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[0:06] Patrick Oliver Jones: Welcome to Closing Night, a theater history podcast celebrating famous and forgotten Broadway shows that close too soon.

[0:14] Patrick Oliver Jones: I'm your host, Patrick Oliver Jones, and in the previous episode, we explored one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's lesser known and least produced musicals, The Woman in White.

[0:26] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, to take you further behind the scenes of this Broadway production, I'm sharing my conversation with Leah Horowitz, who was a swing in the show and an understudy for Maria Friedman, who played Marianne Holcomb.

[0:40] Patrick Oliver Jones: She was a big help as I put the episode together.

[0:43] Patrick Oliver Jones: And now you'll get our full interview and learn even more about what was going on backstage.

[0:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: As someone who's performed in five different Broadway shows at the Marquee Theater, Leah provides extra insight into what it was like working in this venue.

[0:59] Patrick Oliver Jones: But after the break, we'll start with her audition story and how she joined the Broadway premiere of The Woman in White.

[1:17] Leah Horowitz: So I remember them sending me the material actually to cover Jill Pace, Laura, which is the soprano, and I'm a soprano, so it seemed like the right part for me.

[1:27] Leah Horowitz: And I remember like going into an empty dressing room at the Marquee in a show I wasn't on, and just like working on this material and like getting all into it emotionally, working so hard on it, because I was like, I have to book this show like Andrew Lloyd Webber, a new show, like this is gonna be a hit.

[1:44] Leah Horowitz: And this is, you know, it's legit singing, it's like my bag.

[1:44] Leah Horowitz: So I worked really hard and went in for my initial audition for Kristen Blodgett, and I can't remember who else was there, maybe just casting, and you know, gave it my all, and I got a callback.

[2:02] Leah Horowitz: And first of all, that the callback was, you know, for Trevor Nunn and for Simon Lee, who was the music supervisor.

[2:09] Leah Horowitz: My agent said, um, so they want a Shakespeare monologue.

[2:14] Leah Horowitz: I was like, what?

[2:17] Leah Horowitz: There's something you never get asked for in musical theater.

[2:21] Leah Horowitz: And it was literally for the next day.

[2:26] Leah Horowitz: Luckily, luckily, I had in the back of my brain a monologue I had done in high school, you know, and I wasn't far from high school.

[2:35] Leah Horowitz: I was really young at the time.

[2:36] Leah Horowitz: I was in my early 20s.

[2:37] Leah Horowitz: So I dug it up.

[2:38] Leah Horowitz: It was from Twelfth Night, Viola from Twelfth Night, you know, the famous monologue, um, which now I can't remember.

[2:45] Leah Horowitz: But I dug it up, went over it over and over and over it, went in the next day, um, did all of the Laura material for Tre and Trevor and Simon were lovely, super, uh, auditioning for Brits is a completely different experience.

[3:01] Leah Horowitz: They are so nice, they always come out from behind the table and shake your hand when you walk in the room, like lovely.

[3:09] Leah Horowitz: And then I did my monologue, and it was okay.

[3:13] Leah Horowitz: And then I'll never forget Trevor Nunn came around, came up real close to me and like spoke to me very quietly.

[3:21] Leah Horowitz: Uh, and you know, he's like a Shakespeare expert.

[3:25] Leah Horowitz: Spoke to me very quietly about the monologue and gave, I could not tell you now what he said, but whatever he said to me was like some sort of weird British voodoo magic that when I did the monologue again, it was like, I can't even tell you.

[3:25] Leah Horowitz: It was like I was emotional, and then I cried, and like it was like the most amazing monologue I've ever given in my whole life.

[3:51] Leah Horowitz: Whatever he did to me, I don't know.

[3:53] Leah Horowitz: So I left thinking like that was amazing, that went really well.

[3:58] Leah Horowitz: Thinking, like, oh, I think I have a good shot.

[4:01] Leah Horowitz: That night, about five o'clock, my agent calls and she's like, So they love you, Trevor loves you, but he thinks that you're really more of a Marian.

[4:12] Leah Horowitz: And he wants you to learn the Marian material and come back again tomorrow.

[4:16] Leah Horowitz: And again, I was like, Tomorrow, what?

[4:19] Leah Horowitz: And Marian is like much beltier, and she's the lead, and she's older, and I'm in my early 20s, and Maria Friedman is at that point, I think in her 40s, and I just was like dumbfounded, but I okay.

[4:33] Leah Horowitz: So I went over all of that and went in the next day and you know, did all of the Marian material, and I, you know, went well, I think, and then felt good about it.

[4:44] Leah Horowitz: And it did feel like more my personality, not if not vocal, it just felt like more me.

[4:50] Leah Horowitz: And then my agent called and she was like, Yeah, they want you to cover Marian.

[4:56] Leah Horowitz: She was like, but they want you to be a swing and cover Marian.

[5:03] Leah Horowitz: And I have to admit, I cried because I had been a swing on Millie, which was really, really hard, and then I had been a swing on Lakage right after that, which was much easier work-wise, but there had been a lot of drama about different things, and it had been hard in its own way.

[5:21] Leah Horowitz: And I really, really, like a lot of people who start as swings, I was really trying to climb out of that.

[5:27] Leah Horowitz: Like some people enjoy being swings and they are happy with it.

[5:33] Leah Horowitz: And some people, like I was good at it, but I wanted to move past it.

[5:37] Leah Horowitz: And I wanted to, I didn't like not being on.

[5:40] Leah Horowitz: I wanted to be in the show every night.

[5:42] Leah Horowitz: I wanted to feel, you know, this was before all of the Instagram, like, oh, swings are amazing.

[5:42] Leah Horowitz: You know, this was before all of that, before anybody knew what they were.

[5:51] Leah Horowitz: And it just to me felt very unacknowledged, very like you weren't quite part of the company.

[5:58] Leah Horowitz: So I cried, but I just, I wasn't gonna turn it down.

