"Lovers In Disguise" sung by Devin Richards

This is the very first lyric Amy Lynn Shapiro put into my hands when we began writing songs. It came from a night back during the cold winter months when we were racing around trying to find the Rouge Wine Bar to get to the Salon. And I mean it was BITTER cold outside. So, she had the idea of writing a song about secret lovers (since she's my secret girlfriend). When Devin heard it, he insisted that he had to sing it. What we didn't know was the he'd turn it into a comedic number. With his permission, from his nightclub act:

Video: Last Day in Houston

Jim & Steve on Queer Voices

Listen to the recording.

Houston Vlog 2: Intro to Stages

Houston Vlog 1: It's All About Steve

This is the first video diary from our trip to Houston with "Zero Hour." In this one, we meet my brother, Scott, and his wife, Jill.

Steve Does The Talking!

Whenever you're half of a couple, you tend to take on roles. And when you're forced into a role you're not used to, it can be a bit disconcerting. For instance, last night at the theatre, they were having a pre-show reception for one of the show's sponsors, a law firm called haynesboone. (Thanks! I love their slogan: Setting Precedent.)

Lise, who does PR for the theatre, asked me if I would appear at the reception and say a few words about Zero Hour because Kenn McLaughlin was home sick. Of course, this means more than just talking about the play. This means being at the reception, shaking hands with people, entering into conversations with them, being personable -- all things I let Jim do for us as he's much more chatty, story-telly and charming than I am at parties. (I tend to find the food, sit in the corner and wait for it to be over).

So, before the show started I snuck into the kitchen and sampled all the food -- it was quite good! They were all unique little squiggly things on round things (salmon mouse, avocado mouse, etc.) delivered from a local restaurant. The rep from the restaurant was a cute, funny guy and we got along great.

Then, I went into the rehearsal hall for my first songwriting session since I've been here. I didn't know there was a piano in there until Jim told me there was a few days ago. YAY! I have a whole stack of lyrics I've been dying to get my teeth into. Ah, there's nothing like a brand new lyric on a clean sheet of paper to make my heart go twitter.

After working about a half hour and almost finishing the first song, while "sampling" a few of the others just to see if anything came to me -- writing songs like like having dessert; if you eat too much at one time, you'll spoil dinner; also, once I start on a musical idea, I have to take it to its musical completion. Otherwise, when I start on the next song, it will sound just like the one I've been working on. One idea at a time, please! -- I made my way to the party.

And I was very good! The people surrounded me once I introduced myself. There was a nice looking gay couple who enthusiastically said they'd seen The Big Voice. And I felt like the life of the party. I kept thinking, "If Jim were here, he'd be doing this and I'd be curled up in a corner in another room reading a book."

So, they clinked glasses just before the show was to start and introduced me formally and I began talking about the origins of "Zero Hour," about how much we love Stages Theatre, how helpful Kenn was with creative input and how much I thanked haynesboone for sponsoring the show, and that I felt they'd be very proud of the piece.

Happily, they all seemed to know a bit about Zero. One fellow asked if Zero ever got over his anger of the blacklist. I looked at him and said, "No. But it's a much more complicated story than that, and that the play would reveal all." I told them how Zero's friends came to see the show in LA and gave their undying blessings to it and how all of them had approached it skeptically, wondering who could ever "reproduce" Zero Mostel. I mentioned that one of Zero's best friends is working with Jim now to bring the show, hopefully, to New York (though I can't much more until everything is in place).

After the show, they were totally blown away. By the play. By Jim's performance. By everything. And I felt proud that I could stand and represent the show for Jim. And it was nice to actually feel witty and personable in public. Next time, Jim can go sit in the corner and eat, and *I'll* do all the talking for us!

Houston Press Raves Over Zero Hour.

Zero Hour If you've never had the absolute pleasure of experiencing the one-and-only Zero Mostel -- and that's the only way to describe his free-wheeling performances, an experience -- then Jim Brochu's one-man show on Mostel's life and times, running concurrently at Stages Repertory Theatre with another one-man show, I Am My Own Wife, is probably the nearest and best you'll ever get.

