On Smaller Stage, Broadway Stars Show Appreciation for Stagehands

Earl Wilson/The New York Times Katie O’Toole, a cast member of “Jersey Boys,” sang with the River Rats at Connolly’s bar in Times Square this month.

Katie O’Toole, a cast member of “Jersey Boys,” walked onstage on a recent Saturday night and wowed the audience with a sultry rendition of Lesley Gore’s 1964 hit song “You Don’t Own Me.”

Just before Ms. O’Toole left the stage, she turned to the band and shrieked over the roar of a standing ovation: “Thank you, Rats, I love you guys!”

Ms. O’Toole was giving a shout-out to the River Rats, a local rock band that invited her and five other Broadway performers from “Jersey Boys” and “Mamma Mia” to sing with them at Connolly’s, a Times Square pub, where a $20 cover fee paid for the kind of unique theater not advertised on any marquee.

Ms. O’Toole and the other stage actors are more than friends with some of the River Rats â€" they are colleagues. Five members of the band are also members of Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the group that operates the sets and builds and breaks down the stages upon which Broadway stars perform.

“We have a great relationship with the actors,” said Aarne Lofgren, 61, a stagehand, singer and string-bass player who helped start the River Rats 25 years ago.

“Over the years, many of the actors have been a part of our crowds and felt the love,” Mr. Lofgren said. “It’s the kind of love they are used to getting on Broadway.”

Once a year, as a way of saying thanks to their singing stagehands, many of the stars lend their musical talents to the River Rats â€" a 10-member band from Edgewater, N.J. â€" shortly after the curtains close on their shows.

The unusual tradition began eight years ago, the brainchild of Mr. Lofgren and his childhood buddy and fellow stagehand, John Thompson, 60, who is also a singer and washboard player with the band.

“One night we just said, ‘Hey, we work with a lot of talented people. Why not invite some of them to one of our gigs?’” Mr. Thompson recalled. “That’s how the whole thing started.”

Jennifer Noth, an understudy for the three leading women in “Mamma Mia,” said that she was “thrilled to be a part of the River Rats’ big night.”

“They help us out all the time, and now we’re here to help them out,” Ms. Noth said shortly before going onstage with two fellow cast members, John Hemphill (vocals) and Daniel Cooney (acoustic guitar), to perform a song called “Angel From Montgomery.”

“It’s not like we’re throwing these guys a bone, because they are talented enough to stand on their own,” Ms. Noth said. “We do it because we respect them as colleagues. We do eight shows a week and they are at every one of them. We know Aarne and these guys on a daily basis as our crew guys, but it’s great to see a different side of them. They really have an amazing gift.”

For the roughly 200 audience members who danced and sang along with the band, that Saturday night proved to be the ultimate Off Broadway event (Connolly’s is on 45th Street, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue).

“This is an awesome show,” said Steve Lasser, a Wall Street broker who knows several of the River Rats from high school. “There’s an awful lot of talent under the same roof.”

Between sets, Mr. Thompson talked a bit about the band’s history.

“We grew up in Edgewater, a blue-collar town on the banks of the Hudson River,” he said. “People from surrounding towns always called us River Rats, and that’s how the band got its name. We play about four or five gigs a year, but this is our biggest night. We give our fans some Stones, some Springsteen and some original stuff, a little bit of everything.”

The River Rats were also joined onstage that Saturday night by the actors John Edwards and Russell Fischer, also of “Jersey Boys.”

“The house is so alive and the band is so skilled,” said Mr. Fischer, who plays the young Joe Pesci in “Jersey Boys.” He sang Elton John’s “Honky Cat,” and Mr. Edwards energized the crowd immediately after with a rousing rendition of the Bill Withers’s 1971 hit “Ain’t No Sunshine.”

As Mr. Edwards performed with the River Rats, Roz Ryan, who plays the prison matron Mama Morton in “Chicago,” sat in the audience at a table with several of her cast mates, all of them wearing huge grins.

“I’m enjoying this role reversal, watching our talented stagehands perform,” Ms. Ryan said. “It’s nice to be a part of the audience once in a while and watch someone else work.”