Theater

“Noooooooooooo!” —Christina Applegate

Applegate admitted she was not thrilled by the way Barry Weissler handled things in the press when he switched to Backstory B: Charlotte d’Amboise as the standby who becomes the star. “I put my two cents in about that, definitely.” As for D’Amboise, “I don’t look at her as a standby. She’s my other Charity and I’m her other Charity. When I’ll feel like having a day off, she’ll play it again. We share. I mean, not really share—I’m not gonna be there Tuesday and she’ll be there Wednesday, it’s not like that. But we’re partners in this.”

As it turned out, they were partners on print ads, too. Up in his company’s crowded office at 46th Street, Barry Weissler showed me. “If you turn around, you’ll see the way we went for the time being with Charlotte d’Amboise.” On a poster board in the corner was the silhouette of D’Amboise taken in Boston, posed with hat and cane. “Because it’s a shadow figure, it could have been anyone,” Weissler explained—and as an “interim solution,” he’d featured the shots in an ad in the Times, with Applegate’s button-cute face alongside D’Amboise’s lithe shadow.

“Once I do my marketing magic, I sell the public on the product. Now they want that product. The minute I took the star away, the ticket sales faltered and the refunds were huge. Because as great as Charlotte is, they wanted what they thought they had purchased. It’s human nature.”

He credited co-producer Ed Schloss with helping to add $1.5 million to the initial $7.5 million dump. “He was despondent that we were closing.” Is Applegate an investor? “No,” he said. Are friends of hers among them? He paused over his Whole Foods turkey meatballs—a good while longer than it takes to swallow—looked up and said, “No.” How many phone calls did he and Applegate exchange that weekend? “How many phone calls? I feel like this is a deposition.” Industry sources say Schloss kicked in about $1 million and Applegate’s wealthy connections provided the rest. Christina Applegate’s fund-raising blitzkrieg may have been one of the most productive blackouts in history.

Weissler did say that the premature closing almost lost Charity its theater. The deal to transfer Twelve Angry Men to the Al Hirschfeld was almost set to close that day, until Weissler called Jujamcyn head Rocco Landesman to steal it back. “I had a battle on my hands, but thank goodness we prevailed. See, that’s an example of why you would never do this as a marketing ploy.”

“I don’t look at her as a standby. We share. I mean, not really share—I’m not gonna be there Tuesday and she’ll be there Wednesday, it’s not like that.”

By opening his show on the Tony deadline, Weissler is hoping the buzz of nominations will sustain momentum. With the refunds stanched, the advance is inching up well over $2 million, he says. Not awful, but not good. (Other sources estimate $1.5 million—closer to awful.) He’s predicting at least a $50,000-a-day increase once performances start.

“No one’s going to feel heartbroken,” Weissler said, smiling. “Charlotte’s job is to be a standby. Nobody said, ‘Hey, this is gonna be your big break, kid.’”

Well, actually, they did. Still, that’s showbiz. As Charlotte d’Amboise prepares for her first preview in her temporary dressing room—Applegate will move in when D’Amboise vacates—she’s far more composed than she was that nerve-racking evening in Boston. That is, until I suggest that she might be less than disappointed. “Who said I wasn’t disappointed?” she snaps, her face tightening. “It’s very disappointing that that’s the way the theater is, that you have to have a big name. It’s a safe choice that producers make. And sure, it sucks, but that’s reality. I don’t want to be a bitter person. So as much as I put my heart and soul into this, it’s not my heart and soul. I’ve gone way past that.”

Maybe she didn’t get enough time to make the role her own? “It doesn’t have anything to do with me growing into the role,” she counters. “Even if I were fucking brilliant and I had been doing it for a year, I don’t think anything would have changed.” Though D’Amboise is contracted to replace Applegate, an escape clause gives the production free reign to take on another big-name star, leaving her “skeptical. Always skeptical.” Of course, first the show has to have an actual run—not to mention an opening night, for which there is no guarantee. That first night of previews (a decently tight performance; D’Amboise even did a cartwheel), Applegate’s silhouette was on the Playbill. By May, it’ll be her spotlit face. Back in rehearsals, Bobbie and Cilento were doing their best to come up with one routine that suited both performers. Applegate was knocking a lot of wood these days; she was eager to try out her first steps, but she knew this was one aspect of the production she couldn’t control.

After Applegate and D’Amboise left the rehearsal room, a frustrated Walter Bobbie dropped the institutional voice for a moment, providing his own concise backstory. “This is a stupid story,” he said. “It never stops. But we keep making lemonade! We’re opening the biggest fucking lemonade stand you ever saw!”