Mandelbaum: The Musical (990)
By Jack Goodstein

     Although Mandelbaum had the look of a basso, he would have been the first to admit that other than the rotundity of his physique there was little of the singer about him.  He leaked music like a rotting boat, water.

     Of course this limitation had  not stopped him from regularly appearing at casting calls for Sondheim and Rogers, Sullivan and Gilbert, and Miss Saigon.  
On one occasion he had even managed to plow through  one and one half complete bars for Sir Andrew himself.  
Not to mention his audition for the Staten Island Community Players’ production of Die Meistersinger, for which he had chosen, fittingly he thought, “If I Were a Rich Man,” from Fiddler on the Roof.  
And while these attempts had never met with anything more than smiles and 'thank you's, Mandelbaum still  continued his assault on the musical stage, since if, after all, one didn’t try, one certainly didn’t succeed.

     His vocal coaches, of whom there had been many, few lasting past the first lesson, suggested he might more effectively devote his efforts to something other than the musical stage.  Mandelbaum, however, was not one to let such an insignificant limitation as the sound of the voice stand in the way of his ambitions. 

     Of the eighteen productions gracing Broadway stages during the current season,  sixteen were musicals, and last season and the season before and... why go on.  It could not have been more clear: the Mandelbaum that would light up the marquee of the Martin Beck would be the singing Mandelbaum.  Any other Mandelbaum, all other Mandelbaums, would be relegated to the backwaters of the Village, Theatre Row, or worse still, New Jersey.  
Not that he scorned the legitimate theatre.  Far from it, Mandelbaum prided himself on his lust for the classics: it was simply the grudging recognition that his lust was not the lust of the great unwashed, and if he desired to spread his talent to that wider audience, Gratiano, Lord Montague, Twelfth Night’s Sea Captain, even were he to actually find himself cast in those roles, would not likely accomplish that end.

No, the sound of popular success was the sound of music.

     And what if he couldn’t sing, was there not the example of Rex Harrison, Richard Burton,  Roseanne Barr?  If Zero Mostel, why not Mandelbaum? 

     Greatness was never to be achieved by those who grasped only for that which overly punctilious musicians ordained lay in their grasp.  Overly nice voice teachers, finicky music directors, pedestrian producers, if they could not hear beyond the sound of  Mandelbaumian cacophony to the symphony of  his soul, what of it?  It was not therefore necessary to bow down to such small minds. Mandelbaum heard; Mandelbaum sang on.

     Sang on in silence, for all the greater world at large might have been aware, until one night, the night - that night - a pajamaed Mandelbaum lay himself down to sleep a basso buffoono, and awoke with the voice of an angel.  
Such transformations are not uncommon.  History notes one fellow, who shall be nameless, who went to his bed perfectly normal, only to awake as some sort of cockroach.  
There is the fellow who woke to  find himself a nose, and even in more recent years, an incident of a sleeping young man arising as a breast has been reported.  
In the light of such well documented phenomena, Mandelbaum’s metamorphosis could barely cause a blip on the radar of skepticism. 

     Mandelbaum  himself was certainly not shocked.  When he opened his mouth for his daily vocal exercises, what he heard was what he had always heard.  Indeed it wasn’t until a neighbor pounded on the  door demanding to know where it was that Mandelbaum had purchased the recording that had so thrillingly wakened him from his morning slumbers, that Mandelbaum understood that something had indeed changed.  And when the call asking where tickets for “the concert” were to be had,  Mandelbaum was certain.

      Recognizing the momentous moment, he immediately went to the phone and dialed the number of his vocal coach de jour and left a message, on the machine that always seemed to answer whenever he called.  He called the office of the agent to whom he had submitted headshot and resume two months prior and left word with that busy man’s secretary’s assistant.  
He called two producers whose names were often mentioned in the same sentence as Hal Prince, who rumor had it were casting a musicalization of  Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

“Mandelbaum,” he told the secretary.

“They’ll get back to you,”  The secretary told Moskowitz.

     While he waited, he sang show tunes, operatic highlights, pop anthems.  He sang, and when he finished he sang again: folk songs, lieder, rhythm and blues.  Song after song melted one into the other: hip hop and salsa; his head filled with song.  The phone rang, but he heard only music. He stopped not to eat, not to drink, either. Reggae, sustained him; soft rock quenched his thirst. 
Neighbors knocked, beat, and banged at his door in their enthusiasm.  Mandelbaum wanted not their kudos and congratulations.  Mandelbaum wanted music.  He felt as if he could drown in the glory of his voice. He filled the air with choral arias from Bach and Handel,  paeans to a deity he knew not, music he hadn’t known he’d known. Hours became days and Mandelbaum sang. Cantorial melodies from the ghettos of Europe, tribal chants from African villages poured from him like blizzards of snow flakes. 

     Days became weeks and if anything the voice became even more beautiful.  Its sound was enchantment; its sound was seduction.

     Weeks became months and even if, by chance, the vocal coach de jour or the agent’s secretary’s assistant, or the two producers often mentioned in the same sentence as Hal Price, had returned his phone call, Mandelbaum would never have had an inkling,  nor would he have cared. 
What part, what role could he be given that  would be anything but a chain to keep him from the wealth of music that had become his own?  Musical comedies?  Like food, like water, like even air to breath - no longer did he need these things.

     An explosion of  melody  burst from him:  Mandelbaum was the music.