And Timothy Mathis as Dainty June

How, perhaps you ask, did a gorgeous red-haired 23 year old babe and a very well-preserved, still attractive 50 year old man end up onstage at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room, belting all the hell out of “If Momma Was Married” from Gypsy?

Cause that’s what happened Sunday afternoon when the ravishing (she never looked better than she did Sunday) Miss Abigail Taylor played Louise to my deeply felt Dainty June.

Well, it’s Michael Mathis’ doing. My brother produces really neat things like Broadway On Broadway in Times Square and really arduous things like the New York City Marathon. Under the banner of really neat, Sunday night he did the Visa Signature Tony Awards Preview Concert in that gorgeous space in the Time Warner building where the stage is backed by a wall of glass looking onto Central Park. It takes your breath away. The event is a concert that airs on CBS June 7th to kick off Tony week and cast members of 6 of the season’s 8 new musicals and all 4 revivals performed. But for the afternoon camera tech they needed two stand-ins with big Broadway voices to walk through the show and sing it!!! Michael was certain he could think of somebody.

So at 4:30 Sunday afternoon Abigail and I show up dressed to the nines, we’re thrown up on the stage, handed a piece of music from “In the Heights” and told, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t know it. Sing anything into the microphones while the band plays”. And that is exactly what we did. I’m standing onstage in a purple spotlight at Jazz at Lincoln Center, accompanied by 8 brilliant Broadway musicians, bopping and scatting and belting something about opening a fire hydrant and running from the cops.

Somewhere around 5pm Abigail took to the microphone to do Ariel the mermaid’s “Part of Your World”. Right about “You want thing-a-ma-bobs? I got twenty!” I realized the room, buzzing a moment before with production assistants and crew and press people and various whoevers, had stopped cold and every eye had turned to the stage to watch my little love. Halfway through the number, Michael’s assistant turned to him way atop the theatre and asked “Why is the mermaid here so early to do the sound check?” Michael said “She isn’t the mermaid”. The assistant: “Well, she should be!” Abigail finished and got something akin to an ovation. I welled up. It was neat.

The rehearsal flew by as I took to the stage to do “Bali H’ai” and made up complete nonsense sounds for Passing Strange and Xanadu. I sang a very tentative “Finishing the Hat”. Abby stopped the place cold again with “Hopelessly Devoted to You” and we ended with our delicious romp through the Gypsy duet. I may return to the stage to fully realize my Dainty June. I think I owe it to the theatre.

So the show is great. I was proud of Michael and proud of Abigail and, frankly, proud of myself. I’m likin’ life right now.