Commiserate with Sting in a Stairway
I didn’t choose this journey I’m on.
This journey was chosen for me.
I didn’t ask for this task I’ve been given,
And I’d give it up, gratefully.
If I could
I would.
But I won’t.
I can’t.
All of the broken lives, and all of the broken dreams
Coming down the aisles in steady streams.
—“FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS” BY KATHIE LEE GIFFORD FROM SCANDALOUS
I have experienced both triumph and tragedy on Broadway. Though I was thrilled to step in for Carol Burnett and perform in Putting It Together, Scandalous was devastating for me. It remains the single biggest disappointment in my professional life. It’s still difficult for me to pass the Neil Simon Theatre on West Fifty-Second Street. It’s painful to look up at the marquis and see a different name of a show.
I avoided the theater as long as I could until Sting asked me to attend a performance of his new musical called The Last Ship—a poignant story about the failing shipbuilding industry in England. I have always adored Sting and admired his music enormously. He’s a true musical artist of the highest order and a very sweet man.
I had heard that the show was in trouble. Even a star as big as Sting was having difficulty at the box office; the critics had not been kind (that’s news?), and there was talk of it actually closing. I sat in the theater waiting for the curtain to rise. I totally understood everything he was going through. My heart was breaking for him as I watched his sensational cast perform his artfully crafted songs. At the end of the show the performers received a rousing standing ovation.
People who have never written, produced, and performed, and critics who couldn’t do these things if they tried, have no idea how difficult and all-consuming the work is. There’s an old Broadway saying often attributed to Larry Gelbart: “If Hitler is alive, I hope he’s out of town with a musical.” It’s funny but true. The musical theater process is brutal from beginning to end, and few shows ever turn a profit, much less become a bona fide hit.
I really enjoyed The Last Ship and was looking forward to meeting with Sting afterward to tell him so. For some reason he had asked me to meet him in the stairwell outside of the main dressing room. I knew the area well as I had spent many a moment there with Carolee during Scandalous.
Sting arrived and sat down on the stairs. It was another one of those surreal moments in my life. I had seen him onstage at Lincoln Center and had been with him on my television shows, at the GRAMMYs, and at celebrity parties in New York. But I never would have dreamed that I’d be sitting on the stairs with him in this musty, dusty, decrepit staircase of a theater that has only been home to one real hit: Hairspray.
Sting is a magnificently handsome, magnetic man. But on this day he seemed weary, and I ached with recognition. Our conversation went something like this.
“I don’t understand, Kathie Lee,” he started. “I understand the world out there [outside of Broadway], but I don’t understand this one. It makes no sense. Show after show I watch the audience. They’re involved, they’re laughing, they’re crying, they’re standing up and cheering in the end.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“I know, Sting.” I nodded. It was the same way with Scandalous. “It’s like the critics watch a completely different show than real people do.”
“I’m thinking about going into the show myself for a while. To try to save it.”
“That’s what I was planning to do when mine closed. We just ran out of time.”
It seems some dreams are like that. No matter what you do, or how hard you work, they sometimes simply run themselves right out of time to become what you had imagined they would be. It’s true for all of us—even for music icons like Sting or crazy creatives like me.
Still, dead ends don’t have to be the end of dreaming. And they’re certainly not the end of opportunities that lie ahead. But perhaps they provide a unique opportunity to commiserate with a friend . . . even one named Sting.