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unpopularwiththepopulace · 4 years ago

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Here Lies Jenny: Bebe Neuwirth’s under-remembered masterpiece?

While Bebe Neuwirth is often remembered foremost for her presence in worlds like Chicago, Cheers or Fosse, there’s another piece in the tapestry of her work that brings many notable threads together and is equally significant to her.

Here Lies Jenny is the somewhat under-discussed piece of theatre that in fact has connections to all three of these aforementioned things, because of the people she worked herself on creating it with, and deserves to be brought up with slightly more comparable frequency.

A moment then to explore some of the history of this elusive but important show.

Here Lies Jenny, recalled as a “surprise off Broadway hit”, opened at the Zipper Theatre in downtown Manhattan in May 2004 and ran there for five months.

The show was an interpretive revue of the music of German composer, Kurt Weill, born out of an idea Bebe had herself. It was shaped by collaboration with close friends – with its initial genesis assisted by Leslie Stifelman (the show’s pianist, who she’d worked with on Chicago), direction by Roger Rees (who she’d long known and worked with since their time on Cheers together), and choreography by Ann Reinking (who was Bebe’s closest dance companion in the Fosse universe).

Set in a dark and shadowy looking barroom, the piece followed Bebe as the central, amorphous female figure named ‘Jenny’, supported by three male cast members and a pianist, through an evening of carefully selected Weill songs. Alongside Bebe and Leslie on stage were Gregory Butler and Shawn Emamjomeh, as two rough denizens of the bar, and Ed Dixon as the general proprietor.

There was no linear storyline to the show and no spoken dialogue, but Bebe described how the evening unfolded “in a very logical and emotional, fulfilling way.” All of the songs presented “[described] the interaction between these five people there, that make it necessary to sing the next song.” Rather than taking a group of songs by a particular composer and imposing a narrative on them, the songs were interwoven together to create an “impressionistic and realistic painting of this person’s life.”

To give a summary of the show’s arc, Jenny initially descends the wire staircase into the bar, with little more than a frightened expression and a small bag of wordly possessions. Accosted by the two forceful patrons, she’s flattened down both physically and emotionally. The men depart and return throughout, and the emotional core of the piece fluctuates from song to song as each number evokes a different picture and interpretation of a circumstance or feeling. As reviewers put it, “she’s sometimes bold, sometimes reticent, until she leaves…with what seems like a modicum of self-possession and hope,” and “climbs that long staircase on her way into the world again.”

The idea for creating Here Lies Jenny came out of Bebe’s own desire to put together a piece of theatre and an evening of performance of her own. It was a notion intensified by growing external interest, or as she recalled, “people have always said to me ‘Do a show, do a show, do a one woman show!’”

But for a while the form the piece would take was unclear. Bebe knew she “didn’t want to do a revue”, and she didn’t want “the usual cabaret thing… [or] ‘Bebe and Her Boys.’”

“I generally hate one women shows,” she would remark, “unless it’s Elaine Stritch or Chita Rivera or, you know, Patti LuPone.”

According to Bebe, she’s “much more comfortable as a character doing something. I'm not comfortable just being myself and singing in front of people.”

On and off for around two and a half years then, Bebe had been considering how to approach this matter while putting together some music, predominantly that of Kurt Weill, with musician, conductor and friend from Chicago, Leslie Stifelman.

Leslie suggested bringing in a director, so Bebe turned to Roger Rees – a person she regards as “not just a great actor,” but also “a fantastic director”, with a “very interesting creative mind.” Showing Roger the songs, he “realised that they all described women, or aspects of women, or different times in women’s lives.”

Roger thought it would be interesting then to combine all of these varied sentiments and have them channelled through one specific woman, in one specific location, to present a complex but diversely applicable tapestry centred around the emotional interiority of one tangible female force.

The show is “fragmented, prismatic…less narrative than poetic,” according to Roger. It’s not prescriptive. Rather, it evokes strong feelings and allows the audience to interpret them into their own individual and personal narrative for this woman. It poses questions and provokes thoughts. Who is this woman? Why is she here? Why is she here now? Is that a child? Or is that just a wish for a child? What did she have in this life before we meet her and what has she now lost?