[5:58] Leah Horowitz: I wasn't gonna turn down a Broadway show and a chance to work with Trevor Nunn.

[6:05] Leah Horowitz: And I said, okay.

[6:07] Leah Horowitz: So yeah, that was kind of how it all started.

[6:11] Patrick Oliver Jones: And what was it like working with Lloyd Weber and Trevor Nunn during the rehearsal process?

[6:15] Leah Horowitz: Well, Andrew Lloyd Webber was not really around until we got into tech.

[6:22] Leah Horowitz: I think he came during tech.

[6:24] Leah Horowitz: And he would kind of sit in the front of the house and he would lean over the pit and talk to Kristen Blodgett or Simon about different things, but he didn't really, we didn't interact with him very much, honestly.

[6:36] Leah Horowitz: He was kind of shy, I think.

[6:38] Leah Horowitz: And Simon would tell us.

[6:40] Leah Horowitz: I remember one time during tech, we were all standing in like the backstage hallway in our costumes, like very obviously cast members, and he walked right past us and just like didn't say hi, and we were all kind of like, okay, you know.

[6:55] Leah Horowitz: But Simon told us over and over, like he loves you, just, you know, he's very shy, and you know, don't be offended if he doesn't like talk to you or anything.

[7:04] Leah Horowitz: So that's what we were told.

[7:06] Leah Horowitz: Trevor was wonderful.

[7:08] Leah Horowitz: We rehearsed it, I think New 42, probably in the early days of New 42, where it was just like everybody was like, This place is amazing.

[7:17] Leah Horowitz: And the first rehearsal, he just sat us all in chairs in a circle, and he basically gave us like a history lesson, which was fascinating.

[7:28] Leah Horowitz: He's wonderful to listen to.

[7:30] Leah Horowitz: Like you could listen to him talk for hours about theater.

[7:32] Leah Horowitz: And was it a history about the book?

[7:36] Leah Horowitz: And its relation to Wilkie Collins was a good friend and contemporary of Charles Dickens and talked a lot about that and historical context and just all sorts of wonderful things to kind of get us into it.

[7:49] Leah Horowitz: And then yeah, rehearsing with him was wonderful.

[7:52] Leah Horowitz: Watching him work with Maria, especially, because they had a great relationship, but just such a kind, smart, intuitive, like insightful man.

[8:02] Leah Horowitz: And Simon Lee, who was the music supervisor, and he taught us all the music, was just one of my favorite people ever.

[8:10] Leah Horowitz: Dry, hilarious, you know, like we would learn something and sing it, and he would be like, Well, that was terrible, you know.

[8:16] Leah Horowitz: But like so funny.

[8:18] Leah Horowitz: And you know, we could tell he loved us, and like I remember we all had to work on the ensemble.

[8:25] Leah Horowitz: We had to have like a Yorkshire accent, I think.

[8:28] Leah Horowitz: It was like a northern dialect.

[8:29] Leah Horowitz: So we did a lot of work on that.

[8:31] Leah Horowitz: Um, but yeah, rehearsals were great.

[8:33] Patrick Oliver Jones: Um, so like when did you audition for it and when did rehearsals begin?

[8:38] Leah Horowitz: Because it opened in November of 2005.

[8:41] Leah Horowitz: When I first auditioned, I was in Lakage.

[8:43] Leah Horowitz: So it must have been like June of 05.

[8:47] Leah Horowitz: Okay, so the summer before.

[8:49] Leah Horowitz: Then Lakage closed, and about a week after Lakage closed, I got a phone call saying, Can you jump into Fiddler on the Roof?

[8:57] Leah Horowitz: Which was it was the Alfred Molina, then Harvey Fierstein Fiddler.

[9:01] Leah Horowitz: They were like, Can you jump in?

[9:02] Leah Horowitz: Because we have like all these people out, and we just need like a temporary person to fill in for a month.

[9:08] Leah Horowitz: And I was like, okay.

[9:08] Leah Horowitz: So I jumped into that.

[9:10] Leah Horowitz: Then they kept me for a second month and they wanted me to stay longer, but I knew I had to start rehearsals for Woman in White.

[9:16] Leah Horowitz: So I left and had a week vacation and then started rehearsals for Woman in White.

[9:20] Leah Horowitz: That was like my craziest year.

[9:21] Leah Horowitz: Yeah.

[9:22] Leah Horowitz: And there were people who had auditioned back when I had, and then there were people who had auditioned like a few days before.

[9:29] Leah Horowitz: I don't really understand like how that happened.

[9:31] Leah Horowitz: But yeah, there were people who were like, Yeah, I just found out I got this the other day, and here I am, you know.

[9:36] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah.

[9:37] Patrick Oliver Jones: And then as you said, the three women came from London, uh, but also Michael Ball then joined the cast.

[9:43] Patrick Oliver Jones: What was it like working with Michael Ball and Maria?

[9:48] Leah Horowitz: Immediately.

[9:50] Leah Horowitz: She was and is just the most joyful and energetic, funny, like she's like vivacious.

[9:58] Leah Horowitz: Like we all, everybody loved her and just wanted to be around her all the time.

[10:04] Leah Horowitz: Um, I also just feel after working with her and a couple of other Brits I've worked with, I just feel like their attitude towards theater is different than ours.

[10:14] Leah Horowitz: Like they take it seriously, but they also don't.

[10:17] Leah Horowitz: They have this sense of like play and like being on stage with her, she was doing this incredibly dramatic role that had crying, but she was able to just goof around on stage, like she would turn her back to the audience and pull a face at you and make you laugh, and then turn around and she'd be back in character.

[10:35] Leah Horowitz: She was amazing like that.

[10:37] Leah Horowitz: And we just adored her.

[10:39] Leah Horowitz: She was just also just an open book and just got to know all of us and really was just the wonderful leader.

[10:46] Leah Horowitz: You know, the feeling of a show is often so dictated by the principles and how they act.

[10:52] Leah Horowitz: And yeah, yeah.

