This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Michael Reidel: Hey everyone, my name is Michael Reidel, and you're listening to the Theatre Geeks Anonymous Podcast.

[0:07] Ebony Vines: Welcome to Theatre Geeks Anonymous, the podcast about Broadway flops, scandals, and new work.

[0:15] Pamela Shandrow: I'm your host, Ebony Vines.

[0:17] Pamela Shandrow: And I'm your host, Pamela Shandrow.

[0:20] Ebony Vines: Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Theatre Geeks Anonymous Podcast on the Broadway Podcast Network and all your favorite podcast listening apps.

[0:30] Pamela Shandrow: Thank you.

[0:33] Ebony Vines: Hey geeks. Welcome to this special episode of Theatre Geeks Anonymous.

[0:38] Ebony Vines: We're so excited for you to hear this interview with our guest about his new book, Singular Sensation, The Triumph of Broadway.

[0:47] Ebony Vines: Michael Reidel has been the theater columnist for the New York Post since 1998.

[0:52] Ebony Vines: New York magazine has called his column a must-read for the theater world.

[0:56] Ebony Vines: Some of you may know him from the PBS show Theater Talk, which he co-hosted with Susan Haskins for 25 years.

[1:03] Ebony Vines: Michael began his radio career as a regular on the Imus in the Morning Show in 2011.

[1:08] Ebony Vines: And in 2017, WOR, New York's oldest and highest-rated station, asked him to co-host its morning show with well-known sportscaster Len Berman.

[1:19] Ebony Vines: The Len Berman and Michael Reidel in the Morning Show is the highest-rated morning radio program in the New York City area.

[1:26] Ebony Vines: Michael's book Razzle Dazzle, The Battle for Broadway, won the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing in 2015 and is widely considered to be the successor to William Goldman's celebrated 1967 book about Broadway, The Season.

[1:41] Ebony Vines: A graduate of Columbia University, Michael lives in the West Village.

[1:46] Ebony Vines: We are so happy to have him here today. The man who is the impetus for our podcast, Michael Reidel.

[1:54] Pamela Shandrow: Woo! Uh, I just I wanted to let you know that when I was a kid, I started watching Theater Talk back in Maryland.

[2:03] Pamela Shandrow: And I would stay up until one o'clock in the morning because that's when it would come on.

[2:10] Pamela Shandrow: And my mom would she'd come downstairs and she would be like, Ebony, it is after midnight. You need to go to bed.

[2:16] Pamela Shandrow: And I was like, No, mom, I have to watch Theater Talk.

[2:20] Pamela Shandrow: And she would let me, even though I was like a kid and should be in bed.

[2:25] Michael Reidel: Well, the funny thing about that, Ebony, was it started in New York in the early 90s, and there were these free cable stations. It was like the Manhattan Network Cable Station. I don't really understand what it was about, but somehow my partner back then, Susan Haskins, and I, we said, Well, why don't we create a show about Broadway that's kind of like just the kind of fun, the gossipy, have the critics on, the columnists on to talk about what's really going on behind the scenes.

[2:56] Michael Reidel: So when we started Theater Talk back in the early 90s, we had no money. I mean, we had no money whatsoever. And we never had any money because there was always nonprofit, so I never made a dime off the whole thing. But it was just kind of fun. But we would have to find these kind of scrunchy, slightly sleazy little studios in Chelsea to take the thing. And I remember we shared a studio with, and back in the day, and you, Pamela, and you, Ebony, are too young for this, but there used to be these phone sex ads on late-night television on the Manhattan cable network. And we would share the studio with the, shall we say, the performers who would roll around on the beds in the studio with the phone cord and saying, you know, give me a call, baby.

[3:54] Michael Reidel: And I remember once, Susan Haskins, who was my co-creator of Theater Talk, she came in and there was some woman who was tangled up in a phone cord saying 9975 for a good time, who was doing lines of coke next. And she said, You have to get off this bed because we have Edward Albee, the author of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, coming in in 10 minutes. And so somehow we managed to do a Theater Talk show with Edward Albee just right up against the bumper for the porn phone call.

[4:32] Michael Reidel: So I will say that based on your chapters about Edward Albee, I'm sure that he would have gotten a kick out of that.

[4:40] Pamela Shandrow: Oh, he would have loved it, yeah.

[4:42] Michael Reidel: I mean, Edward was a great friend of mine. I mean, I met him when I was at Columbia and he was teaching class there. So this would have been about 1986 when he was really in the wilderness. Of course, you know, he wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and A Delicate Balance, but his career had kind of been finished. And so he was taking jobs to make money, teaching at places like Johns Hopkins and Columbia. And I was in love with this girl, and she wanted to be an actress, and she took this class with one Edward Albee, who I'd never heard of him before. I really hadn't, I was not a theater guy. And I thought, well, if she's gonna take the class, I want to take the class because, you know, I'd like to be around her.

[5:27] Michael Reidel: So I went to the library, the big old stacks at Columbia. And I took down, I went to, you know, Albee. Hey. Went to the A. Albany. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Oh, I better read this because I have to audition to be in this class to be with this girl I want to see. And I kid you not, guys. I sat down, I started reading Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And I kept thinking, I've never read anything like this before. I sat there in the stacks of the Columbia Library, and I read the whole thing cover to cover, and I thought, oh my God. These people, George and Martha, who they want to kill each other, but they love each other at the same time. I thought this is the most brilliant thing I've ever read. So I thought, I have to meet this Mr. Edward Albee guy.

[6:20] Michael Reidel: So I remember the poster on the bulletin board, you know, a long time ago, a bulletin board was you have to have a monologue to audition for the class. I was like, well, what's a monologue? So I went to the Columbia bookstore and I looked in the theater department said monologues. So I took down this Dylan Thomas monologue about some anthropological professor. And I thought, well, Dylan Thomas, never heard of him before. But he says he's Welsh. I didn't even know Welsh was, but I guess English. What the hell did I know? I'm a kid from upstate New York. I don't know anything, you know. I know I was going to sleep with a girl who's going to get in Edward Albee's class, and I want to be there too. So there you go.