It is indeed an unusual entity, and atypical from other more standard revues, cabaret acts, or works of theatre. A “self-described Japanophile”, Bebe explained how it played in the “Japanese aesthetic concept known as wabi sabi.” Of this she would elaborate, “There’s no direct translation, but it’s about the beauty of things as they age, embracing what’s painful in life as well as what’s joyful.”

It is certainly a piece that contains beauty as well as pain, which itself is a complexity and dichotomy often ascribed to Kurt Weill’s music.

When initially finding and working on songs for what was to become Here Lies Jenny, Bebe noticed being drawn to the work of one composer most strongly.

Like Bernadette Peters talking about how she gravitates to selecting Stephen Sondheim’s material for her concerts, Bebe would say simply, “all of the music that I loved the most was Kurt Weill music.”

A revue in 1991 called Cabaret Verboten (also with Roger Rees), that sought to recreate a Weimar Republic cabaret and re-conjure some of the decadence of pre-Nazi Germany, increased Bebe’s exposure to Kurt Weill’s music and was where she “first became captivated by the composer”. Building on this strong connection and deep appreciation in the years since then, Bebe would assert of his music, “it resonates for me.”

“Neuwirth knows Weill’s music isn’t for everyone,” one reviewer wrote, “but she won’t apologize for it.” She sees its capacity to be “appreciated on many different levels,” and has described it on varying occasions as “unflinchingly honest”, “very fulfilling to perform”, not just “arch and angular and Germanic…[as] many people think”, but as having “great lyricism and tenderness”.

Bebe feels a strong affinity for Weill’s music in part because of its “ability to convey the truth completely and fearlessly and without artifice”. For example, “If you're talking about heartbreak, [his music] goes to the absolute nth degree of what that really means. The way he shows that is with fearless lyrics and the bravery to make the music as beautiful as it can be.”

“Maybe the way I appreciate it speaks to the kind of person I am,” she would say. “I’m very bright but not an intellectual. I like things in a visceral, passionate and spiritual way.” And to Bebe, Weill’s music certainly provides that – which was why devising this show was of such importance and significance to her.

Bebe said also that “the show offers the broad range of Weill's songwriting talents.” This is indeed a truism, with the work of no fewer than ten different lyrists being showcased across the nearly two dozen songs during the evening, including Berthold Brecht, Ira Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner, Langston Hughes, and Ogden Nash.

The different styles and languages of Kurt Weill’s music mirror Weill’s own history and geographic progression through the world. Born in Germany, “Weill, a Jew, had to flee the Nazis at the height of his popularity. He fled to France and then to the United States, where he became a citizen in 1943.”

His songs reflect the world in which he was living. For instance, ‘The Bilbao Song’ is a tale of sometimes gleeful, sometimes regretful nostalgia and comes from a collaboration with Berthold Brecht in German. It is performed here only in English through the use of “Michael Feingold's now-accepted translation”. The Brechtian-ism is a feature of this production as a whole that was remarked on at the time, being appraised there was “more than a dash of an alienation effect at play,” with material being sung for example behind grilled windows or facing away from the audience.

His French material is alternately reflective of the musical identity Weill tried to devise while having to reinvent himself from scratch in France. Bebe performs one of these French numbers here, entitled ‘Je ne t'aime pas’, which has its own poetic lyricism, and indeed mournful significance, given the translation of the title as ‘I don’t love you’.

Alternately, jazzy, Broadway glamour is comparatively evident in some songs like ‘The Saga of Jenny’ from musicals that arose in America on the Great White Way out of the era of Golden Age of the American musical in the ‘40s to the 60’s.

This show was ambitious then, in its mission of exploring a wide range of the composer’s musical contributions across multiple decades, countries, styles of music, and lyrical collaborations.

Beyond his own musicals, Kurt Weill’s music has been notably seen elsewhere on Broadway or in the theatre world via interpretations such as songs in concerts with Betty Buckley, Patti LuPone, Ute Lemper; or full stage productions with Donna Murphy as Lotte Lenya in Hal Prince’s 2007 Lovemusik; or Lenya’s recordings herself.

