Broadway: February 2008 Archives

...the glorious Bernadette Peters!!!

Why we love her? Anyone who has ever seen her in concert or on the Broadway stage knows that she is one of the great divas of her time. A two-time Tony winner, her stage triumphs have included "Annie Get Your Gun," "Sunday in the Park With George," "Song and Dance," "Into the Woods" and "Gypsy" (I love her Mama Rose and think it ranks right up there with Merman's).

Happy birthday and best wishes to this great talent...

Audra McDonald has accomplished so much in show business over the past 15 years but she had never before been in a hit television series until ABC's "Private Practice."

She plays Dr. Naomi Bennett on the "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff which had a strike-shortened first season but returns in the fall. She is part of a cast that includes such stars as Kate Walsh, Tim Daly and Amy Brenneman. But Audra is most asked about working opposite hunky Taye Diggs who plays her former husband but current co-worker.

"There's such an amazing cast and everyone's like, 'Oooh! Taye Diggs! You get to kiss Taye Diggs! I've known Taye since we both started out in (the Broadway musical) 'Carousel' in 1994 so he's like a brother. For me it's not that big a deal."

But what is a big deal is Monday's airing of "A Raisin in the Sun" on ABC. "Raisin" became the first television film to ever premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Audra is reprising her role from the 2004 Broadway production along with Sean Combs and Phylicia Rashad. She won both the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for her stage performance.
But the transition from stage to screen was not effortless.

"It's difficult because it's a different set of muscles you're flexing," she said. "For theater people, it's learning how to tone it down yet still have the same intensity. We're so used to making it huge and throwing it to the back wall and you can't do that. There is an adjustment to be made."

Audra, 37, is one of the few actresses to have four Tony Awards, an accomplishment that puts her in the company of such theater legends as Angela Lansbury, Jessica Tandy and Julie Harris.

She has shined in such shows as "Carousel," "Master Class," "Ragtime," "Marie Christine" and "110 in the Shade" on Broadway. But she isn't one to rest on her laurels, to spend her day polishing her Tonys and other awards.

"You don't think about it at all. I have a seven year old! Tonys don't pay the rent. They're wonderful, they're exciting, but they don't pay the rent. You have to get back to work."

When she has taken breaks from the stage, Audra has found plenty of that work on television. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance as a nurse caring for a woman with terminal cancer (Emma Thompson) in "Wit," was featured in the 1999 television version of the musical "Annie," and starred opposite Josh Brolin in the NBC drama "Mister Sterling."

When she does return to the theater, there is already a project waiting for her: "A new show has been written for me, an adaptation of 'Carmen' and it takes place in Cuba in 1958. I just did a workshop of that and that's going to go to Broadway whenever I can get a hiatus from 'Private Practice.'"

Loretta Devine is indeed, divine.

As I chatted up this great star of stage and screen at last week's NAACP Image Awards, there was a lot of laughter coming from the woman who was one of Broadway's original "Dreamgirls" and who now appears on the new ABC show "Eli Stone."

"The scripts are wonderful," she said. "It reminds me a little bit of David E. Kelley when I did "Boston Public" and how his scripts were so unpredictable. I was dating a midget at one point! (laughs) So you just never know what's going to happen and that's what makes it really exciting to go to work every day."

So far, she hasn't dated any midgets on "Stone" but she has been utterly charmed by Jonny Lee Miller who plays the title role.

"He's so charming, he's got this thing about him that you just fall in love with," she gushed. "On set, he's kinda quiet, just real laid back. But you just fall in love with him."

Loretta works so often, I figured she just has this big pile of scripts waiting for her at home.

"Oh no! I still have to audition, I audition for almost everything," she said. "I auditioned for 'Eli Stone' and lucked out and got it. When the new people come in, they've seen your work but they have to see if they can work with you. Sometimes I'm lucky, sometimes I'm not. I go see all the stuff I didn't get and pretend and say, 'Oooh! I'm so glad I didn't get that!' (laughs) But in your heart you're thinking, 'I could have made that movie great! I could have nailed that part!'"

One part she did land was a role in the acclaimed indie flick "Dirty Laundry" as a mother who has raised her estranged son's child. The film screened at Outfest a few summer back and recently had a brief run in theaters late last year. It has just been released on DVD.

"I always do supporting roles and that's as close to a lead as I've ever gotten," she said. "I'm really proud of it. It's like the little movie that could. It's such a good movie and people are really enjoying it."

Although Loretta won three NAACP Image Awards for "Boston Public" and two more for her roles in "Waiting to Exhale" and "The Preacher's Wife," she wasn't nominated for "Laundry" despite it being one of her
best roles.

She explained why: "I think it's because I played such a raunchy drunk and I passed out at the end. You can't get an Image Award for that behavior.(laughs)"

"Laundry" was not a big box office hit but Loretta did appear in "This Christmas" in December which had an $18 million opening weekend, opening in second place. She played a mother in both "Laundry" and "Christmas."