[7:06] Michael Reidel: I thought, well, he's I guess he's English or Welsh, whatever he is. So I remember going to audition for Edward Albee. This is 1986, 87. And I do this ridiculous monologue with an English accent. Or I won't is a room sum, whatever. I remember Edward, back in those days, he wore this leather jacket and he had that, you know, that gunslinger mustache that all the gay people on Christopher Street had in the 70s. They said, do that again, but lose the accent. And I did it, and he cast me in the play.

[7:50] Michael Reidel: Wow. And we became kind of friendly over the years. And I have to say, for my book Singular Sensation, The Triumph of Broadway, the chapter I'm the most pleased with was the chapter on Edward Albee. I knew him when he was cast out of the kingdom, but nobody, nobody would give him the time of this man who wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Delicate Balance, The Zoo Story. I mean, some great plays of the 20th century. He was finished. He was over. And I got to be kind of friendly with him. And I would interview him from time to time when he had a new little off-Broadway play at the Daily News. I was a reporter back in those days. But nothing ruffled him. He was like, you know, Michael, he once said to me, he said, you know, they like you, and then they don't. But what was the quote from him? It's something about popularity and excellence and them not having a great relationship. Like that actually stood out to me quite a lot.

[8:48] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah, because I think, yeah, it's really easy, I think, to lose, you know, to fall from grace in this business. You know, one off spoken comment, you know, and then suddenly, you know, you can't get a job anywhere, and it's unfortunate.

[9:03] Michael Reidel: Yeah, I know. I mean, he was cast out of the kingdom, but you have to understand with Edward Albee that he had this difficult issue with his mother. She never accepted his homosexuality. And she turned him out of the house. And then she died in the late 80s, early 90s. And Edward wrote a play and he sent it to me. And it was called Three Tall Women. He said, You know, what do you make of this? And this is a totally true story. I read the play and I called him and I said, I think this is your new Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Because he fundamentally understood what it was like to be brought up by an evil, wicked mother like that. But after she died, after he took care of her to the end of her life, he told me he said, You know, I learned something about her. I hated her my whole life. But at the end of her life, I found something new in me, and that was pity.

[10:04] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah.

[10:05] Michael Reidel: And Three Tall Women is a great, great play about a monstrous woman, and yet there's something about her who's a survivor. Everything. And you kind of do like her at the end. There's another story that reminds me now of what we're just talking about with Elaine Stritch and having her be, you know, cast in as Claire. And you know, this alcoholic when she was an alcoholic and now she's recovered. And there was a lot of leeway that was given to her by at least one of the people involved, you know, because this the backstory shows that, you know, she's actually doing a really incredibly brave thing right now by, you know, by kind of confronting her own monster and living through that. And that is really the case here where the backstory, there's always gonna be some kind of backstory going through someone's life that you don't see.

All you see is what they give you, and what they give you is something that is objectionable, right? Ultimately, that is what kind of makes you, you know, want to say go away. But what happened with Elaine, and I was I was very, very good friends with Elaine over the years. And in A Delicate Balance, Edward now had the resurgence of Three Tall Women, so Lincoln Center rediscovered A Delicate Balance, which by the way, you know, your listeners should read that play. It is a masterpiece, an absolute masterpiece of A Delicate Balance.

[10:33] Michael Reidel: Yeah, and Elaine was playing Claire, the alcoholic and the smoker. And Elaine had then given up alcohol and smoking, right? But yet she had to play an alcoholic and the smoker. It's crazy. So that was just like in you, you guys know as performers, it was just like there was something in her mind, and she was going a little bit insane. And the actors who were with her, George Brizard and Rosemary Harris, they were like, what's going on with Elaine? This is kind of weird. But Jerry Gutierrez, who directed it, understood what Elaine was fighting. She was playing a character who had given up, who was doing all the things that she had given up, and so he cut her a lot of slack.

[12:16] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah.

[12:16] Michael Reidel: I saw that performance. And I tell you, you will never see a performance like that. She had the pathos and the humor, and she could switch it on a dime. Amazing. But you know, it was a little crazy backstage, and there was one moment where George was he was like fed up with Elaine, and the curtain came down and he slugged her. He slugged her at the curtain. And she ran into her dressing room and took out her curling iron and she chased him around the backstage trying to hit him because he slugged her. The only reason A Delicate Balance, that great revival did not go on was because Andre Bishop, who produced it with Lincoln Center, told me, Michael, the only time you were safe was when the curtain was up, and they gave brilliant performances.

[13:01] Michael Reidel: Yeah. But when the curtain came down, it was madness backstage. We could not go on with this. And he closed it. And he called Edward and he said, Edward, I'm sorry, but they're insane backstage. And Edward, who always floated above everything, just said, you know what? I'm perfectly fine with it. I've had my comeback, and that's all I care about.

[13:25] Ebony Vines: That's awesome. On our podcast, we talk a lot about the backstories of flops. And so as we were reading through your book, I have a lot of notes. And there were several flops in there that I wondered if you could expound a little bit on. One of them we did a whole episode on called Big. And so the part where you're talking about how they thought that Rent was gonna be the new Chess and Big was gonna be the new Phantom. I just I didn't know we knew that they thought it was gonna be a big deal and it was a huge disappointment. But do you have any more insight on that backstory of Big and how that faltered?

[14:08] Michael Reidel: Well, yeah, so I remember the shows that were going to open that season. I think Victor/Victoria with Julie Andrews and Big, which was based on the Tom Hanks movie, right? And everybody thought those were gonna be the big shows. And then out of nowhere came this little off-Broadway show called Rent, written by Jonathan Larson, who sadly, as you know, died before he could ever see what he had contributed to the American musical theater. And I interviewed Richard Maltby, who wrote Big with David Shire. They're doing this big show; it's gonna be a huge show based on the famous Tom Hanks movie, and it's gonna be great and wonderful. And then Richard is in Detroit where Big was trying out, and it was not an easy tryout.