[10:53] Leah Horowitz: Michael Ball was nice, didn't hang out with us as much as she did, but I don't remember any problems with him.

[11:00] Leah Horowitz: The curious thing about Michael Ball, you've probably read this.

[11:06] Leah Horowitz: He left the show rather abruptly.

[11:10] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, it was some viral infections.

[11:12] Leah Horowitz: We were never really told what happened.

[11:14] Leah Horowitz: Then finally they told us he wasn't coming back.

[11:18] Leah Horowitz: And uh, the funny thing that I remember was I, we had done Secret Santa right before he left, and I was his secret Santa.

[11:26] Leah Horowitz: And I had worked very hard on it, and it was great because it drove him nuts.

[11:32] Leah Horowitz: He could not figure out who his secret Santa was.

[11:34] Leah Horowitz: I mean, I don't think he really knew who knew me very well, so why would he know?

[11:38] Leah Horowitz: But like I wrote these little like poems every few days, and I would like leave them under his door, and the poems would like lead him to where his gift was, which I totally copied during Millie, Christian Borle was my secret Santa, and he did something similar for me where he wrote me these incredible like installments of a detective story, which I still have them, which would lead me to a different dressing room, and then I would have to like beg the person to give me my present, and they would they would like pretend they didn't have it.

[12:05] Leah Horowitz: So I did kind of did that for him, and he was going around asking her who's my secret, and nobody would tell him.

[12:12] Leah Horowitz: Like the last thing I got him was like a massage gift certificate, and it was like, well, it's mine now.

[12:17] Leah Horowitz: Yes, yours is, yeah, it, the whole show, to be honest, after we, well, even before, but I was gonna say after Trevor left, I felt like the mood changed, but really before that, in previews, is when we all, when they told us that Maria had breast cancer.

[12:35] Leah Horowitz: And I think from then on, the show kind of felt a little bit like it was under a black cloud.

[12:41] Leah Horowitz: I remember the day they told us we were all like, they gathered us in the house during previews, and Maria wasn't there that day.

[12:48] Leah Horowitz: And they told us that she had breast cancer, and we were most of us were crying.

[12:52] Leah Horowitz: I mean, we loved her so much, and it was so upsetting, and, and also not to be selfish, but we were all kind of like, what's gonna happen?

[12:59] Leah Horowitz: You know, like she was the linchpin of the show.

[13:02] Leah Horowitz: She was really the big star performance, and we also were so sad for her, and also like this was really her, I think it was her Broadway debut.

[13:11] Leah Horowitz: Like she was this huge, huge star in London, like Bernadette Peters level.

[13:16] Leah Horowitz: But people here didn't really know her, and she was so, I mean, I haven't even gone into how wonderful she was in the show.

[13:23] Leah Horowitz: She, I mean, I watched her a lot because I was her understudy and I was a swing, so I could watch her from the house.

[13:29] Leah Horowitz: And I never got tired of watching her because she was so present and so alive, and she never was quite the same twice, but not in a bad way. I mean, she hit her marks, she she wasn't, you know, she wouldn't mess with anybody to like change her blocking or anything, but she was just so in the moment, it was it was just amazing to watch her every night and her dramatic turns and just everything was always so fresh. So, anyway, we all just really wanted that for her. And so she started going to radiation. Um, so she wouldn't do the matinees, I think. I think she didn't do Wednesday and Saturday matinees. Um, so Lisa Brescia went on for her. And there, and therefore, and since I was a swing, I would go on for Lisa.

So even though I was a swing, I was in the show at least twice a week, and usually more, because if other people were out, or you know, Maria would sometimes take other shows off if she was really tired. But the fact that she did like sometimes six shows a week while undergoing radiation, that tells you all you need to know about her. I mean, she was so brave and so on stage you never would have known. Well, yeah, because she had surgery, and I think it was like a week later she opened the show. Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah. I mean, she she loved us, she loved the show, she was so determined to do it. And uh, we were all trying to support her, but you know, it that was kind of a black cloud.

And then there started to be resentments among the B understudies because they were just very I I the shows I had done before, they would really kind of do it let take turns. They would do it evenly, like this person goes on, this person goes on. Like uh when I did Millie, if Sutton was out for a week, they would kind of divide the week evenly between her two understudies, you know. That was always how I had seen it done. And this was just very blatantly like, nope, you guys are not going on. And then the harder part for me was because Lisa was going on for Maria at least twice a week, they didn't have her do understudy rehearsals on Thursdays because I mean, rightly so. She why should we rehearse her?

She's going on, you know, twice a week. So I did Marion in every understudy rehearsal, every Thursday. I was marrying. And I was very, you know, very attached to the role and really like put my all into it. And it was um, it was very hard vocally, and I really was doing things that I had never done vocally, and I was really proud of what I was doing, and I felt like I was doing good work, and the just the anguish of like not getting to do it, you know. And when I would go to the stage manager, he he kind of wouldn't tell me why. Nobody would really tell me why. I mean, I knew that I didn't really have costumes. I think that might have been part of it. Like maybe they knew the show wasn't doing well and they didn't want to spare the expense to make costumes for the bee cast.

Um, I had a couple fittings where they would just kind of throw some random stuff on me that I could wear if that in an emergency. But yeah, none of us were ever quite told why. And um, my friend of my co-swing Laura, she also covered Jill, and um she never went on either. The neither of us ever went on. So we kind of shared that where we we were doing all this work together in rehearsal and never got to do it. And I think Danny Torres, who was kind of the B Walter, he did get to go on, and Courtney Glass was the B. Um sounds so awful to say she was the B, um, Anne Catrick, woman in white. She got to go on a couple times. But for the most part, I never yeah, we were never told. And it's interesting how stage managers, because they're they're really the ones who make that call generally, but yeah, it's interesting how they just uh will even that out sometimes and won't. I mean, the thing is you know when you're the bee, because like whenever I was on tour with Avita, our Perone was rarely out.

