Behind the Scenes with Broadway's Alex Santoriello

Imagine stepping into the world of a seasoned performer who's career has danced on stages across the world - from a nightclub in Barbados to the heart of New York City's theatre district. Join us as we uncover the captivating journey of Alex Santoriello, a leading figure in the performing arts scene in Florida’s The Villages. His story is a vibrant tapestry, woven with threads of his many talents, not least of which is his passion for flying sparked by childhood memories of Flash Gordon and Sky King. Strap in and take flight with us to Kansas, the place where his love for the open sky truly took hold.

Get an all-access pass to the backstage of some of the most iconic musical productions Alex has been a part of - from 'Man of La Mancha' to 'Jesus Christ Superstar', 'Evita', 'My Fair Lady', 'Sweeney Todd', 'Grease', 'Mamma Mia' and 'West Side Story'. As he walks us through his current project, 'Grumpy Old Men', we delve into the nuances of assembling a production with the help of good friends. We'll also get a glimpse into the world of 'Cats', Andrew Lloyd Webber's longest-running musical, and the inspiring tale of how his sister wrote a Broadway musical. Get ready to immerse yourself in an episode jam-packed with theatre magic, captivating stories and a whole lot of inspiration!

Season 8 Introduction

Transcript

Emily 0:30

Welcome to the Open Forum in the Villages Florida podcast. In this show we talk to leaders in the community, leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live here in the villages to give perspectives of what is happening here in the villages. We hope to add a new episode most Fridays at 9 am. We are a listener-supported podcast. You can become a supporter for as little as $3 per month or you can choose to pay more. To become a supporter, go to openforminthevillages. com and click on support in the black box. There will be shoutouts for supporters in episodes.

Emily 1:01

In season 4, we have made some dramatic improvements and changes. First is a clarification of the podcast's title. It is open forum in the villages, florida. To make clear that this is a regional show, independently produced for folks who live in central Florida and the villages areas. It is a dramatic increase in the use of AI in the creation of each episode. These include a transcript of each show. Please understand that there may be errors inserted by the AI that may not be caught before the transcript is published. However, this is a dramatic step forward. We will now include chapter markers for each show. The show description text will be AI generated. In fact, the show's announcers are now all AI voices, including me, emily. Hope you enjoy.

Mike Roth 1:42

This is Mike Roth. I'm here with Alex Santoriello.

Alex Santoriello 1:46

Nice to be here, Michael. Thanks for having me.

Mike Roth 1:49

Great, great. Alex, I know you've had a good reputation here in the villages and the performing arts. I wanted to tell our listeners what you did before you got here to the villages and where you came from.

Alex Santoriello 2:01

Immediately before I came to The Villages, I lived in Barbados. I owned a nightclub. It was a piano bar and restaurant. We served sushi and had a teppanyaki table.

Mike Roth 2:12

So it was all kind of it was all show as you could say Right, right, and did you play the piano in the piano bar?

Alex Santoriello 2:20

I know only the one song.

Mike Roth 2:22

So, Alex, did you play the piano in the piano bar?

Alex Santoriello 2:26

I played the piano. I played piano man. Almost every night that I was in the bar. People actually thought that I played piano because of that, but in truth I only played one song by heart and that's piano man.

Mike Roth 2:39

Okay that's good. And before Barbados, where were you?

Alex Santoriello 2:42

In New York. I owned and operated the only Parisian company in New York City history and I actually did it for the purpose of trying to fly aerial advertising banners around the city. But I ended up getting entangled with New York City for a long period of time and so that actually the business ended same time as the World Trade Center came down and I had been operating in the Hudson River, so I couldn't do that anymore. I ended up going to Barbados again for the third time, where I had been doing concerts every year and I met a person oh, I met a girl and moved there. That's how I got to Barbados.

Mike Roth 3:18

Okay, good, and I understand. You fly a plane too. How did you a fellow in show business? How do I fly it? No, no, how did you get involved with flying? I mean, it's a kind of different art form, in my opinion, Very interesting.

Alex Santoriello 3:33

Flash Gordon represents two very important things in my life First of all the idea of exploration and flying, and the other thing was fabulous music. I obviously loved the old serial, the one Larry Buster Krab was in. You know from the old days the serial. Buster Krab was the hero I was enamored with that in the Buck Rogers series.

