By Andrew Gans
17 Apr 2009

Nancy Opel

News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage.

NANCY OPEL
There is always reason to rejoice when Nancy Opel — a Tony Award nominee for her comical performance (and superb high belting) in Urinetown — is back on the New York stage. And, this season audiences have even more reasons to be happy since Opel is playing not one, but three characters in the new Joe DiPietro-David Bryan musical The Toxic Avenger at Off-Broadway's New World Stages: Mayor Babs Belgoody, Ma Ferd and a Nun. And, Opel even gets the chance to duet with herself in a show-stopping number titled "Bitch/Slut/Liar/Whore." Earlier this week I had the chance to chat with the down-to-earth Opel about her stellar career, which boasts roles in several David Ives plays as well as the original Broadway casts of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George. Opel also spoke about her latest show, which reunites the Drama Desk nominee (for Polish Joke) with her Urinetown director, John Rando; that interview follows:

Question: How did these roles in Toxic Avenger originally come about? I know you did the show at George Street Playhouse first.
Opel: I did do it at George Street first. About two years ago now, I did a reading, and I believe it may have been one of the first readings of the show for Joe [DiPietro] and David [Bryan]. Joe is the one who requested that I do this particular reading. And I said, "Joe DiPietro? Sure! I'll do a show for Joe DiPietro." [Laughs.] I kind of came in cold. I hadn't read it before we did the reading. It was basically the show we've got now, doing the Nun and doing the two roles of the Ma — Melvin Ferd's mom — and the evil Mayor of the town. In the middle of this reading we were doing, we had a weekend, and Joe and David came back after the day or two of the weekend and said, "Nancy, we thought since you were playing these two roles and they sort of never meet... we thought that they should actually meet. And then if they meet, maybe they should actually have a fight." And I went, "Alright." And they go, "Yeah, so we wrote this song!" [Laughs.] So there was this song "Bitch/Slut/Liar/Whore" in which the nemeses meet and they fight with each other, which is spectacular. I think it's really fun. I don't mean that I'm spectacular — well, you'd have to judge that. [Laughs.] It's just really unbelievably fun. It was sort of tough, a little bit of a brainteaser to put together the number. I had to work it through in my head as to what I needed to do physically to change from one character to the other the most seamlessly. John [Rando] said, "What are you thinking? What are your thoughts?" And I said, "You know what? By tomorrow, I think I'll be able to tell you and the guys exactly what this should be. And if we can just do it by the numbers, I think we've got it." As per my usual working with John Rando, I always feel like he welcomes my ideas. I love working with him because it's a real natural collaborative process. I feel like he's always open to input, which is wonderful from a director.

Question: What was the audience response like when you did it at the George Street?
Opel: I have to say, even before that — when I learned the number in half an hour and then performed it in this little reading — people sort of went crazy. I was just standing there. I had just learned it. I did both parts just standing there, and people were whooping and yelling. [Laughs.] And I thought, "Wow! I got something here, I guess." You never really know until you do it out loud for somebody. It just so happened my brother happened to be at that reading. He lives in Kansas City, so you know how coincidental that was. He goes, "Nancy, you know what? It's funny, it's just funny." At the George Street, I have to say it was the same. I was a little concerned because, generally speaking, subscriber audiences are older and perhaps more conservative. Once again, I have to say that they all really surprised me. They flipped out over the show. Everybody does.

Question: Did the show change much between George Street and Off-Broadway?
Opel: For me there was a significant change. When we opened at George Street, the character of the Mayor, who enters very early in the show… [the creators] said that they thought there should be a song. So we had a tiny little intro for the song that I did out there, but then they totally fleshed it out before we came to New York. So it was literally just a couple of lines, and then it turned into a number now called "Jersey Girl."

	Nancy Opel in The Toxic Avenger
	photo by Carol Rosegg

Question: Do you have a preference between the two characters?
Opel: [Laughs.] Listen, don't tell Melvin's mother, but it's more fun to be mean. It always is. Evil characters are far more fascinating to play, although [the mother] is lovely and, in her own way, equally as problematic within the structure of the show. [Laughs.] But it's kind of fun to be actively evil.

Question: How do you find singing the rock score?
Opel: Well, I've never really done a rock thing before. It's one of those things [where] you sort of get in the thing and then you go, "Oh, you want me to do that? Well, alright." So mostly what I did was, I just said to David Bryan, "Listen, sing to me into an MP3 what you want this to sound like and send it to me, and I'll practice that." To be honest with you, it's sheer imitation. I probably shouldn't say that, should I? I should probably say that I thought of every brilliant note all by myself! [Laughs.] Obviously, there's some stuff that I did on my own, but the essential shape of stuff and the feel is really what I wanted to get, and then I went from there. It's fun, but it's really unbelievably challenging. I do all kinds of crazy switch-off, flip-octave — it's nuts. And it's only because Chris Jahnke, who did a lot of the vocal arrangements, would go, "Okay, Nancy, here's what I want you to do…" Just crazy stuff. I'd go, "Chris, this is really hard to do," and he says, "I know, but you can do it." [Laughs.] So that's where some of the wild stuff that I do [came from]. Let me put it this way — I have to take care of myself to do this job, which is totally okay because I sort of do that anyway.

