Center Stage has tried to present information about The Scarlet Pimpernel from all angles in order to give readers a better understanding of the workings of the production, from its very beginnings to the present time. With that in mind, I felt that I would be remiss if I did not present the viewpoint of The League. This fan group has proven to be an integral part of the mix and it can be argued quite convincingly that The Scarlet Pimpernel would not have survived the spring of 1998 if it were not for the enthusiastic support of The League.

To this end, I gathered a group of five Leaguers together for a roundtable discussion. Each person in the group has been with The League since the very early days, and has been a fan of the show since SP1. More importantly, each person has volunteered his or her time and talents to this production in some extraordinary capacity. This discussion took place on July 31, 1999, just after the opening of SP3 in Dallas. (None of us had seen SP3 yet.)

Those taking part in the roundtable discussion were:

Peter Williams - webmaster of the official site of SP and co-founder of the League mailing list
Shari Perkins - webmistress of Sir Percy's Place and co-founder of the League mailing list
Kelly Honig - administrator of the SP Message Board and coordinator of many League functions
Sal Italiano - ticket seller extrordinaire and coordinator of many League functions
Nancy Rosati - Center Stage Interviews

Shari and Chuck Wagner

NR: I would like to start out with a little intro into who everybody is and give us a little background on what you do in your real life and how you found this show or this group.

SP: I'm a sophomore at Cornell University and I'm an undeclared theater major. I actually spend so much time doing stuff in theater that I don't know how I manage to do stuff with the Internet. I'm a dresser, I'm a student. (laughing) I take classes sometimes too. That's pretty much my life - theater, studies, Pimpernel.

NR: What are you planning to do with the degree when you graduate?

SP: I'm not an actress. I'm thinking of doing advance study in stage managing.

NR: That's great. Where do you live when you're not at school?

SP: Roanoke, Virginia.

NR: OK. Peter, how about you?

PW: I am by day an Internet engineer for a company in Vermont, and by night a theater junkie. I was introduced to (Frank) Wildhorn's music in college by a friend. I was hooked immediately. One thing led to another and here I am.

NR: You have to say where "here" is because it's not Vermont anymore.

PW: Right. I was raised in Vermont and I just moved out of state, 720 miles, to Pittsburgh. Nancy, your turn.

NR: (laughing) I'm older than all of you. I actually have twenty years background in Cobol programming and banking and now I'm the Vice President in charge of Information Technology for the New York branch of a foreign bank. My job is completely non-theater related, but I've done community theater for twenty years as well and I've always been interested in it. I live on Long Island. I work in New York City one day a week, and telecommute from home the rest of the time. Kelly?

KH: I'm a bum. (laughs) Actually I'm going back to school in September, but I still don't know what I want to do with my life. I love theater. I've been to Broadway for ten years and it's pretty exciting. I live on Long Island and I work for a dentist. It's pretty interesting...I don't mind blood. (laughs) I just got a new job that I'm starting in September. I'll be working at New Dance Group in Manhattan, and I'm really excited, even though I'm sad to be leaving the dentist. I used to act when I was in high school. I still sing in a little alumni high school choir. That's about it.

SI: I'm a musician. I played with a band called CITIES and released a CD in the late 80's. I still study bass-guitar and vocals. I work at a music marketing company in Midtown called Concrete and I'm a free-lance haircutter. I don't like working in salons because it's just way crazy.

NR: Shari, how did you find the show?

SP: I read the book a long time ago and I loved it. Then I saw Chuck Wagner in Les Misérables and I loved him. So, I got the concept album as soon as I could and have followed this show ever since. I was overjoyed to see it come to Broadway. It was my favorite story. I was hoping it would be my favorite performer (Chuck), but that didn't happen. At least he has been involved and that's good enough for me.

NR: When did you start "Sir Percy's Place?"

SP: During October of 1997 before I went to see the show.

NR: Really?

SP: Yeah. Well, I knew I was going to like it. It was first on my personal site, which has since withered and died because I don't care about it now that I have "Sir Percy's Place." Right after I came back from seeing the show I made it a separate site.

NR: That's almost two years now. How much time do you estimate that you spend on it?

SP: Oh, that would be frightening. (general laughter from everyone) There have been times that I have spent twelve hours out of a day on it.

