By Seth Rudetsky
06 Oct 2008

This week I also interviewed Kelli O'Hara, who's starring as Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. Kelli grew up in Oklahoma (like Kristin Chenoweth) and went to Oklahoma City University and majored in opera (like Kristin Chenoweth!). She was essentially following in Kristin's footsteps, and I thought maybe I'd get some great catfight competition story about Kelli moving to New York and confronting Kristin at an audition, but, turns out, Kristin was amazing to Kelli! Kristin got Kelli an audition with her agent, and the agent signed her! Her first big break was the tour and then the Broadway company of Jekyll and Hyde as the understudy for Emma, played by the sassy Andrea Rivette. She used that show to learn how to change her way of singing from operatic legit to more Broadway/pop. She then became an understudy in the Broadway revival of Follies. She played the young Hattie (Betty Garrett) and then took over the role of Young Phyllis (Blythe Danner). In the opening scene, she was in charge of leading Joan Roberts to the stage. Joan was the original Laurey in Oklahoma!, and Kelli was essentially her assistant in the opening scene. But Joan also seemed to think that Kelli was her assistant at all times! Kelli said that Joan didn't really know her name and would call out to her at the end of rehearsal, "Hey, you! Go get me a taxi!" Kelli would rush out and hail a cab for the first two weeks of rehearsal until a stage manager told her that she didn't actually have to do that.

Kelli got an audition for Sweet Smell of Success, but it was while she was in tech for Follies. She asked if she could go in during her lunch break, but it was the same lunch break that Sweet Smell was taking! Still, she went to the rehearsal studio and hoped someone would be there. She knocked on the door and there were a few people there from the creative staff (including the director) and she begged them to let her sing. Unfortunately, there was no pianist, but one of the guys there offered to play. She started singing and felt the tempo was too slow, so she did ye olde "snap at the piano player to pick up the tempo" routine. Kelli described the audition to her friend that night, including the part about the too-slow accompanist, and her friend went on the internet and pointed to a picture of a guy and asked, "Was this the pianist?" Kelli then saw that the man she snapped at to speed-it-the-hell-up was the composer, Marvin Hamlisch! Of course, Marvin thought it was hilarious and loves to tell the story to people. Kelli had the good fortune to get a lead in Sweet Smell of Success and the badfortune to be doing Follies at the same time with the girl who did it in the workshop but didn't get the Broadway gig. Yay. It's fun to feel awkward eight times a week.

After Sweet Smell she went to Sundance to work on the musical of The Light in the Piazza, where she played Franca, the wife of the Michael Berresse character, and she was excited to know that it was coming to Broadway in February. She was then offered Dracula and turned it down because she was doing Piazza that season. However, Dracula said they would let her out after six months! Even though she felt a little dubious about the show, she needed the work, the exposure and the health insurance (!), so she took the gig. Kelli was told that she wasn't going to have to be naked but the next thing she knew, she was nude. She recalled that right before she took off her clothes, an enormous group of stage hands would suddenly have a cue to prepare for stage left. She's still got it!

As she was preparing for Piazza, she got a call from Bartlett Sher telling her that it was decided that Celia Keenan-Bolger who played Clara looked too young for the role. They said that Clara has to look like a woman so that the child-like behavior she exhibits is more incongruous. They had auditions around the country and finally asked Kelli to try out for the part. She said absolutely not. She told Bart that everyone was happy where they were and not to change anything. But the role was definitely going to be open, so Kelli finally went in. She got the role and a Tony nomination and before you're devastated for Celia, just know that she got Spelling Beethat same season and a Tony nomination as well!

Kelli said that playing Babe in Pajama Game made the creative staff of South Pacific realize that she could do more belty-style Broadway (not just soprano), and that's why she was brought in for South Pacific. However, she had to wait four months (!) for a callback because they wanted to cast the Emile first. They felt that he was a more difficult part to cast and once they had him, they could match a Nellie to whoever it was. As a matter of fact, they had three different age ranges up for the role: Kelli was in the middle, and the younger actress up for Nellie was Celia Keenan-Bolger, and the older one was Victoria Clark! I'd also like to pitch the three of them to star in the musical version of "The Brady Bunch"…with Joan Roberts as Alice.

This week, I'll be doing my Sirius Live on Broadway show at the Times Square Information Center Wednesday at noon with Tony nominee Alice Ripley and Autumn Hurlbert and Bailey Hanks from "Legally Blonde: the Search for the Next Elle Woods." Speaking of which, check out the new episodes of "Legally Brown: The Search for the New Piragua Guy" at my website. This is the web series created by Lin-Manuel Miranda from In the Heights, and episode three features the elimination of Matthew Morrison and episode four has the end of Allison Janney, who, for some reason, is trying out for the Piragua guy. The episodes are at www.SethRudetsky.com, and they're hilarious. Oh, and this week is also the "fun" holiday of Yom Kippur. Oy. Let me wish my fellow Jews an easy fast and Happy New Year! And, I'm out.

*

(Seth Rudetsky is the host of "Seth's Big Fat Broadway" on SIRIUS Satellite Radio and the author of "The Q Guide to Broadway" and the novel "Broadway Nights." He has played piano in the orchestras of 15 Broadway musicals and hosts the BC/EFA benefit weekly interview show Seth's Broadway Chatterbox at Don't Tell Mama every Thursday at 6 PM. He can be contacted by visiting www.sethrudetsky.com.)

Seth and Kelli O'Hara

View article on single page

Previous Page   1 | 2 Next Page