A Broadway comedian is coming to San Antonio with his one-man show. And I've got to tell you, Seth Rudetsky talks faster than anyone I’ve interviewed.
“You know, I talk about how I loved Broadway as a toddler but I think they think I was exaggerating like my mother. My mother exaggerates everything," he said.
The performer played piano for ten years in "The Phantom of the Opera" production and he told me this short story:
“I heard something clatter next to my piano. As it turns out it was the phantom’s mask,” Rudetsky said.
The mask had accidentally fallen into the music pit from the stage.
“So I put on the Phantom’s mast in the pit, and as I was playing -- dah, dee, dah -- I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, I am the Phantom!’ I was really just trying to get a laugh out of the viola section because they were notoriously uptight,” he said.
Unfortunately, the high-tech mask had molded to his face, and couldn’t be re-used.
“Basically two thousand dollars wasted and I was almost fired, butI had a great time for five minutes,” Rudetsky said.
The Emmy-winning comedian is bringing his oversized personality to the Woodlawn Theater on August 2 for his show called "Seth’s Big Fat Broadway Show."
“I’d say it’s a combination of 'The Daily Show' and 'America’s Funniest Home Videos,' with a Broadway bent," he said.
Rudetsky is known for doing something called "deconstructing."
“In my show I do a side-by-side comparison of Patti Lupone in 'Evita' versus the exact same phrase sung by Madonna," he said. "The result is devastating.”
Rudetsky's takedowns are the stuff of legends.
“I always like to show people: This is why this is brilliant, this is why it’s a splitting headache” said Rudetsky.
He said Elton John caught wind of these deconstructing videos and said this to him:
"I’m obsessed with what you do, can you put together an entire birthday party for me?" Rudetsky said.
So he did, presenting that show to him in London.
“Yeah, my God it was amazing!” Rudetsky said.
- For more on "Seth's Big Fat Broadway Show" at the Woodlawn visit: woodlawntheatre.org/seth