KH: She is like "Speedy Gonzales." She had all this stuff up and I was still staring at my monitor - I haven't done anything from Pimpernel 3 yet on my site and she has everything.

SP: That's because I'm home for the summer and I've been bored. I've just sat on my computer all day and thought, "Hmm, what can I add now?"

NR: You do it in spurts, don't you?

SP: I tend to. When I'm at school or doing a lot of theater, it's harder for me to stay updated, especially when the show's in the middle of a run. Whenever something big was happening, like the opening of SP2, or now SP3, I get really into it and do a lot of updating. I've spent a lot of time on it.

NR: Peter, you found Pimpernel through Jekyll & Hyde, right?

PW: Yes. I was introduced to Frank's music by a friend. I heard Jekyll & Hyde first and then the same friend gave me the Pimpernel Concept Recording with Chuck and Linda (Eder). I had just been through a very rough break-up and for a period of about a month, every night, in order to fall asleep, I would listen to the song "Home Again." That would allow me to clear my mind and fall asleep. Like Jekyll & Hyde, I really loved the music and became a big fan of Linda and Frank. I think I started my unofficial site (I didn't really have a name for it) right around two weeks after Shari did. We were chatting on the Playbill Online Message Board at that point, along with a couple others, and then we started working on the League email list around December, 1997. Shari and I just started saying to each other that we should start a mailing list similar to the one that Jekyll & Hyde had.

SP: The Playbill Online board changed its format and it became almost unusable. We didn't want to lose this sort of family feeling that we'd gotten...

PW: ...Um hm. That was on the increase. There was a growing group of fans there.

NR: I remember being on the Jekyll & Hyde list at that time and there were more people talking about Pimpernel than Jekyll & Hyde, so they kind of said, "Guys, go start your own list." I thought that was around February.

KH: I thought that too.

SP: No, we were started by January, but it took us about a month to get everything ironed out and the list working correctly. We opened it sometime in January of `98.

NR: Do you remember how many members there were in the beginning?

SP: The first week we probably got about 15 or 20.

PW: That sounds about right.

KH: I joined in the second or third week of February and it was about 30 or 35. We all knew each other then.

NR: How many people are there now?

SP: The last time I checked it was over 590.

NR: OK, back to how I found the show. I had seen Jekyll and Hyde first. Actually, I didn't really know anything about Frank Wildhorn at the time, but I knew something about someone named Bob Cuccioli because my husband and I went to college with him. The three of us were in this really bad little glee club. At the time, Bob was a really nice guy with a nice voice. I remember he was a finance major. If there was a male solo, either Bob or my husband would get it, but that was it. Several years later, we happened to stumble on his name in a newspaper listing the cast of And the World Goes Round and we said, "Gee. Could that be the same Bob Cuccioli we went to school with?" and both of us said, "NAH!" But, lo and behold, it was. We were pretty excited that somebody that we knew was going to star on Broadway, so we were going to see the show no matter what it was. We got the concept CD and we really enjoyed it. We went to see Bob and thought the show was wonderful. He had grown tremendously in those twenty years and we were extremely impressed.

For Christmas, Kid's Night was coming up, and I got my daughter tickets for Jekyll & Hyde, which she was really excited about, and just for the heck of it, because it was a Wildhorn show, I bought tickets for all four of us to see The Scarlet Pimpernel. We didn't know anything about it, but we dearly loved it, even more so than Jekyll & Hyde. I enjoyed Jekyll, and I especially enjoyed seeing Bob, but it's such a different show. To me, it's so heart-breaking that I find it hard to see often. I like happy endings. I joined the League right around the same time and discovered really nice people so I stayed.

Sal and Kel

SI: What drew me to the show was Marc Goldman. I BLAME Marc for ALL my theater obsessions. Dave Clemmons was on for Terry (Mann) and it was Dave's last night in the show and Marc said, "You have to see this show." So we went and all I remember was Dave. HE BLEW ME AWAY! Then I went back and back and I'm still going. September 10th will be #63 and September 18th will be #64. What keeps me coming back are the SONGS! All of the actors can sing them. I respect how each individual approaches the songs. I never get bored.

