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presidents. After that night, automobiles were kicked to the curb and chief executives had served out their terms. Yet the On the Town cast album didn’t immediately enter the Kirsch home. “I didn’t even know that was an option,” he says. “I just thought that you saw a show and had to remember it.” A return trip to the production informed him otherwise (and cost his parents money).
Once upon a time And yet, the recording that truly made Charles fall in love with show music was All American—not even the cast album of the 1962 flop, but a recording of a backers’ audition where the songwriters warbled their score. “I have consistently tried to learn songs from it, make other people in my family sing songs from it, talk about it and listen to it as much as I can,” he says. Still, Charles says the CD that he’s played the most is The Drowsy Chaperone. As he says, “I relate to Bob Martin’s character”—the “Man in Chair” who loves old musicals. Charles, now 14, may be evidence of reincarnation. When asked a Broadway Radio trivia question—“Who had roles in three Rodgers and Hart musicals and then reprised one of them for a revival?”—he said, without hesitation, “Vivienne Segal.” Well, he does say that “the hits I love are mostly golden age: Fiddler on the Roof; Gypsy; Kiss Me, Kate; A Chorus Line and all the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows except,” he cautions, “Oklahoma!” Lady in the Dark at the New York City Center Encores! series caused Charles to be “swept away by the wonderful production and performances.” Now he’s just getting around to Chicago and Cabaret, because Remy had thought him too young for their salaciousness. But his recent bar mitzvah ushered him into manhood, so she’s issued permission.
His opinion counts Conversely, Charles was less impressed with Wicked (“very disappointing”) and Rock of Ages (“somewhat dizzying, very intense and abrasive on the eyes and ears”). If that last statement sounds as if a critic said it, indeed one did. Since 2015, Charles has been one of three “Kid Critics” for BroadwayWorld.com, where he raved about Something Rotten and The Prom. This post also got him invited to a Sunday brunch sponsored by the 2016 Fiddler on the Roof revival, where Danny Burstein and Jessica Hecht warmly greeted him. “We got to talk,” he adds, “and eat bagels.”
Atlanta’s Historic Fox Theatre | foxtheatre.com