KATE BALDWIN
A few years ago, I took a road trip to see Tony Award winner Alice Ripley's performance in the Kennedy Center's production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Tell Me On a Sunday, and while I was there, I decided to catch Arena Stage's mounting of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. It was in that company that I first had the chance to enjoy the work of Kate Baldwin, who was a zesty, completely engaging Nellie Forbush. Since that first encounter, I've been waiting for Broadway audiences to have that same pleasure, and thankfully that time has come. Baldwin is currently offering one of the most charming musical theatre performances of the season in the Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow at the St. James Theatre. Playing opposite Tony winner Jim Norton and Cheyenne Jackson, Baldwin gets the chance to wrap her rich, creamy voice — which easily glides between a lilting, lovely soprano and a powerful, emotional belt — around such classics as "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?," "Old Devil Moon" and "If This Isn't Love." It's an especially busy time for the gifted artist, who just released her wonderful debut solo recording, "Let's See What Happens," on the PS Classics label, and who will make her Feinstein's at Loews Regency debut Dec. 13. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Broadway's newest leading lady; that interview follows.

Question: How did the casting originally come about for the Encores! run of Finian's Raibow?
Kate Baldwin: I went in and auditioned and sang the song and read the scenes and got the part! [Laughs.]

Question: What the experience like?
Baldwin: It was great. It was lovely. It was sort of like a homecoming. Jack Viertel, from the numerous Encores! that I've done there, has always said on the first day of rehearsal, "Welcome home." I do feel like Encores! is a bit of a home for me because my very first job in the city was Babes in Arms at Encores! I got to be in the ensemble of that show. It was the very first time I met Chris Fitzgerald and Jessica Stone and Erin Dilly, all of whom I call friends now. That was a really remarkable company. Noah Racey was in that company. Kevin Cahoon was in that company. There are a lot of really great young actors who have since gone on to do awesome lead roles on Broadway and in television, too.

Question: What are the other Encores! that you've done?
Baldwin: After that it was A Connecticut Yankee, Bloomer Girl… and then I did, four years ago, something called the Encores Bash. It was sort of a concert-y kind of evening. It was celebrating Jule Styne and Dorothy Fields and Frederick Loewe. There were Brigadoon songs. I got to sing in that as well, and that had a host of really awesome people in it, too. So that was my fourth Encores!, and my fifth was Finian's Rainbow.

Question: What was your reaction when you did hear that you would be transferring?
Baldwin: Disbelief, honestly. I'm a person who has been in New York for ten years and been doing this for ten years, and honestly I've been burned a couple of times… [Laughs.] I'm laughing as I say it! I'm not bitter about my experiences. They've been helpful in informing who I am today and what I am able to do and what I am able to bounce back from. I've had other shows that were "going to Broadway," and that offer never materialized or things fell apart along the way. So I had some healthy skepticism about the Broadway transfer, I really did.

Question: How much was changed from City Center to Broadway?
Baldwin: The biggest changes were personnel changes. Three of the main roles were changed. The two men who play the senator and Chris Fitzgerald, who plays the leprechaun, are new additions. To my mind that was the major change. The script also had a major new influence. At Encores! we had the lovely and talented David Ives, who does all of the Encores! revisions, and is fabulous and smart. For the Broadway production we have Art Perlman, who is also fabulous and smart, who figured out a way to bring back some of the flavor of the original script without compromising the events of the story, without compromising the clarity that David Ives had set up. This is all my opinion. I honestly didn't sit down with both scripts to compare them. I think they both serve the story very well and give enough of the flavor of the original script to give people an idea of what it must have been like and yet appeal to a 2009 sensibility.

	Kate Baldwin and Cheyenne Jackson in Finian's Rainbow
	photo by Joan Marcus

Question: How would you describe Sharon?
Baldwin: Sharon's a great girl. Sharon goes on a journey during the show, which is so exciting. She goes from a non-believer to a believer. She starts off the play with her father, who is the ultimate dreamer and has the gift of the blarney in him. So she is, in my imagination, forced to take over the household when her mother dies. She is forced to bring him back down to earth and make him face the reality of the situation. She is the realist. She is on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. She is the person whose trust and respect is hard-won. So, at the beginning of the play, to encounter another dreamer in Woody Mahoney, when he starts talking about poetry during "Old Devil Moon," she has those mixed feelings, that sort of dread of, "Oh no, here I am with another man who doesn't have his feet on the ground, and I'm gonna have the same kind of role with him that I have with my father." The nice thing about Woody is that he is, in fact, taking care of his community in much the same way Finian is. . . . One of his lines is "Don't take it so hard, Sharon." That always resonates with me a little bit, too. It resonates with Sharon and resonates with me, Kate. I always take things a little hard, and it's a nice sentiment to say, "Hey, lighten up!" And Sharon does.

Question: What's it like singing that score?
Baldwin: It's great! It couldn't be better. It's a gorgeous score. It's hit after hit. The fact that we have a huge orchestra to sing it with is like falling into a feather bed. It's what you dream about when you're a little kid.

Question: Do you have a favorite moment in the show for Sharon?
Baldwin: I don't — they change so often. "Glocca Morra" is sort of the first moment that I think of.

Question: You do that really beautifully.
Baldwin: Thank you. It's sort of a quiet, contemplative, reflective moment that usually happens in a musical theatre piece later on. It's not usually a person's first song. The first song is usually, "Here I am, world! Watch out, here I come!" And Sharon's isn't. That's sort of the beauty of the show. That's why I say people have to come to the play as opposed to the play going out and grabbing them. That is a favorite moment. Standing on the St. James stage — I call it a "woo woo experience." I think about what's gone on there before me and what will go on there after me, and I am humbled by the history of it all. The fact that there are people sitting out there in the dark who paid money to come and listen for two-and-a-half hours, I find astounding… especially right now, especially in 2009 where 15 seconds seems like it's too long to pay attention to anything, where we rush around, don't look at each other and don't listen to each other and can't listen to each other because we're bombarded by so many outside forces. The fact that somebody sits and listens to a ballad that includes a few strings and a harp, I find so refreshing and so gratifying, and I am so grateful.

Question: You've worked on Broadway in a few shows, but this is the first time you've opened a show in a leading role. What does it feel like to finally have this chance?
Baldwin: It's so sweet. Only because I've been here for ten years and have been around and in this community for so long, it feels earned, it feels right, it feels full and happy. The best part of all of the accolades or attention that has come from this is that friends and colleagues who I've worked with over the last ten years have sent me emails and letters and phone calls saying, "We knew this all along. We knew that you were who you were back when we worked with you, and we're so happy that New York City is finally acknowledging it, too." It feels like a tremendous pat on the back from everybody. It feels like everybody I've ever worked with or known is sort of holding me up. I feel like I'm in their hands, and it's a wonderful place to be.  Continued...