Much of Kurt Weill’s legacy lives on through his wife, Lotte Lenya, who was seen as his “chief interpreter… [and] largely responsible for reviving interest in the composer” after his death.

Like Lotte with her “whisky baritone”, Bebe is able to convey meaningful interpretations of Weill’s music through her vocal richness and skilled acting choices, carefully controlling factors like timing, pronunciation and syllabic stress.

An example. Bebe does the most satisfying version of ‘The Bilbao Song’ I have heard. There’s a line in this song that states: “Four guys from ‘frisco came with sacks of gold dust,” in which the last portion of the phrase is repeated a further two times. Bebe emphasises the third “SACKS, of gold dust?!” in the dramatic manner stylised through my punctuation in attempts at recreating its phonology, which contrasts against the two previous readings. This gives the line a salient narrative purpose. It conveys not just an observation, but a tale of surprise and incredulity – who on earth would walk into a bar carrying entire sacks of gold dust?

It may be seemingly just one small detail, but it has a large impact. Other versions that intonate all three repetitions of this line the same miss this engaging variation and feel flat in comparison.

This song would justly so later become a staple of her concert material – along with others like ‘Surabaya Johnny’ and ‘Susan’s Dream’.

But there is unfamiliar territory traversed in Here Lies Jenny too. The rendition of Ogden Nash’s lyrics with ‘I'm a Stranger Here Myself’ is ‘new’ – and it’s exquisite, in its melodic, lilting and playful but darkly seductive swirling sentiment.

Another notable number in need of individual mention would be ‘The Saga of Jenny’. There are two Kurt Weill songs most strongly associated with the ‘Jenny’ moniker – this, and the also well-known ‘Pirate Jenny’ from The Threepenny Opera, which Bebe had done a production of in 1999. The latter was trialled in early versions of the show but ultimately didn’t “serve the piece as well as other…moments could,” so was taken out. Fortunately, Bebe would later work it into her concerts.

The former made it in, and provides the exciting opportunity to get to hear Bebe’s take on this song as made well-known by a number of respected performers. ‘The Saga of Jenny’ appeared initially in Weill & Gershwin’s collaboration for the musical Lady in the Dark in 1941, starring Gertrude Lawrence. The song has since gone through innumerable reiterations, such as via Ginger Rogers in the 1944 film adaptation of the same name; Julie Andrews’ big-production performance in the Gertrude Lawrence biopic Star! in 1968; and other high-profile concert performances like via Ruthie Henshall, Christine Ebersole, Lynn Redgrave and Ute Lemper; along with Lotte Lenya’s own recordings.

Further extending the song’s life was ‘The Saga of Lenny’ – a version devised with new lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, performed by Lauren Bacall for Leonard Bernstein’s 70th Birthday in 1988. All of these are on YouTube and I would testify are worth a watch.

In this show, Bebe performs the number with the bravado of a war-time songbird. She strides around with an old-school 1940s microphone back and forth across the stage as she progresses through the song’s distinct chronological sections, grounding the show centrally back to its identifying moniker and characterising an eponymous, engaging and multiply varied ‘Jenny’.

When not bound to microphones, Here Lies Jenny also involved the use of Ann Reinking’s “minimal but inventive” choreography to create striking visual images. Though perhaps not resembling the fast-paced, razzle-dazzle of Chicago, these patterns of movement are at times no less impactful. Bebe is dragged fluidly across a countertop, rolled sinuously down pairs of legs, centred in a dark tango (that one review likened as a potential metaphor for a ménage à trois), or spun backwards upside down onto Emamjomeh’s shoulder in the air – to name a few notable moments.

Not a dance show by any strict sense, all of these demands are nonetheless physically taxing. This is a matter of importance given the timing of the show.

What Bebe had long deemed a “peculiar” hip from her early twenties, begun causing notable pain when it “went from peculiar to downright bad in 2001” during Fosse on Broadway. It was recorded the “pain continued during [this] high-concept Kurt Weill revue” in 2004, such that performing this manner of movement in the show can have been no trivial feat. The next three years brought subsequent arthroscopic surgery for cartilage removal, and then total hip replacement.

