Feature: 54 Below - The Basement Where You Want To Be

A long time ago, when the world was young and many of us were even younger, there was a place of magic and mirth right here in the city of Manhattan.  It was a place of color and light, dark corners and dirty deeds, and the wacky and the whimsical.  It was a place that achieved fame and notoriety, and it was the place that everyone wanted to be.  Places like this burn fast and they burn bright, and within three years it was gone, but the legend of Studio 54 lived on.  In the decades since the ultimate discotheque shuttered, the tales, the documentaries, the books, the movies, and lots and lots of talk made the entity into a legend, and an ever-growing part of that legend was The Basement, which, itself, became a legend, as more and more stories filtered out into the general populace of fabled celebrities gathering in what was, essentially, a garage or a storage room, for the more *ahem* private parties.  From the upstairs to the below stairs, Studio 54 was a true blue New York City legend.

Today, Studio 54 the disco may be no more than a memory and all of those books and movies, but that basement, that iconic storeroom with exposed pipes, grungy floors, beanbag chairs and bowls of party favors is alive and well, and (after a facelift) still magical, and it has been for eleven years - eight years longer than the original room upstairs.  That hallowed ground where the celebrities once partied is a place where, every night, there is a celebration - only a celebration of a different kind.  This is a celebration of Broadway, of live entertainment, of that most treasured of all things: New York City nightlife.

Now, this isn’t a history lesson about 54 Below - that can be found on Wikipedia HERE.  And it isn’t a commercial for the shows the club will be offering in 2024 - those can be found on the club’s calendar HERE.  This is an appreciation of the club and a breakdown of why this writer, this aficionado, this patron of 54 Below is so grateful that Steve Baruch, Richard Frankel, Marc Routh, and Tom Viertel have given this gift to the world, and make no mistake: 54 Below is a gift.  You see, I was attending shows at 54 Below long before I started my job as the head writer and editor of Broadway World Cabaret.  I went to 54 Below with some regularity during the club’s first seven years - how could I not?  The club was consistently providing opportunities to see the Broadway performers that I had grown up listening to on cast recordings and dreaming of seeing live but had never had a chance to because, by the time I moved to New York City, many of them had rotated off of the Broadway producers’ castability lists (a sad but real thing in show business, grrrrr).  But there they were, on the stage at 54 Below, giving cabaret performances in a room so intimate that, no matter where you were sitting, you could see the fluttering of an eyelash, the blushing of a cheek, or the dropping of a tear.  The food was always great, the service was always welcoming, and the ambiance was equal parts elegant, glamorous, and larger-than-life, kind of like a Judy Garland movie.  All a person had to do was walk down that long flight of stairs and turn a corner, and they were in a show business wonderland.  How does a person who loves Broadway not fall in love with that?  

Well.  Little did I know.

When I started at Broadway World on August 1st, 2019, I spent a lot of time scrolling through club websites and studying their calendars, in order to see what would play these marvelous rooms of NYC, the small venues where jazz and comedy reign, where burlesque and storytelling rule, and where drag, rock, folk, and Broadway all have equal importance.  The variety available in the small venues of Manhattan was astonishing… and 54 Below was showcasing all of that variety almost every day of the year, usually with two shows nightly.  I knew, well, the nights at 54B with those Broadway stars whose presence I craved, but I was to learn about the 9:45 slot, where emerging artists were being showcased and group shows were being presented, shows suited to a younger, perhaps edgier, maybe more adventurous crowd of people.  What a welcome sight to see on a club calendar - established artists at 7 pm and up-and-comers at 9:45.  Broadway belting at the early show and punk rock at the late show.  And once I started going to the 9:45 slot shows, I saw that the clientele at the later performances was also of a more, shall we say, emboldened nature.  I came, quickly, to love the 9:45 slot (it’s 9:30 these days) and would often find myself doing back-to-back nights in the basement, and that is when I got to know the staff, and see what a family 54 Below is, and family, as everyone knows,  is everything.  I made the regular productions of 54 DOES 54: THE 54 BELOW STAFF SHOW a must-see because it gave me a chance to know, better, the fine young people working the room, the bar, the coat check, the front desk, the offices, and even the kitchen.  Many of the 54 Below team are performers, but not all of them, but that didn‘t stop everyone from participating in the series that was created by Front of House manager Dylan Bustamante.  And every time I attended one of the staff shows, General Manager Mandisa Boxill was in the audience, cheering boldly and boisterously like a proud Mama (or, at least, Auntie), as was owner Richard Frankel, who can often be seen strolling the room and greeting the guests.  That’s parental support, doncha know, in all its glory.  Indeed, members of the 54B staff have debuted their own shows on the 54 Below stage - like doorman Javier Garcia, who brought Mariachi to The Basement for the first time.   As the exhilarated, exhausted audience left the club with broad smiles on their faces, a passing-by Richard Frankel grabbed me and said there had NEVER been anything like this special night before, and I knew he was telling me the truth.  How proud he was, smiling at Javier’s triumph, and how enthralled he was by the audience response.  Front of House worker Kevin Ferguson fulfilled his dream of becoming a producer at 54 Below with his annual FRIENDSGIVING show, and bartender Pier Lamia Porter produces two different series at the club, the BLACK WRITERS SHOWCASE and MAKE THEM HEAR YOU: AN ODE TO BLACK MUSICALS, and those aren’t Porter’s only ventures at the club - she has a mission to empower black artists and women, and she is doing just that under the aegis of this place where the bosses empower the employees.  54 Below isn’t just a restaurant or a club or a cabaret room - it’s a state of mind, a state of being, and it is reflected in the familial support to be found there - and not just from the people who own or work the venue.