I mean, there were a lot of problems with that show. And Richard picked up the New York Times and he read Ben Brantley's review of Jonathan Larson's Rent opening at the New York Theater Workshop. And Richard said, that's it. What we're doing is not what the culture wants anymore. We're doing this big old-fashioned Broadway show that's heartwarming. And all of a sudden, Ben Brantley in the New York Times is saying this is going to shift the American musical theater. It's not gonna be fantasy anymore. It's not going to be sweet and heartwarming. It's going to deal with the here and now, the nitty-gritty of New York, people who are fighting AIDS, people who are fighting drug addiction, people who are fighting gentrification.

And Richard just looked at his show and he said, I knew it was over. There was no way we could compete against Rent. And that is the fundamental change I try to get at in my book, Sensation: The Battle for Broadway. That you had in the '80s the Cameron Mackintosh, Andrew Lloyd Webber shows. You had Cats and Phantom and Les Mis and Miss Saigon. And then you get up to Sunset Boulevard, Andrew Lloyd Webber's biggest show of all time, $14 million, which by the way is a show I love and has a great score. I mean, "As If We Never Said Goodbye" is one of the great musical theater songs ever written. "With One Look" is a beautiful song. Gorgeous. But it was just, it was so heavy. It was so big. We were in the era of every special effect, everything.

People want to go to Broadway for the amount of money they're paying, which by the way was $65 back in those days. If only that balcony, the rear now, it's like $200 for the rear balcony. But anyway, but remember, it was like everything had to be big and huge. And I remember going to the opening night of Sunset Boulevard at the Minskoff Theater, I think it was. And I thought, okay, the score is beautiful, but this is a small show. This is an intimate show. It's Norma Desmond, Joe Gillis, and the Butler. It's a show. And yet all of these special effects with the mansion flying, all of this was laden onto it, and it felt heavy. And Andrew wins the Tony Award in 1995, I think it was, because the only competition was Smokey Joe's Cafe, which was the review.

So it had Andrew in his book, and he wins score and he wins best musical. At the same time, at the height of Andrew Lloyd Webber's powers, there was this kid none of us had ever heard of before, Jonathan Larson, toiling away for years, who was at the end of his rope, who did not know how he was going to make a living in the city writing Rent. And the year after that, Andrew Lloyd Webber presents the Tony Award posthumously to Jonathan Larson, who did not live to see what Rent did and changed everything on Broadway.

[18:24] Ebony Vines: Yeah, that was such an interesting part of the book because it ended up being Rent and Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. And I was just like, I just love hearing and seeing how things turn out so differently from what people expect, and that people who normally are not the ones that people would look to to be the juggernaut can be. And these are young people toiling away, unknown, just coming up, and then they end up being this next generation.

[18:58] Michael Reidel: But Ebony, that's the whole point of loving the theater. Yeah, because you have to go back, you know, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber were kids when they wrote Jesus Christ Superstar, right? Which was the, you know, one of the first rock musicals. Amazing. Yeah, I love the show. I mean, the great thing about covering the theater, writing about Broadway all these years is if you do the show that you think is gonna be a hit, all right. All right, let's say I have Bono and the Edge. Spider-Man, which is the biggest franchise in the history of movies. And I've got Julie Taymor, who is the director of The Lion King. It cannot fail. And yet it was a $150 million flop. Now, if I say to you, all right, I'm gonna adapt this 1,000-page novel about a guy who steals some bread.

By the way, the novel's in French. I'm gonna make that into a musical. You'd say, are you out of your mind? And that musical, of course, was Les Misérables. I think though, at the end of the day, a good story is a good story is a good story. And we talk about this a lot because we did a actually a two-parter about Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, because it was just so much to talk about. What we talk about is though, you know, putting so much money and so much emphasis on everything else besides the story, and that's where you fall into trouble because you're not actively telling the story anymore; you're showing people the special effects.

[20:42] Michael Reidel: Yeah, I mean, I do think fundamentally what makes a great musical is a good story wedded to a great score that has melodies. I think it's underappreciated the importance of melody, and this is why I will always defend Andrew Lloyd Webber. You can, I remember Cy Coleman, the great old composer of Sweet Charity and Barnum said to me once, I remember I was kind of slagging off on Andrew Lloyd Webber back when Cy was alive, and he said, Michael, there was not one of us, one of us composers who would give his right eye to have written "dun dun dun."

[21:26] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[21:28] Michael Reidel: Those six notes, and then they grab you and they bring you in. It's true. And I mean, all the great composers, and I also think Stephen Sondheim is a melodist. People say, oh, Stevie, he's too cold, he's too aloof, his melodies are too complicated. "A Little Death" in the parlor, in the bedroom. Beautiful, lilting, gorgeous melody. You know, "Nothing's Gonna Harm You" while I'm around. It's a beautiful melody.

[21:58] Ebony Vines: Yeah, yeah.

[21:59] Michael Reidel: Andrew Lloyd Webber writes those gorgeous melodies. My only concern with the kids writing today, to be honest with you, I can't really sing a lot of songs from Next to Normal or even Dear Evan Hansen. I know there's that "tap tap, I'm tapping on the tap tap-tap."

[22:17] Ebony Vines: Yeah, "Waving Through a Window."

[22:20] Michael Reidel: Waving with my cast on my head. It's not the same thing as "Isn't It Rich?"

[22:27] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[22:27] Michael Reidel: Are we a pair? I mean, there's no doubt that the melody has definitely changed. I think because you do have so many younger people coming up that, you know, they want to hear what they listened to growing up. So it's, you know, you do have like a lot of more contemporary style. But I love Sondheim.

[22:51] Ebony Vines: I mean, yeah, totally.

[22:52] Michael Reidel: But I will also say, because like Dear Evan Hansen, if you just take away the riff, if you lower the key and slow it down a little bit, you still have that melody that you can go home singing and or humming, and you know it still hits a chord within you, I think at least.