Mike Roth 3:55

Oh, Ming the Merciless was the villain. He was great.

Alex Santoriello 3:58

Ray Middleton.

Alex Santoriello 3:59

I think that was his name.

Alex Santoriello 4:00

At one day, you know, my father came down into the rec room it was a Sunday, if Flash Gordon was on Sunday for like a half an hour and I turned it on and my father came down and said you're not watching this crap. And he went to go put the stereo on the hi-fi. Right, you didn't have stereo back then. So he goes to put a record on and I storm off to my room and I'm up there like brooding, really not happy about this, and all of a sudden I hear the Flash Gordon music come on and I go. He's relented.

Alex Santoriello 4:28

So I run down and I plop my butt in front of the television and screen is black and it was my first realization that it was the music really that propelled the whole story. And it was all the old classics, so they were all public domain. Nobody had to pay any money for them. They just used the pieces and recorded them for the serials. And I said, oh, that was my first connection, that music was so amazing. And it was like and my connection to flying as well, Sky King didn't hurt.

Mike Roth 4:57

Sky King.

Alex Santoriello 4:57

that was good, and my father was in the Air Force, so we had pictures of planes and things like that.

Mike Roth 5:03

When was the first time you got into a cockpit, into the?

Alex Santoriello 5:05

cockpit 1976, when I started to learn how to fly.

Mike Roth 5:12

Did you do it as a hobby or as a business?

Alex Santoriello 5:14

No, I did it because I wanted to learn how to fly. I had wanted to become a helicopter pilot but I was told I couldn't do it because I had signed a bonus agreement to be combat arms. So I was stuck. So I couldn't do that. So I learned to fly on post at the flying club and it was only $800. Remember that was when fuel was like 25 cents a gallon or something like that and the planes only cost you like $19 to rent for everything For an hour.

Mike Roth 5:41

It was unbelievable. Yeah, it was great, yeah, yeah.

Alex Santoriello 5:45

And I learned to fly in Kansas where, if something went wrong, I could land anywhere, because there's hardly any trees out there, sorry.

Mike Roth 5:50

Where did you?

Alex Santoriello 5:50

learn to fly again, kansas.

Mike Roth 5:52

Oh, in Kansas.

Alex Santoriello 5:53

Fort Riley, kansas. Yeah, okay.

Mike Roth 5:55

Yeah, that's how everything was flat.

Alex Santoriello 5:58

Pretty much Very few trees. You know it's like, okay, we're going to give this property one tree, you can have two, you can negotiate, maybe next year you can get a little seedling and, you know, grow one of your own. But there's not a lot of trees out there.

Mike Roth 6:10

Yeah.

Alex Santoriello 6:11

Pretty flat.

Mike Roth 6:12

Yeah, when I was old enough to think about it, I bought one of those Microsoft Flight Simulator games and discovered that, oh, it was really easy to take off, but I crashed 100% of the time.

Alex Santoriello 6:25

Landing is difficult. Landing is the most difficult part of the whole process. That's when you, as a flight instructor, you go out there and you say what are you going to accomplish today? I'm not going to let my student kill me. Very simple you could do a lot of things up in the air, but when you get close to the ground, things get. You know you have your hands on, you're sitting with your hands underneath your butt, ready to grab the wheel any moment you know. But you don't want to really be up there like with your hands on your lap going okay, okay. You don't want to look like you're anticipating that. You know the student is going to try and kill you this time around you know, so you're a rated flight instructor as well.

Alex Santoriello 7:01

Yeah.

Mike Roth 7:02

And that means, you have instrument ratings too.

Alex Santoriello 7:04

I do.

Mike Roth 7:04

Okay, what's the longest flight you've ever taken? Charles Lindbergh question.

Alex Santoriello 7:09

No, actually I was on tour with cats and I was. I had rented a plane that I was flying I had it for about four months from city to city. I would fly cats from city to city or fly back to home, back to New York City for the weekend, you know, for we had a day and a half off and I had one show in Newfoundland, in St John's, and it was a, if I remember, it was a five hour flight from St John's, newfoundland, to St John's, new Brunswick, yeah, and then from St John to Teterboro, where my home airport was another four hours, and of course we started around, I don't know, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock at night, so we didn't get to New York until four in the morning.

