For those who are not familiar with Seth Rudetsky or his work, it’s hard to sum it all up in a few sentences. Having grown up studying classical piano, Seth has since worked his way into playing and chatting to some of the biggest names on Broadway, as well as foraging into stand-up comedy and writing his own musicals. Although that’s a very brief CV of his work, Seth is also well-known for his YouTube videos in which he ‘deconstructs’ Broadway, and his stage show of the same name does just what it says on the tin.
Powered by his incredible musical knowledge, and experience playing for many shows that have a home on the Great White Way, Seth’s two hour long show digs into the depths of Broadway’s finest performers including Patti LuPone, Barbara Streisand, Gavin Creel and erm… Cher. Whilst educating his audience on several performances, Rudetsky also highlights many small flaws or embellishments that actors use to make their performances different night after night. For the majority of the show, any clips from cast recordings or bootlegged performances are found to fall into two categories: one is “a-mah-zing” good, the other is “a-mah-zing” bad. For example, Elaine Paige singing ‘Rainbow High’ is good; Madonna singing Evita is bad.
Whilst his acerbic wit and fast-paced humour propels the show between segments, Seth also manages to incorporate his own obsessions with certain performances – and ponders how some were allowed to get away with over-riffing, not vibrato-ing or overacting their lines. From Friedrich in The Sound of Music’s inability to only use his chest voice, to Streisand adding extra syllables to her words, the entire evening becomes a slightly geeky look at Broadway performances in their minutiae.
He revels in the car crashes and obsesses with the brilliant – and even imagines what might have happened in the recording studios. His encyclopaedic knowledge of the Broadway back catalogue together with his own vocabulary allows the audience to understand – many perhaps for the first time – things that you would not normally hear during a first listen. From here on in, I’m certain I could pick out a ‘button’, spot some ‘freak-riffing’ or no longer be seduced by ‘amnesia-riffing’.
With his own personal touch to the evening featuring recordings of his twelve-year-old self, it is clear that Rudetsky is at home on the stage: educating and entertaining his audience with his camp, lip-syncing comedic routine is part of his genuine appeal. Encouraging the theatrical geekiness of his audience, Seth Rudetsky’s Deconstructing Broadway is the perfect evening of musical theatre mastery.
Seth Rudetsky’s Deconstructing Broadway played for one performance only at the Leicester Square Theatre. For more information about his work, visit the SethTV website.