This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:01] Ben Rimalower: Broadway Podcast Network presents Giants in the Sky. How Sondheim and Lapine went into the woods. With me, Ben Rimalower. Today's guest, Chip Zien.

[0:11] Ben Rimalower: Once upon a time... My guest is Chip Zien. Chip created the role of the Baker in Into the Woods, as well as the roles of Mendel in Falsettos and Mr. Bungie in A New Brain, both by William Finn and James Lapine, and the role of Marvin in In Trousers by William Finn. His numerous other Broadway credits include Carolina Change, Les Miserables, and Grand Hotel, as well as the upcoming Harmony.

[0:46] Ben Rimalower: Like I said, I've been dying to talk to you from the... Actually, now I'm looking back years ago. I don't remember the context. I was talking to Alison Fraser, and I said something about how I was fascinated by the development of Into the Woods. And I, you know... And she said, well, you should talk to Chip. I mean, he knows everything. And then that's just been a constant thread. I mean, James Lapine, I think, three times said, I got to email Chip. I got to email Chip.

[1:12] Chip Zien: Really? Well, that's... I was curious, like, to hear what everybody else had to say to see if anything that I remember... You know, I'm older now. That's the thing. I waited too long. Everybody says it's, you know, 35 years. They don't remember everything. You know, that everything I'm saying jives with what other people might say, or I have a completely different slant. I thought Paul Ford's book was kind of interesting when I...

[1:38] Ben Rimalower: Yes, totally.

[1:39] Chip Zien: I mean, he had some thoughts about it that were really interesting to me. And, you know, he was so quiet and gentle sitting at the piano. I had no idea... I love Paul. I had no idea he was thinking so many different things.

[1:54] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[1:55] Chip Zien: You know, he played us all into the theater with a little theme song for us. And if you were like, you know, he'd be at the Roundabout or Studio 54, and you'd see him sitting up there, and he'd play us, you know, Into the Woods or whatever.

[2:11] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[2:12] Chip Zien: Do you remember your Paul Ford theme, like, for rehearsals and stuff?

[2:15] Chip Zien: Well, I think he... Before Into the Woods, I don't remember anything. After Into the Woods, it became ba-ba-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum, or something even more, you know, sometimes a silly version of No One Is Alone. There's a lot of different... It's the jazz version.

[2:37] Ben Rimalower: It's the jazzy version.

[2:39] Chip Zien: Yeah. But, you know, I loved him. And parenthetically, because I don't know, you know, I was around for that moment when he suddenly decided he had had it at least temporarily with show business.

[2:54] Ben Rimalower: Yes, on the people in the picture, right?

[2:56] Chip Zien: People in the picture, exactly.

[2:58] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[2:59] Chip Zien: And I was there that day.

[3:02] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[3:03] Chip Zien: You know, it was a moment in show business I will never forget.

[3:08] Ben Rimalower: No, a lot.

[3:10] Chip Zien: Paul Gemignani was just... It just... What's going on? Have you talked to Paul? Have you had any...

[3:16] Ben Rimalower: You know, he just sent me a text.

[3:20] Chip Zien: It was that kind of thing, pandemonium.

[3:22] Ben Rimalower: Well, Paul Gemignani is my... What do you call it? My Moby Dick on this. I mean, he had originally said yes, and then he said he couldn't do it, and I haven't been able to get him to... I thought if I could get James Lapine from a no to a yes, I could get Paul Gemignani, but so far, no luck.

[3:40] Chip Zien: Well, that's interesting.

[3:41] Ben Rimalower: That's interesting. I mean, you know, I was... You know, Lapine's book about Sunday in the Park was so interesting, and I thought, you know, really sort of, you know, for a book about the theater where we all lie, like, all the time, his book was, like, phenomenally honest.

[4:01] Chip Zien: Yeah.

[4:02] Ben Rimalower: And I thought it was really interesting.

[4:05] Chip Zien: Totally.

[4:06] Ben Rimalower: But he didn't do one about Into the Woods.

[4:09] Chip Zien: No, and since he left me hungry for it, that's why I wanted to do the pod. So let's start with, you know, I mean, I know that you were very much in the sort of Lapine repertory at that point in time. I mean, having done March of the Falsettos and then Merrily out at La Jolla, and I actually just found out, maybe you don't even know this, Ira Weitzman told me that the actual first collaboration between Bill Finn and Lapine was that James did the graphic design for the In Shrouders album.

[4:45] Chip Zien: Yes.

[4:46] Ben Rimalower: No, I knew that. That blew my mind.

[4:49] Chip Zien: Yeah.

[4:50] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, no, I did know that.

[4:52] Chip Zien: I did know that.

[4:54] Ben Rimalower: So, well, let's see. Is there a question on that?

[4:58] Chip Zien: Yes. My relationship to Into the Woods, I mean, you know, first of all, without Lapine, I have no idea what my career would have been. But I was in, I had left, I had gone to California and I decided that I wasn't, you know, I was going to try to get a TV series or whatever, and I was staying in Oakwood with, yeah, with sad people, you know, and that, you know, have you ever been to Oakwood?

[5:36] Ben Rimalower: Oakwood, yeah.

[5:38] Chip Zien: In the old days, it was actually kind of fun because it used to be a lot of naked people in hot tubs. And this is, and I'm talking late 70s.

[5:47] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[5:48] Chip Zien: And it was kind of really cool. And then it turned into guys who had just been thrown out of the house, you know, who were just wives who just kicked them out.

[5:55] Ben Rimalower: For anyone that doesn't know, Chip was talking about the Oakwood apartments in Burbank or Toluca Lake.

[6:01] Chip Zien: Yeah, well, Burbank, I was, you know, on Barham, sliding down into, you know, the corner brothers of that house. Furnished apartments that people can get by the month or whatever for actors coming to do shows from New York, that kind of thing.

[6:14] Ben Rimalower: I love it.

[6:15] Chip Zien: I used to swim laps out there. And if you, you know, depending on which way you turn your head to breathe, you could look out at the lights over the valley.

[6:23] Ben Rimalower: Gorgeous.

[6:24] Chip Zien: Beautiful. And one time I did that and I was swimming right next to a duck that was swimming along with me.

[6:29] Ben Rimalower: Oh, was that the inspiration for Howard the Duck?

[6:32] Chip Zien: I thought that, I thought that was just one of the finest moments of nature. And I don't know, I loved it, but.

[6:39] Ben Rimalower: It sounds beautiful. What's the depressing part?

[6:41] Chip Zien: Well, the depressing part came when, as it aged, we're talking about Oakwood apartments, where people stayed when they were working out there. It became literally guys whose wives would kick them out. And then there were a lot of kids there who, whose parents had taken them out there to try to get a TV show or to audition. At one point, I had finished when, well, I guess it was a little bit later, but when Falsettos ended on Broadway, Jonathan Kaplan, everybody was at Oakwood and trying to decide if that's exactly where they wanted to be at that point.