"They were very different kinds of mothers," she said. "In 'Dirty Laundry' I play a drink - a functional drunk - keeping her family together who has a son who she is very angry with. It was a dramedy - part comedy and part drama. And 'This Christmas" had a family that was very polished, very upper-class. I had six kids and they were the most beautiful kids you've ever seen!"

The biggest hit Loretta has appeared in recently was "Dreamgirls." Even though too much time had passed since the Broadway show for the 58-year-old to be considered for one of the leads, she had a small role that included a beautiful solo at a memorial service.

"I got a chance to meet Beyonce and later I went to one of her concerts," Loretta said. "I met Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose and we've been in touch since that. It was a great experience because of that because these are the girls coming up. They're all so brilliant and they're going to have these fabulous careers and I'll get to play all their mothers!"

Last year, Loretta reunited with her "Dreamgirls" co-stars from the Broadway show to sing at a fundraiser (she is pictured with Sheryl Lee Ralph and Jennifer Holliday).

Here are a few more choice bits from out conversation:

On all her mother roles: "That's just the age I am. When I was young I did 'Dreamgirls' and "Down in the Delta." I've been so fortunate, I've had a chance to work for 25 years straight. As you get older and if you keep going, you will play everybody's mother nif you're lucky. Me and Jenifer Lewis!"

On being recognized in public: "Everyone thinks I'm Gloria from "Waiting to Exhale" and every once in awhile, I'll get someone who saw "Woman Thou Art Loosed" who'll say, 'Oh, you were so mean! You was a mean mother! But we love you anyway!' And they want to know if you're really like your characters and I'm nothing like my characters. I think my characters are a lot of times a lot bolder. Like in "Eli Stone," I play Eli's secretary and she has much more chutzpah than I do as a person. I would never talk back to my boss!"

On who she is supporting for president: "Of course I voted for [Barack] Obama because he looks like change and I hope he is what he looks like. Everything that I've read about him makes it seem like he can make a big difference."

I knew that Carol Channing had endured a very long, and very unhappy marriage to her third husband. When she filed for divorce from him in 1998, she confessed that they had rarely had sex in more than four decades together! Can you imagine?

So when I saw Miss Channing a few weeks ago at an event for the Smithsonian, she was with her current husband - and junior high school sweetheart - and they seemed like a coupla lovebirds. So I congratulated her on that when we spoke:

Greg: "I'm so glad you found each other."
Carol: "Oh thank you. You must have a wonderful girl or wife."
Greg: "Actually, if I had anybody it would be a boy."
Carol: "Oh, well that's alright. It's love!"

Anyway, here is a column I have written on Miss Channing that will run in tomorrow's LA Daily News:

Carol Channing may be 87 years old and a certified Broadway legend, but the star of "Hello, Dolly!" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" still feels like there is so much ahead. She's blissfully married to her fourth husband, Harry Kullijian, who was junior high school sweetheart and looked her up after she wrote about him in her 2001 memoir "Just Lucky I Guess." Together, they have been sweeping throughout the state of California working to restore the creative arts to the public school system.

"At my age now, I can lift (kid's) lives," Miss Channing said when we spoke recently. "They cry, the teachers do, to see these wonderful little brains desintegrating right before our eyes and they're looking for something to excite them and so they get into the craziest things. They're not in love with life and that's what the arts brings....I can see these little children growing up, exposed to the arts. Oh boy, it's the greatest high in the world."

If there was ever anyone who is living proof of how the arts can enhance a life, it is this three-time Tony winner and Oscar nominee:"I wanted to lift people's lives from the fourth grade on, my first time on stage in the school auditorium," she said. "I realized, that's what I want to do for the rest of my life, it's like a calling.

Her Broadway career began in 1941 and by the end of that decade, she was a huge star with such credits as "Lend An Ear," "Wonderful Town" and "Blondes." But it was "Dolly" in 1964 that cemented her status as one of the theater's grand leading ladies. She stayed with the show for three years, starred in a 1978 revival then in 1995, came to Broadway one last time for another run as "Dolly" followed by a national tour." The last "Dolly" production was the end of her heading up major theatrical productions. But she is still performing.

"I go from one great theater to another and do my one-woman show, talk about the arts, and introduce my husband," she said.

Husbands haven't always such a great topic for Miss Channing. She was quite young when she married writer Theodore Naidish. After their divorce, she married Canadian pro football player Alexander Carson with whom she had a son. That marriage too ended in divorce and in 1956, she married her manager and publicist, Charles Lowe. Although they were married for 42 years, she filed for divorce in 1998 and confessed that the union had never really been a happy one.

That has made her current marriage to Kullijian all the more sweet: "For the first time, everything is in front of me. Everything. It's the happiest time in my life."

...Broadway legend Elaine Stritch!

The Tony winner turns 83 today. She's still going strong, winning her second Emmy last fall for her role as Alec Baldwin's mother on "30 Rock." If you haven't seen Elaine Stritch sing "Ladies Who Lunch," you are missing out on greatness. She sings in on the DVD or CD of her great one-woman show "Elaine Stritch at Liberty" the mixes songs with deeply personal stories. To see her sing the song at the height of her powers, get ahold of the original Broadway soundtrack of "Company."