That being considered, the show was able to run in the highly demanding manner it did for five months straight because of Ann Reinking’s assiduously crafted choreography.

The Zipper Theatre was the “funky downtown Manhattan space” that housed the show for that time. The timing of the production and the nature of the theatre played integral parts in the piece’s characterisation.

Roger took Bebe to see the theatre when they were devising the show, and to Bebe, it felt right. “There is this creative gesture that we are making and the gesture is completed if it’s in this place.” Not in some new, shiny theatre; but here, with a darkness and sense of history that created an evocative mood similar to the tone of the whole show “as soon as you walked into the building.” This was aided by the show beginning at 11pm each night – “absolutely an artistic choice” – given that what “happens between these five people, happens very late at night”, in a shadowy time of day filled by darkness and secrets.

Here Lies Jenny ended its run in New York in October 2004. But this did not mark the end of the piece. Bebe and her troupe took the show to San Francisco in the Spring the following year – after a seven month interim that included filming thirteen episodes of Law and Order: Trial by Jury, the aforementioned hip cartilage removal, and subsequent recovery.

The show was not deemed flawless by everyone who reviewed it. Some thought it too dark or wished for less abstraction and ambiguity. But as one article would conclude, “Faults aside, it’s hard not to recommend a show devoted to Kurt Weill,” ultimately providing a “unique and polished evening at the theatre.”

Roger Rees would reflect on the show, “Weill & Neuwirth work so well together” because Bebe’s “high standard of performance” means she is able to “delve deeply and go on forever” into material he likened to being as complex as Shakespeare.

It “demands a great deal from a performer, and she is equal to it,” Roger said. “She’s very deep in herself. There’s nothing made up about [her], which is a rare and beautiful thing. The match between performer and material is exquisite.”

This would likely mean a lot to Bebe, as the show itself meant a lot to Bebe. And still does several years later. She would cite it in 2012 as the “role she wish[ed] more people had seen”, as to her, it “was a beautiful, unusual piece of theatre”. Altogether, it was something ineffable and “bigger than the sum of its parts”.

“It’s something I've wanted to do, and I did instigate it,” she said, of putting the show together. But that’s not to say it was easy to helm matters. “For me to be in charge, makes me very uncomfortable.”

That the show got made at all then Bebe would recognise as “a testament to how deeply I love the material and how inspired it makes me.” Her trust in people like Leslie, Annie and Roger enabled the creation of such a project from the ground up that wouldn’t have otherwise existed. Thus, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Sondheim, it was the combination of both personal drive, and also the shared collaboration of four people who all “love each other very much” that ultimately ‘made a hat where there never was a hat.’

It was even further an important show to her, because it was “a very private thing.” She’d describe Jenny as a very physical and emotional role – “the most personal of anything I've done.”

It clearly holds a special place in Bebe’s own heart. Undoubtedly, it would be poignant to revisit again. As we look to the near future of theatre with shows that could feasibly be staged as events start coming back, in tandem with the publicly expressed desire of people wanting to see Bebe back on stage again, this pre-existing, modestly-sized, inventive piece would be no bad suggestion.

How about a Here Lies Jenny reprise when theatre returns?

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newssplashy · 6 years ago

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Opinion: A rough rehearsal, a suicide and a broadway show in turmoil

NEW YORK — The text came in on a Thursday afternoon. The director of “Chicago,” the second-longest-running show in Broadway history, wanted to see the sole remaining member of the opening night cast the next day.

It was an unusual request. The cast member, Jeff Loeffelholz, an understudy who in recent years rarely performed, hadn’t met with the director in a long time.

The encounter was brief, but, for Loeffelholz, unsettling. In notes he jotted down and in text messages to a friend, he said that the director had been “brutal” and that the musical director had criticized his performance. At the end, Loeffelholz wrote, the director told him to “respect the production,” which he interpreted as a suggestion that he should consider quitting.

Six days later, Loeffelholz killed himself.

It is rarely possible to know exactly why someone takes his own life, and suicide generally has multiple causes.