Three-time Tony winner, Mostel is one of Broadway's monstres sacrés: an original, something titanic, a force of nature. As a performer, he was his own shock and awe, and his story is one of steely determination, fierce pride and unquenchable anger at what happened to him and his many friends during the '50s Communist witch-hunts. When his performing career was curtailed, he survived through his first great love -- painting -- his lifeline to creativity. Mostel was one of the lucky ones; he outlived his adversaries and returned in triumph to Broadway (Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros, Sondheim's Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Harnick and Bock's Fiddler on the Roof) and then Hollywood (Mel Brooks's The Producers).

An incredibly versatile actor, he made you weep with his brilliant insight into James Joyce (Ulysses in Nighttown), or roar with laughter from his antics with The Muppets. All the highlights and lowlights of Mostel's complicated, seismograph-like life are covered by Brochu, who bellows, cajoles, pleads and charms much like Zero.

There's a snippet from Mostel's comic days at Café Society; an improv from his first drama class; his "Hello, loose lips" speech in front of the full Forum cast, coldly welcoming HUAC rat Jerome Robbins as the show's new director; and endearing personal family confessions. Comedy, pathos, Borscht belt schtick, bombast and sentiment, and Mostel's instantaneous shift from one to another, it's all here and rendered with loving photorealism. The physical resemblance is downright eerie: a slicked-down comb-front that Mostel should have trademarked, those haunting saucer eyes, that surprising agility like one of the hippos from Fantasia and that melodious thunder of a voice.

(Here is Zero on the Muppets, referred to above:)

Free Prizes!

We love the place they've put us for this run here in Houston. It's a suite hotel where we can cook meals. It sits on a golf course and, if we want to use the restaurant attached to the golf course, we can get 50% off on the weekends. And this restaurant has GREAT food, including a terrific Texas Chicken Fried Steak.

Today, they announced a free buffet here in the hotel with chicken fingers and salad. AND a BINGO GAME! So, Jim and I, who've never turned down a meal, made our way down to the "Great Room," loaded our plates up with hot chicken fingers and bought some Bingo cards (for $1 each, the proceeds to go to a children's charity).

Although there were several groups of men (British workers doing something for Siemens) eating large platefuls of food, Jim and I were the only two people playing Bingo.

And we both won at the same time! Our prizes? Two free meals for two at the Sand Trap Restaurant!

Opening Night in Houston.

I can't take videos and post them because I stupidly forgot to bring the power cord to my video camera. I can take video, but then I'd use all my battery power to download them and I'd rather have a lot of video. So, I'll post stuff after I get home.

The opening night of Zero Hour was great. The audience was on its feet before the lights even came up. The Chronicle review was the same as in the blog posted earlier, but it had a huge layout on the page with a great picture. After the show, one of the Board members, so excited about it, took the picture Jimmy draws during the performance and auctioned it off for $100.

We took Saturday off and went to see the movie "Grindhouse," which we enjoyed in all its blood-splattering glory.

Sunday, my brother Scott and his wonderful wife, Jill, came to visit and see the show. (Video to come). They took me out before the show to a place called the Ragin' Cajun.

Jill and Scott. I like my brother, but I like Jill better.
She has WAY more sense.

The Ragin' Cajun is topped by a giant crawfish.

Bet ya can't find good boudin in Noo York City!

Here is where you line up to order your food.
I'm not sure what the stacks of books are for.
To put the kids on so they can sit up at the table?

The elegant seatin' area is very unpretentious.

I make jokes, but the fact is that the food here is spectacular. I mean AMAZINGLY spectacular. After New Orleans was destroyed, the people from there who came to Houston loved the Ragin' Cajun best of all, I was told. The fried shrimp was to die for. It's all about the breading. Myself, I had a sumptuous crawfish pie.

On Sunday, the show went very well again. There was a talkback afterwards in which Jim told lots of stories and the people discussed the show and its issues very intelligently, bringing up aspects neither of us had really thought about. I do love Houston audiences and always have.

On Monday, Jim went to the Pacifica Radio station at 90.1. It sits in a small home in a residential area. Politically liberal, the hosts began the interview by saying, "If anyone wants to call in to talk about the blacklist, our lines are open."