KH: I saw Jekyll & Hyde just because I had seen Robert Cuccioli play Javert and I thought he was fabulous, so I wanted to see him again. I thought it was really good and I started posting on the Jekyll & Hyde message board and I met Kristal and I met Christy (BroadwayBaby) and these people were really nice. Then, Pimpernel was coming, and Terrence Mann was in it, and nothing was going to keep me from this show. So, we went to see Broadway on Broadway, `97 and I thought, "Who is this guy Douglas Sills? Why is Terrence Mann not here? This is an outrage!" So, we thought the song was pretty good, and the guy was pretty good, but he still wasn't Terrence Mann. I remember my mom and I took a walk over to the Minskoff box office that day to look at ticket prices. Actually, it was my father's idea to see the show. He had started taking us to see shows because he felt guilty that he was going to too many hockey games. So, we were sitting in the theater and all I remember is that "Into the Fire" was the most amazing thing I had ever seen on the Broadway stage. It just blew me away. Then there was the last note of "Prayer." He finished "Prayer" and mom and I looked at each other and thought, "Oh, my God!"

NR: And that was the old one when it was the low note.

KH: That's right. Of course, during "Vivez" I just kept thinking, "Where's Terrence Mann? What is it with this wedding and all these flowers? I don't care. Where's Terrence Mann?" But then I thought, "OK, who is this guy (Douglas) and why have I not seen him before?" I walked out of there and I loved it.

SP: And I was furious that Chuck Wagner wasn't cast as Percy. I really was prepared to hold that against Douglas Sills, except I heard all these good things about him before I went to the show. I still wanted Chuck Wagner in there.

PW: Douglas had quite a slant against him because many were expecting or hoping for Chuck and many were expecting or hoping for Anthony Warlow.

SP: And many were expecting or hoping that Terrence Mann was playing the hero, not the villain.

KH: I didn't know what he was playing - I didn't care, I just wanted to see him. A lot of people have said, "You came to the Minskoff for Terrence Mann and you walked away for Douglas Sills." That's kind of true but they were such a great team that you weren't really choosing between them. The chemistry between them is amazing.

SP: That's about to happen again. Tons of people are going to go to the Neil Simon for Carolee Carmello. She's the new big draw.

NR: That's true. The other thing I wanted to talk about is the phenomenon of the Internet fans and keeping the show running. Nan Knighton has told me that, and we've heard Douglas talk about that. It's kind of a brand new thing, and in this show it actually did make a difference. There's no doubt about that. Even Ron Melrose told me that.

SP: It's really hard for me to fathom how big of an impact it did have and I'm so glad.

NR: I know everyone here told their friends, "This is a really good show - go see it." We could probably each point to a couple of hundred people who saw it, because of our say-so. And I know Sal was responsible for many more ticket sales, but that's nothing in comparison to the total ticket sales! I've heard people say, "Oh, the Pimpernel fans go every night." Well, even if we did go every night, there still would not have been enough to keep the show going.

SP: Yeah, and I don't know anyone who goes every night.

NR: There isn't anyone. That's the perception of people who don't know us.

PW: Yes, it's true that each of us individually would encourage others to go, and in that way sell tickets, but you're right that that can only account for several hundred ticket sales. But another part of it is that other theater fans hear that there's this "crazy fan group" for this show, so it must be something interesting to really captivate 500+ people and get them raving about it in unison. So, they might think, "What's the hype? Let's go see."

SP: That's true, but there's also a pretty hostile reaction that I've sensed in some places. There are people who hold it against the show.

KH: That's very true.

SP: It's hard for me to understand, but I've seen that all along.

NR: I've seen that too. People have said to me, "Get a life" but I tell them that I have an extremely busy, varied life, and so do the other people that I know who are involved with this show. We see many, many shows - probably more so than the average person. We're involved in many different things. We just happen to like this too. It's not the ONLY thing in our lives and that does seem hard for people to understand. I don't think I've encountered anyone who I thought did this as the only thing they do with their time or with their money.

KH: I've seen so many more shows just from being in the city so much than I did any other year. I used to see one show a year and that was for a special occasion, but I saw so many shows this year. I saw my first plays. I had never been to plays before that had no singing. (sarcastically) They actually exist and I went and it was amazing. It's such a different kind of theater experience and I probably wouldn't have gone if I hadn't been around all of these theater loving people.

SP: By becoming aware of one show, you become aware of them all.

Part 2 - Kel, Sal and I discuss what we do for SP, and we all talk about why we're still here.