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ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Burns, Jenkins, Shindle and the Strike
By Seth Rudetsky
12 Nov 2007
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Capathia Jenkins
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Oy! The strike! It's so bizarre that I'm in one of the few shows running. It's not like I chose to do The Ritz because I knew it would be immune from the strike, it just arbitrarily worked out that way.
I'm hoping by the time you read this, all the Broadway shows will be back on. Actually, why don't I add more to that wish. I hope all the Broadway shows will be back on, including some that have closed. That's right. Not only Rent, Hairspray and Drowsy Chaperone, I want to see Evita with Patti LuPone and Drood with Betty Buckley ASAP. Local One, that's what you need to focus on while negotiating.
This week began with a benefit for Only Make Believe, a great organization founded by Dena Hammerstein (Jamie's widow) that brings theatre to hospitalized children. It was great to see Julia Murney again, fresh off of Wicked. She sang "Life of the Party" from Wild Party, which was Idina Menzel's song in the final version of the show, but was Julia's song at one point. Most people associate "Raise the Roof" with Julia's character, but when I first saw it, Idina's character sang it, and she was played by Sara Ramirez. That show had more swapping than the movie "The Ice Storm."
Oh, yeah, speaking of Sara, she's the guest on my televised Chatterbox this week (Tuesday at 12:30 on channel 56). Okay, back to the benefit. Capathia Jenkins sang "Stop The Show." If you haven't downloaded that song from iTunes, stop reading now and get thee! It is so hilarious and she sounds amazing! She full-out hits an F sharp (with vibrato) and holds it forever! No wonder she almost got Effie in the film. She told me that when she went in for her screen test, they had her do the whole fight scene into "And I Am Telling You." And not lip-synched, totally live. She said that she gave it all she had, and when she finished, she was completely exhausted. Then Bill Condon (the director) came over to her and congratulated her. Following that with "Okay, we're gonna take it again from the top and this time try to blah blah blah."
Again!!?!?!? She thought that was it! I should have warned her. Whenever I screen test, I always mark the first time. I remember back in the forties, I was testing with a young Lana Turner… Anybody? Nobody.
At the benefit, Capathia's back up was sung by the hilarious Jill Abramovitz, Mary Ann Hu (who just got the Bloody Mary understudy in South Pacific!) and Jason Michael Snow. I recently sent him a congratulatory text message because I saw his name on The Little Mermaid cast list. He sadly informed me that I was mixing him up with Jason (no middle name) Snow. He's Jason Michael Snow. Ouch. There are two Snow's on Broadway? Wait, what about Jessica Snow Wilson? How does she feel about all of this? And what if she got married to Jason? Would she be Jessica Snow Snow? And didn't this kind of humor go out in the seventies?
Anyhoo, right after the benefit, I hightailed it to see Andrea Burns' CD release show. Her new CD "A Deeper Shade of Red" just came out, and it's fabulous! And her act was amazing! She did a long version of "I Feel Pretty" interspersed with stories about all the different times she's played Maria. From when she was first 15 years old (she sang the first verse sprightly and joyous) to years later (done à la Karen Morrow) to mere months after giving birth (sung through exhausted tears). She ended it by saying she'd play the role into her eighties and then proceeded to sing it Stritch-style (AKA, throatily spoken: "I feel pretty….A-a-a-and entrancing").
The next day I interviewed Andrea on my Sirius radio show. She talked about being a sophomore at NYU and, for fun, going to an audition for the European tour of West Side Story just to experience a real New York audition. They needed a Shark girl who could understudy Anita. The girls all had to learn a section from "America," which also happened to be the section she had learned in her Performing Arts High School in Miami. That didn't stop her from pretending to slowly learn it and then being able to suddenly nail it. She got through the dance call, and they asked her to sing. She washed off all of her Anita make-up, wore a simple top and sang the high C at the end of the "Tonight Quintet." They told her that the tour left in three days for Berlin, and they wanted her to be on it. Suffice it to say, her parents were not pleased that her tuition that semester was for naught. But Andrea felt she had no choice. She'd be performing all over Europe with a full orchestra and tons of dancers that worked with Jerome Robbins — including Nicole Fosse. As a matter of fact, Nicole said that her mom would be visiting at the end of November and wanted to cook for the cast. So Andrea spent Thanksgiving eating a turkey cooked by Gwen Verdon!
The sad part was that she was told the woman playing Maria never missed, so there was no way she'd ever go on for the role. And, therefore, they gave her no rehearsal for the role. And, of course, she had to go on for Maria right after she got there, with only a few hours' notice and no rehearsal. Haven't people learned their lesson after Shirley MacLaine was told that Carol Haney "never missed" and the world was told that the Titanic would never sink? Stop making absolute statements!
Later on, she took over the role of Maria and developed a major crush on her Tony…and wound up marrying him! She's been married to the brilliant (now director) Peter Flynn for ten years, and they have an adorable three-year-old son, Hudson.
Andrea then told me about her first big New York break. When she came back to New York, she ran into someone she went to musical theatre summer camp with (French Woods). PS, French Woods is the name of the camp, not someone's drag name. Anyhoo, her friend was getting a show produced featuring his music, and he asked her to come over to sing through stuff, just so he could hear it out loud. Turns out, he thought she sounded amazing doing his songs, and he (and director Daisy Prince) put her in the show. Her friend was, of course, Jason Robert Brown, and the show was Songs for a New World. The hilarious part is that Billy Porter couldn't do the recording because he was under contract with another label, so they had to take Billy out of the cover photo and change everyone else's photo to take up the lost space. It's crazy. Look at the cover of the CD, and you'll see "Andrea" sitting on a stool. And by "Andrea," I mean Andrea through a funhouse mirror manipulated by the 1.0 version of Photoshop. Continued...
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