Question: Do you have a favorite moment in the show? Is it the song where you switch back and forth?
Opel: At the moment, because we still haven't quite settled into a routine, it's absolutely one of my favorite moments. Although I do have another moment, and I don't know if I should give it away. Oh well, other people have talked about it. I think one of my other favorite moments is when I kiss the guitar player. [Laughs.] Don't tell him that, he'll get conceited!

	Nancy Opel in The Toxic Avenger
	photo by Carol Rosegg

Question: You talked a little bit about working with John Rando. Tell me how he works as a director since you also worked with him in Urinetown…
Opel: You know what? I love to work with him because he's one of those people who has a plan and is pretty specific about what he wants to do with the show, but he's also very open to whatever you bring. He's not the kind of person that crunches an idea before you try it. I don't think I've ever heard him say, "Well . . . maybe." Maybe on a handful of occasions he'll sort of laugh and go, "No, I don't think so." I don't know that he's ever done it to me, but for the most part, if you have an idea, he'll kind of laugh about it — obviously, we've done a lot of comedies together — and go, "Well, you know what? Try it, try it, let's try it." There have been times when I've come up with an idea, and I've tried it and it maybe wasn't completely successful and he goes, "You know what? There's a grain of a really good idea here, so try it again." He won't give you that one begrudging time and, if it doesn't work, that's the end of it. That's what I like about it. I feel like you can work with John and he's very — I know it seems funny because a director has to be a judging machine in a way — but he's very non-judgmental when you're trying stuff. He knows that you're putting your ego on the line when you come up with new ideas or you try something new. There's a sensitive relationship between the artist and the material. There's nothing worse than for somebody to come, and they don't mean to, but a lot of times a director will crunch you on something that you're trying, and then you kind of feel either sad or angry or embarrassed and you don't want to do it again. And, John just doesn't do that. He's the most nurturing, generous director.

Question: I'd think that would make you feel safer to try something new.
Opel: That's the thing. He makes the rehearsal room feel very safe. That's really important for trying to come up with something other than either compromised or careful or conservative work.

Question: Now, going back just a few years. You made your Broadway debut in the show that got me hooked on theatre, Evita.
Opel: Yeah, that was a few years ago! [Laughs.] It was actually… well you may not have seen it 30 years ago…

Question: No, I did. I saw you twice.
Opel: Oh, my God. We opened it 30 years ago. 30 years ago as of September 2009.

Question: What was it like being the matinee Eva?
Opel: Luckily, I had a chance to sort of dip my toe into Broadway before I started doing the matinees. I started after the first year, so I was the ripe old age of 23. . . .so I had a year to get my feet wet. Not only was it my first Broadway show, I had never done anything in New York. I was literally fresh out of school. I had made hometown connections in Kansas City that got me my Equity card in Connecticut the summer before, so I had my Equity card. And then suddenly all of these auditions — I had seven auditions for [Evita]! They kept on bringing me back. I heard back channel that they just wanted to see if I could do it again. [Laughs.] I was just a kid, and they wanted to see if I was consistent or just lucky, I guess. I remember my very last audition, Hal Prince jumped onto the stage, and he put his arm around me and he said, "How old are you darling?" And I said, "I'm 22," and he said, "That's about what I was thinking. Great job." And he jumped back off the stage, and I thought, "Oh, well I'm cooked. I'm dead." But I went on to have a lovely, lovely job for four years.

Question: Did he direct you when you became the matinee Eva?
Opel: No, not directly, as is typically the way. If you're a cover or a second cover, you get put into the show by the stage manager. However, I was lucky enough to be in on everything from the beginning, and I was also lucky enough to be allowed, whenever I was available, to watch the rehearsals of all the principals. So I felt like I was as much ground floor in there as you could be. So I did get a chance, at least indirectly, to hear what Hal was saying vis-ΰ-vis the character and the show.

Question: What was it like performing that role?
Opel: It was great. It was an amazing learning experience for me, especially that I had a chance to do the part so much and to just do any part that long. I don't necessarily know that four years is the greatest idea, but four years these days isn't that much. A lot of people have done things for tons longer than that. At the time it was crazy to stay in a show that long. People would leave after six months or whatever. I felt like I learned a lot. I learned a lot about audiences and the way they work. I learned a lot about interpersonal relationships with a cast. That was a big show — there were like 45 of us, I think. I think it's the biggest show I've ever done. It was an amazing opportunity to sort of cut your teeth on the Broadway scene. I learned so much, and I sort of grew up in the show.