I th I think the one time he went out, because I was on only with the tour nine months, but the one time he went out, I was in Orlando, you know, I had family there, and they chose to put the other understudy on. It hurts it hurts. Yeah.

[17:47] Leah Horowitz: It's like, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, yeah. And it really shakes your confidence too, because you start thinking, like, am I not good? Are they not telling, are they not being honest with me and telling me, like, look, you're I mean, and and I was, I was really young. I was 20, I don't remember, 25, and I was much younger than Maria, and I was younger than Lisa. Lisa was closer to Maria's age, although not, you know, she was kind of in the middle, and I was like, but it was all speculation because nobody would really ever tell me. And yeah, no one ever tells us. And I often think if it had been a different stage manager, would he have been honest with us? But this this um stage manager just he just wasn't. He wouldn't tell us. So there was a lot of bitterness around that, you know.

[18:29] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, believe me. I felt that.

[18:31] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, I know. You mentioned this black cloud. Now, did the producers handle, you know, with her being out? Obviously, the empathetic thing to do is to care about that and make sure that she's well and the show will will survive without you, kind of mentality. But how did the producers handle it overall?

[18:47] Leah Horowitz: Well, her uh Maria's uh sister, Sonia was like her sister, okay, because I know Sonia Friedman. I'm I I know that name, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's her sister. And she's lovely. And in my memory, I think they were very supportive of Maria and whatever she needed to do. But uh the the other thing I really remember is it just felt like the show was not really promoted as much as you would think. Like, look at Bad Cinderella, this new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. And like, granted, we're in a new age of Instagram and TikTok and all this stuff, but to me, it feels like it's being heavily promoted, heavily marketed, you know. Um, it's that, you know, the new Andrew Lloyd Webber. He's a huge name.

And with Woman in White, it felt like, and I don't know why, but it felt like nobody knew about it. Like at the I remember at the time, if I went to like a party or somewhere where they were there were non-theater people, somebody would say to me, Oh, what do you do? Oh, I'm an actor and I'm in a Broadway show. Oh, you're in a Broadway show. Which one? I'd say the woman in white and just be like blank stare. Like, no, you know, it was like, yeah, maybe we were on a couple of buses. There were a couple billboards, but like, and I think Maria maybe sang on like one talk show, maybe the today show, I don't even remember. We just weren't out there. And um it just was so odd to me that it was like a waste, you know.

Like, because, you know, I was listening to the sound, the cast album the other day, the London cast album, because we never made one. I was listening to it to kind of try and jog my memories, and it's not a bad show. It's really not. Uh, it's melodramatic, severely melodramatic, but that's really the source material is very melodramatic and it's very um moody. It's a really wonderful, twisty story. Granted, they did they did change it a lot from the original book. The original book is wonderful, everybody should read it. It's considered, I think, the first true.

[20:59] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was reading that gothic detective story or something. And you know, Wilkie Collins and Dickens were friends, and Dickens was reportedly like very influenced by Wilkie Collins. They had to change it. You know, obviously, there's so much in the book that they had to simplify it and change a few things. But really, like it has some beautiful melodies. David Zippel wrote some really clever, funny lyrics. The story really like moves along, um, has some real great twists, has a big twist at the end. There was no reason that people should have not at least gotten they they couldn't have gotten butts in the seats for it, you know.

[21:38] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I I was reading the reviews for it, and the the music, of course, it's Andrew Lloyd Webber, so they're gonna comment on that. It was kind of mixed. Some some called it a shimmering delicacy. Whereas whereas others said it was stuck in repetitive overdrive, you know, that he borrowed not only from like Gilbert and Sullivan, but he borrowed from himself.

[21:57] Leah Horowitz: Which Andrew Webber was known for doing. That's what he had.

[21:59] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, he always borrows from his classics. Was the music under constant revision during rehearsals, or was it pretty set?

[22:06] Leah Horowitz: Because it had already done London, so I assume I remember the music being pretty set. I really don't remember a lot of changes. It honestly felt, especially since our three female leads had done it in London for a year, I think at least. So it really just felt like they were picking it up and putting it down on Broadway, and just you know, at times it was like a little weird because the women had just done it with a different cast, and sometimes they would be like, Oh, the person in your track in London did it this way. You know, there were like conversations like that where you know, they would have to get used to us because we were it was we must have been weird for them to be picked up and plumped down with a different company. Um, but yeah, I I think they pretty much did the same show they did in London. I think in London it it did better in London, you know.

[22:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I mean, obviously opened before.

[22:56] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, but then it also came I think it closed after.

[22:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yes.

[22:58] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, it closed after your production.

[23:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: Correct.

[23:05] Leah Horowitz: The woman in White with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The romantic and spectacular new musical, The Woman in White. Starring the original Phantom, Michael Crawford. Now playing at the Palace Theatre London. Featuring Lloyd Webber's best score in years, this stunning new production is a dazzling white hit.

[23:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now, with it being such a British musical, was there any effort to make it more Americanized or any changes that you know about?

[23:42] Leah Horowitz: I don't think they made any changes to Americanize it. No. No. It was, I mean, the book and everything is it's so thoroughly British. And I don't think there was anything in it that was not understandable to American audiences.

[23:56] Leah Horowitz: I mean, I'm sure that you were gonna ask me about this, but I think a big thing that polarized people about it was the set.

[24:03] Patrick Oliver Jones: Right. I was just about to ask about that because most of the reviews that I read raved about it. There were a few that said it distracted, but most of what I read, it was innovative and they loved it, and it was just this new video thing that hadn't really been done on stage before.

[24:17] Leah Horowitz: It was brand new technology. So the set was basically kind of like a giant, almost like a donut, right? So a s kind of a circular wall that went all the way up. And for most of the show, the the two front walls that faced the audience could open up like this. So for most of the show, it really looked like a semicircle that had a couple of doors built into it. And within the middle of the donut was a turntable. And then the set, I should I shouldn't say the set, I guess the backgrounds were projected onto it in an innovative way. They the projector was not out in the house. The projector was up above. And it would project kind of at a sharp angle down onto the wall. So you could get pretty close to the wall before your body interfered with the projector stream.