But the death of Loeffelholz on June 29 has rattled the cast, crew and creative team of one of Broadway’s marquee shows.

“It’s something that has really unnerved the whole company,” Bruce Bonvissuto, a trombonist in the orchestra, said. “It’s really been a very difficult period to go out and do a show every night.”

However complex the causes of Loeffelholz’s death may be, widespread discussion of his final rehearsal has brought new attention to the way theatrical creative teams wield power in an era of increasing concern about how managers treat subordinates in the workplace.

“Since Jeff’s tragic death, we have heard from a new round of Equity members that bullying is still far too common in the theater, despite our work on harassment prevention,” Mary McColl, executive director of Actors’ Equity, the union representing performers and stage managers, said.

Some have taken to social media to detail instances in which they felt mistreated or abused. “Backstage bullying is essentially Broadway’s dirty little secret,” Robert DuSold, an actor, wrote in a blog post about Loeffelholz’s death.

The show’s producers, director and musical director all expressed sadness over Loeffelholz’s death; the production and the director declined to comment on details while investigations are underway, while the musical director said she has always behaved professionally.

An investigation is being conducted by Actors’ Equity, which hired a lawyer to review the death and said it would share the results with the cast. The producers hired their own lawyer to investigate, but then decided to “rethink the process,” according to a spokesman, after that lawyer complained about a lack of cooperation from the cast, some of whom were suspicious about whether the show’s inquiry would be objective.

Anger has been directed at the producers and directors, but whether that is fair is a difficult question. Broadway, the mountaintop of theater, is by nature a demanding place. Tough rehearsals happen all the time.

And Loeffelholz, at 57, was dealing with the kind of career and life pains every actor goes through — indeed, the pains that many everyday workers go through. He was not getting any younger, and his character, a small but demanding role, was not getting any older. He and his partner had also lost control of a chocolate shop they ran in Rockefeller Center and were fighting with the owners.

But no one — not his friends, not his partner, not his bosses, and not his colleagues — seemed to know the depths of his despair until he was found, near death, in his apartment.

— Dream Role for an Unusual Talent

“Chicago,” a musical satire about a group of murderous women seeking to parlay their notoriety into careers in vaudeville, is among the best-known shows Broadway has produced; a 2002 film adaptation was the rare musical to win an Academy Award for best picture. The current Broadway revival — the original ran for two years in the 1970s — opened in 1996, and has been performed more than 9,000 times, grossing $625 million thus far; the show is also running in London, and has had multiple tours. Only “The Phantom of the Opera,” which opened in New York in 1988, has been on Broadway longer.

Loeffelholz was an unusual figure in the “Chicago” milieu — a standby for the character Mary Sunshine, a journalist with a soft spot for sob stories who is played by a male soprano dressed in women’s clothing. Loeffelholz’s responsibilities involved calling in eight times a week to see if he was needed, and, if not, staying near the theater while the show was running. When the revival opened, he signed a standard contract guaranteeing him a job for the life of the show; such a provision was not unusual, but most productions measure their life spans in months rather than decades.

The role was a dream for Loeffelholz, a theater lover who could sing high notes most men cannot reach. He brought a comic flair to the part, and took pride in the enormous applause he routinely received when his character is revealed to be a man.

"It was the perfect role for him — it fit his voice and it fit his personality,” a cousin, Donna Wynn, said.

Loeffelholz’s domestic partner, Peter De La Cruz, said the couple chose their apartment to be near the Ambassador Theater, where “Chicago” is performed, so he could dash over when needed, and when they would eat out, they would choose a restaurant in the neighborhood. “He loved it,” De La Cruz said. “Sometimes he would go on midway through the show. You have to have nerves of steel, and he did.”

Loeffelholz was born and raised in Norman, Oklahoma. His father, Ray Loeffelholz, died by suicide at the age of 23, about three months before Jeff Loeffelholz’s birth, according to a friend and a news report at the time. His mother died, apparently of a heart attack, at 45, when Loeffelholz was in college; he sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from “Carousel” at her funeral.

Jeff discovered theater in high school, and studied drama at the University of Oklahoma. In college he got experience performing in women’s clothing — appearing in drag in one of the plays that became “Torch Song Trilogy” — and began developing his soprano, at first as a way of mimicking the divas he adored.

