sets and lights and real seats, so that was nice. Uh, but this song, it's uh the female lead, Aldonza is asking Sancho why he's so loyal to Don Quixote. Why is he so faithful to him? What what does he get out of it? And this is his response.

[48:21] ♪ Musical number: "I Really Like Him" — performed by Diego Prieto ♪

[50:11] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, during the 38-year history of the Marquis Theatre so far, only one composer has had three shows play at the theater. Any guesses who? Frank Wildhorn. Now he contributed songs to Victor Victoria starring Julie Andrews. There was his revisal production of Jekyll and Hyde, and then there was also an original musical called Wonderland based on Lewis Carroll's Timeless Tale. Now Wildhorn gathered his Civil War collaborators, lyricist Jack Murphy, and director Gregory Boyd to present a modern twist on Carroll's beloved story, with Alice as a grown-up woman rediscovering Wonderland to save her own child. However, financial challenges and mixed reviews posed hurdles to the out-of-town production as it aimed for Broadway.

There were also constant revisions to the score and to the script, and casting changes were also adjusted, including one where they replaced Titus Burgess as the caterpillar with our guest tonight, E. Clayton Cornelious, in his first principal role on Broadway. Please welcome E. Clay to the stage as he sings his number from Wonderland.

[51:32] E. Clayton Cornelious: This is my Alice tonight.

[51:34] Lisa Howard: That's right, special guest, Lisa Howard.

[51:38] E. Clayton Cornelious: So when I auditioned for the show, it was my sixth Broadway show. But they offered me the role in the room, which is very rare, I guess, in this business, right?

[51:48] Lisa Howard: Yes.

[51:49] E. Clayton Cornelious: So we got to the rehearsal room, and it's my first lead, and I'm sitting there, and I'm scared to death. I'm with all these wonderful people now in this in this uh musical. And um they still had Titus's song that they expected me to sing. Now, we all know Titus. He has a very high voice. And I don't have a very high voice. I do, but he lives there. And so every day I would um uh try to do this song, attempt to do this song, and I was like, I this I cannot do this. Whatever he's doing, I can't do it. And I would go home almost in tears. Like, I I this is not like an original, I can't, I'm not creating. So my agent stuck up for me and um basically talk called the producers and said, You you have to help this guy out.

Like he's he's really trying to put his all into this. So they came to me two days later in a studio. Um Frank Wildhorn sat on the piano and just did that. And uh Jack Murphy, who the lyricist basically gave me all a bunch of lyrics and just said, sing this is how it turned out.

[53:33] E. Clayton Cornelious: Is a tricky tricky business.

[53:37] E. Clayton Cornelious: You think you’re somebody till suddenly you’re not, you’re not your name, and you’re not your address, 'cause of you who you remember is who you forgot.

[53:55] E. Clayton Cornelious: Hey, here’s this advice from a caterpillar.

[54:02] E. Clayton Cornelious: I think, oh sorry, metamorphosis, owl, fool's paradise is you standing stiller, 'cause the river rushing round you is the thing you made.

[54:20] E. Clayton Cornelious: The way you talk sounds like a fortune cookie, instead of how things really are.

[54:32] E. Clayton Cornelious: Well, part of me, let's take a look and see how you’ve been working, working out so far.

[54:45] E. Clayton Cornelious: Just like last things are always changing.

[54:51] E. Clayton Cornelious: Just when you learn the tune, it's time to modulate.

[54:57] E. Clayton Cornelious: Rasimatize rifts are rearranging when the melody is simple, then don't complicate. And never answer me at all. The more things change the more they say the same. From a distance you look smaller, but you're just as tired. So who are you? I'll repeat, repeat the question. Are you prepared to tell me what you're looking for? Well, you need a clue. Well, then here's my suggestion. If you can't see what's in front of you, then look somebody who I did that eight shows a week, guys. And I haven't sung it since 2011. Here's a little clue. Every time or two. Why you're passing through from your point of view. Find out who I.