[7:21] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[7:22] Chip Zien: It was, it was weird. Were you married yet at this point?

[7:26] Chip Zien: I was, Susie and I have been together since like 71.

[7:30] Ben Rimalower: Oh, wow.

[7:32] Chip Zien: Late 71. We've been together longer than anybody I know in showbiz.

[7:37] Ben Rimalower: Wow. You know, Susie, my wife danced, danced in the New York City ballet. This is a personal life. You know, she danced in the ballet and then we had, she got injured in the 80s, early 80s.

[7:50] Chip Zien: Yeah.

[7:51] Ben Rimalower: And that's when we had our, we had kids and then she continued to dance and then she's taught now at the School of American Ballet for 35 years or 40 years.

[8:00] Chip Zien: So you were already a dad at this point.

[8:03] Chip Zien: In Into the Woods, I was a dad. I had just bought, well, there was a timing issue, which was that I was very excited that to get to go to San Diego where we first worked on the show.

[8:19] Ben Rimalower: Was that your first iteration of Into the Woods? The one at the Old Globe?

[8:24] Chip Zien: Well, actually, yes, it was. Well, actually what happened was I had done a reading. Well, first, I found out that Merrilee wasn't going to come into New York. Lepine had invited me up to a summer house for a barbecue and for a day in the country. And as I got out of the car, he said, have you talked to your agent? I said, about what? He said, oh yeah, we're not going to do Merrilee. And I, the color drained from my body. I was really counting on that. It had been the first time that Merrilee had ever been done since we opened. And I loved doing it. But we thought we were coming in and then we weren't. Anyway.

[9:12] Ben Rimalower: Did that color your experience later with Into the Woods where you were more skeptical of whether this was actually going to go in after San Diego?

[9:22] Chip Zien: Well, at that barbecue with Lepine at his country house, he took me upstairs. He had those, this was a generation of old K-Pro computers. I don't know. You're way too young to know what that is, but it was what they considered a portable computer, but it weighed over like, it was like hundreds of pounds.

[9:41] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[9:42] Chip Zien: Massive thing with a little four inch black and white screen.

[9:45] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[9:46] Chip Zien: On the screen, Lepine said, yeah, I don't want to deal with Merrilee, but I'm working on a new show. It's about woods, Into the Woods. And he showed me a scene that was on this little black and white screen that had little, little animals and like bugs and little people running around in the snow. And he said, this is it. I'm doing a show about fairy tale. And I said to him at the time, I said, I mean, like we just did real people in Merrilee with really interesting problems about showbiz.

[10:19] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[10:20] Chip Zien: Greatest thing I've ever gotten to do. And like, what? What do you, you're dealing with little fairy tale characters. Why are you doing that?

[10:25] Ben Rimalower: So, so that was my first exposure to it. The next thing that happened is that they did a reading at Playwrights Horizons of pretty much act. I think I don't remember it's a whole show, but it certainly was act one in which I read Cinderella's Prince.

[10:42] Ben Rimalower: Oh, wow.

[10:43] Chip Zien: Yeah. And I thought I crushed it. I mean, I really thought like I was just, you know, amazing. And Lapine came up to me afterwards and he said, what are you doing? So I said, what do you mean? I just, I crushed it. I mean, it was great. I got this great response. He said, oh God, it was not right. It wasn't what I wanted.

[11:06] Ben Rimalower: Was agony in the show at that point?

[11:09] Chip Zien: No, no, but the scenes were there, you know, just the agony wasn't, I don't remember that we even saying anything.

[11:17] Ben Rimalower: Do you remember the rest of the cast?

[11:20] Chip Zien: I remember that Joanna Gleason was there and, and, and, and I had known Joanna from a previous show. So that was nice.

[11:30] Ben Rimalower: What show was that?

[11:32] Chip Zien: I got fired from a show called, it was, it was on Broadway with Matthew Broderick a while back or Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick called It's Only a Play.

[11:42] Ben Rimalower: Oh, sure.

[11:43] Chip Zien: Yeah. You know, Terrence McNally wrote it.

[11:48] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[11:49] Chip Zien: Somebody got fired. I replaced the person who got fired. Then I got fired. Then I got replaced. And then he got fired and it ended up, David Dickerson ended up playing that part. But that's, that's another story.

[12:00] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[12:01] Chip Zien: So, Joanna was there. The baker was Ray Gill.

[12:06] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[12:07] Chip Zien: Ray Gill is an actor who had been in Merrily and a great guy and he really looked like a baker.

[12:13] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[12:14] Chip Zien: Like a big kind of guy. Did you know him?

[12:16] Ben Rimalower: I mean, I don't know if he was, you know, he was just this wonderful person that was a friend, a close friend.

[12:25] Chip Zien: So that, so where am I? So that was my first exposure to the show.

[12:29] Ben Rimalower: Anyone else from that cast? Ray?

[12:31] Chip Zien: I can't remember other than Joanna and Ray. I'm like, who was the other purpose for, I can't.

[12:38] Ben Rimalower: Was Betty Buckley the witch in that, in that version?

[12:41] Chip Zien: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[12:49] Ben Rimalower: That's kind of an interesting story too, but that's later.

[12:52] Chip Zien: So, like even before we had gone to San Diego, it wasn't a workshop or anything. It was just the, everybody got together. I think we rehearsed a few hours and then read it. I told this, by the way, to James and he claims that it's just completely made up, but he's wrong.

[13:10] Chip Zien: Oh, no, he had all these false ideas. He told me Ellen Foley never played the witch on Broadway.

[13:16] Chip Zien: Playbills with their name on them.

[13:20] Chip Zien: Yeah. Yeah, no. So, so, okay. So then I end up, I'm in LA, staying at Oakwood. And I get a call from Ira Weitzman, who said, like, you know what, Lapine's about to call you. He's has an idea. Stephen and James have an idea that you should play the Baker. And I, I said, you know, really? I mean, he said, the problem is they want you to fly back to New York to read for them. And Ira said to me, to his everlasting credit and my gratitude, he said to me, don't do it. He said, they're so up in the air. He said they wanted Tom Hulce. And they can't get him. Because I think he might have been making the movie of Mozart at that time. Amadeus, yeah. Amadeus, right. So, so he said, don't, Lapine's about to call you.