Question: And then you also got to create roles in Sunday in the Park with George. . .
Opel: Back then there were tons of shows getting produced all the time — I mean, comparatively speaking. A lot of people would just get tired and leave. I made a deal with myself that I would stay in [Evita] until I felt a better opportunity came along, and that better opportunity was the workshop of Sunday in the Park with George.

Question: That's pretty amazing.
Opel: I know! Isn't it? When I was a kid, I dreamed, "I wanna work with Hal Prince and Steve Sondheim." I didn't know that it would be not together and in consecutive shows!

Question: Does anything stick out in your mind about that workshop?
Opel: It sure does. Evita was a New York premiere, but it was a show that was intact and that they were basically going to do the way they did in London, so the template had been formed. That was not the case with Sunday in the Park. There was a lot more fluidity in terms of structure. There was a lot of improv-ing. There was a lot of work that was done that was both invigorating and frustrating. So much material was tried and then thrown out. No matter what, even though you're kind of into experimentation — if you're an actor, you should be, in a way — but at a certain point I think that you feel anxiety if you can't sort of nail down what you think you're going to be doing in front of a lot of people very soon. [Laughs.] It was both thrilling and terrifying all at once. I remember going through all kinds of emotions with that. I think, at the end of it all, particularly by the time we opened on Broadway, I realized something that was very important. That is, although you take your work very, very seriously, you mustn't take it so seriously that it either makes you angry or bitter or mean. I think it can be easily turned into a sense where you're an actor and you stand in the back of the room with folded arms and you sort of dare the creative staff to fix the show. I don't ever want to be one of those people because that's a mentality that makes it almost impossible to turn things around.

Question: Was there anything that got cut from the show that you were surprised got cut?
Opel: I think that's always the case. When you play secondary or tertiary characters in a show, things are gonna get cut. Things get cut for everybody, but I imagine that some of us noticed our stuff quite a bit more because we had all of this back story that was appearing onstage and then suddenly it wasn't. That's hard to take, but what you have to do is take it for the team, you know?

Question: Do you remember the first time that the first-act ending was staged, what that felt like to be a part of? For an audience member, it's such a beautiful moment when the painting comes down.
Opel: I think the first time we ever even sang through the song, we knew it was something really special. Staging it was kind of weird because it was just like one big, weird, mazy promenade. You had to know where you were because the stage was not particularly big. Well, it was tiny at Playwrights, and it felt small at the Booth as well just because there were so many people on the stage trying to make patterns. It wasn't like, "Five, six, seven, eight!" Like I said, it was a tricky show. The staging and the content, everything about it was tricky. Not only that, but up until zero hour on Broadway, Steve was writing songs. Two songs in the second act came in pretty much at almost the last minute — at least that's my recollection. . . . There's stuff that came in really late. Really, really late was "Children and Art." Really late. I'm talking, we were in previews right before we were sort of freezing the show. "Children and Art" came in very late, and I believe "Lesson #8." Those two pieces that are in the second act came in very, very late. I felt like those are the things that really, really changed the second act. It was so transformative that it just seemed like a magic potion or something, but once you're that close, you can't see anything. You just have to trust.

Question: In more recent shows, there have been two times where you took over for people during previews: for Barbara Barrie in Fiddler and Elayne Boosler in Triumph of Love.
Opel: Elayne actually didn't make it to previews. I took over that role in rehearsal!

Question: What's it like stepping into a show a little later than the rest of the cast?
Opel: Well, once again, I was happy to be in the room for Triumph of Love the whole time. That also was a pretty good transition. I really enjoyed doing that show. Once again, that was a show that had so much really swell material. Trying to shape it was a little difficult. But, like I said, once you get to a point where you've been through the wars like that, you can sort of take it a little more easily.

Fiddler was crazy. I literally had a day of rehearsal and a put-in, and that was it. Seriously, I rehearsed on Monday and went in Tuesday night. Had a put-in Tuesday and went in Tuesday night. I'd never done anything like that.

Question: What was that first performance like for you?
Opel: It was crazy. It was literally like I just had tunnel vision. Whoever I was doing something with, it felt like they were a million miles away from me, and I was sort of staring through them through this gigantic, weird tunnel. But I was oddly calm at the same time. It was just so improbable, I think it's sort of like my brain couldn't even believe I was doing it. [Laughs.] I had stuff written everywhere: on my hands, on note cards that were on the table in Golde's house. [Laughs.] It was crazy. The role was really basically a couple of scenes where, if you just got to where you need to go, you could get through the stuff. If it had been something like a show where you had scene after scene after scene, even with little stuff to do, it would have been harder. And also "Tradition" is all holding hands, so everybody pushes you the right way. Continued...

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