[23:10] Ebony Vines: It could be. I mean, listen, I'm 55 years old, so, you know, I'm sell by date. You should not listen to anything I have to say, but I don't really find also I'm a little upset with the lyrics today. I mean, you know, I'm tap, tap, tapping on the window, looking outside. It seems to me it's just kind of obvious. It's just sort of, it's literal. Whereas something that Stephen Sondheim does about two people who should be together but can't, or it's about clowns. "Isn't It Rich? Me here at last on the ground, you in midair." There's a kind of poetry there that's kind of missing from lyric writing today, I think.

[23:53] Ebony Vines: I would agree with that. Stephen Sondheim is, I mean, he's the juggernaut if you really consider lyricists. I mean, he's amazing.

[23:59] Michael Reidel: Yeah. But even Jonathan Larson, I mean, you know, how could you possibly conceive of a lyric? "525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments to live." How do you do that number? That's not like I'm rapping on the window.

[24:24] Ebony Vines: No, it's true. It's true.

[24:27] Michael Reidel: I mean, that's something that a true genius does with. And also back to what you said about melody, because people, the first few notes of "Seasons of Love," and everybody's like, oh, they know exactly what's about to happen.

[24:43] Ebony Vines: Of course, yeah, absolutely.

[24:46] Michael Reidel: "How do you measure a life? In daylight, in cups of coffee." I mean, who can come up with that? "In cups of coffee." It's not, it's not like, oh, I'm rapping on the window.

[25:02] Ebony Vines: Sounds like you're a little obsessed with Dear Evan Hansen here, Mr. Riedel.

[25:05] Michael Reidel: Well, I'd like, listen, I love the guys who wrote it, but I'm not a big fan of Dear Evan Hansen. But still, work should be about things that you can't even imagine. Metaphors.

[25:17] Ebony Vines: Completely.

[25:19] Michael Reidel: That just thought-provoking.

[25:21] Ebony Vines: Absolutely.

[25:22] Michael Reidel: That makes you think on a completely different level than just what's right there in front of you. I think that's super important. I mean, that I think that is why ultimately I love musical theater so much is because it is a fantasy you can escape into. You can listen to those words, and it makes you feel on a level that just talking about your feelings doesn't take you.

[25:43] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[25:44] Michael Reidel: And then it catches your breath for a moment, you know.

[25:47] Ebony Vines: Yeah. How do you measure a life in cups of coffee? I mean, what a wonderful phrase.

[25:53] Michael Reidel: How much coffee have we all been drinking back in those days?

[25:56] Ebony Vines: He caught it.

[25:58] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah.

[25:59] Michael Reidel: Yeah, he did.

[26:00] Ebony Vines: Um, so I wanted to also ask you about a couple more flops.

[26:07] Pamela Shandrow: We want the you are you're you're rough.

[26:13] Michael Reidel: You're one of the point if you want to know the bad news.

[26:16] Ebony Vines: We oh that yeah.

[26:18] Pamela Shandrow: Our the reason why we love talking about flops so much.

[26:22] Michael Reidel: Well, actually, we you started this, I have to tell you, Mr. Riedel.

[26:26] Ebony Vines: Um, because the whole podcast started because of Rebecca and that backstory.

[26:35] Michael Reidel: Right.

[26:37] Pamela Shandrow: So uh is there anything more than like, of course, we read the article, and then um we know people who uh were involved in the in the cast.

[26:48] Ebony Vines: Um, but and then we've kept up, and it just feels like every time we read another news article, the story takes an unexpected turn that you just could never have written in a book because somebody would have told you that you were totally crazy.

[27:02] Michael Reidel: Yeah.

[27:03] Ebony Vines: We were talking before we started looking at your apartment when you got up to leave.

[27:07] Pamela Shandrow: We were talking about Rebecca, which was hugely informative to us even starting this podcast in the first place.

[27:15] Michael Reidel: I had been, I had auditioned for it and been called back for it and made it to the almost and then didn't quite make it further.

[27:21] Pamela Shandrow: But I also had friends that were doing it.

[27:23] Ebony Vines: I sat down for pizza one day in Dumbo, and I was telling her about it, and I was like, you know, what's really cool is like this whole scandal, you know, behind the scenes of it all with the angel investor suddenly, you know, not actually being a real person and disappearing, and then the you know, so everything that kind of went on, and she was like, Well, that's an amazing podcast idea.

[27:43] Michael Reidel: So that's kind of what started.

[27:45] Pamela Shandrow: We'd love to hear if you've got any little stories about Rebecca that you can think of that might whet our appetites.

[27:53] Michael Reidel: Well, I remember um so I knew Ben Sprecker, who was the producer of Rebecca, a total sleaze bowl, I always think.

[28:02] Pamela Shandrow: Well, now we found out that he truly is.

[28:04] Michael Reidel: Yeah, yeah.

[28:05] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah, I think he was arrested for child porn at one point.

[28:07] Michael Reidel: Yeah, that's right.

[28:09] Michael Reidel: But I remember I think I was I had a vacation and I was I was traveling around somewhere in Europe visiting some friends, and I was kind of keeping tabs on stuff, and there was a thing about Rebecca, the money wasn't there, this and the other thing.

[28:24] Michael Reidel: I thought, well, this'll be something I should dig into.

[28:27] Michael Reidel: So come back to New York, and I'm a little behind the curve on this story.

[28:32] Michael Reidel: I think the New York Times was ahead of it on me.

[28:36] Michael Reidel: But I had to catch up.

[28:38] Michael Reidel: And I called my friend uh Mark Thibodeau, who was the bus agent.

[28:43] Michael Reidel: I said, Mark, you know, bring me up to speed, what's going on?

[28:46] Mark Thibodeau: He said, Michael, this is just beyond belief.

[28:50] Michael Reidel: I mean, Ben is raising money from people who don't exist and who are corrupt.

[28:57] Michael Reidel: And I said, Well, all right, so give me a sense of this.

[29:01] Michael Reidel: And he said, Okay.

[29:02] Michael Reidel: He's raised money from this guy named, I think his name was Mark Hotton.

