For the last few months at Jersey Boys, we have had the pleasure of having John Lloyd Young back to play Frankie Valli. For those of you who may be reading this and have no idea why this is special, it’s because he WON THE FUCKING TONY for playing Frankie. How often does someone come back to reprise a role they won a Tony for 7 years prior? But more importantly, how often does a Tony winner come back and teach the entire hair and wardrobe department MADARIN CHINESE? I have the honor of having my make-up mirror chair in the hair room. Since most musicians are in the pit and not onstage, they have no individual make-up chair to get themselves ready in. But because I am running up and downstairs 4 times a show to go onstage in full costume and wig, that makes me a “character” and I get a mirror and chair in the hair room, and get to hear John Lloyd Young teach everyone a choice word or phrase in MADARIN CHINESE.

JLY usually writes these words on a yellow post-it and affixes them on a random mirror in the hair room in the bowels of the August Wilson Theatre. He also says the MANDARIN word and makes you repeat it so you get the exact inflection of the word. He often explains to us that if you get one inflection wrong, you could be saying a completely different word or phrase.

But today was a little bit different. As I finished putting the final touches of eye make-up on, I go to take my pre-show pee in the tiny bathroom of the hair room, and there I find a yellow post-it on the outside of the bathroom door.

As you can see, he also puts the MANDARIN CHINESE characters for the word on the post-it. So, I ask him if he would mind if I would take a picture of this and blog about it. He says he doesn’t mind at all, so I do.

Now, on the other side of the SUH SUE-OH door, is another sort of lesson. It is the lesson that teaches us that all of us at Jersey Boys are united by one fact: everyone’s shit stinks. No matter if you are a Tony-award-winning actor, or a musician in a pit or a stagehand in for a work call, you are subject to this law. In a hair room with a tiny bathroom, someone is bound to complain when people have overstepped toilet etiquette. So, let’s look at what is on the other side of the SUH SUE-OH door.

What I love more than anything about this note is the misspelling of COURTESY. It is half way between the word that means “a female version of bowing” and the word that means, “extending a polite gesture”. For the last 2 years, I have wanted to switch around that S and that E. It kills me.

What I also love about this notice is the phrase “lovely lobby bathrooms.” Like in the middle of the show we can leave, run into the lovely lobby bathrooms, take a shit and

think we can be back before the next musical cue.

I go upstairs and find my final note of the day stuck to the wall in my dressing room. Well, it’s not a dressing room per se… since it is actually a tiny unused toilet and shower room that functions as an extra wardrobe room, and my changing room. I look above my BARSHA laundry bag (which I throw my stockings from act 1and my knee-highs from act 2 in) and see a tiny note that says PRESS HERE.

No, this is not a request to iron what’s in the bag, nor is it a button that I am asking someone to push it. It is a label that was removed from above a button on Keyboard 4, the keyboard that I stand behind at the end of the show that rolls onstage on a platform with me singing and playing and makes me feel like an 80’s rock star again.

This little label is too hard to explain. Its meaning on Keyboard 1 down in the pit, does not mean what it means on Keyboard 4, and my sub was correct in removing it. Suffice it to say that if you did indeed PRESS HERE on keyboard 4, you would not be able to change from a string sound to a rock piano sound, because PRESS HERE locks the keyboard into the sound you are playing.

But as it is with protocol in a Broadway show, it was a beautiful gesture by my sub. Putting it where I’d see it to ask me if it was okay that she removed it.

And right before the finale of the Jersey Boys on Broadway, I get to experience a little touch of “COURTSEY”, in a place where the SUH SUE-OH is only for those who pee.