Alex Santoriello 7:51

Oh, it was long.

Alex Santoriello 7:52

Brutal, it was long and on the approach the whole thing was fogged in.

Mike Roth 7:56

Sure, it wouldn't be easy.

Alex Santoriello 7:57

No, I know, and I'm coming in. It was beautiful, it was very smooth because it was like a low lying cloud layer but couldn't see the ground, so you had to fly, you had to land on instruments and so, as I'm shooting the final approach, it's like I have it on autopilot and I'm thinking, okay, you can do all the job right now and it coming up to the final approach course where you've got to turn left, the plane is supposed to turn left while it doesn't, and it's getting ready to go outside of the range. It's got like a 10 degree range on one side or the other of the localizer line and if you go either side, you're supposed to abort and go back out to the VOR and do another thing, do another pass, and I'm like I'm a nine hours flying airplane. I don't want to do this. I grabbed that plane, turned it over on its side and I said you are landing right here, never peg the marker. And it was a beautiful thing.

Mike Roth 8:41

Well, you had a lot of experience by that point and you became a boat captain. That's also a license, the occupation or requirement, isn't it Correct, yeah?

Alex Santoriello 8:53

I actually have a US Coast Guard master's license a hundred ton license with auxiliary sail and towing things like that and I also have a United Kingdom license a 200 ton yacht master license and I'm commercially qualified to operate vessels anywhere in the world for hire. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Mike Roth 9:11

Yeah, how often do you do that? Every year.

Alex Santoriello 9:13

I did eight deliveries last year. This year I think I only did three or four. It's a short season because the granddaughter's in town and so we cut the season short so we could go off to Dollywood this last week.

Mike Roth 9:27

So yeah, and you're still doing the boat captain thing. That's a perpetual license.

Alex Santoriello 9:32

No, I have to keep so many days on the water over a period of time.

Alex Santoriello 9:37

And yeah, so you continue to renew it.

Alex Santoriello 9:39

You take a medical exam and same thing for the pilot's license. Every two years I have to redo my written exam for flight instructor.

Mike Roth 9:48

So you learned about power of music from watching or listening to Buster Crab music on Flash Gordon. How did you get into show business the first time?

Alex Santoriello 9:57

Well, there was an audition in high school for Fiddler on the Roof and people said, well, why don't you audition? Because I was in like the chorus. And so I went and auditioned and I got the part Muffle the tailor, Muffle the tailor, Muffle. Yeah, and I learned some really valuable things. But you know, I mean just basic stuff like stand still, and if you don't stand still I'll nail your feet to the floor and don't fig leaf, you know, don't put your hands in front of yourself, like. You know a couple basic rules, you know. And I ended up getting the part. And then that was one show, and next year I got another one and I get another one, but I'll never forget the kid that I got the part rather than him getting it. So to me, break a leg.

Alex Santoriello 10:43

And.

Alex Santoriello 10:43

I went home to my mother and I went kid, it's horrible. I said he's so upset that you know I got the part that he told me break I hope so, break a leg. My mother says no, no, no, no, that's, that's the whole way he means. He means good luck. You know what break a leg means.

Mike Roth 10:58

Stage talk.

Alex Santoriello 10:59

I know, but do you know what it comes from?

Mike Roth 11:01

No, I don't know where it comes from.

Alex Santoriello 11:02

No, it's like you know things, like you hear people say Merid, you know, which in French means shit and people say, well, why do you say, merid, you don't want to tell a dancer? Break a leg. Yeah, break a leg comes from the old days, when they used to slam the chairs on the ground rather than clap.

Mike Roth 11:17

Oh really, yeah, yeah, break a chair leg.

Alex Santoriello 11:20

Yeah, break a leg. That means they're so excited about you Okay.

Mike Roth 11:23

Yeah, that's great. Do you have any show business experiences that you had before you came to the villages that you'd like to share with our audience? Good or bad, both types.

Alex Santoriello 11:35

I've been very blessed. I managed to break into the Broadway, into Broadway as an actor, as a singer, really as a singer and an actor?

