Live! One night only!

New York bid adieu to another great dancer Saturday night as Ethan Stiefel (right) took his final pliés and pirouettes with American Ballet Theatre at the Met. It was another sold-out house and another long, long curtain call. If anything, Stiefel may have been more loved than Angel Corella. He was perhaps not as flashy, but he had a grace and dignity that was charming. He traveled easily between modern dance and the classic 18th century story ballets that are the backbone of ABT, and he traveled convincingly on a Harley, as the documentary Born to Be Wild: The Men of ABT, showed us.

I had a chance to meet him while he was the Dean of the Dance Department at North Carolina School of the Arts. Ransom was the head of the conducting department and they worked together at least once. Alas, my travel plans didn’t meld with Ethan’s, so we never did meet, but the almost-connection left me feeling a renewed allegiance to this attractive, blond Midwest phenom.

I’ve been thinking about star turns I have witnessed over the years, as I finished a long-dreaded project: cataloging and filing the hundreds of Playbills and Stagebills that have accumulated around the house. Many of them (364) are of Ransom’s performances, either as a conductor or flutist. Many are of concerts and operas I attended in which he was not involved; over 220 are from theatre productions I’ve seen, from regional theatres to Broadway. 90 more were from dance concerts, like the two recent ABT performances.

Collecting all this data reminds me again that I forget things at a remarkable rate. I marked many of the records “NMAA,” shorthand for “no memory at all.” Ex: Zoë Wanamaker, Claire Bloom and Stephen Spinella in Electra. Three terrific actors in a play by Sophocles! How is it I have no image whatsoever in my mind’s eye?

I’ve seen many greats on the Broadway stage: Robert De Niro, Maggie Smith, Morgan Freeman, Peter O’Toole and Lily Tomlin just to name a few. If you’re interested, you can see the whole list below.

I have the program for the first concert Ransom and I ever attended together: the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican; all Tchaikovsky: Hamlet overture, Piano Concerto 1, Symphony No. 6, Pathétique. One of the first stories I tell about us is about that concert: as the music was ending, I was on Cloud 9. I was in London, hearing the LSO, with this gorgeous man who was my (very) new boyfriend (2 weeks in); after the concert we were on our way to a party to meet Lenny Bernstein — it was all just perfect, and the music had been divine (including the piano concerto, probably the first piece of classical music I ever knew). I turned to Ransom and was about to say how great it sounded when he looked at me and said, "god, that was terrible!" "Oh, right," I thought, bowing to his far-better knowledge of music. Is that the sound of a bubble bursting?

There are other great memories: Jennifer Holiday stopping the show, and our hearts, with “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls; the 5,000th performance of A Chorus Line; the incredible 10-hour Nicholas Nickleby; Tom Stoppard’s brilliant Arcadia four times; Lincoln Center’s wonderful South Pacific; Brian Dennehy and Christopher Plummer dueling it out in Inherit the Wind; and on and on.

I’ve said it before and I will likely say it again: I am very glad to be a New Yorker!

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Some of the theatrical stars I have seen:

Alan Alda (Art)

Alan Cumming (Cabaret, The Three Penny Opera)

Alec Baldwin, Jessica Lange (A Streetcar Named Desire)

Angela Lansbury (Sweeney Todd)

Audra McDonald (Carousel, Porgy & Bess, Henry IV, Master Class)

Bebe Neuwirth (Damn Yankees, Chicago, Sweet Charity)

Bernadette Peters (Gypsy, Into the Woods)

Brendan Fraser (Elling)

Brian Dennehy (Death of a Salesman, Inherit the Wind, Long Day's Journey...)

Cheyenne Jackson (Finian's Rainbow)

Chita Rivera (Kiss of the Spider Woman)

Christain Slater, Edie Falco (Sideman)

Christopher Plummer (Barrymore, Inherit the Wind, King Lear, Macbeth)

Denis O'Hare (Cabaret, Elling, Inherit the Wind, Take Me Out)

Derek Jacobi (Breaking the Code)

Elaine Stritch (Showboat)

Ethan Hawke (Coast of Utopia, Henry IV)

F Murray Abraham (Angels in America)

Gary Sinese (The Grapes of Wrath)

Glenda Jackson (Macbeth)

Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss and Gene Hackman (Death & the Maiden)

Harvey Fierstein (La Cage aux Folles)

Hume Cronym and Jessican Tandy  (The Petition, Love Letters)

Ian McKellan (A Knight Out)

Jean Stapleton (Arsenic and Old Lace)

Jeff Daniels (Redwood Curtain)

Joan Allen, Marsha Mason and Jeremy Irons (Impressionism)

John Lithgow (The Front Page)

Jude Law (Hamlet)

Julie Andrews (Victor Victoria)

Kathleen Turner and Charles Durning (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)

Kevin Kline (Henry IV, Ivanov)

Liam Neeson (The Judas Kiss)

Liev Schrieber (Talk Radio)

Lily Tomlin (The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life…)

Maggie Smith (Lettice and Lovage)

Martin Sheen, Michael York and Fritz Weaver (The Crucible)

Matthew Broderick (How to Succeed..., The Producers, Night Must Fall, The Starry Messenger)

Matthew Morrison (The Light in the Piazza, South Pacific)

Morgan Freeman (Driving Miss Daisy, The Gospel at Colonnus)

Nathan Lane (The Common Pursuit, The Producers, The Frogs, Love! Valour! Compassion!)

Patrick Stewart: (A Christmas Carol, Ride Down Mt Morgan, The Tempest)

Patti Lupone (Anything Goes, The Old Neighborhood)

Peter O'Toole (Pygmalion)

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Vanessa Redgrave (Long Day's Journey…)

Raúl Esparza (Company, Leap of Faith

Reba McIntyre (Annie Get Your Gun)

Rex Harrison (The Circle)

Richard Benjamin, Paula Prentiss (Power Plays)

Richard Chamberlain (My Fair Lady)

Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe (Equus)

Robert De Niro and Ralph Macchio (Cuba and His Teddy Bear)

Robert Sean Leonard (Arcadia, Born Yesterday, Breaking the Code, Invention of Love, Long Day's Journey…, The Music Man, You Never Can Tell)

Ron Silver, Joe Mantegna and Madonna (Speed the Plow)

Rosemary Harris (An Inspector Calls, The Royal Family)

Sam Waterston (A Walk in the Woods)

Tyne Daly (Gypsy)

Victor Garber (Art

Zoe Caldwell (Master Class)