But you know, we were taught how close we could get, you know, we we had to keep a certain distance from the projector. But like certain some of the projections moved. Like there was a projection when we were all out at a picnic and we were in front of like a burbling stream or like waterfall thing was moving, or like in the London sequences in the second act, there would be like shadowy figures walking back and forth. Like it was pretty cool. And then the um sometimes the front walls of the donut would close and they would project onto the front of it, like you project a house, and then there was an actual door that you could walk through, which didn't always work.

[25:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I did. I was just about to say, as with anything technical, there must be times.

[25:58] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, there were times when things would not work. And um, there was this one scene when when I was on for Lisa, Lisa had this track of a prostitute. She would walk with I think Marion and Walter in front of those closed walls, and there was a door that she would take out a key and pretend to open the door and like walk them through the door. But sometimes if something went wrong with the set, the door would automatically lock. It was like a safety feature where if something wasn't working right, it would lock to like protect the actors. So you get to the door and pretend to try to open it and it's not opening. So then you would kind of shrug and just walk off into the wings, you know. And then I think a couple times they might have had to stop the show because they couldn't get the front of the donut to open, like it got stuck. Or I feel like that happened. Also, one night we had somebody die in the audience, but that's a whole other story.

[26:52] Leah Horowitz: I mean, that happens sometimes. That was awful. Um, but yeah, so the set was polarizing, and the polarizing part was at the very end of the show. I almost said spoiler alert. That's so stupid. Um, the show begins and ends on train tracks. There's a station agent, and it begins and ends on the train tracks. At the beginning, there's this whole, you know, prophecy that something bad's gonna happen. And at the end, it does happen. This train comes, and it's been a long time, so I can't remember. The train kills somebody, one of the villains. I think it kills Percival Glide or something. When the train came at the end, it was an amazing effect where, if you're sitting in the audience, the train would come and almost seem to come straight towards you.

People would duck, you know, like people in the front rows would actually flinch. It would kind of come straight towards you and then kind of veer at the last second off to the side. Um, but some people said that the projections made them dizzy, so that kind of didn't help that word was spreading around, you know, that like, oh, the projections make me dizzy, but that's also a very subjective thing. It depends on where you were sitting, how they looked, you know. I felt they worked better from further back, but maybe if you were sitting up front, maybe they would be a little overwhelming. Well, yeah, it's the same thing if you sit in the front row of an IMAX theater.

[28:30] Patrick Oliver Jones: Exactly. And so, what was it like the first time? Because obviously in rehearsals, you don't have this huge set. So, what was it like the first time when you got on stage and finally had all this tech around you?

[28:43] Leah Horowitz: The tech process was, I remember the tech process being very long and arduous for this show because the projections had to be so precise, the lighting had to be just right. This was another thing that you might have seen mentioned in reviews, and a lot of people had a problem with it was a very dimly lit show because of the projections. Um, because of the projections, you couldn't brightly light the stage because it would wash them out, you know. There was a lot of kind of focused lighting and spots, but the funny part was, again, I got to watch it a lot as a swing. The ensemble was basically in shadow for most of the show because they would light the leads. So you could see them, but the ensemble, I mean, watching from the house, half the time you couldn't tell one person from another.

It was like a bunch of faceless people because we were often kind of in the shadows. Um, we were almost like part of the set, it felt like, you know. And I think that's another thing that kind of put the show under a black cloud, is I think that a lot of people in the ensemble started feeling like, why am I here? You know, like I'm in a shadow the whole show. Like nobody can even see what I'm doing. Like it was there was just as it went on, I think there was a lot of kind of like grumbling, and you know, understandably, it was just it was very different um situation than most people are than you're used to. You're used to like everybody's up on this brightly lit stage, and we were kind of lurking in the shadows a lot.

So it had its pluses and minuses. The other thing I remember about tech was our costumes were very period appropriate, they were very historically correct. So the women all wore corsets under our costumes, real corsets, lace up, you know, they were very uncomfortable. And in tech, we wore them for hours. And like, can you imagine? Like tech is usually like you have those 10 out of 12s. We were in a corset for, I mean, like that was the kind of show where like you had to learn like don't eat too close to the show, like you're gonna be in this corset, and then we'd have these like heavy, you know, everything was it was almost like they had built the costumes to like they weren't thinking about that. We were in a show, performance eight times a week.

[31:14] Patrick Oliver Jones: Eight times a week, yeah.

[31:16] Leah Horowitz: They were not built for comfort, you know. They're very heavy materials. Was that the same from London? Do you know? Did you know if it was?

[31:21] Patrick Oliver Jones: I think they were the same, yeah.

[31:23] Leah Horowitz: In the pictures, they look exactly the same, you know. The other costume thing I remember was that there's one of the ensemble numbers is called Lamest Tide. Early in the show, and it's this festival Lamist Tide, and we're all singing this song, which I will tell you that the whole cast thought sounded like the Macarena. And if you listen to the recording, you'll hear what I mean. Right, don't be such a bones in the ring. And the choreography was very fast and lots of like jumping all around. And we're all trying to sing this song, and we're jumping all around doing this fast choreography, and the women are wearing corsets and these heavy, heavy dresses on top of that. And it was like, it took us a while to be able to do it.

Like once we had the costumes, it was like a whole other ball game, you know. Um, and we also had some crazy quick changes that were like 30 seconds. Um, and the funniest one was there was a change into there's like a casino scene that's very short in the second act where Glide and Fosco, I think, are at this craps table, and the women are dressed in these beautiful, like kind of fancy, like not prostitute dresses, but kind of like women who would hang out in a casino, not proper women, but like these elaborate dresses and these hats, and just like we had a very quick change into that, and maybe a quick change out of it. And after I watched that scene as a swing from the audience, I came back and said to all the women, I was like, I hate to tell you guys this, but you guys are completely in the dark in that scene.