[29:06] Pamela Shandrow: Yes, that's right.

[29:07] Michael Reidel: Yeah.

[29:08] Michael Reidel: And uh Mark said, I did a Google search on it, and the guy was indicted for fraud and went to jail.

[29:15] Michael Reidel: And then when I brought that up with Ben Sprecker, the producer of Rebecca, Ben said, don't ask any more questions.

[29:23] Michael Reidel: I thought, oh, this is weird.

[29:25] Michael Reidel: So I'm very close to the Schuberts, uh, Phil Smith and uh Bob Wankel, who run the company.

[29:32] Michael Reidel: And I remember reading in the Times that the Schuberts were kind of defending Ben Sprecker because they've done business with him and they were friends.

[29:42] Michael Reidel: And Mark was too scared to really go to the Schuberts and say what he knew.

[29:47] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah.

[29:48] Michael Reidel: So I went to them.

[29:49] Michael Reidel: I went up to their offices and I said uh to Phil Smith and Bob Wankel, who were running the company then.

[29:54] Michael Reidel: I said, Do you guys know who you were in business with?

[29:57] Michael Reidel: Have you really researched this?

[29:59] Michael Reidel: And they were like, Well, we don't know.

[30:00] Michael Reidel: And I said, Well, here's what I know.

[30:04] Michael Reidel: This address that they've given for some investor in Australia who's gonna save it.

[30:11] Michael Reidel: That address is a park bench in a park in Melbourne.

[30:15] Ebony Vines: Whoa, I didn't know that part.

[30:19] Michael Reidel: So what are you guys getting into?

[30:21] Michael Reidel: And they all we'll take care of it, we'll take care of it.

[30:24] Michael Reidel: I don't know.

[30:25] Michael Reidel: I I said, I remember saying to Schuberts, I said, Guys, I'm just telling you, there's something fishy and smells about this.

[30:32] Michael Reidel: And I'm an old newspaper columnist, and I know I know when something is not quite right.

[30:39] Pamela Shandrow: Do you think about this that Ben Sprecker had more knowledge about this than he claimed?

[30:47] Michael Reidel: Ben Sprecher knew exactly what was going on.

[30:49] Pamela Shandrow: Okay.

[30:50] Michael Reidel: And he was desperate to keep the thing going.

[30:52] Michael Reidel: Because you have to remember, and the way Broadway financing works is people give you money.

[30:58] Michael Reidel: And as long as you can keep telling them the show is gonna go up, you the money.

[31:04] Michael Reidel: Yeah.

[31:04] Michael Reidel: Once you tell them the show has to close, you have to give them the money back.

[31:08] Michael Reidel: And Ben Brecker did not have the money to give that money back.

[31:12] Pamela Shandrow: Right.

[31:13] Michael Reidel: He was a desperate man, so he had to keep the scam going.

[31:17] Michael Reidel: And then I remember this thing, story broke about somebody who had emailed there was a producer that Ben found in Florida, if I'm not mistaken, who was gonna come forward and give him all the money.

[31:32] Ebony Vines: Right.

[31:33] Michael Reidel: An angel, yeah.

[31:34] Michael Reidel: An angel who was gonna save the whole show.

[31:37] Michael Reidel: And I thought, this is weird.

[31:39] Michael Reidel: So I called my friend Mark Thibodeau, who was the publicist on the show, and I said, Mark, what is going on here?

[31:46] Michael Reidel: I mean, the guy was gonna give the money, then he got an anonymous email saying that the whole thing was corrupt.

[31:52] Michael Reidel: Don't give him the email.

[31:53] Mark Thibodeau: And Mark said to me, Can I be honest with you?

[31:56] Michael Reidel: I said, Yes.

[31:58] Mark Thibodeau: He said, I'm the person who sent the email.

[32:02] Michael Reidel: Because this whole thing is a fraud.

[32:05] Michael Reidel: And Mark had sent it from a Starbucks, and I said to Mark, I said, Mark, um, you need to be in contact with a lawyer because even though you send it from a Starbucks, they will find out who's in some way.

[32:18] Pamela Shandrow: That's right.

[32:19] Michael Reidel: And I thought, Mark, you're doing the right thing because you know that Ben is a skeevy, corrupt, horrible person.

[32:26] Michael Reidel: You know, this whole thing is a fraud.

[32:29] Michael Reidel: You are trying to be the whistleblower, but as the whistleblower, they're gonna come down on you.

[32:33] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[32:34] Michael Reidel: Right, right.

[32:35] Michael Reidel: And so then I put Mark in touch with a very famous lawyer friend of mine here in New York, who kind of helped him navigate through everything.

[32:44] Michael Reidel: And Mark got sued, and the whole thing fell apart.

[32:48] Michael Reidel: But I was there, it was a great day in the courtroom when Ben Sprecker, that sleaze ball person, and he thought he thought he was gonna win that.

[32:48] Michael Reidel: He thought he was gonna win it.

[33:04] Michael Reidel: And then the jury, because Mark is a great guy, Mark Thibodeau, and the jury ruled that um Mark did the right thing by telling that investor, don't get involved in this corrupt operation.

[33:17] Michael Reidel: And they Ben was suing for like five or six million dollars, and I think they gave him ten thousand dollars that Mark's insurance covered.

[33:25] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[33:26] Michael Reidel: I remember sitting in the courtroom looking at old slimy old Ben Sprecker.

[33:33] Michael Reidel: You are finished.

[33:35] Pamela Shandrow: Well, I I don't remember, was he doing many shows before then, Ben?

[33:42] Michael Reidel: He'd done a few shows here and there.

[33:44] Michael Reidel: They were all flops, and they might the guy has no taste.

[33:47] Michael Reidel: He's a totally corrupt, horrible individual, and he's getting what he deserved.

[33:51] Michael Reidel: But he did, you know, honestly, he had the Schubert's wrapped around his little finger at one point.

[33:57] Michael Reidel: I kind of liked him.

[33:58] Michael Reidel: I mean, like all these slimy characters in this business, they sometimes put on a good show for the gullible.

