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As some of you longtime friends
and fans know, Michael Andrew is also an accomplished character actor
(with a degree in Theatre). And he is thrilled to return to the Orlando
theatre stage once again. He was featured in the Mad Cow Theatre production
of "As Thousands Cheer". This is a famous classic 1933 music revue
show written by Irving Berlin and Moss Hart. This show includes such
hit songs as “Easter Parade’, “Heat Wave”, “Harlem on My Mind”, and
“Miss Lonelyhearts”. The format is a Living Newspaper, with sketches
and songs related to the headlines and columns of the 1933 New York
Times, including the society pages, gossip column, weather report,
and, of course, the funny papers. And it became a local sensation....
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Entertainer Michael Andrew co-stars in Berlin & Hart's classic
show
"As Thousands Cheer"
One of "most successful shows in Mad Cow Theatre's history!!!
Feature Article from
www.OrlandoSentinel.com
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Direct online story link:
http://orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/theater/orl-thousands07040702apr07.story?coll=orl%2Dcaltheatertop
Swing shift: Bandleader takes a turn as actor
A new stage for bandleader. (JULIE
FLETCHER/ORLANDO SENTINEL) Apr 6, 2002
By Elizabeth Maupin | Sentinel Theater
Critic
Sunday Entertainment Feature
Posted April 7, 2002
Even when Michael
Andrew was on top of the world -- leading the band at the
Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center,
or singing with his own orchestra at Merv Griffin's Beverly Hilton
-- it never quite felt right.
The leader of the popular retro band Swingerhead
may have been singing his heart out.
But what he really wanted to do was act.
"Even when I'm doing my thing with Swingerhead, I always felt
like an actor playing a singer," says Andrew, leaning back at a little
nightclub table at the foot of a black-and-silver art deco stage.
"I started out with, 'I'm going to be this Sinatra guy now.' And it
worked, so I went with it. But this is what I love to do."
What Andrew is doing is taking a risk -- abandoning, at least for
four days a week, his role as a swing-era-style singer and taking
up a role on the stage. He's one of a six-member ensemble in Mad
Cow Theatre's production of the Irving Berlin-Moss Hart
musical revue As Thousands Cheer.
When As Thousands Cheer opens at Mad Cow's downtown theater Thursday
night, Andrew's many Orlando fans will have the chance to see him
in the role he always meant to take.
Andrew, who is in his late 30s, has spent the better part of the last
dozen years riding the wave of the swing revival -- performing in
New York and Beverly Hills, at the downtown Orlando club once called
Rat Pack's and at Atlantic Dance on the Disney Boardwalk. He tried
his best to emulate idols such as Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin
and Mel Torme. And he came close enough for Merv
Griffin to call him "one of the great singers of all time."
But what Andrew wants to do now is act. So right now he's doing it
-- playing comical characters of the 1930s, crooning the tunes of
Irving Berlin and stepping back to watch as some of Orlando's favorite
actors do their thing.
A sort of Saturday Night Live of the era between the world wars, As
Thousands Cheer also features Mad Cow regulars Rick Stanley
and Jay Becker, along with Lucy Carney (below), Gail
Bartell and DeOnzell Green. The director is Alan Bruun.
In one sketch, Andrew plays movie heartthrob Douglas Fairbanks
Jr., who's pretending to be heartbroken -- for publicity purposes
-- over the breakup of his marriage to Joan Crawford. Carney,
a favorite from the old Civic Theatre of Central Florida, plays Crawford.
"It's like being in a Mel Brooks movie with Madeline Kahn,"
Andrew says of his matchup with Carney.
"That's the thing I missed most about not doing theater -- not having
that interaction. It's a real joy for me."
Andrew started his theater days young. His parents performed in community
theater when he was growing up in suburban Milwaukee, and his father,
who was in the real-estate business, owned a theater called the Swan.
At the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, Andrew majored in theater:
He was always cast as the comic second banana, the old guy, the character
part.
He thought halfheartedly about majoring in business. But he found
himself spending all his time on the stage.
"It was always instilled in me somehow that it wasn't a practical
thing to pursue as a career," he says. "But I realized this was what
was in my heart."
At the same time, he realized he had always loved the swing music
of Sinatra and cohorts. He found a lounge where a woman singer
was performing that kind of music. Andrew didn't even know what it
was called.
"I said to her, 'I sing that kind of music.' That was an exaggeration
-- I sang it in the shower. She said to bring in my stuff, so I found
a friend who played the piano and we got together about four songs.
She said, 'You've got a job.'
"After he graduated from college, in 1987, Andrew found work performing
on Carnival Cruise Lines, where he put together an act in which a
nerdy comical character transformed into Sinatra. In 1990, he moved
to Orlando and played Stan Laurel when Universal Studios opened
that year.
Not long afterward, he was singing one afternoon in a nearly empty
lounge in Atlantic City when he met an agent for the Rainbow Room.