Like it was like what it just felt like so. Every time we did that change, we're like, here we go, putting on these beautiful costumes that nobody can even see. You know, it was that was that was a wild one. Um, yeah, the costumes took a lot of getting used to.

[33:30] Patrick Oliver Jones: If yeah, did the choreography have to change from the rehearsal to once you actually got?

[33:30] Leah Horowitz: No, they did not change the choreography. We just had to get used to it, and that song always sounded completely breathless. Everybody just sounded like, you know, it was just that's that was the way it was, you know, it did not get changed. Now we talked about this briefly, so you know a lot of emphasis has been placed these days on understudies, swings, and their importance to show. What was the general mood back then? How important did you feel the understudies?

[33:49] Leah Horowitz: Um, I can't speak for them. I think the A understudies who went on probably felt a lot better than the B understudies did. I mean, that's I imagine the B crew we just felt it was just felt very thankless. I mean, we were working real hard at our rehearsals, and we were having a great time together at rehearsals, and then we just never got to do it. And you know, I'm from New York, so like talk about you're talking about wanting to do it for your family. I mean, I really wanted to do it for my family and friends. Like, you know, I'd been telling my parents all about it, and like my parents never got to see me do it, you know, it was just like, and they're really important to me. Again, there was just a lot of like there was a lot of bad feeling backstage, you know, I think because of that like most of us bonded like nothing else, you know, like some of those people are still like my dear friends.

If I see any of them, we give each other huge hugs. I mean, we all kind of went through it felt like we went through a bit of a war. Like we it was the fact that we were in this show that was not doing well, and everybody was kind of like, you know, felt um kind of like they were doing thankless things and it bonded us, and we had, I think the more serious a show you're in, the sillier you are backstage. So we had a lot of fun and we laughed a lot, and you know, we played apples to apples in the green room all the time, and we giggled and goofed around, and you know, it wasn't all, you know, terrible. But I just think I think the overall feeling was of disappointment because we had all thought that we had booked this surefire hit that was gonna be like, you know, the next fan, not the next phantom, but like, you know, we thought it was gonna run.

And I think we all thought it was, I mean, I thought it was a decent show and very interesting and different. And then when that didn't happen, and Maria was sick and like everything just started, you know, and then Michael didn't come back, and it was just kind of a slow slide down, and then abruptly we were told we were closing, and it was, you know, it was a hard time.

[36:16] Patrick Oliver Jones: What was that meeting like? Then I mean, did anyone expect what was about to be said?

[36:20] Leah Horowitz: I don't think any of us was completely surprised because, you know, I think we all were aware like the houses were getting tinier and tinier, the balcony was often empty. Um, we were aware, we were all watching the grosses. We but I feel like the producers had like just a few weeks before, you know, been very encouraging and they would sometimes bring us like baskets of bagels and you know, oh you guys are doing great and everything. Like it was like they weren't really telling us what was going on and they weren't being totally transparent. And so then they showed up one day and you know, told us we were closing, and I think we all felt a little bit like you could have leveled with us a few weeks ago, you know, like we're all adults, you know, there were a few Broadway debuts, but a lot of us had been around the block or been in other shows like we weren't it wasn't really a cast of babies. Um, so they could have been more honest, but I don't know, I'm sure in their minds they thought that they were sparing us, and they, you know, I'm sure they had their own reasons.

[37:22] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, in reading just, uh, it was interesting as I was reading the closing notices and Bob Boyette, I mean, he is just like Pollyanna Bubbles and Sunshine. And I was like, okay, your show's not doing well, your show is closing, it's been two months. It's always just interesting to hear people just put a nice little bow on a pig. I'm like this is, yeah, and that seems clueless almost.

[37:41] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, and now that you say that, I remember Bob Boyet and like, yeah, I think that's what it was. I think that they were kind of telling us like everything's great. Even though we knew it wasn't because we could see the small crowds. But then when your producer tells you like, oh don't worry, everything's fine, you want to believe your producer. You know, they know more than you do about what's really happening, and you don't want to believe that your show is gonna close after two months, you know.

[38:14] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, yeah, that tracks.

[38:14] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, and Judy Kuhn was going to be coming into the show. Did you ever rehearse with her or totally forgot about that?

[38:23] Leah Horowitz: Yes, she came in and was I think we did rehearse with her because I remember meeting her and I remember like, yeah. And then I remember her kind of joking that, you know, that she closed the show or something. But it's funny because I ended up years later, a couple years later, I went into Lay Miz in 2007, fall 2007. I went into Lay Miz the same day. It was me, Judy, uh, I was Cosette, Judy was Fontine, and uh, John Owen Jones came in as um as uh Valjean. So we all came in the same day. And about a week or two after we joined the cast, they gathered us all together and said we you're closing in January. And I remember, I think I remember Judy joking about how like, oh, I could close shows, you know, which obviously not true, but like, yeah, she was she's very sweet and was like a very good sport about it. But yeah, I had totally forgotten that.

[39:18] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I had blocked that out. Did she go through the whole rehearsal or was it stopped before she?

[39:20] Leah Horowitz: She probably rehearsed for like, she probably did rehearse for a couple weeks, yeah. And um, and also um Jennifer Hope Wills came in. I think she came in and replaced Elena Shadow in the ensemble and then to cover Jill. She came in, I think only a few weeks before we closed.

[39:44] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah.

[39:45] Leah Horowitz: So they, I mean, they were doing things as if we were gonna keep going, right?

[39:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, and you know, thinking about it now, now that I'm older and like know how things work more. That's the other thing. I feel like I was so young and still so green that I really didn't yet understand like the nuts and bolts of like how Broadway is run. I think I understand better now. I'm sure they wanted to make it run until the Tonies.