Tell him you're, I was shooting at this point, I was on a TV show that nobody ever saw. It was an hour. It was fun. But, but Sydney, I saw every episode in real life. I didn't even love Sydney. It was a show called Shell Game. No, never saw that. Margot Kidder. And on the first day, Margot was having some issues at that point in her life. And the producer came up to me and he said, keep your bags packed. This will literally on the first day of filming. He said, this will never go. We made seven episodes. It aired opposite Cosby on television. And it was dead last in the ratings. And that was the end of it. But I didn't know that at the time I was, I actually was filming Shell Game. So, so Ira said, tell, tell James that your shooting schedule prohibits you from coming back to New York. You're not able to do it. You'd love to play the part, which is what I, which is, I said, okay, but you're making me nervous, Ira, because I really would like to play this part.

[15:08] Chip Zien: Yeah. So did you have a sense from the reading that this was a great role that, that, you know, yes, I had known. I mean, I, I don't know that I necessarily saw myself because I don't think I look like a baker. Yeah. Except of, you know, bagels. I don't know. I don't feel like, you know, I don't know that I looked like a baker. So, so, and Ray did and I, and also as a friend. So anyway, so I, so I, so Lapine called me and I, I said, you know, James, I can't make it. I lied. I said, I really would love to do that. That would be unbelievable, but I'm kind of stuck. And he said, oh God, you know, I don't know what to do. Then he said, we really wanted to see you read some of the scenes and, and I hung up and I, you know, I called Ira and I said, well, I told him, he said, yeah, just sit tight.

I I'm on it. I'm, I'm on it. And a couple of days later, Lapine called and he said, well, it's too late. We can't figure about, we can't think of anybody else. So you get, you you'll do it. You do it. And that's how I got the part. And so I came back to New York and the, they were a little, I was maybe a day or two late to, to, to the rehearsals. And very quickly, he was throwing me out there to do act one and it didn't go so well. And I said, James, I just, I'm off the plane, you know, don't, you're making me nervous. I, and, and I said, I, I, you know, I'm on a TV series. I don't need to do musicals on Broadway. And I, thinking that the show wasn't as bad as in fact, it was the TV show. And, but Joanna Gleason pulled me away and she said, Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip, let's have lunch.

Let's go have lunch. Let's, let's not James, let's, let's Chip come with me and let's go have lunch. She pulled me away from potentially what could have been a bit of an argument. And, and then we, you know, like, I think about a day later, Lapine, we, we did this run through holding scripts and, you know, he came up, he said, I just, I had Ray Gill in my mind and, but this is great. It's going to be great. And that, that was, so there we were. And we were, we were rehearsing down in the, in the West Village someplace. Oh, West Beth. Yeah. West Beth, exactly. How'd you know that? That's like, I think Ira Weitzman told me that. Yeah. We were at West Beth, like in this weird place. And, you know, No More hadn't been written yet.

Yeah. No One Is Alone had not been written yet. And one day Sondheim came in, we had, you know, he had checked my keys, the key that I'm comfortable singing in. And, you know, a few days later, he came back with No More. And we went into the other room, Gemignani grabbed me and Steve was there. And we went into this other room with the piano. And it's in the old days of like, when they tape music together, like an accordion, and then it's falling out on either side of the piano. And it's, you know, and Sondheim sat down at the piano and played for me and Tom Aldrich and Gemignani, No More for the first time. Yeah. And it was, you know, first of all, he's fun. He's playing it. And he's singing it.

It's always fun to hear composers sing this song. Yeah, I turn around Gemignani, who is, you know, a bear of a guy, just tears streaming down his face. And we were all just a mess. I mean, it was just I couldn't believe. And I remember thinking, Oh, my God, it's, it's, it's in my key. You know, this is Steven Sondheim. Yeah. You know, it was an amazing, amazing moment. So, so, so, you know, eventually, then we go to San Diego. And yeah, you want to interrupt me with, with any question that makes me more coherent than that?

[19:21] Ben Rimalower: No, that's extremely coherent. That's incredible. I mean, I'm, I'm curious if I'm between having had that positive feedback at last from Lapine, and then having this incredible song, I mean, you know, whatever wound up happening with Into the Woods after that point, the show could have been a flop and never been heard from again. You already had this just incredible song written for you that just would last time. I mean, did your attitude change? In terms of, wow, this is exactly what I want to be doing.

[19:56] Chip Zien: You know, I think we had a sense, I think Joanna and I both had a sense that our lives were changing in some sort of dramatic way. I mean, we when we did come back to Broadway, we were rehearsing down in 890 Broadway, and we would share a cab back up to the Upper West Side and, and we would go by the Martin Beck, which was where the show was at the time. And, you know, we would look at the marquee and think, like, this is unbelievable. You know, I mean, this is really unbelievable. But we went to, so we get to San Diego. Yeah. And, you know, there's a, I'm sure you've heard the classic story that like people after the first act, they started going home. Yeah. And I believe that my sense of that whole thing was that it was Stephen Sondheim and went out into the parking lot.

He said, there's a second act. You know, I mean, I think we had dressing room windows. My memory of it is vague, but I, you know, people were saying, we were all laughing because people started going home. You could see cars leaving. It was like, you know, great, show's over. And Sondheim said no. And then he added that line in at the end of the first act, which was, what's the line, the second act? Could be continued?

[21:15] Chip Zien: Yeah. One of the other things that led into this, I'm all, I'm all over the map here, but when we set keys, we had to go to Sondheim's house to set keys and his piano and stuff. And there's an interesting thing there, which was that, you know, Steve's next door neighbor.

[21:39] Chip Zien: Catherine Hepburn, right? It was Catherine Hepburn. Yeah. Okay. And they weren't that, they weren't fond of each other. Right. Did you know that? So I had been in, well, I don't think I'll say that I was in, I was in a movie. I had to go to Catherine Hepburn's house to be approved for a film. I was in a film with her. Oh, wow. Which was very exciting. And I thought it was also going to be a big moment, but it was possibly the only bad film she ever made.

[22:07] Chip Zien: What was that? Do I have to say the name of it? It's called The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley. I rarely say the name. I mean, I remember after we finished shooting it or it was like the word of mouth was getting out, like the New York Post called me and said, what happened? Like, you know, like, was it Hepburn's fault? Like, you know, I was just like amazed. I had all these scenes with Catherine Hepburn and, you know, but she was so, I had to be approved by Hepburn. I had to go to her house and she greeted me at the door, which was amazing. And we walk into her den and she says, what do you drink? What do you drink? Oops. What happened? What do you drink? Do you drink scotch? Yeah. And I, I said, yes, I don't drink scotch. I, you know, ever, but I said, yes. And then she came out, this is the glass that's fell out. So we went, and then we walked into her backyard, which was an open courtyard that all the brownstones on that block.

[23:13] Chip Zien: Yes. Backed up against, there was a, an historically preserved beautiful park that was behind all of those, that block of brownstone. And so I'm standing there with her and I'm really, it's Hepburn. And she said, you know, there's this guy who lives next to me who writes music. And like, I, you know, he, he plays the piano at three o'clock in the morning. And she just, she said, I climbed his rose trellis the other night and pounded on the glass because you can't have people playing the piano at three o'clock in the morning.