“He lived as if in a musical,” said a friend, Bart Ebbink. “Certain songs would fit a situation he was in, and he would burst into song.”

Upon graduation, he, his boyfriend and Ebbink piled into a car and drove to New York. They found an apartment in Astoria, Queens, and embarked on new lives; in 1986 he met De La Cruz, who was with him until his death.

Loeffelholz began performing in comedic cabaret acts where he would sing songs normally performed by women — at first in “Soprano Showstoppers,” and then, with Michael Tidd, in “Dangerous Duets.” He played Mary Sunshine in summer stock in Potsdam, New York, years before landing the Broadway standby role.

In the revival’s early years, Loeffelholz went on as Mary Sunshine many times, but in recent years he was rarely used.

Under the contract, Loeffelholz could be fired only for cause. He could be bought out — a step that would have cost the budget-minded production, which has used tight cost controls to continue running for 22 years, about $30,000 to $40,000, according to his friends.

Adrian Bryan-Brown, a spokesman for the production, said “the amount of a buyout would not be a limiting factor in making decisions that benefit the production” and that “the producers had no reason to buy out Mr. Loeffelholz.”

— Called in Before Rehearsal

Loeffelholz feared that the production no longer supported him, and he was worried when he was asked to come in just before a full-cast rehearsal, on June 22, to work with the show’s director, Walter Bobbie, and musical director, Leslie Stifelman.

Bobbie, 72, is an admired stage veteran with 21 Broadway credits as an actor, director and writer; he won a Tony for his direction of “Chicago.” Stifelman, 58, was a “Chicago” pianist who in 2003 was elevated to musical director; she conducts the onstage orchestra and speaks a few lines of dialogue. She has described the cast as family, and even met her wife, Melissa Rae Mahon, through the show.

Loeffelholz had no real relationship with Bobbie, and he felt that Stifelman didn’t like him, friends said.

“He thought something might be up,” said Brian Rardin, a close friend and Tidd’s partner.

Loeffelholz texted Rardin during breaks in the rehearsal, and jotted down notes afterward. “Walter was Brutal and I feel like it was a set up directed towards me personally!” he texted to Rardin. “They made me do the song about 5 times at one point he got mad and walked out.”

In the notes Loeffelholz left, he said that, as he repeatedly sang Mary Sunshine’s big number, “A Little Bit of Good,” Bobbie asked him to “quit overperforming it and being draggy”; said he couldn’t hear the song’s lower notes; and described himself as “very disappointed” and “very upset” before leaving the auditorium. Stifelman then said she wanted to work on the middle section of the song with Loeffelholz, saying “you always do it wrong,” according to his notes.

Much of his description was confirmed by witnesses who heard parts of it, but asked not to be identified because they feared endangering their positions with the show. Bryan-Brown said those descriptions “do not represent our understanding of the events of that day” but declined to be more specific while the investigations are ongoing.

According to Loeffelholz’s notes, he and Bobbie had a brief final conversation at the lip of the stage, which none of the witnesses heard. He wrote that Bobbie had asked him to “respect the production,” said “I cannot tell you what to do, but 22 years”; said that he did not agree with run-of-production contracts; and said “you make more money than I do with this production.” (Bryan-Brown said the actor did not out-earn the director. Loeffelholz made an estimated $106,000 a year, the current Broadway minimum.)

Stage rehearsals, of course, can be demanding, and repeating a song or scene is common; witnesses said the interaction with Loeffelholz was not as tough as some they had experienced at “Chicago,” and a stage manager’s report that day noted nothing unusual. But the Mary Sunshine song is taxing for the male voice, and the exchange hit Loeffelholz hard. He was in a dark mood by the time he got home. “He was definitely upset, depressed, despondent,” Tidd said.

The following Monday, Loeffelholz met with a representative from Actors’ Equity, the union, to report the interaction. But over the next few days, he remained out of sorts. “He said, ‘I have a scarlet letter,'” De La Cruz recalled. “He was so mad that they took this route.’