A year later the agent called and told Andrew he had an audition the
next week to be the famed nightclub's bandleader.
"I was pretty much this kid from Wisconsin, and it was practically
the first time I had been in New York. I was staying on a friend's
couch. I ended up staying on his couch for six months."
Andrew spent two years leading the band at the Rainbow Room.
"I had to jump into it and act as if I knew what I was doing or I
wouldn't get the job. So I had to learn very fast how to take control.
I tell you, I learned fast, and I learned from my mistakes."
That job ended in 1995, and Andrew came back to Orlando. Bruun was
then artistic director at the Civic, and the two collaborated on a
kitschy science-fiction musical called Mickey
Swingerhead and the Earthgirls. Andrew wrote the script and
most of the songs and played the lead.
Then the swing craze took over, and he rode that to Griffin's Beverly
Hilton, where he wound up spending 18 months. When he finally came
back to Orlando, he says, it seemed like the end of an era for him
-- a time to move his life in different directions.
"I called Alan to say I wanted to get back into theater. I thought
I'd take some acting lessons. Alan said, 'Your timing is unbelievable,
because we're doing this show.'
"That show, Bruun says, "was pretty much the pinnacle of the topical
revue," a kind of theater wildly popular in the 1930s. Writer-director
Moss Hart (who went on to co-write You Can't Take It With You
and The Man Who Came to Dinner) and Broadway legend Irving Berlin
based their 1933 revue on the headlines in the day's newspapers: Satirical
sketches about the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Herbert Hoover
interspersed with songs based on the gossip column ("Through a
Keyhole") and the Sunday rotogravure ("Easter Parade").
"Everybody has the opportunity to step out and do a star turn," Bruun
says. "Everybody has their moment."
Mad Cow has remade its second-floor theater into an intimate cabaret,
with the elongated, deco-style stage at one end, small tables surrounding
it and more audience seating on risers at the back. The result allows
the performers to connect with theatergoers in a way more conventional
plays don't allow.
"This revue was originally done in a big theater," Bruun says. "To
take it and marry it to cabaret is the best of both worlds. The performers
get to showcase all the many talents they have.
"And the songs of Irving Berlin are so wonderfully sincere. We've
tried very hard not to comment on them. It would be so easy with 'Easter
Parade' to schmaltz it up. But to have it mean something, to have
the music and lyrics come from the heart . . . That's where the generosity
of spirit works perfectly in a cabaret setting, where the audience
can respond directly."
For Andrew, performing in As Thousands Cheer means putting aside his
experience as lead vocalist and bandleader and making himself part
of a group.
"There are certain aspects of performance that go on a back burner
when I'm the leader," he says.
"As an actor, that isn't always good. I said to Alan, 'I need this
discipline as an actor.' I want to just concentrate on being a performer.
In this it's a chance for me to work on things I normally have to
push away."
It also means moving from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again
-- playing John D. Rockefeller Sr. to Becker's John D. Jr.
and also getting to sing "Easter Parade."
"Everybody in the show gets to sing great songs and play crazy characters,"
he says.
"That's like a dream for me. It's really what I love the most."
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What: Mad Cow Theatre production of a Moss Hart-Irving Berlin musical
revue.
Where: Mad Cow Theatre, 105 E. Pine St., Orlando.
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays (opens Thursday,
through May 12; also, 7:30 p.m. April 22 and May 12; no shows April
20 and 26 and May 10).
How much: $12-$18.
Where to call: 407-297-8788
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Performance Schedule Recap: April
11 (Opening Night w/ Champagne Reception), 7:30pm - SOLD OUT!! April
12, 7:30pm - SOLD OUT!! April 13, 7:30pm - SOLD OUT!! April 14, 2:30pm
- SOLD OUT!! April 18, 7:30pm - SOLD OUT!! April 19, 7:30pm - SOLD
OUT!! April 21, 2:30pm - SOLD OUT!! April 22, 7:30pm - SOLD OUT!!
April 25, 7:30pm April 27, 7:30pm - SOLD OUT!! April 28, 2:30pm May
2, 7:30pm May 3, 7:30pm - SOLD OUT!! May 4, 7:30pm May 5, 2:30pm May
9, 7:30pm - SOLD OUT!! May 11, 7:30pm - SOLD OUT!!
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PLEASE
STAY TUNED FOR MORE MUSICAL PERFORMANCE INFO with MICHAEL ANDREW
- IT'S GUARANTEED TO BE A FUN TIME.
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"...Andrew and Carney are amusingly grand "
- The Orlando Sentinel
"Michael Andrew... a local
sensation" - INK19 Magazine
"...six fabulous performers"
- The Orlando Weekly
"..most successful
shows in Mad Cow Theatre history" - Mitzi Maxwell, General Manager,
Mad Cow Theatre
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