[34:06] Michael Reidel: I mean, the way as Garth Rubinsky has done in my book.

[34:06] Michael Reidel: Yeah, I mean, Garth Rubinsky was he was the king of the world.

[34:15] Michael Reidel: He created Ragtime and Kiss Up Spider Woman and uh Showboat, the revival, and it was the greatest thing of all time.

[34:23] Michael Reidel: He was gonna make gazillions of dollars for all of his investors.

[34:28] Michael Reidel: Total fraud and total phone.

[34:31] Michael Reidel: And he all a Ponzi scheme.

[34:31] Michael Reidel: But the nose, my nose never lies.

[34:33] Michael Reidel: It never lies.

[34:35] Ebony Vines: Well, I'll tell you why, guy, guys, it never lies.

[34:38] Michael Reidel: Yeah.

[34:39] Michael Reidel: Because you have to understand the fundamental economics of Broadway.

[34:42] Michael Reidel: Okay.

[34:43] Michael Reidel: If you invest in a show and it costs five million dollars, that's your capitalization.

[34:48] Michael Reidel: Well, then you have to break down what are your running costs each each week.

[34:53] Michael Reidel: So let's say your costs are $250,000 each week just to keep the thing afloat.

[34:58] Michael Reidel: Now, if you make $350,000 over that week, that's a hundred thousand dollars profit.

[35:04] Michael Reidel: If you make seven hundred thousand dollars, that's a lot of profit.

[35:08] Michael Reidel: That profit each week goes back to reducing the capitalization cost.

[35:14] Michael Reidel: But if you don't make that each week, but if you fall below that weekly cost, then you pay the actors and the stage hands and the theater owners.

[35:23] Michael Reidel: If you fall below that, you're never gonna return your $5 million investment.

[35:29] Michael Reidel: And I'm thinking with Garth Drobinsky, I thought, you know, Showboat, great show, brilliantly directed by Hal Prince, fabulous, and yet it's so expensive.

[35:40] Michael Reidel: 10 million bucks laid out on the line, and now your weekly running costs are $600,000.

[35:46] Michael Reidel: You gotta be selling $800,000 worth of tickets.

[35:49] Michael Reidel: Yeah to return your initial investment in two years.

[35:54] Michael Reidel: Never makes sense of Garth Trubinski's economics.

[35:57] Michael Reidel: And at the end of the day, and I was one of the few reporters who really questioned what he was doing.

[36:03] Michael Reidel: At the end of the day, everything was phony.

[36:06] Michael Reidel: He kept two sets of books.

[36:08] Michael Reidel: Yeah.

[36:08] Michael Reidel: And showed all of his investors, I'm making millions of dollars on this show.

[36:12] Michael Reidel: And these shows are great.

[36:13] Michael Reidel: And the secret set of books showed we're not making that much money.

[36:16] Michael Reidel: We're losing money.

[36:17] Pamela Shandrow: I mean, uh obviously he did end up getting his comeuppance, but how do you think he made it for so long without someone, you know, besides yourself going, something stinks here?

[36:30] Michael Reidel: I will quote my old friend Fred Ebb.

[36:33] Michael Reidel: How can they see with sequins in their eyes?

[36:37] Ebony Vines: Okay, perfect.

[36:38] Michael Reidel: All you have to do with showbiz, showbiz, you can have the smartest people in the world, but when they get involved in showbiz, they're like, oh my god, I love it.

[36:48] Michael Reidel: I love the smoke and mirrors, I love the excitement, I love the glamour.

[36:53] Michael Reidel: And Garth was able to convince everybody, see how what I'm doing, see what I'm doing, see these great shows, come to my opening night parties, my my lavish parties.

[37:03] Michael Reidel: See how great this is.

[37:05] Ebony Vines: You know, you won't even look.

[37:07] Michael Reidel: That part when you said he was the private jets to like pick people up for the day.

[37:13] Michael Reidel: And I thought, what Broadway producer has that kind of money?

[37:19] Michael Reidel: That was bananas.

[37:21] Ebony Vines: Nobody that's above the board.

[37:23] Michael Reidel: Not unless you've been doing Hamilton or Phantom.

[37:28] Michael Reidel: Right.

[37:29] Michael Reidel: But but but Ebony, you have to understand the whole thing is you create the perception.

[37:33] Michael Reidel: Right.

[37:33] Michael Reidel: That you have this wealth and this power.

[37:36] Michael Reidel: If I want you, and he did this with Richard Mulpey, Richard Mulpey, uh, who wrote uh the great uh closer than ever, a show that I really love.

[37:45] Ebony Vines: Me too.

[37:45] Michael Reidel: I love that show.

[37:47] Michael Reidel: But Richard, he brought in to do Fossey.

[37:49] Michael Reidel: And you know, Richard is on vacation in Aspen with his wife, and Garth says, I want you to meet.

[37:55] Michael Reidel: He calls him and he says, I want you to meet Anne Ranking.

[37:58] Michael Reidel: She's coming in to help on Fossey.

[37:59] Michael Reidel: And Richard says, uh, okay, I'll come back, you know, next week from my vacation.

[38:04] Michael Reidel: He says, Garth says, No, I want you here uh tomorrow.

[38:07] Michael Reidel: And was like, Well, I'm on a vacation.

[38:09] Michael Reidel: Don't worry, I'm sending the plane and the helicopter and the limousines.

[38:13] Michael Reidel: And he flies Richard from Aspen to come to New York, and Richard has a 45 minute meeting with Anne Ranking about Fossey.

[38:21] Michael Reidel: And then Richard gets back in the limo into the private plane, back to Aspen.

[38:26] Michael Reidel: And that was the kind of thing that Garth did.

[38:28] Michael Reidel: But Garth, Garth's whole Garth's whole showbiz quality was I will show you that I can do anything that I want to do.

[38:40] Michael Reidel: If I can do it, you will believe in me.

[38:43] Ebony Vines: Huh.

[38:47] Michael Reidel: The master manipulator.