[40:09] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, yeah, that's the goal. They wanted Maria to get a nomination, they wanted nominations. So yeah, that's the goal of every show, especially when you open like what we opened it in December, I think.

[40:18] Leah Horowitz: November, yeah.

[40:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: November.

[40:20] Leah Horowitz: So yeah, I'm sure in their minds they were just trying everything they could to get us there. And I guess maybe abruptly they were like, we can't string it out anymore. Probably the money ran out or something.

[40:30] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, balconies are empty.

[40:33] Leah Horowitz: That's it's never a good sign. Yeah, and the marquees, marquee is a big theater and it looks pretty empty when it's empty.

[40:39] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, what was it like being in the marquee as far as that experience about you know from dressing room backstage on stage? What was what was that theater like?

[40:46] Leah Horowitz: Well, I've done seven Broadway shows and five of them have been in the marquee. So you know I think I might I might hold the record, or I'm one of the people who's been there the most. So I mean, the marquee gets a lot of flack because it is a newer theater, and people say it just looks like a conference center that's got no, you know, it's got no charm, it's got no personality, and you know, I guess that's all true. But like I think for an actor, I mean, then when I did a couple other shows in other theaters and saw the difference, you know, Le Miz was in the Broadhurst, which is a much older theater. Like the marquee is kind of great because the dressing rooms are pretty big. It's got an actual green room up on the second floor.

Um, it has a couple of dressing rooms on the ground floor that were for the principals, like right off stage. Um, you have to climb a bit of stairs to get up to like the highest level of dressing rooms, but nothing like some of those older theaters where you're climbing like six flights of stairs and it's all like cramped. The wing space is pretty generous. Um, the backstage, the wings were always freezing in the winter. Like I don't know why, but there would, I guess it's just there were just cracks where the outside air would get in. So like often if it was a dance show, they would have to put space heaters in the wings, and the dancers would all just like huddle around the space heaters and stretch and stuff in front of the space heaters. Which is interesting because I did research that it was like that from day one. And the dancers were always complaining about it being so cold on the stage.

[42:15] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah.

[42:15] Leah Horowitz: I mean, it definitely has its faults, but I don't know. I'm sentimental about it. I'm probably the wrong person to ask because it's yeah, I consider it like my home. And like it was always so wild to like book a show that and then find out that I was back in there again and just be like, what dressing room am I gonna be in this time? You know, I kind of love that theater, but I just have a lot of good memories there.

[42:37] Patrick Oliver Jones: And uh what five shows have you done there then?

[42:39] Leah Horowitz: So I did Millie, Lakage, Woman in White, and then later I did White Christmas and Follies was there too.

[42:46] Patrick Oliver Jones: That's right, Follies was there.

[42:47] Leah Horowitz: Yeah. When we did we did Follies at the Kennedy Center, everybody told us you're not moving, don't think that you're gonna move, you're definitely not moving. And then they told us that we were moving, and then they said you're gonna be in the marquee. And I think I about like fell over. I couldn't believe it. It's like so crazy that I was gonna be back there. So I think the marquee is a tricky theater because I mean they've moved the box office now, so it's a little more visible, but the box office used to be very hard to find. It was on Times Square, and you had to kind of know to go in these like little revolving doors and then the actual theaters in a hotel, and like it's not it just wasn't as visible as other theaters, you know.

So, like that I think has always worked against it. That like it's confusing to tourists, like where is the marquee? You know, like how do I get there? And you have to go in this hotel and go up to the second floor. Like it's it's bizarre when you think about it. So I think that's always kind of worked against it. But yeah, other than that, I'm not really sure why it has such a bad track record. Um, I think Follies did well. I honestly think that Follies could have run longer, but we were always only gonna be there for a limited amount of time because of Vita was coming in. So we we were forced to leave. But like I think that's why we then went to LA for like six weeks because we still had momentum, you know. We had a lot of people loved it. We had people coming back over and over, you know. Um but yeah, Millie ran for I think over two years. Um I don't know if it recouped though.

[44:16] Leah Horowitz: No, no, it did not. In fact, I think Me and My Girl is the only show that recouped every other show has not. So financially, there's that there's only been one success story at Marquee. But still, Victor Victoria, Millie, these are shows that have lived on and and you know obviously great shows.

[44:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: Um, we didn't talk about the animals in the show.

[44:39] Leah Horowitz: Oh, okay. Do you know how to do that?

[44:41] Patrick Oliver Jones: Everything I read, everything I read mentioned no animals.

[44:44] Leah Horowitz: Oh, yes. Okay, okay, so about animals. So the character of Fosco, who's um Michael Crawford in London and Michael Ball in New York, he's one of the villains, but he's like a very charming villain. But he's they put him in a fat suit because he's supposed to be enormously fat. So poor Michael Ball had to wear this like fat suit and like I think like a facial thing too. It's like a whole it doesn't even look like him. Um sure it was very uncomfortable. Um, and don't blame him for not coming back. Um Fosco has he's very weird eccentric character, and he has all of these birds and mice and rats as pets. Um so for most of the show, he's he's just you see him, he has a a pet mouse that he like talks to in his hand, but then he'll like tell the mouse, like, oh, you hide, and he puts the mouse in his clothing.

Like, like the mouse, the mouse or the rat comes out at certain moments, and then in the second act, there's a whole long sequence in his house where Marion goes to his house and she's trying to like seduce him to get information out of him. And in his house, there's bird cages and cages with rats and mice, and they were all real animals. And then there was this one rat who was supposed to do this trick where Michael would hold his arms out, like straight out, and the rat would be on one hand, and then at Michael's queue, the rat would run along his arm, I think around his back, and then down the other arm to his other hand. The rat did not always do it. So it worked about 50% of the time. So we had one of the dressing rooms was the animals' room.