So, that told Jim right from the start that this wasn't a typical "show biz" interview. They were focused on the political issues raised in "Zero Hour," which, as the Houston Chronicle mentioned, takes up a major part of the play. I enjoyed sitting in an outer area listening to the interview as they seriously discussed the blacklist and the House Un-American Activities Committee. As I was sitting there, someone came up to me and said, "Hello! I'm Pokey! We know each other form online! I was sitting there listening and heard Jim and said, 'Hey, I know those guys!'"


So, I hugged her and we talked for a little bit. It was fun to run into one of my netfriends from out of the blue.

Houston Chronicle Blogs Zero Hour

Everett Evans, the Houston Chronicle's theatre critic, has posted a pre-review of Zero Hour on the newspaper's blog. It's overwhelmingly positive. What do you think?

First Preview in Houston.

The first preview in Houston was off the charts positive.

The audience, of course, didn't really know what they were in for. Zero Hour is like a freight train. Zero opens the play by hitting the audience hard and fast because he's aggressively determined to take control of the "interview" that's taking place (which is the conceit of the play, that he's being interviewed by a reporter).

I sat in the back row watching, hoping they would "get" what was going on. It seemed, at first, that the laughter, though plentiful, was nervous, as if they weren't quite sure if they are supposed to be laughing. Zero, as a character, gives no quarter.

Then when it gets into the blacklist and the rant that Zero goes on against McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee and being called a communist, by the end of the play, which concludes suddenly, like a shotgun going off, the audience immediately went into roaring applause. The people around us were saying to each other, "This is amazing! I've never seen anything like it!"

The second act is gentler and funnier, and they were with Jim all the way. There is one particular punchline (which I won't give away) which we wondered would "work" in Texas. The laughter seemed to go on for 2 minutes. They loved it. And at the end of the show, it was an immediate standing ovation.

I overheard people in the lobby saying it was the best show all season. So, we are pleased and grateful to know that it plays as well in Texas as it did in Los Angeles. Tonight, second preview.

First Pictures From Houston.

We arrive!Here is the front of Stages Repertory Theatre:

It has a beautiful lobby:


Jim, Lise & Calvin:


Karen the Stage Manager:

Assistant Stage Manager Megan:

Lighting Designer Jeremy:


Jodi the Property Mistress:

Steve the very serious hanger-on:

Jim and Calvin:


Photos from Jim's runthrough:






This shot is very large. I am using it as my screen saver. If you click on it, you can see the full sized image:

After the runthrough, Kenn McLaughlin, the extremely talented producing artistic director gave Jim some thoughtful notes. We worked with Kenn four years ago and completely fell in love with him. He presents terrific theatre and very creative seasons of plays and musicals on two stages.

Now THIS is an article!

Click on the image to see it BIG.

Zero Hour in the Houston Chronicle

Sunday morning brings a terrific article about Zero Hour in the Houston Chronicle.

When I got the link in an email, it didn't work very well. So I went to chron.com and entered through the front page. You might have to do that.

By EVERETT EVANS
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

Any playwright attempting a solo biographical play had better make sure he's chosen a fascinating subject.

So why would Jim Brochu write a solo play about a big zero?

Because the "zero" in question is the late, great Zero Mostel.

Brochu stars as the unique, celebrated and bedeviled actor in Zero Hour, making its Houston debut Friday at Stages Repertory Theatre.

Mostel (1915-77) is best remembered for originating the role of disreputable producer Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks' original 1967 film The Producers, and for his three Tony-winning Broadway triumphs of the 1960s: in Ionesco's theater-of-the-absurd landmark Rhinoceros, and in the hit musicals A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Fiddler on the Roof.

That decade's achievements constituted a spectacular comeback. Mostel's career had been derailed throughout the 1950s, when he was blacklisted because of his political affiliations and refusal to "name names" before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

A larger-than-life figure in every respect, Mostel was renowned for his explosive presence and abrupt transformations (onstage and off) from jovial to hostile, gentle to volcanic. His tendency to improvise delighted audiences, but often exasperated playwrights, directors and fellow actors.

"Playing him is like trying to put socks on an octopus," Brochu says. "You never know where the next tentacle's going to jut out. But the mischief, the danger, the volatility — all that makes it fun. I find I slip very easily into this role. Somehow it comes naturally to me."

Brochu, who co-created the off-Broadway musicals The Last Session and The Big Voice: God or Merman? (which he performed at Stages in 2003), cites several reasons for his affinity with Mostel.