[23:48] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. Okay. Now jump ahead. I'm now in Sondheim's house setting for the show. And he said to me, you know, who lives next door? And I said, yeah, I happened to him. And I said, it's very weird, but I happened to have been in Catherine Hepburn's house. And he said, yeah. And he said, she, she was scared the hell out of me. She climbed up the side of my house and pounded on the glass window. And I believe the point of this story is that I kind of believe that there's a sort of a well-known line in Into the Woods, which is it's the witch next door. I'm not a hundred percent positive, but I think that was like an in joke about how Steve felt about Catherine Hepburn.

[24:40] Ben Rimalower: That's hysterical.

[24:41] Chip Zien: Yeah. So that's, that's the, anyway, where are we now? We're in San Diego.

[24:44] Ben Rimalower: We're in San Diego. Yes. And you're feeling now that you're part of something special and.

[24:51] Chip Zien: Yeah, it's like great. And San Diego is kind of fun and it's, and the old globe is very pretty. And so.

[25:00] Ben Rimalower: But did you have that haunting you that just a year or two earlier, you'd been there crosstown in La Jolla doing Merrily thinking you were going to Broadway, that this was, you know, another stalled pre-beat?

[25:14] Chip Zien: You know, the truth is I didn't, I just assumed that with, with Stephen Sondheim, I think my, my brain was saying like, well, this, of course, this is going to go back to New York. But there was, it was disappointing because what happened is.

[25:33] Chip Zien: So we finished in San Diego and I, I bought and thinking that we're going basically right back to Broadway. And I bought an apartment. I, I had made money on the TV show and I, you know, I had dumped enough money to buy a condo up on the Upper West Side where I lived for a hundred years. And so I bought the thing and the apartment and I bought, I had, I bought, I got a Saab car, I got a car, I bought a Saab, I'd have a Saab. And then, and then there's an announcement that we're going back into workshop and we probably wouldn't open for another, like maybe eight months or so. Yeah. And I, that was devastating to me because I felt like, oh my God, I'm going to have to be on salary. I've just taken this giant leap in my life to buy a car. And I'm.

[27:02] Chip Zien: And he was the selected choreographer. Famously, by the way, when the show, when we were actually putting the show on, Lapine, one day in front of the cast, he walked on stage and he said to Lara Lubavitch, I love, I love, this whole number is great. I love everything about it, except for the steps. Can we just take out all the steps? So what, he just liked the traffic patterns and like the timing? He didn't like the steps, you know, and I think Lara Lubavitch almost fainted at that point. It said like, kind of dances, kind of about steps and movement. Lapine said, yeah, but I just, if we could just kind of get rid of all those steps. It was the right decision though, I assume. I, I, I've always, you know, I think, I think James was really smart. So I, yes, I, I, I think it was, and maybe it was a little too dancey, you know.

[28:01] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. I mean, were there, were the other choreographers that didn't get the job? I mean, did you have people coming in and giving you like, you know, jazz hands and stuff?

[28:05] Chip Zien: Yeah. Well, we had all different styles of choreography. It was actually very weird, kind of fun.

[28:09] Ben Rimalower: It was in the workshop process?

[28:14] Chip Zien: Well, what happened was, is that I, I, I'm, I'm a little foggy. We, we, we, we basically, we had a workshop to, to fix. The main thrust of it was in San Diego, Joanna Gleason ate an apple and died. Right. Somebody threw an apple on the stage. She had her affair with the prince. Yeah. Threw an apple out onto the stage. She ate the apple and died. Yeah. Ever seen again for the rest of the show. And that seemed to be not, not sufficient. And so, so, so I can't remember if we worked with the choreographers first or we had the workshop first, but basically when we came back from San Diego, the show closed in San Diego in January of 87.

[29:09] Ben Rimalower: Right, right.

[29:10] Chip Zien: And the workshop was in, was in August. The workshop, you know what, I, I, we did all these different versions of Act Two and Joanna's stuff and I can't, I, I've lost it, but, but, but that, but the, the other part of it was, well, just basically those workshops were, were mainly to figure out what to do with the baker's wife that was a little more fleshed out in terms of what her arc was. But that's when the choreographers were coming in. I think the choreographers came in maybe before that.

[29:46] Ben Rimalower: Before that. Do you remember any particularly, you know, different ones?

[29:50] Chip Zien: No, I, I, I think Lars scared me. I mean, he had a famous modern dance company.

[30:04] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[30:05] Chip Zien: But he was trying to do, what, what are the, the paint, the painter with the fat people, you know, the strain of, of, of, start to the B, the, you know, their, their round ball, ball.

[30:18] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. Who is that?

[30:19] Chip Zien: And he basically was saying to us that that's the style of, of, that I want you all to get, which is to walk around like, to do this. Oh God. So we're not, we're not live, you know, to, to, to kind of clump around.

[30:36] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[30:37] Chip Zien: I remember thinking, oh God, I don't know what, what, I don't know what this is, but, but anyway, so, so, so that we went back in the workshop and then it became pretty obvious that we would continue. And then.

[30:53] Ben Rimalower: Cause that was pretty quickly from workshop to.

[30:56] Chip Zien: Yes.

[30:57] Ben Rimalower: Rehearsals.

[30:58] Chip Zien: Well, yeah, it was about, you know, say, well, when we closed in San Diego was in January. And then I think back by the time September rolled around, we were back in rehearsals to do the show on Broadway. And, and then that, that workshop was where Betty Buckley was the witch.

[31:12] Ben Rimalower: Right. So, so yeah, this Ellen Foley slugged me on the street at one point because she said, you know, we were pals and, and she said, look, I haven't heard what is going on with this show. Like, did, did you have an offer to do the show?

[31:32] Chip Zien: And.

[31:33] Ben Rimalower: Prior to the workshop.

[31:35] Chip Zien: Yeah. Well, prior to, no, I post, I think it was, I can't remember how this all worked up, but post it was just before we started rehearsals for the Broadway production. And she hadn't heard anything. And yes, I've had, and you know, I mean, I mean, I, I was nervous about the whole thing. Whenever there's a break in time, you know, you always think, well, Mandy can do it. I mean, you know, and Mandy.

[32:03] Ben Rimalower: And you bought a condo and a soft.

[32:05] Chip Zien: Yeah. I bought a condo and a soft. And I had like, Mandy and I had kids at the same time and we were pals and we had, we were having dinner one night and he was saying that generally if a show goes out of town, that once it comes into town, they offer him the part. My wife turned to me and she said, wow, that's weird. Weren't you just out of town with the, what are you doing? And so, so I was negotiating. So then I got nervous at Mandy's house and I stood up and wandered around and I looked on his piano. He had the script and score of Into the Woods. And I, you know, I told the next day I said to my agent, I said, whatever the deal is, just take the deal. I mean, it's like, I'm terrified now. You know, I, I, you know, so, but that, that made me close my deal a lot sooner than I might.

