Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I am grateful for so many things, my faith, my family, my friends my career. Most of the blessings are too personal to write about, but on the career side here is a partial list:

I performed in Broadway on Broadway. I got to see Times Square from a 30-foot stage when it was filled with people. My face was on the jumbotron high above the city. My poster is still hanging in Shubert Alley. I got to perform on the David Letterman Show, and the Today Show. I was awarded the Artist of the year by the YMCA of New York. My show won the Ovation award for best solo show. I got my cartoon put on the wall at Sardis yesterday. The original Bob puppet will be inducted into the Smithsonian Institute very soon. I opened my show on Broadway to the best reviews anyone has gotten this season. “The Two and Only” is the second highest rated show in the New York Times “Best Broadway Shows” poll of readers. Celebrities and Abernathy alumni have come to see my show and I got to meet them in my dressing room. I got to be the last one to perform at the Helen Hayes before there is a major renovation. I still get to be there with all the ghosts which may leave after the face lift when it is no longer familiar to them.

I have met so many wonderful people who populate New York City. However, it is time for me to move on. This is the last week of our show on Broadway. The notice was posted last night. It is a very odd contrast to a day spent promoting the show and receiving awards. There is a chance the box office will surge and we will stay another week, but for me it is easier to just accept the closing. This is the first time this show has been closed, always before we just finished our run.

The goal of this show was to present it to as many people as we can. That destiny seems to be in the presentation of the traveling tour now. I would stay forever, and always thought we would stay until the end of the year. It isn’t up to me, it is up to the wonderfully gracious people at the Theater and the producers who have been so supportive of my dream.

I don’t know who reads this blog except my Mom and Dad and a few friends. However, if you are reading and you have not seen the show, come now. Now, as in Tomorrow. There might be a chance to see this show on the road on some future day, but to see it in the Hayes on Broadway is a unique and disappearing opportunity. It is and always will be unique here in New York among the theater ghosts.

Broadway has become a theme park of shows that stay much longer than they should. I will always be glad that my show was a shooting star, too quick to be seen by the masses, but a brighter flash and a unique experience to those who just happened to look in the right direction. I will be glad not to hear things like, the show is a little tired, it seems out of date or you should have seen the original cast.

If love for a show was money The Two and Only would be the richest show in Broadway history. Some day when I am spending another Thanksgiving counting my blessings I will remember that love and its worth. How priceless is that?

Happy Thanksgiving.
As you were,
Jay