On Thursday evening, Loeffelholz sent a round of texts to friends, saying “I love you”; wrote “No joy” on a notepad; and then swallowed a lethal amount of alcohol and pills. When De La Cruz got home from work, he found him unresponsive; the next day he was removed from life support. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.

— Backstage Despair

Determining the cause of suicide is, of course, difficult. Many people are treated roughly at work, and even lose their jobs, without killing themselves.

Loeffelholz had experienced some financial stress. After working at, managing and investing in a Teuscher Chocolates shop in Rockefeller Center for years (he would often bring Champagne truffles to “Chicago”), De La Cruz was laid off and Loeffelholz resigned in 2016, when the shop’s owner moved to bring in new leadership. The couple sued Teuscher, and the case is pending in state court.

“They weren’t struggling, but they were worried, and the stress of being an older performer on Broadway is tremendous,” said the couple’s lawyer, Juan C. Restrepo-Rodriguez.

“Chicago” performers interviewed said that, although they were stunned by Loeffelholz’s suicide, they were not surprised by the incident that preceded it. Multiple current and former musicians, most speaking anonymously because they feared retribution, said Bobbie could be intimidating and Stifelman could belittle or disrespect performers.

“She would regularly be cursing, slamming things, and trash-talking musicians and performers,” said Dan Peck, a musician who previously played the bass and tuba for the show. “And whenever Jeff was on, despite the audience loving him, she would be throwing shade and rolling her eyes.”

Stifelman, who has stayed away from the show since shortly after Loeffelholz’s death, disputed the descriptions, saying in an email, “In two decades working at “Chicago” I’ve trained hundreds of performers with the utmost of professionalism and respect and any insinuation to the contrary is just not true.” She said she never told Loeffelholz “you always do it wrong.”

“No words can ever begin to express how profoundly saddened I am by Jeff’s passing and for all that Jeff’s family and friends are going through,” she said. “In the 20-plus years I have worked for the producers of Chicago, my job has been the music, never hiring or firing, and in all that time without incident.”

She has support from Rob Fisher, the show’s original musical director, who said, “I’ve never seen her belittle or humiliate, and it’s hard for me to imagine that.” Fisher also said “everybody loved Jeff,” but added that the role of Mary Sunshine “is not something that people can do for 22 years — male vocal cords can’t sustain singing in that range.”

Bobbie declined to comment, but his union, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, released a statement on his behalf. “With two investigations ongoing, it is not appropriate for our member Walter Bobbie or for SDC to discuss the tragedy,” the statement said. “Walter is deeply saddened by Jeff Loeffelholz’s death and offers his sincere condolences to Jeff’s family and loved ones.”

Bryan-Brown said the production had received no prior complaints about Bobbie or Stifelman.

Initially the producers, Barry and Fran Weissler, named as their investigator a lawyer, Judd Burstein, who had represented them, leading some performers to believe he would not be objective. Many performers refused to meet with him, and another lawyer, Bruce Maffeo, appointed by Equity to conduct a separate investigation, discouraged such meetings. When Burstein publicly objected, and said Equity was in “circle the wagons mode” because of its own handling of Loeffelholz’s concerns, the Weisslers decided to reconsider how to proceed.

“It is important to them that both the unions and the company have confidence in the process for investigating the matter,” Bryan-Brown said.

Loeffelholz’s friends are hoping the investigations will have an impact.

“We want the whole truth,” said Marshall Coid, the “Chicago” violinist. “We seek change in his name as a fitting legacy for a wonderful and much-beloved man.”

While the investigations proceed, family and friends are planning an Aug. 7 memorial at St. Malachy’s Church, known as the actors’ chapel, where Loeffelholz, who was raised Catholic, would occasionally attend Mass.

And in a backstage stairwell at the theater, there are two tributes to Loeffelholz. In one corner is a shrine with candles, photos of Loeffelholz, and a plastic bag holding his body mic. And on the next landing, cast and crew have begun writing in iridescent markers on a black wall words expressing their hopes for change: “Love.” “Kindness.” “Support.” “Respect.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/07/opinion-rough-rehearsal-suicide-and_30.html

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