[38:48] Michael Reidel: Yeah. For a while until at the end of the day, you know, when you opened up the hood of the car and you saw there's no engine here. And that's the end. Oh man. Oh Lord. Well, it is 45 minutes, and you um we that's what we uh agreed on, so I don't want to take up too much more of your time.

[39:12] Ebony Vines: You're all right. We want to keep going, we'll keep going. We got more questions. We have very healthy lungs.

[39:20] Michael Reidel: Okay. I will say though, I will say, you know, um it really does hurt me because um I love Broadway so much as you guys do. And this book was conceived before the pandemic.

[39:36] Michael Reidel: And you know, I wrote a first book called Razzle Dazzle the Battle of Broadway, which was about how you know, a handful of people stuck by Broadway in the 60s and 70s when the city was falling apart and Times Square was sleazy and Schubert organization was bankrupt. And it was about a lot of people like the Schuberts and the Niederlanders and Michael Bennett and um um Peter Shaffer, who did Equus, who just stuck by Broadway and gave it some anchors to hold on.

[40:07] Michael Reidel: And then for me, the 90s, which I covered was a time of when Broadway was really exploding. There's shows like Rent and Chicago and The Lion King, um, Angels in America, they became part of the mainstream popular culture of America again, in a way they had not been in a long time.

[40:29] Ebony Vines: Mm-hmm.

[40:31] Michael Reidel: And, you know, this book was written to end with September 11th, which, you know, was an existential crisis because you know, I live in the West Village and I could look out my window and I could see the Twin Towers every morning. And I got up and I made my coffee and I saw a gash in the North Tower, and I thought, what the what the heck is that? The smoke was coming out. I thought, well, it's like a I guess a small plane has hit the tower, and I remember thinking this'll be the um the front page of the New York Post tomorrow, my paper then.

[41:12] Michael Reidel: And then I, you know, well, it's not terrible, awful, this is weird, but I took a shower and I came back, and then I saw another plane hit the South Tower. I thought, oh my god, life has changed.

[41:24] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[41:25] Michael Reidel: And you cannot imagine what it was like back then because I called Jerry Schoenfeld, who was running the Schubert's that morning, and said, Michael, we don't know what to do. Because Times Square was the next terrorist target.

[41:40] Pamela Shandrow: I remember that.

[41:41] Michael Reidel: And also there was a sense that because this happened in Moscow, that terrorists took over a theater and held people hostage in the theater and killed 200 people.

[41:52] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[41:52] Michael Reidel: There were the if you go to a Broadway show, there might be terrorists. We didn't know.

[41:56] Pamela Shandrow: Cool.

[41:57] Michael Reidel: Take over a theater and shoot you up, right?

[41:57] Ebony Vines: Right, right.

[42:01] Michael Reidel: But Rudy Giuliani, when he was saying, and that was uncomfortable. But as I write in my book, Rudy Giuliani, when he was saying, he he was reading a biography of Winston Churchill. And when the Nazis were bombing the crap out of London, Churchill said, I want the ballet, I want the opera, and I want the theaters to go on. Because I will not allow the Germans to bring us to our knees.

[42:31] Michael Reidel: And Giuliani felt that. After what we thought was what the hell is gonna happen this city.

[42:54] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[42:55] Michael Reidel: And I interviewed Matthew Broderick, and Matthew said to me, he rode his bike up to the producers. He was the star of the producers, which was the biggest show then. He said, I he said, I was scared. I mean, I didn't know. I mean, you know, is there gonna be a bomb in? But he said, We went and we did the show, and I was there for this. I was with Ann Bancroft and Mel Brooks at the back of the house.

[43:18] Pamela Shandrow: Wow, maybe half full.

[43:20] Michael Reidel: And it was the hottest show, the producers at the time then. And then at the end of the show, they sang, God bless America. And you thought, Life will go on.

[43:32] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[43:33] Michael Reidel: The city will survive. Whether it can survive this pandemic, we shall see. But I'm optimistic and hopeful.

[43:43] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah.

[43:43] Ebony Vines: We are too.

[43:44] Pamela Shandrow: We are too. I mean, we have discussed this at length. It's one of those things where it will come back, but we think that it's going to be severely changed, and that might not necessarily be a bad thing. What do you think about that?

[43:58] Michael Reidel: It's gonna be it's it has to come back, and you have to get rid of these obscene premium prices.

[43:58] Ebony Vines: Yes.

[43:58] Michael Reidel: You have to get rid of the I mean, Broadway, frankly, got too gritty and too much. And they were like, We're only for the one percent, and we

[44:12] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah.

[44:12] Michael Reidel: Well, it's prohibitively expensive. It's almost like I'm being punished, and that's when I can't, you know, it's like go to your room, you can't see that Broadway show. I mean, you know, this drives me crazy. I I know all the producers, they've made a ton of money, but there was a point in time where they were like, you know, Michael, if we can get the biggest price we can get, we will get it.

[44:33] Michael Reidel: So you know what? And just you you kill the theater though, if you say to people, you can't afford us, and we're just gonna cater to the one percent. So fuck you.

[44:46] Pamela Shandrow: We don't well, you know, the fuck you was the Michael Bennett who came from Buffalo New York with no money, with no money at all, who could live in this city and then created a chorus line and dream girls.

[44:58] Michael Reidel: All right, you know, uh Tommy Tune who came from Texas with nothing and did Nine and Grand Hotel. If you just want to make it for the one percent, you're gonna have the most boring theater that possibly imagine.

[45:12] Pamela Shandrow: That's right.

[45:12] Michael Reidel: Well, Jonathan Larson, Lynn Manuel Miranda, like listen.

[45:17] Pamela Shandrow: Well, Lynn, the thing about Lynn, Lynn had a pretty comfortable life, I would say by himself.

[45:24] Michael Reidel: Jonathan was working full time job while trying to write that in the first place.

[45:27] Pamela Shandrow: So yeah, definitely. Once you say to kids who want to be in the theater, and let's face it, we love off Broadway, we love the theater around the country, but nothing really exciting happens until you're on Broadway.

