Pam Meyers, Danielle Ferland, and Teri Ralston Share Stories of On-Stage Mishaps on STARS IN THE HOUSE

Today's first guest on Stars in the House was Marisa Tomei to discuss a reading of BEIRUT this week with MCC Theater. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of COMPANY, original cast members Teri Ralston and Pam Meyers along with other Sondheim alums Danielle Ferland, Lonny Price, and Liz Callaway joined Stars in the House, benefiting The Actors Fund, this afternoon (2pm).

Marisa Tomei began: "This play that we are going to be reading, with Oscar Isaac, Beruit, I did in 1987 at MCC. I wrote to Bernie [Telsey] in the beginning of this pandemic and said 'that play is on my mind. Can you believe everything...' When Alan Bowne wrote the play it was in the middle of the AIDS crisis. It was an unknown plague and it's about these two young lovers trying to reach each other through this quarantine. The whole Lower East Side is a quarantine. What would we do and what would we sacrifice to be with someone we love right now?"

Teri Ralston, Danielle Ferland, and Pam Meyers joined to discuss COMPANY and Stephen Sondheim.

Teri: "This morning and felt deeply lonely on the COMPANY [anniversary] which is all about company and friends and you know, Seth, thank you for this. You started playing the opening of COMPANY and the tears started. It's a time of reflection and gratefulness to have had this amazing opportunity and spent my adult life basically having the wonderful association with Sondheim and Hal Prince and all these incredible people. My COMPANY friends are all still family."

Seth asked Danielle about her experience as Little Red Riding Hood: "Talk to me for a minute about playing Little Red Riding Hood. Did Sondheim play the song for you?"

I remember one of the first things in the read-through when you're sitting there and he's playing through the music and sings through it himself...It just comes from his heart. I remember so many changes in that show. The Little Red song didn't change that much. I remember the Jack song and the Cinderella song but there were so many different things that happened with that. We did a workshop of three different endings of that show a few weeks before the Broadway rehearsals started."

Seth: "I was there during the previews I think the set fell down?"

Danielle "Yea and you know when the set fell down, I used to take the train with Barbara Brynn to Connecticut. We'd run to the station together because it was always like 'are we going to make the train?' Because the show was so long and if the set fell down you're like 'I guess I'm missing the train.'"

Pam and Teri chimed in with their stage mishap stories.

Pam: "My park bench fell over on top of me one time. It came out on a wagon and...fell off. It was metal and fell over on top of me...I crawled out from under it and picked it up and put it back up on the platform and all the time you hear just vamping."

Teri: "We had this big lego set that was behind us and it would slide out and this drop would come in and it came down in the middle of the lego set and crash everything went flying."

Liz Callaway made an appearance to perform Being Alive from COMPANY. Before her performance she shared: "Company was my first Broadway show I'd seen. My parents saw it first and brought home the album and I just memorized it. I listened to it constantly."

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