Theater Productions and Alzheimer's Discussion

Alex Santoriello 11:45

I, fortunately it was not. I always felt that the show business is very clickish. Everybody knows so many people, so it's very rare when someone new gets the opportunity to participate. So I felt really lucky because they were out of towners. You know, it was Trevor Nunn and John Caird from the Royal Shakespeare Company, from England, and so they didn't have this set click, like most of the American directors who have been here a long time. So I was really lucky. I think that was a major reason that I was fortunate enough to get cast in the original company of Les Mis on Broadway. And, of course, I was really lucky because I was born with the voice.

Mike Roth 12:23

I certainly wasn't ever very disciplined you know you didn't take singing lessons.

Alex Santoriello 12:27

No.

Mike Roth 12:28

And let's take a quick break here and listen to a Alzheimer's tip from Dr Craig Curtis. Dr Curtis, I've heard that exercise can help your brain. What type of exercises should people be doing?

Dr. Craig Curtis 12:40

Well, the good news is it doesn't take a lot of heavy exercise to make the brain healthier. Right now, the US government recommends approximately 150 minutes per week. So 30 minutes, five days a week, of a moderate intensity exercise such as walking. So something as simple as walking 30 minutes a day, five days a week, can improve your brain health.

Warren 13:01

With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr Curtis's goal is to educate the village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life. To learn more, visit his website craigcurtismd. com, or call 352-500-5252 to attend a free seminar

Alex Santoriello 13:19

2014, I brought my wife, Karen's, and my boat up from Barbados and delivered it to St John's, Madero Beach over there on the west coast and parked it up there and then came and moved into The Villages, moved all of our stuff in came beginning of 2015.

Mike Roth 13:38

How did you hear about The Villages?

Alex Santoriello 13:39

My dad lived here. Oh well, that's a little bit. My dad and my mom lived here. My mom had passed a couple years before and I figured I'd go and ruin the rest of my father's life, which apparently I've done a very good job of.

Mike Roth 13:54

Okay, and after you got here, you started producing shows.

Alex Santoriello 13:58

I've been very fortunate. What?

Mike Roth 14:00

shows have you done here in the villages?

Alex Santoriello 14:03

See, the first one I did was man of La Mancha, with Joan Napton, who was my partner for the last seven years, and we just actually did the show again last past March.

Mike Roth 14:16

Okay, I thought you did that one once, yeah we did it.

Alex Santoriello 14:19

It was the first show we did together a long time, so what other shows did you do, Jesus Christ? Superstar Evita, my Fair Lady, Sweeney, Todd, Grease, Mama Mia, West Side Story, which brings us to our next show, which is going to be Grumpy Old Men.

Mike Roth 14:41

Grumpy Old Men is The Villages. You got it Okay. Grumpy Old Men.

Alex Santoriello 14:45

It seems very well suited. It's a very funny story. It's a touching story. It was a very popular movie and, ironically enough, the people who are involved in the show are both friends of mine the fellow whose idea it was originally, jeff Gardner. He was kind enough to let me couch surf for quite a while at his apartment in New York while he was actually getting this underway as a producer and he put all of his money and his heart and his soul into it. And he brought on board another really good friend of mine, neil Berg, to compose the music, and Nick brought Nick Maglin, neil brought Nick Maglin on, who was the editor from Mad Magazine back in the old days, and Dan Rammus to do the book, who's a really terrific playwright. So the three of them are credited now with the show. That's been very successful across the country. It's a lovely show. It's really well written.

Mike Roth 15:45

How many songs are there?

Alex Santoriello 15:46

I don't know 17 songs. I don't know it's like a normal musical.

Mike Roth 15:52

Normal musical. So it's about Two and a half hours long. I hope not how long you think it's gonna be.

Alex Santoriello 15:57

I hope it's gonna be. Uh, uh, I don't know Mets, you know why it might be two, 15, two and a half maybe less.

Alex Santoriello 16:04

I'd like to try and bring them in as fast as I can. I gotta keep the pace of the show up. I'm a big stickler for trying to have scene changes very, very quick. One of the challenges with grumpy old men is, uh, is that there's a lot of it's very cinematic, so it goes from scene to scene jump, jump, jump, jump, jump. And how are you going to change those scenes and keep the things so that this the pace of the show moves, so that by the time the next scene starts you still remember what happened in the last scene? You know I was like oh, but you know the scene change was so entertaining I forgot what we're doing. I'm sorry, sometimes they're like that, you know.

