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a theatregoer's notebook by Harry Haun

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When Batt's at Bat
The fella at the Saturday Night Fever audition in platform shoes and bell-bottom pants got the part. "By night I'm deejay at the 2001 Disco--by day I'm a sleazy disco instructor," says BRYAN BATT, who revels in his role's outrageousness.
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TESS STEINKOLK

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"When I saw the wig, I said, 'Now, I know him.' His getups are brilliantly hideous, too."
Arlene Phillips, who's directing and choreographing this show, put Batt on Broadway in the first place as the replacement for Rocky One in Starlight Express. "I'm convinced I was cast because I refused to fall down at the audition. I willed myself not to."
After trains, Batt did felines (Cats). To get a human role, he went Off-Broadway to play the doomed Broadway dancer in Jeffrey (he later reprised that role on film). He got that with four little words. When Paul Rudnick asked, "Are you really in Cats?" Batt shrugged,

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"Yeah, now and forever."
Since then, Batt seems to have taken up residence at the Minskoff. The theatre's electricians call him "the house actor" because of his consecutive runs there in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Sunset Boulevard, The Scarlet Pimpernel and, now, Saturday Night Fever.
Punctuating these--if not puncturing them--are his recurring stints in Forbidden Broadway. 
His next goal is TV. "If one more of my friends tells me I should be on a TV series, I'm going to buy a box, cut it out and stick my head in it--just like Lucille Ball--and have everybody over to the house."

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Callaway Comes Thisaway Finally following the lead of her little sister, Liz (Baby, Cats) Callaway--in one felled Swing!--ANN HAMPTON CALLAWAY hits Broadway.
"I couldn't ask for a nicer way to debut on Broadway," confesses the cabaret diva. "They wanted me. They called me. They said, 'Will you do it?' I didn't even have to audition."
Callaway's legendary musicianship is a good thing to have on the ground floor of a musical-cavalcade show like Swing! "It's such an exicting process, not only to be in the show but help create it as well. We had a lot of brainstorming sessions at the beginning, and I put my lips together and gave opinions. Like a number at the end of the show called 'Stomping at the Savoy.' I did research on what it was like to be at the Savoy then, and they allowed me to write lyrics to give a more vivid picture of what historically happened.
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BILL WESTMORLAND
"It's really a fun musical romp, and people get educated. That's what I love about the show. It honors the new swing movement, but it also gives people a bird's-eye view of what it was like in the old days. It covers the old and the new and what may be coming."
What's coming for Callaway--in addition to her Broadway bow--is a full load as usual. Her CD, Easy Living, just went into release; she's writing more songs for Barbra Streisand's millennium album, and she'll headline the Chanterelle's New Year's Eve show.

74 WWW.PLAYBILL.COM [[image - computer cursor]] PURE THEATRE ONLINE

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