[33:03] Ben Rimalower: Wow. That, that's an interesting way the producers put pressure on.

[33:07] Chip Zien: Mandy Patinkin go to dinner with you.

[33:09] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, exactly. So, so, so anyway, where are we? So, so, you know, then we were rehearsing the show and now it's Betty Buckley.

[33:19] Chip Zien: Yeah. And that's an interesting, a whole interesting chapter too, because Betty Buckley would have been fantastic.

[33:26] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[33:27] Chip Zien: I mean, she, she was, but we were all a group already. We had done the show in San Diego, you know?

[33:32] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[33:33] Chip Zien: And so that it got a little tricky, but I'm also, I mean, I mean, I just was, you know, Betty Buckley was on the road with Hello Dolly and I flew out to see her. I loved her.

[33:45] Ben Rimalower: Me too.

[33:45] Chip Zien: Me too. I saw her at Miami Beach. So real and funny, yet funny. And then, you know, the voice, it's the voice and, you know, she's so great, but it's somewhere along the line, I was in the country somewhere and I got a phone call from Gemma Niani saying that Betty Buckley had been replaced, but that she had been replaced and that Bernadette had agreed to step in.

[34:13] Ben Rimalower: She would have been fantastic.

[34:15] Chip Zien: I mean, it's also weird to me, like all the, the legend around Bernadette's casting in the role. I mean, I've heard stories, oh, she was at lunch with Sondheim or they called her begging or something like that. But it seems so odd to me that after Sunday in the Park with George, I mean, if Mandy had the music on his piano when you were having dinner, how is it that like it had never occurred to anybody to even think about Bernadette?

[34:41] Ben Rimalower: And the closest, I mean-

[34:44] Chip Zien: It may have been that Bernadette didn't feel, I don't know the answer to that.

[34:49] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, yeah.

[34:50] Chip Zien: I can speculate that Bernadette, in looking at the show as we had done it in San Diego, thought maybe the part wasn't all that she would want it to be.

[35:00] Ben Rimalower: Right, that Joanna was playing the lead and that this was a sort of secondary role.

[35:04] Chip Zien: Right, and, you know, songs like Boom Crunch, which was, you know, that were complicated and, you know, maybe, you know, I don't know. I never, I never, I don't know.

[35:19] Ben Rimalower: But wouldn't she know? I mean, having, I mean, reading that amazing book by Lapine about Sunday in the Park and Bernadette having lived through it, knew that at the 11th hour, they gave her children an art and Mandy got, you know, or vice versa, you know, lesson number nine. And like this stuff, I mean, that they were going to get it, make it happen, right?

[35:43] Chip Zien: Yeah, well, and she did agree to do it. And Bernadette is just, you know, she's so loved. She's everything that we all think that she is. She's just a lovely person and she's really fun to be around. And I think they just were, and they love her, Lapine and Sondheim, and I think they just felt it took some pressure off of them.

[36:05] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[36:06] Chip Zien: In a way that made them more comfortable and not have to worry about stuff. But they did also, they, you know, at some point, Lapine came up to me and he said, you know, we're going to have to, we're going to have to add stuff in for Bernadette.

[36:20] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[36:21] Chip Zien: We're going to have to kind of move some things around. And he said, I, you know, I think you're going to probably lose some things that you probably really like. And one of which was my favorite scene in the entire show, which I did lose, which was that after I rescue Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf, I have a scene with Joanna where we're sitting there and we're saying, well, what the hell do we do now? She's, you know, where's that kid going to go? And Joanna says, well, I think we'll have to take her in. I mean, like, what else could we do? And I say, no, I can't stand her. I hate her. I don't want her anywhere near the kitchen. Okay. And it was, it was, it was the best laughs. Like I felt some of my best laughs and I just wasn't having it at all. I didn't want any part of her. And I said to Lapine, I said, don't cut anything. I love that. This is one of my favorite scenes. He said, I know, but you know, it's just where it is in the show.

[37:20] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[37:21] Chip Zien: And, and, you know, and the other thing about Boom Crunch was that has everybody talked about that number? Well, I know it was the song that preceded before Last Midnight was written. That was the witch's song after It's Your Fault. And that it was, I don't know, Paul Ford was talking about how much he loved that song, but I mean, I've listened to a few versions of it now. It doesn't sound as good as Last Midnight to me.

[37:34] Ben Rimalower: Well, I, I agree with Paul. I thought Boom Crunch was a really good song. And I think this, this is another thing, but I, again, probably totally wrong. Bernadette was struggling with it because she hadn't been rehearsing that long.

[37:58] Chip Zien: Yeah.

[38:02] Ben Rimalower: And was it late in the process?

[38:02] Chip Zien: Well, she came in, she came in after we had been rehearsing to go to Broadway. So she missed a couple of weeks. I mean, you know, and Boom Crunch is a really hard song. And, and then there's a complicated orchestration and the blocking was a little nutty.

[38:17] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[38:18] Chip Zien: Difficult. At some point, James and Lapine, I mean, James, James and Steve decided to, I think they had made up their minds that they were going to replace the song.

[38:30] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[38:30] Chip Zien: And so they missed a couple of shows. This is in previews. They missed a couple of shows. And I thought one night, I thought Bernadette sang that song, Boom Crunch.

[38:42] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[38:43] Chip Zien: Just, it was a massive success. I mean, it was like the audience went crazy. And I, you know, and I said to like, gosh, I wish the guys had been here because I don't know if they've ever seen that. It was like this amazing response. And she, it was brilliant. And, but it was like gone the next day when they came in with Last Midnight.

[39:05] Ben Rimalower: Well, speaking of the songs that came and went, one that I've now heard a lot about is Second Midnight.

[39:12] Chip Zien: That's the long version of Second Midnight. What do you remember about that?

[39:15] Ben Rimalower: I don't, you know what, I can't remember. I always hear about that and I barely remember any, you know, I mean, the big thing musically that happened when we were in San Diego was that No One Is Alone came. We opened the show without No One Is Alone.

[39:35] Chip Zien: Right.

[39:48] Chip Zien: I remember the moment when the first phone came in. That was an amazing experience too. I mean, yeah. But the sort of transitional first midnight. I said, second midnight gone. Those things all changed. And for the life of me, I can't remember how all that went. Oh sure. But I mean, the second midnight it was, I guess the version that now, I mean I've heard several different incarnations, but they were all over five minutes long, that melody from "Children Will Listen" that people use as a verse in "Children Will Listen." I think Sondheim put it in for Barbra Streisand and now it's sort of part of the like pop version. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was in that and you sang it.

