On February 10, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman brought their friends, stories, and the indescribable magic that surrounds the songwriting duo to the 2025 GMHC Cabaret.
Each year, we gather to honor musical theatre legends with the Howard Ashman Award, named for the magnificent composer whose life was cut short due to AIDS-related complications in 1991. This year we recognized these two superlative songwriters, who have carried Howard Ashman’s legacy forward in both their work and their activism.
The evening was as exceptional as the honorees. “I wish everything we support was as pleasant as this,” Shaiman and Wittman’s friend Sarah Jessica Parker remarked as she and Matthew Broderick presented them with the Howard Ashman Award.
The sold-out evening was decidedly full of love, community, laughter and tears — a balm of sorts that began almost instantly. Here is just a glimpse into the wonderful evening.
Shaiman took the Joe’s Pub stage to play and sing “Sheridan Square,” a song Howard Ashman wrote with Alan Menken to honor their friends who were sick or passed away due to AIDS-related complications during the height of the epidemic. Shaiman shared that he and Scott Wittman had met in Sheridan Square and he, like Ashman, kept a list of names of each friend that passed away — a list that would grow to include Howard Ashman’s.
As Shaiman reached the second chorus, photos of the lists he kept floated onto the screen behind him. Through muffled sniffles from the audience and stage, Shaiman incorporated the names behind him into Howard Ashman’s lyrics before belting out “you’re the reason I sing this song.” Consecrating the space with both the sadness of loss and celebration of life, Shaiman’s performance let the audience in on how impactful the height of the epidemic was — and how incredibly necessary it is to keep up the fight. At this point, no one tried to muffle a sniffle. The entire audience rose to their feet simultaneously wiping tears and cheering as loudly as they could.
True Broadway royalty brought the house down in song after song — each performance could truly have been the closing number.
Darlene Love performed Shaiman and Wittman’s “I Know Where I’ve Been” with the fabulous Broadway Inspirational Voices, who also supported Bridget Everett on “I’ll Take You Home.” Tony Award winner J. Harrison Ghee sang the songwriting team’s “You Coulda Knocked Me Over With A Feather” from Some Like It Hot and Christine Ebersole tenderly performed “The Place Where the Lost Things Go” from Mary Poppins Returns. Robyn Hurder and Caroline Bowman gave a preview of Shaiman and Wittman’s upcoming Broadway musical Smash, and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul joined forces with the honorees to perform a quartet of their Emmy-award winning song “Which of the Pickwick Triplets Did It?” from Only Murders in the Building.
Howard Ashman’s music was represented as well, with John Edwards and Cacophony Daniels, the evening’s mistress of ceremonies, singing tunes from the Ashman & Menken songbook joined by Kyle Branzel (piano), Larry Saltzman (guitar), Joe Wallace (bass), and Jeremy Yaddaw (percussion). Auctioneer Robie Gordy led the evening’s paddle raise with an effective polish that engaged the entire room.
As always, GMHC would like to thank our incredible sponsors — without whom this fantastic evening would not have happened: Kelsey Louie and Brett Perala, Room & Board, SMASH Broadway: Bob Greenblatt and Neil Meron Producers, Amida Care, Avita Pharmacy, Fort Hamilton Distillery, Johnathan Mallow & Brian Jones, Mount Sinai Institute for Advanced Medicine, and The Shubert Organization.
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