I’ve always had a special love for Joe Orton’s writing. Ever since I dreamed of filling in for Maxwell Caulfield in the 1981 production of Entertaining Mr. Sloane, I couldn’t wait to get onstage and shake hands with Orton’s brand of anarchic wit. When the chance came to do Sloane at the Laura Pels for the Roundabout, twenty-five years after Max’s run at the Cherry Lane, I was elated. The production had its ups and downs. And judging from the fact that some of my favorite Orton lines elicited a quieter response than I had anticipated, I think the New York audience for this playwright may have waned a bit. But what other playwright has a character, in the course of admonishing a young man to steer clear of his sister, say the line, “Give me your word that you’re not vaginalatrous!”?
I haven’t been onstage as often as I would have liked, but my fondest memories live there. And the importance of the theater and the people I’ve worked with there always seems to lead back to the very beginning, to Tuck and to the cast of The Doctors and what they passed on to me. Learning to act while in the spotlight is difficult. The theater is where you learn. (At times, I tell myself the theater is all one needs to counterbalance a five-year run of a campaign advertising a credit card.) What a gift to work with directors like Max Stafford-Clark (Serious Money), Tony Walton (Equus), Steve Hamilton (Gross Points, All My Sons), Greg Mosher (Streetcar), Walter Bobbie (Twentieth Century), and Scott Ellis (Entertaining Mr. Sloane), and with actors like Michael Wincott, Julie Halston, Jennifer Van Dyke, Laurie Metcalf, and Richard Easton.
In light of some of the highly dubious commercial endeavors I’ve undertaken, either to fund my charitable foundation or keep the lights on or both, I’ve subsequently yearned to embrace projects that, like the theater, are good for the soul. Renewal doesn’t have to mean an escape from the business altogether. It can mean simply trying something different. I’ve sung a duet with Barbra Streisand, hosted a radio podcast, worn a coconut bra playing Luther Billis in a concert performance of South Pacific at Carnegie Hall. I’ve produced webisodes in which I gave romantic advice to strangers in the backseat of a car. I’ve hosted a game show. But the most rewarding of all of those excursions may be my job as the radio announcer for the New York Philharmonic.
In 2009, I attended a concert at Carnegie Hall featuring Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Seated in the box next to me were Matías Tarnopolsky, the vice president of artistic planning for the New York Philharmonic, and the one and only Zarin Mehta, president and executive director of the Phil, brother of Zubin Mehta, and gentleman without equal. “What are you doing here?” Tarnopolsky blurted out. After I explained that years of being trapped in a car in another life had made me a classical music fan, Matías and Zarin exchanged a look; then Zarin said, “Come see me.” Soon after that, I was hired as the announcer for the New York Philharmonic’s weekly radio broadcast. What a great honor, education, and joy that has been.
In the ’80s, I would drive around LA, listening to KUSC, KFAC, and other, now lost FM classical stations. As I’d approach the gates of Warner or Paramount to head into an appointment, the symphony on my radio was still unfolding. I’d call the stations’ programming directors, whose numbers I kept on speed dial on my Motorola car phone (yes, you’d dial and they would pick up the phone), to find out all of the details of the piece: composer, ensemble, conductor, recording label. Then I’d hustle over to Tower Classical on Sunset and order the discs. There was no ArkivMusic back then, no Amazon, so I would have to drive back to West Hollywood to pick up the order two weeks later. But it was so worthwhile. Before the advent of digital downloads, I collected a lot of music. I concentrated on that battery between conductor and ensemble that produced much of the more acclaimed classical recordings, back when many of the majors were recording more frequently: Charles Dutoit with the Montreal Symphony, Leonard Slatkin with the St. Louis, George Szell with the Cleveland, Georg Solti with the Chicago, Bernstein with the New York Phil, Levine in Boston, Previn in London, Zubin Mehta in Los Angeles, Eschenbach, Barenboim, Gergiev, Dudamel, Tilson Thomas, Maazel, Haitink, Masur, Salonen, Dohnányi, Abbado, Boulez, von Karajan, van Zweden, Boult, Muti.
Classical music renewed me. Like painting and literature, it put me in a grounded place of peace. So much so that if I did it all over again, I’d learn to play the piano and become a conductor. Oh, God, would I ever. Go online and watch Charlie Dutoit conduct. Dutoit, the most elegant of them all. What I wouldn’t give to be him for a year. These men (and a few women, like Marin Alsop) float on a cloud made of God-given genius and intense hard work. In the audience, I have been disappointed countless times at the movies, less often at the theater, but never at the symphony, where the orchestra brings to bear the remarkable talents of men and women who exist in their own aerie atop the performing arts. With all my heart, I urge you to visit the symphony in your town or nearby. Afterward, you just might be renewed.
My taste runs toward the lush, the romantic, the sonorous. I’ve been compiling the list of the recordings I want played at my funeral for some time:
Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, fourth movement, Lorin Maazel conducting the New York Philharmonic.
Chopin’s Nocturne in B-flat Minor, op. 9, no. 1, performed by Yundi Li.
Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, third movement, George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra.
Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye (the Mother Goose Suite), Charles Dutoit conducting the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
Rachmaninov’s Symphony no. 2 in E Minor, third movement, André Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.
Chopin’s Nocturne in D-flat Major, op. 27, no. 2, performed by Lang Lang.
Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, Sir Adrian Boult conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 6 (Pathétique), fourth movement, Valery Gergiev conducting the Orchestra of the Kirov Opera.
I know, I know. It’s a long playlist. But come to my funeral, if only for the music. For those of you who are classical fans, I know I’m laying up on the fairway here, going for par. But, hey, at that point I’ll be dead. Allow me this last indulgence.
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