Mary Testa has been nominated for a Tony as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her work in On the Town. Some say Testa, brief though her appearance was in On the Town, stole the show when the Public Theater revived the Bernstein Comden-Green classic for Broadway in fall 1998.
Playing the dipsomaniacal Madame Maude P. Dilly, the voice and movement teacher whose notes went to extremes, she sang a wild "Do Do Re Do," and had perhaps 10 minutes of stage time. But that was enough to convince audiences -- and nominators -- that she helped bring "comedy" to this musical comedy.
After the George C. Wolfe-directed staging of On the Town played Central Park in 1997, Testa won an OBIE Award for her performance.
On Broadway, Testa has appeared in A Funny Thing Happened..., The Rink, Marilyn and Barnum. Off-Broadway, just prior to On the Town, she played a homeless woman weaving in and out of the lives of troubled yuppies in A New Brain.
After her gig in On the Town, she tested a cabaret show in New York City, with Evans Haile, and is looking ahead to appear in Michael John LaChiusa's Marie Christine, at Lincoln Center, in fall 1999.
She has also sung in concerts with symphonies and appeared in film and TV.