I’ve been at this job for four years and five months, and I’ve sat at one of two different tables nearly every time I’ve been in The Basement.  From where I sit, I can see almost the entire room, and I can’t tell you their names but I can tell you that I see the same faces in the audience with heartwarming regularity.  There are patrons of 54 Below who can be found sitting butt-up against the stage for the Joanna Gleason show and the Brian Stokes Mitchell act but who can also be found on their feet dancing during the Nicole Vanessa Ortiz Pride Disco concert or supporting The Drinkwater Brothers when they drop in for guest spots in group shows.  These patrons of the arts who are not participants in the art form have choices regarding where they spend their nights in New York, and they appear most happy when sipping a wine or specialty cocktail while taking in a show at 54 Below, where they are seated near, around, by, or even with the likes of Norm Lewis, Kathleen Turner, Janet Montgomery, and Len Cariou.  The celebrities turn out, in droves, to see what their friends and colleagues are presenting these days, and when Lucie Arnaz calls out to Michele Lee, an entire room rubbernecks in unison to get a look at her famous girlfriend, seated dead center on the banquette.  When Nicole Henry calls out to LaChanze to join her in an impromptu number, the crowd goes wild when the Tony winner runs up onto the stage and grabs a mic.  When Ariana DeBose jumps up at her table for a quick dance with Jenn Colella as she boogies her way through the dining room, cheers ring out into the night air.  The Basement at 54 Below is a place of purest wonder and highest happiness, and that joy isn’t just in person anymore.

When the pandemic shut the doors of the nightclubs and our homes, 54 Below did not wait around to take action.  They knew that the world needed connection, needed distraction, needed anything that might cause a spark of happiness.  They began streaming archival recordings of past shows, free of charge, on their website.  They created a kind of internet station one might call 54B TV and for weeks they brought the artistry of their headliners into our homes.  Eventually, the club began producing shows to be broadcast at a later time, bringing Marilyn Maye, Natalie Douglas, Jeremy Jordan, and Norm Lewis to our monitors and screens by way of some slick, glossy, classy filmmaking.  That mission carries on today with livestreams of particular shows throughout the year.  Just Wednesday night, while under the weather from flu, I watched the Ann Hampton Callaway/Liz Callaway Christmas show YULETIDE REVELRY, and the work of the tech team making the livestream happen is highly commendable.  Thanks to their proficiency and the willingness of the artists to have their shows broadcast anywhere in the world, people can, globally, see these remarkable performers from the privacy and convenience of their homes, whether those homes be in a far off land, or just a few blocks away.  54 Below has evolved with the times - something they have been doing, since the very beginning and continue to do, daily.

In 2022 the American Theatre Wing gave 54 Below a Tony Awards Honor for Excellence in the Theatre, which the organization well deserved.  In 2023, 54 Below made the bold choice to transition to non-profit status, which shocked and stunned some, but not this guy.  For years my friend Ari Axelrod has been telling me that there should be a not-for-profit cabaret, that it was possible, and that somebody in the city should undertake to create it.  Well, Ari got his wish.  54 Below didn’t just become non-profit, they created a ticket subsidy initiative that would offer more affordable tickets to shows, and the organization has repeatedly demonstrated a directive to diversity by presenting artists of all backgrounds, be the background ethnic, gender, age, genre, satus, or otherwise.  Their new non-profit status will enable 54 Below to continue to present young people like Charles Kirsch, the teenage host of BACKSTAGE BABBLE LIVE!, where he showcases Broadway legends and icons, queer artists like Wren Rivera of JAGGED LITTLE PILL fame, whose solo show debut packed The Basement, or those Broadway veterans who, first, got this 54B-er’s butt onto a bar stool.  

During one of my trips to 54 Below this year, I was leaving the club after one of the staff talent shows (a show that is always standing room only).  Outside of the door to the dining room, a staffer who had forgotten the words to their Sondheim song was on the verge of tears, and Broadway legend (and 54B regular headliner) Lee Roy Reams was holding them by the shoulders, bent over slightly and peering into their eyes.  It’s ok, he was saying, it happens to everyone, he was saying, it’s Stephen Sondheim, he was saying, until, quite finally, the soloist stepped into his arms for a long hug of consolation.  Lee Roy Reams was in the dining room as an audience member but he was there because he, a famous icon of the Broadway stage, loves those 54 Below staffers who make the club run, and he wanted to see them ply their craft.  It was a genuinely great moment that this watcher of the world is grateful for having seen, and will never forget.  It’s a magical place, it’s a family operation, and it’s a business determined to grow with the evolution of the world, to breathe new life into the art form of cabaret and concert, and to keep that little stretch of road on 54th Street in this big burg of Manhattan as legendary as it has been, and as legendary is it can possibly be.  

 

All photos in this article by Stephen Mosher.
1).  Scott Coulter, Blaine Alden Krauss, Mike Schwitter
2).  Santino Fontana
3).  Cassi Mikat, Meaghan Sands, Kariana Sanchez, Christopher Brasfield, Brooke Beatty, Stephanie Lazard.
4).  Javier Garcia
5).  Joanna Gleason
6).  LaChanze and Nicole Henry
7).  The Tony Award for 54 Below
8).  Marilyn Maye
9).  Chita Rivera

 

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