[45:39] Michael Reidel: Yeah, that is fundamentally where things take off.

[45:42] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah, yeah. But to say that, you know, say to people that Broadway is only, you know, we want to charge a thousand bucks for the balcony of Hamilton, you gotta pay $800. That is obscene.

[45:52] Michael Reidel: Yeah. That is ridiculous. Listen, I don't wish COVID on any of us. I really do not. I mean, I've known some friends who've died of it. So sorry. But the only thing that comes out of it is if you can just restructure the economics of Broadway so the theater can be accessible.

[46:09] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[46:10] Michael Reidel: Who have nothing. I mean, I came this with no money as a kid going to Columbia, but I was able to, you know, buy a $10 or $15 ticket to see some of the shows on Broadway.

[46:20] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[46:21] Michael Reidel: Fall in love with Broadway. Who is the writer of Slave Play, Ebony?

[46:26] Ebony Vines: Uh Jeremy O'Harris.

[46:27] Michael Reidel: Jeremy O'Harris. He did a TikTok that I watched the other day that was it was a letter that was written to him, or a video maybe that was that was sent to him by a little black boy from Harlem who said, I really want to see your play. I've read it and I really want to see it. And like then Jeremy, you know, cut back into the video and he said, Those are the people that I'm writing my shows for, and those are the people who have the hardest time coming to see my shows.

[46:53] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[46:53] Michael Reidel: Yeah. And that is really, it's such a detriment to this business, to well, to like just theater in general, to the idea of theater. I grew up in central Illinois, yeah, as far away from Broadway as you could possibly get. But I had such this love affair with musical theater and Broadway that I would go to the store, the music store when you could actually buy music in a store, and I would read through all the little libettes on the back of the CDs of the new quote unquote new CDs that were there.

[47:22] Michael Reidel: And like I would read the story and be like, Yeah, I really like that. So like Steel Pier was one of those that I read the back, and I was like, what a great idea for a show. And obviously it didn't hit the market very well. But like that's what pulled me into the stories. It was these ideas that were coming to fruition through the art of music and theater and dancing.

[47:42] Michael Reidel: And it was so exciting and romantic and wonderful. And just, you know, like nobody can experience that because you can't afford to get a ticket. And the people that can experience it don't really have the same level of appreciation for it.

[47:57] Michael Reidel: I'm off my soapbox now. I'll leave you guys because I gotta run, but we're looking for it. That uh is from my book Razzle Dazzle, The Battle for Broadway, my first book before Singular Sensation, The Triumph of Broadway.

[48:12] Michael Reidel: Um my old friend Jimmy Niederlander, who owned all the Niederlander theaters there. Jimmy died about seven or eight years ago now. He was a great guy. I loved him. Hey, I used to go every Wednesday, I would go to his office and we would have um we would have Pastrami sandwiches, and he would tell me about his whole life and how he came to uh build up his theater chain.

[48:38] Michael Reidel: And I said, Jimmy, tell me about the time that um how did you find that great show in 1981, Lena Horne, the lady in her music? And Jimmy said, Well, and then he used to talk like this, he would say, you know, well, I know Lena, you know, from working in the clubs back in the day. And then and she came up to my office one night, and she said, Jimmy, Jimmy. I want to do one last thing before I go. I've never played Broadway, and I'd like to play Broadway.

[49:13] Michael Reidel: And Jimmy was like, Lena, you got the Niederlander theater for two weeks. Put her right in. And those two weeks turned out to be two years.

[49:23] Ebony Vines: Oh, amazing.

[49:25] Michael Reidel: And Lena Horne came back in a gigantic way. Yeah. It was just because guys like Jimmy Niederlander just he loved Lena Horne. He thought, You want a theater? You got the theater.

[49:37] Pamela Shandrow: Awesome.

[49:38] Michael Reidel: And that was how it used to be done back then. And I do hope that when we get with rid of this COVID, it won't be so calculating. It won't be like, oh, we have to do this corporate show, this famous movie title. We have to do this. Oh, it's based on this famous novel. It's based on this famous movie.

[49:57] Michael Reidel: I just would like to go back to the time Lena Horne goes into Jimmy Niederlander. Jimmy, I'd like to do one more show before I go. And Jimmy says, Lena, you got the Niederlander. For two months. I mean, that's the way the theater.

[50:12] Pamela Shandrow: Yeah.

[50:10] Michael Reidel: That's the way the theater should work.

[50:15] Ebony Vines: Yep.

[50:16] Pamela Shandrow: Oh, I love it. From your lips to God's ears, right?

[50:22] Ebony Vines: Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We really appreciate it. We loved the book. We loved it. And um, we're we're excited for it to come out. Uh supposed to be tomorrow, right? The 10th.

[50:34] Michael Reidel: It is.

[50:35] Ebony Vines: Yeah.

[50:38] Michael Reidel: Yeah. Well, I only hope it does it. It does as well as Lena Horne, the lady in which by the way, if you guys have not heard that CD, that is the if you have not heard Lena Horne singing the Lena Horne the Lady Music, that is one of the great things on Broadway.

[50:54] Pamela Shandrow: Okay.

[50:54] Ebony Vines: Oh, I'll have to look it up.

[50:55] Michael Reidel: Oh, you gotta you gotta hear that.

[50:57] Ebony Vines: Yeah, most definitely.

[50:59] Michael Reidel: Thank you so much. It was such such an amazing time speaking with you. We love hearing your stories.

[51:04] Michael Reidel: Great pleasure. Thank you so much and have a great rest of your week. And good luck on Singular Sensation.

[51:12] Ebony Vines: Thank you for listening to our podcast, Theatre Geeks Anonymous. You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at TGA Bee Way.

[51:23] Pamela Shandrow: And on Facebook at Theatre Geeks Anonymous. And if you want to tell us how much you love us, or you have a great story about one of the shows we've talked about, drop us a note at TGABWay at gmail.com.

[51:40] Ebony Vines: Until next time, geeks.