Funnily enough, I think it was the dressing room where Elaine Page later was to be followed. I remembered it as the animal. So there was all like bird cages and rats and mice. And like we had Bill Berlone, who's like the Broadway animal guy, and his trainers, like they one of them was always there with the animals, and we would go in and visit them and get to like look at them. And I mean, they were very cute. I mean, I know rats are like the rats, but like they were trained nice rats and mice. But yeah, very another bizarre aspect to the woman in white was we had rodents and birds.

[47:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: Like literally everything I read about it mentioned nothing about these live animals.

[47:13] Leah Horowitz: That's so that's very interesting.

[47:15] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, I mean, I I mean, honestly, I'd forgotten about it until I was listening to the recording, and I was like, Oh, oh yeah, because he's like in the recording. He's like he he talks to little friends. You know, like he's very weird character, but like part of what makes the story really cool. Like he's very odd and interesting. And he definitely like has a big crush on Marion and just finds her amazing, but he's also like completely evil and nefarious, you know.

[47:39] Leah Horowitz: Yeah.

[47:40] Patrick Oliver Jones: Um, but yeah, that was so interesting.

[47:42] Leah Horowitz: Yeah. My last question will be about the producers again, Bob Boyette and his Pollyanna Sunshine. It was mostly mentioned that of the hundred and so performances, only 31 had the full cast.

[47:56] Patrick Oliver Jones: Wow.

[47:56] Leah Horowitz: Only 31 times was the full cast actually in. So the medical issues and the revolving cast with you know the mixed reviews, those are the two reasons that the show closed. That's what he said.

[48:07] Patrick Oliver Jones: Which is very interesting that it was blamed on medical issues that why the show was.

[48:13] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, yeah. And and uh look, I don't want to put words at her mouth, um, but I recall I feel like I recall Maria being annoyed by that because she was really giving her all and she knew that we were all giving our all. So to blame any of it on us, yeah. Now that you mention that, I I do that's another reason why everybody was kind of bitter, because we were all there doing what we could and to blame any of it on us, and especially Maria, and again, we were all very protective of her and loved her, and so for any of it to be blamed on her, it's like I mean, it's akin to like when they blamed Audra for shuffle along closing.

[48:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: Just thinking of that.

[48:51] Leah Horowitz: I was like, she got pregnant, so we gotta close the ship.

[48:53] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, yeah. And like, especially since she was already contracted to leave at a certain point, like it had nothing to do with that. I mean, that's that was such a travesty. But yeah, um, it was a big education on expectations versus real life. And for me, it was a really big lesson in any time you book a big job like that, it never goes the way you think it's gonna go. Like you really have to temper your expectations and just be happy to be there because you know, Lakage too. I really thought when I booked it. I mean, I knew that show from like a community theater had done it when I was growing up. I knew it was a great show. And when I booked that, I thought, oh, this is gonna run forever. And it didn't, you know. So I think that was for me, Woman in White was very much part of my like growing up process of realizing like things are not always gonna be what you think. And I had to really like learn to roll with it a little bit.

[49:52] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, yeah, I mean, I think that even in London wasn't like this amazing great show that just has to come to Broadway. I think it was the Lord Weber name. I think that's the reason why it got any attention.

[50:02] Leah Horowitz: Yeah, and I also have to think uh again, this is my conjecture, but I have to think that Maria and Sonia and everybody around Maria were probably like, Maria is so amazing. This is such a star-making performance. We want America to see this. We want we want her to get to do this in New York. I have to think that was part of bringing it here. I really do. Because it it really was like her show. Again, it's it's just like, and then she was nominated for a Tony.

[50:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: No.

[50:35] Leah Horowitz: She wasn't?

[50:36] Patrick Oliver Jones: No, no, just the score.

[50:37] Leah Horowitz: The score was the was the one and only nomination.

[50:40] Patrick Oliver Jones: Oh man, I for some reason I remember her being nominated, and then we were all she was nominated for the Olivier.

[50:45] Leah Horowitz: Oh, okay. Maybe it was that we hoped she would be nominated so that she would get to like perform on the Tonies or something, but that she she didn't. Like there was no performance or anything, you know.

[50:55] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, it all just kind of fizzled.

[50:58] Leah Horowitz: But I think they did it in London a few years ago, not long ago.

[51:03] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, 2017, they brought it back up.

[51:04] Leah Horowitz: They brought it back and they did like a smaller, more contained, and I really wish I had just flown over to see that because I was dying to see it done in a different way and to see how it worked and like listening to it again. I really again, I still think there's a show there, and I still think that somebody should do it someday. Like do it off Broadway and like just you wouldn't need the projections. You wouldn't, you know, they're not needed. You could find a creative way to do it. But I I think that the story's so cool, and I think some of the songs are like completely beautiful. I really do.

[51:38] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, well, thank you so much, Leah. I'm so glad that you're giving me, I mean, like the animals, like at the things I didn't know about. So I'm glad you gave me some some background info on this.

[51:48] Leah Horowitz: I have to say, I was like, I I think I told you after the show closed, I honestly like I almost wanted to like leave the business because I I just had like two bad experiences in a row. Like Lakage was not great, and this was like, and I was like, maybe I should just like move to Minneapolis and get married and you know, like because I was just so like dis disillusioned about Broadway. I was just so like I did go about a year after that without really doing anything big, and then I got lay mis and things picked up again. But uh yeah, I think I bought that show, but yeah, exactly. I did it for well, but I did like four lay mises in a row because the first lay Miz I booked was at the Muni, and then I went right to the bottom one, and then I went right to Lincolnshire, and then I about a year later I did it at Tuts.

So I did four Cosettes in a row, and that really like picked things up for me. But but yeah, I had kind of blocked out a lot of woman in white stuff, and this made me really like kind of go back and remember. And then I was texting my friend Justice, and it was her Broadway debut, and the only Broadway show she ever did. So we were texting about it. And so it's been nice to kind of like with distance. I can yeah.

[53:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: As always, thank you to my co-producer Dan Delgado, as well as Maria Clara Ribeiro. Join us next time as we explore the world of composer Frank Wildhorn and his various journeys to closing night.