"He was a big fellow, as I am. With every acting job I've ever done, someone has compared me to Zero." More important, Mostel was a friend and mentor to Brochu, who was 14 when he met the star, then performing in Forum.

"I had never seen a funnier, more explosive performance," Brochu recalls of Mostel as the scheming slave Pseudolus. "He just knocked you back in your seat, he was such a force of nature."

After the show, Brochu ventured backstage to visit with veteran actor and Forum co-star David Burns (a family friend, through Brochu's father).

"I ran into Zero, his costume soaked with sweat. I was going to military school, so I was wearing a uniform. Zero asked 'Who are you? General Nuisance?' I told him, 'I'm Davy Burns' friend; I've come to see him.' And he said, 'You never come to see me.' I said, 'OK, I will.' And he said, 'You'd better!' "

Brochu indeed began visiting backstage with Mostel as well as Burns — marveling at the celebrities he'd encounter in Mostel's dressing room.

The friendship continued, and when Fiddler premiered, Brochu was in the front row, leading the standing ovation.

When Brochu came across an old Theater Arts magazine with Mostel on its cover in 2005, it started him thinking: Could he make a play about Mostel?

"When I began looking into his earlier life, I was floored by the personal and professional obstacles he had to overcome."

Beyond the blacklist and consequent financial hardship for the Mostel family (including wife Kate and sons Joshua and Tobias), there were other frustrations and crises adding drama to Mostel's offstage life.

"For one thing," Brochu says, "his parents (Eastern European Jews who'd immigrated around the turn of the century) cut him off because he married a Christian.

"In 1960, just as he was getting his career back on track after the blacklist, he was hit by a bus. One leg was so badly injured the doctors were going to amputate it. He begged them not to, and they didn't. But they warned him he probably would never walk again. He was hospitalized for four months."

The fact that Mostel not only walked but also gave such vibrant performances as the ones in Forum and Fiddler is a testament to his perseverance.

Perhaps the biggest frustration for Mostel, Brochu says, was that "he feared he would be remembered as 'that fat guy from The Producers' when he saw himself chiefly as a painter. That had been his great ambition since childhood. And from the 1930s on, he spent eight hours a day painting. He always said he did the acting to make the money to buy more paint."

Yet Mostel had only himself to blame: He inadvertently launched his performing career. While working for the WPA as a museum tour guide during the '30s, he couldn't resist veering from the prepared lectures into his improvised comic bits. That led to gigs as a comedian, first at parties, then in Greenwich Village nightclubs. And his reputation as a funnyman led to his first stage roles, then to his movie debut in the 1943 film of DuBarry Was a Lady.

After his '60s peak, he did several films (The Great Bank Robbery, Once Upon a Scoundrel) unworthy of his talent. Just earning money to buy paint, one presumes.

In his final years, he seemed intent on reclaiming the artistic high ground as an actor. He appeared in a revival of his 1958 off-Broadway breakthrough role in Ulysses in Nighttown, received a BAFTA (British Oscar) nomination for his spot-on portrayal of a blacklisted comic not unlike himself in 1975's The Front. He was rehearsing the Philadelphia tryout of The Merchant, Arnold Wesker's revisionist take on Shakespeare's Shylock, when he died.

Brochu has set Zero Hour in Mostel's art studio, two months before his death, as a reporter interviews him about his life and pending stage comeback. The script includes two flashback sequences, in which Brochu relives one of Mostel's early stand-up comedy routines at Cafe Society, and his famous appearance testifying before HUAC.

Premiered last year in Los Angeles, Zero Hour received a Los Angeles Ovation Award as best premiere play.

"To take on the mantle of a one-person show is tremendously angst-making," Brochu admits. "What gets you over that is the love and support of the audience. At the beginning of the (L.A.) run, I knew they were coming to see a play about Zero. By the end of the run, I felt they were coming to see me."

everett.evans@chron.com

• When: Previews at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 18 and Thursday, April 19. Opens at 8 p.m. Friday, April 20. Runs in repertory with I Am My Own Wife , through May 13.

• Where: Stages Repertory Theatre, 3201 Allen Parkway

• Tickets: $26-$36; 713-527-0123