Mike Roth 16:40

A little bit of improvisation during scene changes.

Alex Santoriello 16:46

You know it's always great because you know sometimes they video these things and you see like somebody laying in costumes, walking across the stage and of course they happen to just be in the spotlight and they walk across and it's like, and they do the obvious, don't just skirt across. But when you do, you realize you're in the spotlight, turn, wave and keep going.

Mike Roth 17:06

Yeah, great spotlight. People have the light off or the aperture close.

Alex Santoriello 17:10

No, it was actually on someone else downstage at the time, but the costume piece had to get to the other side of the stage, so you know. So I guess Les Mis was my greatest show of best experience, because it was such an amazing work, groundbreaking, if you will.

Mike Roth 17:26

I understand you were with Cats too, I did the tour of Cats. How long were you with Cats?

Alex Santoriello 17:32

A year man A year on the road playing Gus, the Theater Cat I have played in my time in every possible part. Oh, boy have I ever.

Mike Roth 17:45

Is there any musical or show that you've been in that you wish you hadn't taken the gig?

Alex Santoriello 17:50

Oh, not that I can think of. I'm really good at putting things out of my mind that are disturbing. You know, most of my experiences have been really great. One of the coolest things in my life is that my sister wrote a Broadway musical. She wrote the book Music and the Lyrics for the show yeah Tello Two Cities. She took it from Dickens and adapted it, and so that's probably one of the Didn't have to pay him royalties.

Alex Santoriello 18:14

Huh, no, that was exactly what I was chosen, but you know, I had the privilege of working on that with her from the beginning and finally it made it to Broadway. But unfortunately it made it there at a terrible time from the economic stand-alise 2008. And it was a nightmare at that particular point. So but it's still playing all over the place around the world.

Mike Roth 18:37

So picking up on the idea of grumpy old men, when is that going to be available for tickets?

Alex Santoriello 18:42

Well, August 16th, the show goes on sale.

Mike Roth 18:47

And that's through the village's box office.

Alex Santoriello 18:49

Yeah, online or at the box office.

Mike Roth 18:52

And what are the performance dates for our audience?

Alex Santoriello 18:54

25, 26, and 27 October.

Mike Roth 18:57

Okay, and putting your Press, the digitators, hat on, and looking into the future.

Alex Santoriello 19:02

Press what hat.

Mike Roth 19:03

Press the digitation, you know. Looking into the future, what shows do you think you might be involved with here in the village is beyond the dirty old men?

Alex Santoriello 19:14

Well, I could tell you, partner, that we know stuff. No, don't put down that rule. I know that we're going to be doing dirty rotten scoundrels. KC Productions.

Alex Santoriello 19:22

We'll be doing dirty, rotten scoundrels in March and of course Pro Am Productions will be doing its carols by candlelight again beginning of December, something I've done every year for seven years. This will be the seventh year for Rotary Club, the Village is Noon. And then I got a couple of concerts coming up in January I'm not sure exactly what we're going to do with them yet and then scoundrels, and then a couple more concerts in April, and then I think we're going to do the Fantastics in May.

Mike Roth 19:54

Oh, now, that is a classic, fantastic show.

Alex Santoriello 19:57

It is. It's got some great music people don't really remember. I mean like things like soon it's going to rain.

Alex Santoriello 20:06

I can feel it. Soon it's going to rain. I can tell Soon it's going to rain. What are we going to do, and it's things like try to remember the kind of September when life was old and docile.

Alex Santoriello 20:26

Now, it's always got great great music and a great little story to it.

Mike Roth 20:31

First time I saw that. I saw it in Greenwich Village when I was going to college, Took my girlfriend out there for a date and saw it in a little theater in Greenwich Village.

Alex Santoriello 20:40

Of course Sullivan Street.

Mike Roth 20:42

Yeah, and then it played at the black box here a couple of years ago.

Alex Santoriello 20:46

Did it? Yeah, I can't recall if it did I remember singing it? Yeah, oh, ok, cool they did a beautiful job. Oh, I bet it's a perfect show for a black box.

