Seesaw and The Rink — Page 2

The whole Seesaw scenario is in the book "Second Act Trouble" which contains a reprint of a long article that originally appeared in the Times. It is one of the legendary in-trouble-on-the-road tales. Twenty-to-thirty people were fired or left during the Detroit run or the month of previews in town. Not only was the leading lady canned, but so was the director and the bookwriter, Michael Stewart packed up and left too. That is why Bennett has (or took) book credit.

Look at the credits carefully. There are 4 choreographers credited: Bennett, Grover dale, Tommy Tune and Bob Avian. Only Bennett won the Tony.

Seesaw almost closed after a week (any reserve funds were long gone), but Mayor Lindsay capitalizing on his similarity in looks to the leading man, Ken Howard, did a walk-on that was played on all the local news outlets and perhaps went national on some networks. This created a surge at the box office that kept them going a bit.

If you look carefully at some of those small photos on the cast recording, you will see Lindsay and also Michael Bennett in them.

Seesaw limped through a 7 month run and never made a nickel profit. It was one of those make a thousand one week, lose a thousand the next. The show finally closed because the IRS raided the box office on a Tuesday and demanded (and got) all the cash because the producing entity had not been sending in the payroll taxes that are a part of doing business. The cast came in that night and found the notice up for the following Sunday.

And that's show biz, folks.

To be fair, when Seesaw landed it got decent-ish reviews. And others have said they felt if Bennett had had more time he could have pulled it together (and that the tour, while not vastly different aside from a new song and a dropped song or two was tighter.)