[40:33] Chip Zien: Well, listen, you can put that in your act, Chip. It's fine, we'll do that. We'll do that at the green room. Yes, yes. I'm waiting for it. Yeah, I don't even know. You know, it's, yeah, it's weird. And then, so Bernadette came in, I guess they wrote "Last Midnight," they made little changes, the show is coming together. I mean, do you remember it being a, did you feel rocky during the preview period or did you have this underlying sense of these guys? The previews were tricky. I remember the previews being kind of tricky because things were changing still.

[41:12] Chip Zien: Yeah. You know, it was complicated and I think I still thought that nothing could stop it because, you know, the people involved, but that might've been a bit naive. And I know that, you know, I think James got pretty, you know, at one point he said something to me about like, you know, you can't believe the pressure I'm under, you know, from the producers and to cut them. Maybe he said that they, you know, they want more Bernadette. They want to see, the audience is nervous because they're worried about Bernadette.

[41:44] Chip Zien: Yeah. And, you know, and then, you know, she left the show rather early. Right. Because I think maybe that was part of why, hopefully I'll get to talk to her because I know she had movies that she had already. Yeah. I don't know what that was exactly all about, but when it happened, James called me and he was upset with me about some scene. He was giving me notes, but I said, you know, James, I said, is it, what's your, why are, why are we? And he said, all right, all right. He said, Bernadette is leaving.

[42:23] Chip Zien: Ah. I said like, oh, well, you're kidding. First of all, I felt like it was amazing that she was- She had only been open for a few months and- Yeah, I mean, it was like, it was, it was like she was leaving, it was like March or something. Before the Tony nominations could even come out. Yeah, we had left in November, you know, we had opened in November and, you know, and it was like, and she decided to leave. In November. And I think all of us were concerned that, you know, it wasn't as though we, you know, we weren't the calling card in terms of ticket sales.

[43:00] Chip Zien: Yeah. So I think everybody was concerned. And he was concerned. Yeah. And I don't know, I never, also have never talked to Bernadette about what exactly went into that calculation, but, you know, I didn't want her to leave. Yeah, yeah. We had a thing where when she came, when the witch came into the house at the beginning of the show, where there's a thing where she stomps on a bug. Yeah. That's on the floor. Eats it, right?

[43:31] Chip Zien: Yeah, and eats it. The thing was, I never knew when she was going to do that. And she used to look at me kind of sideways, like, look at me like that. And then she's, this is in the show, you know, down at the ground. Then she'd pause and not deal with it. And so I never exactly knew on any given night when that was going to happen. And the other thing that Bernadette did was that, well, a lot of things, but she was friendly with Tony Bennett and I'm a huge Tony Bennett fan.

[44:01] Chip Zien: Wow. She was very close with Tony, as she called him. And one night I thought I'd had a bad show and I stomped up to my dressing room and I stormed past the doorman and like climbed the steps to my dressing room and shut the door. And I was so upset with myself. And Bob Westenberg was my neighbor up there. He was in the room next to me. And I hear a knock on my door and I hear somebody say, hey, it's Tony.

[44:35] Chip Zien: And I thought like, it was Westenberg saying that he was going to kill me for acting like a jerk. You know, he was going to like put out on me or something. And in my underwear, I take the door, yank it open and I say, Tony fucking who? And it's Tony with his daughter. And for a while there, I became known as Chip, Tony fucking who's I am. I don't know. But, you know, Bernadette was just a tremendous amount of fun.

[45:06] Chip Zien: And I didn't want it. None of us would have wanted her to leave. Well, it must have at least been a relief that the first replacement was a big TV star and that, you know, the show wouldn't shutter. Yeah. And Felicia Rashad sold an amazing amount. I mean, you know, ticket sales zoomed but I think the Tony nominations helped because at some point there we got like 12 nominations and, you know, it was thrilling.

[45:33] Chip Zien: And, you know, we gathered some momentum. In the fall when you were in rehearsals and previews and when you first opened, were you aware of the sort of hype machine around "Phantom of the Opera"? Was that part of your sort of purview experience? I don't think at the time that I took it as seriously as I should have.

[45:54] Chip Zien: Yeah. I mean, it's inconceivable to me that it's still running. I mean, like, you know, I mean, like, you know, we opened at the same time. Yeah, right. It's the third Broadway revival, the 10th New York production of "Into the Wild." I mean, that a show opened and ran like that forever. It's just unbelievable. I also, the other thing about George Leandris, I thought of our generation was going to be the greatest leading man that we had.

[46:24] Chip Zien: Yeah. George Leandris. And he, you know, 25 years, he, you know, he raised his, he made a choice and raised his family and did all this, you know, for that piece of time. And, you know, I knew so many people that were in and out of it, but. Speaking of George Leandris, I have a question that no one has known the answer to that maybe you will. There are demo tracks, these like, sort of cleaned up demo tracks.

[46:45] Chip Zien: Some of them were re-released on them, remastered into the "Into the Woods" CD and others have been on a Sondheim box set. And they're George Leandris, Maureen Moore, John Cameron Mitchell and Kim Crosby and Betsy Joslyn singing early. There's the Boom Crunch, the Second Midnight. Really? You know what, send those to me.

[47:12] Chip Zien: I will, absolutely. I don't remember ever hearing that. When were they made? Nobody knows. Ira Weitzman was floating theories to me. Maybe they were done later. No, they couldn't have been done. I mean. I don't think so. I think they had to have been done earlier. Of course, yeah. I mean, and.

[47:29] Chip Zien: Well, you know, George Leandris was the lead in the first national company of "Little Night Music." Oh yes. And I saw him play the role in the City Opera broadcast of it. And yeah. He had a relationship with Steve. So, so, but I think it had to have been done. I really honestly don't know.

[47:51] Chip Zien: You know, when we recorded the record in New York. Yeah. Because there was a lot of press there. And Steve said to me, he said, this is why I have a problem with actors. I said, what? He said, they're all talking about me. They don't know me. He said, you know, they're all making up stories about me.

[48:15] Chip Zien: And I said, I made the mistake of saying, well, Steve, I'm going to be totally cool. Don't worry about a thing. And I said to him, I said, because I just told the reporters, I said that no one knows that Stephen Sondheim is a six handicap golfer. And he looked at me and he said, what the hell are you talking about? That's not funny. I don't even know what that is. I don't know what you're talking about.

[48:43] Chip Zien: And that's something I've regretted all my life. I thought it was a smart-ass remark. I should not have said it, you know. But when I recorded "No More." Yeah. On New Year's Eve of 1987 going into 88, I got a call at about six o'clock at night saying, Chip, it's Steve. You got to fix the last note on "No More."

