That red dress he'd bought to surprise her, but hadn't been able to give her in the last act? She wore it for her bows. At the close of Houston Grand Opera's landmark production of Porgy and Bess in the 1970s, the director decided to let audiences know how Porgy's crazy plan to travel a thousand miles to find Bess had worked out. I remember a few curtain calls where what triggered pandemonium was as simple as a costume change. Wouldn't happen today: Audiences love to go crazy with applause. ended one lackluster Broadway musical by sending the cast home and doing a few numbers from his nightclub act.
They're just bows now, rarely as much fun as I remember them being in my youth, possibly because back then standing ovations were not routine, so directors and stars had to work for them. All I knew was that Nancy was in heaven, and I was in tears.Īfter that, for the longest time I expected something special from curtain calls. I was a smidge too old to think this was an actual miracle, and a bit too young to appreciate the stagecraft that made it all happen. Nancy! She appeared in a spotlight, not down on the stage with everybody else, but way high up on a platform near the top of the proscenium arch, right in front of my second-balcony seat. Then he turned, as the rest of the kids chimed in softly, sounding almost like a church choir, and they all looked up, and sang the song directly to. So everybody else comes out for applause, reprising the songs they'd sung earlier, which was the custom in musicals back then, including little Oliver, who sang a verse of a song that Nancy had taught him earlier. One older character, Nancy, who looked a little like my mom, died in the second act - a development that I found pretty shocking - and by the time for the curtain calls, it still hadn't occurred to me yet that the actress hadn't died. My first grown-up show: Oliver! Mom and me way up high in the upper balcony, watching all those kids down below. The cast of the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line.