Jeffrey Broadhurst has been in six Broadway musicals, most of them hits (his latest is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang); has worked with such legends as Liza Minnelli, Bette Midler and Jerome Robbins; and counts many other highly respected talents as personal friends. Therefore, he's established enough in the musical theater community that he shouldn't risk ostracism with the following confession: Before he was cast in 1999's Minnelli on Minnelli, he didn't know that Judy Garland is Liza Minnelli's mother.
"I hate to admit this...all my friends scream at me...I'm going to sound like the biggest idiot...," Broadhurst says, half laughing, half apologizing, before he relates the following memory from an early rehearsal of Minnelli on Minnelli: "Liza kept saying 'Mama this,' 'Mama that,' and I turned to [another dancer] and I said, 'Who is her mama? Who's she talking about?' He was like, 'Wha?!'"
In his defense, Broadhurst points out that he had been strictly ballet right up until he started dancing on Broadway—growing up in Myrtle Beach, S.C., he attended schools with virtually no theater programs and performed (outside of dance class) only in theme-park revues. And he attempts this excuse: "Minnelli, Garland, it's not the same name. It's an honest mistake!"
In Liza's show, Broadhurst was one of five gentlemen accompanying her as she performed songs from movies directed by her father, Vincente Minnelli (a tour followed the show's limited run at the Palace Theatre). It wasn't the first diva vehicle in which Broadhurst had won a highly coveted chorus-boy role: He played Tulsa in the Bette Midler Gypsy in 1993. On that occasion Broadhurst's lack of musical theater expertise may have helped him get the job. He had to audition in front of all the powerhouses who had created Gypsy, including book writer Arthur Laurents and composer Jule Styne. "All of whom, at the time, I didn't know that much about, certainly not enough to visually recognize them, so I wasn't nervous or anything," he says. He did, however, know Gypsy choreographer Jerome Robbins, whom he had worked with on Jerome Robbins' Broadway.
In the late '80s, Broadhurst was dancing with Karole Armitage's company, but planning a move into musical theater, when he heard Robbins was seeking ballet dancers for the Jerome Robbins' Broadway ensemble. Broadhurst had been classically trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts but didn't really see a future in ballet past Armitage's avant-garde troupe. "As a swing in Jerome Robbins' Broadway it prepared me to do everything that ever could come down the road. And not only do it but not be in a panic about doing it," Broadhurst says. "If I look back on my life, not only about dance, I probably got the education of my lifetime during that time."
On his next show, Crazy for You, he worked with another premier choreographer, Susan Stroman. "It was just joy," Broadhurst says. "She is an amazing person. She has an incredible respect for the people that are working with her, and she's not threatened by your input and your collaborativeness. She welcomes it." He's also been in Kiss Me, Kate and The Boys From Syracuse on Broadway, as well as tours of The Music Man, Chicago and West Side Story, which has been his favorite to perform (he did selections from it in Jerome Robbins' Broadway). "For men, West Side Story is the best choreography I've done, I've seen, maybe will ever see!"
Nobody would mistake Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for a classic like that, but Broadhurst says his current job has its own rewards. "I know it's such a cliché to say, but it really is a great family atmosphere going to work: It's friendship, camaraderie, that unique backstage bond. I've worked with a lot of those people before." And he finds something special in each number he does in Chitty: "'Bamboo' is very athletic, and I like that about it. 'Funfair,' I think, is the best-structured number. Visually I think it's beautiful. 'Bombie Samba' comes from out of nowhere, but it's great, it's exciting. And 'Toot Sweets' is cute, it builds the story."