[49:07] Chip Zien: I said, well, what are you talking about? He said, it's not right. It's a little flat and it's got to be fixed. And I said, well, you know, they had already gathered like millions of people at Times Square, it was like six o'clock at night, and I went, he said, you got to get down here. Just get down here. We're going to rerecord the last note.

[49:30] Chip Zien: And I went down there and when I walked in, he said, oh no, it's fine. We just grabbed another take. It's all good. But, you know, I was not going to not go to fix the last note, you know, but. Well, the important thing is that we have that beautiful album. What, so Bernadette, you said left maybe sometime in March and then you had already left though and then came back to do the video, no?

[50:03] Chip Zien: Never left. Never left. I think the only cast, I was just thinking about that this morning. I think I'm the only person who never, I never left. You know, I had a little bit of a nibble on "Robbins Broadway." Jerry Robbins had come to chat with me about it. Oh yeah. But I didn't, I was nervous to leave "Into the Woods." I had two kids and a new apartment.

[50:34] Chip Zien: Yeah. And I needed the money. And I couldn't think, what else am I going to, what could be better than what I'm doing? So where am I going to go? And the television thing got complicated because I didn't miss out on, you know, there's this thing where you fly to California and you have to do network tests and you have to, it's always a huge nerve-wracking experience.

[51:04] Chip Zien: But I sort of was too late, you know, I got to that point, but I said, you know, I don't feel comfortable leaving here. And I, you know, and so I, you know, I stayed the whole run. Two years. Yeah. And you did it with all the replacement witches and big- Everybody. I did it with everybody.

[51:17] Chip Zien: And I was a little upset because in the summer, late in the summer before we closed, you know- 1989. Right. I had taken my vacation and I found out while I was on vacation that the show was going to close and I was mad at myself for having left for those two weeks. When everybody came back, it was sensational experience.

[51:40] Chip Zien: It became like, you know, we had to kind of readjust and kind of get back to the way we had written the show. But each performance that we taped, we taped three nights in a row. I have other people talked about it. We taped three nights in a row and it was like a giant rock concert. I mean, it was, you know, it's, I'm so stuck. You know, the reaction that "Into the Woods" is getting here now is so thrilling.

[52:08] Chip Zien: I mean, people are carrying on and, you know, the closest we came to that was those three tape performances where everybody was practically trying to sing along and every number stopped the show. Yeah. After that show, I had a really bad, weird superstition that I would turn the light off in my dressing room. Have you heard this story?

[52:28] Chip Zien: No. And I would never turn the light off in my dressing room until I left to go home at the end of the evening. Dumb, because it's not good for the environment, but now I don't do that. But at the time, I just, I would turn it on and by the time I arrived, then I would turn it off dramatically when I was done for the evening.

[52:48] Chip Zien: And after the third taping, I walked up to my dressing room and the light was off. And I felt like, you know, I don't know. I don't buy into all that stuff, but I felt like that's kind of weird. Who would have turned my light off? We've been doing this for a couple of years. Nobody's ever turned my light off.

[53:05] Chip Zien: And I walk in the room and turn the light on. Sondheim is sitting in my dressing room. Tears, drooling, and screaming. And it's dark, in the dark. And he's saying, Chip, greatest night of our lives. The greatest night of our lives. And it was the, you know, that was my special moment, was the, I mean, it was like, he said, I thought you'd understand. And it was, it just was amazing. That's so impressive. I mean, it's so interesting to hear this perspective on the video, because there've been so many, you know, high wattage Sondheim events. Of course, the 80th birthday, where you and Joanna sing, It Takes Two. And, and it, for people watching, I mean, I grew up watching that video of Into the Woods, and it has that energy.

And I sort of never understood why, because it, one would think that it was just any night in the run, you know? Yeah, it wasn't. It was really special. And it's so great that it got, I felt like, I've always felt like this, somehow the second act on camera, the way James, and I forget who else directed it, there was somebody else. He did, I mean, that's the other thing. Right. We were just in the park, where they had a television director do the cameras. James directed the cameras. Yeah, yeah. So, there's something about the intimacy of those shots that capture a lot. And I, you know, I'm very pleased, obviously, that we did it, and proud that, I thought the second act really looked great. Yeah.

You know, I was thrilled by that. I mean, there, it's, it's really, I don't think we can appreciate how much impact that has had on making Into the Woods, the kind of landmark, iconic show, you know, that it is. I mean, just general, I'm 46 years old, and I think I'm probably near the top age bracket that had that, or sorry, the, yeah, the top age bracket that had that. And, and everyone younger, I mean, that is, that's like the Bible, that's the gateway drug to musical theater, I think, and certainly to Sondheim. It's such an amazing thing. I mean, you know, you don't, when you're worried about your part, and you're creating this show, and you're rehearsing and going home every day, and thinking like, oh God, I gotta be better than that, or I gotta fix, I, you know, I didn't get a laugh there, and what can I do?

And, you know, you're worried. You're also so horribly focused on your own performance that, you know, and, well, I've been accused of that anyway before, but, but, you know, the scope of it geometrically expanded, I think, based on that tape. Yeah. And, and the life that it's had has been so thrilling. And I, I don't know that we really, I certainly didn't think in those terms at the time. I mean, I was proud of it, but the life—

[56:01] Ben Rimalower: Do you remember the first time that you saw that, that tape?

[56:16] Chip Zien: Yeah. Yeah, Bob Westenberg called me, and he said, we both, we all got copies. You know, in those days, I mean, like, that's a long time ago. Yeah. You know, in terms of like social media and what was available to see that might've been photographed that you could see on YouTube or something. Yeah. So we're going like, wow, that, you know, that was kind of beautiful, you know? And it's like, glad I was in it. Yeah. You know, that feeling. Had you ever gone and seen a performance with the understudy on, or had you seen the show at all?

[57:51] Chip Zien: I never, I never saw, my understudy was Phil Hoffman. I never saw him do it. I never, no, I never sat out. And so the only thing I could see that I knew about the audience was that my, my younger daughter would always get carried out in act two, because she couldn't take it. She was terrified of the witch and that dad was going to get hurt. No. I could see from the stage, I could see the door at the back of the theater open because you could see the light coming from the side. And I knew it was my, my wife and daughter leaving before it got too scary. But so that tape was the first time you saw into the—

[58:30] Chip Zien: Yeah, that was the first time I really had a sense of what the show might look. I guess we did, we should, we must've shot some sort of commercial, but it was really that tape that gave me a sense of the show. I don't remember having seen that before.