Mike Roth 20:55

Mm-hmm.

Alex Santoriello 20:55

Yeah. It's great they have a lot of wonderful talent down there at the studio.

Alex Santoriello 20:59

Mm-hmm.

Alex Santoriello 21:00

You know it's a great little operation.

Mike Roth 21:03

So I saw Dirty Rotten Scandals on Broadway with John Lithgow, and something happened during the show which I thought was either ad-libbed or amazing. Amazingly written. At the end of Act 1, two guys are sitting at a table talking and some stuff goes on and the curtain comes down on Act 1. And Act 2 begins. There's the same table and the same two guys sitting at the table and Lithgow gets up from the table and talks to the audience and he says you know, I enjoyed that scene so much we're going to do it again. And they repeat this last scene of Act 1 at the beginning of Act 2. Is that written in or did it? Was that an ad-lib?

Alex Santoriello 21:39

Probably.

Mike Roth 21:40

Probably an ad-lib.

Alex Santoriello 21:41

No, probably written in.

Mike Roth 21:42

Probably written in.

Alex Santoriello 21:43

There are cues. You know Cues, yeah, sliding cues, sound cues and things like that. So everybody would have to be on the same page in order to accomplish that.

Mike Roth 21:55

Okay, the playbook for the show.

Alex Santoriello 21:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, it would have to be written in.

Mike Roth 22:00

But the way he did it, it seemed.

Alex Santoriello 22:02

It's not like a live concert, where you go, hey, I really like that. You want me to do that song again? Come on man, let's do it. Yeah, yeah okay, Make those lights good, you know. No, it's a little bit different. I think I'm sure it's written in. I have to take a look at the script now that you mentioned it to me.

Mike Roth 22:14

Because I thought that was just phenomenal and the audience loved it.

Alex Santoriello 22:18

Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't look at it. I think we should edit that out so that everyone will think that I am brilliant when it happens and go oh my God, that was so cool.

Mike Roth 22:27

Well, you'd have to take a quick read on the script and call me in the next couple of days and say whether or not it was an ad-lib or a real thing in the script.

Alex Santoriello 22:36

Oh, there'll be a disclaimer at the end of this anyway, and what will the disclaimer say? I have no idea, but I better have a good one.

Mike Roth 22:45

Oh, I don't know how to write it I don't know so far.

Alex Santoriello 22:47

this is pretty tame oh this is much better.

Mike Roth 22:50

This is much better oh.

Alex Santoriello 22:50

I'm glad you like it. I'm here for your. I am here to satisfy your desires.

Mike Roth 22:56

Okay, and keep our news as clean.

Alex Santoriello 23:00

I'm doing my best.

Mike Roth 23:01

Yeah it's.

Alex Santoriello 23:02

I have to explain to my grandchild that that word SHIT is not a bad word. It means ship high in transit. In the old days they used to put things down in the hole that potentially would get wet, and when they got wet they would sort of turn gashes. And when somebody would get down there because they didn't have electric lights, they would go down there with a torch.

Mike Roth 23:24

And it would blow.

Alex Santoriello 23:25

And the whole thing would blow. Okay. So they started to put SHIT and so people would say put the shit up there. I mean, I'm just telling you, this is where the word originally got nothing to do with poo, poo. I don't know how it got to that point. I'm sorry. Let me get back on the rails.

Mike Roth 23:42

Yeah, that part's going to wind up in the toilet.

Alex Santoriello 23:44

That's too bad, because that was good, that was good pee, that was fun. I think it should stay.

Mike Roth 23:49

I'll take your word for it, alex. Thanks for joining us today on Open Forum in the Villages, and I'm sure all of our listeners will show up to fill the house at grumpy old men.

Alex Santoriello 23:58

Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate you having me on Take care.

Emily 24:01

Remember our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 am. Should you want to become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mike@ rothvoice. com. This is a shout out for supporters Greg Panjian, tweet Coleman, Dan Kapellan, Ed Williams, Alvin Stenzel and major supporter Dr Craig Curtis at K2 in The Villages. We will be hearing more from Dr Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mike@ rothvoice. c om. We thank everyone for listening to the show. The content of the show is copyrighted by Roth Voice 2023. All rights reserved.