[56:50] E. Clayton Cornelious: Oh, I love that. All right, now. Now, Wonderland only lasted a month. Yeah, it only lasted a month on Broadway, but at least it made it to Broadway. There are numerous shows every year that have readings and workshops and out-of-town tryouts, but never actually make it to New York. Well, one such musical is Paper Moon, which was to have come to the Marquis Theatre in 1993. Now its journey began actually the same year that Me and My Girl opened when Matt Cassella and his brother Martin approached a Broadway producer with an idea for a new musical. Now that was in 1986. It was an idea based on the 1973 film Paper Moon, starring Ryan O'Neill and his daughter Tatum O'Neill. And it tells the story of a Bible salesman con man named Moose and his partner in crime, a tenacious orphan named Addy, both of whom were trying to survive in the Depression-era America by scamming the masses.

Now, by 1991, the Casellas secured the rights, the material leading to a full-scale production at Paper Mill Playhouse in 1993. And the producers were so sure that it was on its way to Broadway that it actually they actually posted a marquee outside of the theater. And ads began to appear in newspapers. However, during that New Jersey production, the creative team realized that the initial production was really just overwhelmed by sets and costumes, and it was obscuring the simple essence of these characters. But there was really no time to change all this before it came to Broadway. So the Casellas and their colleagues made the tough decision to cancel the Broadway opening and further revise and work on the material. Well, Paper Moon never made it to Broadway. But please welcome back to the stage one of its cast members of that original Paper Mill production, John Bolton.

[58:52] John Bolton: Thank you. A wonderful, wonderful company. I remember when that marquee went up, and in front of it, it was gonna be our Broadway debuts, a whole bunch of us, Chandra Wilson, Brooks Ashmanskis, Christopher Siever, uh uh Renee Lee Soldsberry. Just all of us standing there, arms around each other, our marquee is up. And it was up for several months. Um, and then uh it, you know, and we had to walk by it, and then finally the Damn Yankees marquee went up because they had been a success at the Old Globe, and I didn't know I was gonna be in it yet, but we'd walk by it and go, are you daddy? We weren't so happy about that. But on what would have been the opening night of Paper Moon, it was October of 1993, I wound up at the marquee anyway, because I was hired to host the American Printed Fabrics Council annual awards dinner in the marquee ballroom.

You can't make this up. On what would have been our opening night. And I sang this song. Take a new look at printed fabrics. You're in for some great big surprises. Take a new look, and you will see innovation in all shapes and sizes. Thank you. True. But Paper Moon has stuck with me all these years. Uh, we've remained all of us friends because we went through that together. It's a beautiful show, and uh one song in particular, kind of an earworm I've had for about 30 something years, and now I give that earworm to you, courtesy of the great Larry Grossman. This is Someday, Baby.

[1:00:44] ♪ Musical number: "Someday, Baby" — performed by John Bolton ♪

[1:02:27] John Bolton: Okay, think about it though. Sutton Foster wasn't the original. No, no, no, no. The show began in 1999 with Kristin Chenoweth in the lead role. During the initial workshops, then she left the show to do a TV sitcom instead. Then Erin Dilley was going to star in the La Jolla production out in California. But after several production meetings, she and the creative team determined she would not continue with the show. So then it was Sutton Foster chosen to take on the lead of Millie Dilmount. Well, in that grand tradition of being ready at a moment's notice to fill in for cast members that may be dropping. Uh, Janine DeVita was actually supposed to be here tonight. She was going to be singing a song.

She was gonna join us, but she has taken ill and was unable to be here tonight. So last night, a wonderful singer agreed to uh take her place and will be singing Millie's eleven o'clock number, Gimme Gimme. So please give a warm and appreciative welcome to Nadina Hassan.

[1:03:32] Nadina Hassan: Hi, everyone. Thank you for welcoming me tonight.

[1:03:46] ♪ Musical number: "Gimme Gimme" — performed by Nadina Hassan ♪

[1:07:03] Nadina Hassan: Thank you so much. Well, thank you all for joining us tonight. As we celebrated the Marquis Theatre, we celebrated show business, which is greatly embodied in the 1999 revival of Annie Get Your Gun, which starred Bernadette Peters once again and Tom Wopat. And one of the uh one of the great, one of the great songs from that, I think greatly encapsulates what we've done here tonight. Please, as I welcome and invite the rest of the cast to come back for our bows.

[1:07:38] ♪ Musical number: "There's No Business Like Show Business" — performed by the cast ♪

[1:08:24] Patrick Oliver Jones: A big special thank you and shout out goes to Nissa Kale, who was the music director and pianist for the concert. We could not have done it without her.