[58:46] Ben Rimalower: Well, I mean, it is so perfect. I mean, it's, when I, I feel with Into the Woods, they can make the movie, they can make any revivals. They could do it in any incarnation, modernize it, do anything, it doesn't matter because we have it preserved and as, you know, ideal, a light of their original intention. My, my daughter was at an all girls camp. I wanted to, you know, they invited me up to, you know, be at a rehearsal. That production, which was all young, young girls, it was the first production I saw where they had like a storybook and the people were coming out of the storybook. And I actually thought that was one of the most imaginative productions that I'd seen. I enjoyed it so much. And, but yeah, it's done so many different ways.

I mean, like, and I think the version that's being done now, the concert version, I mean, I loved it. And I felt oddly, I felt like, wow, that's a good show. I thought they were wonderful to see. And I love the fact that that beautiful orchestra was behind them and it's so obvious, so visible. The scenes themselves were center stage, you know? And the, and so the, the pristine quality of the scenes were so, it was very intimate in that way. I'd say center stage always, you know, not, not that much movement. And I found myself, I just really, I really enjoyed it. I, I thought it was great.

[59:58] Chip Zien: I also really enjoyed the version that you did in Central Park where you played the narrator and the mysterious man.

[1:00:02] Ben Rimalower: No, that, yeah, that's, there's some issues. Lapine had, Lapine had some issues with that.

[1:00:08] Chip Zien: Oh, because they took liberties with the script. Yeah, well, he took a meeting one day, I got really scared because I thought like, I knew he had some, he was texting me saying, what's going on, what's going on? And anyway, he came to the previews and he was upset about a couple of things. One was that he said, I've never seen a production at the Delacorte where nobody comes in the VOMS, you know, the—

[1:00:28] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, yeah, through the house.

[1:00:29] Chip Zien: They're not using the space. He said that, and he said in that huge multi-level thing it's like so far upstage. He said, what were they, what, why, what's going on? Why did they do that? But eventually when we were in previews, he came in one night, he, we got a message that we had to come to the theater a little bit early because James wanted to talk to the cast. And he's, he came in to say, he gave a note to the cast and, you know, it was directed by the Brits, but, you know, and, you know, and Lapine came in and he said, like, I'm, I, he said, it seems to me that it works a little better and it's not quite so naturalistic and it goes a little faster, you know, and that's, you know, that's the, that was a big note.

And he had, he had feelings about it, but, but I had, I loved being in that production and, you know, Jesse Mueller and Sarah Stiles and, you know, people were just unbelievable. And, and, oh gosh, I'm blanking. One of the actresses names, she was wearing, it was 110 degrees. I'd never played the Delacorte before or after. And we were running around on mulch that was wet.

[1:01:43] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[1:01:44] Chip Zien: Mulch on the stage, raccoons came up and stole the fake bread, which was incredible about. They took, they stole the plastic bread that, you know, in the baker's kitchen. Yeah. And I felt, but then I heard a fight, but we could hear the raccoons fighting underneath the stage and they were fighting over plastic bread. And, but I, you know, I, I had a really, I really also had a good time at that production too.

[1:02:01] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[1:02:02] Chip Zien: You know, Donna Murphy.

[1:02:03] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, sure.

[1:02:04] Chip Zien: And Gideon Glick and Christine. And Gideon was, still Gideon was so much fun. So.

[1:02:10] Ben Rimalower: That must've been such a sort of seminal experience to come back to the show and sing the other half of No More. I mean.

[1:02:16] Chip Zien: I loved it.

[1:02:17] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. I have to say, I, you know, it was Amy Adams. You know.

[1:02:21] Chip Zien: Yeah.

[1:02:22] Ben Rimalower: They, the, the, the, all the women in the cast followed me home one night. I didn't, they decided we were going to have a party in my apartment. I, I, I, I was doing this stupid thing where, you know, well, it doesn't matter. They all decided to lag behind, but suddenly all of them show up at my apartment. And, you know, it was great fun. And then they got up here and I had no food, nothing. I had nothing. They opened the refrigerator. So you're pathetic. This is. Susie was, my wife was teaching, was setting a ballet in Canada or something. And we just, you know, I've been eating out every night. I was like, you know. And that was, that was a good group too. They were fun.

[1:03:10] Ben Rimalower: Would you ever, would you ever want to go back and do that again? Like possibly in the Broadway production or a different one?

[1:03:17] Chip Zien: I think I never realized how many times Tom Aldrich had to change his clothes. And like what a, what an unbelievable, unbelievably difficult that part was. We did a 10 year concert of it. And I was sitting there with Tom, who I just love.

[1:03:33] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[1:03:34] Chip Zien: Great. Just great. And, and he was saying, he said, you know what? He said, I'm going to say it. I think I'm going to die right now. He said, I think I'm too old. I can't, this is killing me. I can't do it. I'm exhausted. And, and he said, I'm not even, I don't even have to change my clothes, you know. But it was, I never, I never appreciated it until I, you know, I did his thing in the park, you know, changing clothes. I mean, it was insane.

[1:04:01] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[1:04:02] Chip Zien: Well, that wasn't really an answer.

[1:04:04] Ben Rimalower: Oh, what was it?

[1:04:05] Chip Zien: What was the question?

[1:04:06] Ben Rimalower: Would you ever be open to stepping back into that?

[1:04:08] Chip Zien: I think I, you know, I don't think I want to do it.

[1:04:10] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[1:04:11] Chip Zien: Because I'm afraid of, I don't know, it's, I don't think so because, you know, in a funny way, I was upset when they did it at Delacorte. I couldn't be the baker again.

[1:04:15] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[1:04:16] Chip Zien: And I was too old for that. And well, so is, so I mean, I, I think I want to, I think, I think, you know, Joanna Gleason said, you've changed, you're, you're, you know, what's the word, you, and.

[1:04:29] Ben Rimalower: You're thriving, you're different in the woods.

[1:04:30] Chip Zien: Yeah, you're, you're, it's, you know, she said, it should be now, you know, you're old, I'm, you know, you're older, we're too old to play these parts.

[1:04:36] Ben Rimalower: No.

[1:04:37] Chip Zien: And, you know, so I, no, I don't think so. Harmony is my next gig. And then, you know, I'm trying to keep my fingers crossed that that happens as they're saying it will happen.

[1:05:06] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, it seems like there's a lot, a lot of energy behind that now.

[1:05:09] Chip Zien: That's very cool.

[1:05:10] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. Well, Chip, this is just, I mean, so incredible to talk to you. I really, I can't tell you how grateful I am.

[1:05:18] Chip Zien: Can you piece something together about what we've said?

[1:05:20] Ben Rimalower: Are you kidding? This is, I barely have to edit anything. This is absolutely wonderful.

[1:05:29] Ben Rimalower: Thank you for listening to Giants in the Sky, How Sondheim and Lapine Went Into the Woods on the Broadway Podcast Network. Check out episode three, where I chat with Danielle Furlan, the original Little Red Riding Hood.