By Andrew Gans
05 Feb 2010

	Sally Mayes with Jerry McGarrity and Carolee Carmello in Das Barbecü

Question: Take me through some of your other favorite theatrical experiences.
Mayes: I would have to say that She Loves Me — that ensemble, there was just nothing better. There was nothing better ever. It was just the greatest experience. It was a beautiful show. I couldn't wait to go to work every night. Sometimes in shows you don't wanna go to work and you just wanna stay home and put your feet up. I could not wait to get to the theatre every night. It was so much fun to play with those people. It was just beautifully done. I loved it. I loved my part, I loved my costumes, I loved my co-stars. It was great. I loved everything for different reasons. Das Barbecü was kind of like being thrown into a blender. It was more fun offstage than on, because we were at the Minetta Lane with a set that had been built for Baltimore Center Stage. It was huge! So we were climbing over set pieces. Every time you went offstage, you came on as somebody else, so you had to change wigs and costumes. It was crazy, crazy, crazy, but so much fun. And I'm with J.K. Simmons onstage. This is before he hit with television and movies, and a lot of people don't even know that he's got this astounding baritone voice. And my friend Julie Johnson from Texas, and Carolee Carmello — it was a great experience. I got to work with Leo Burmester in Urban Cowboy. I got to work with George Dvorsky and have Bob Mackie dress me in Pete 'n' Keely. Pete 'n' Keely was written on us. It was written for what we had to bring to the party. How rare is that, and how great is that? I loved every minute of it. When I did the national tour of Dirty Blonde, it was like this gift that James Lapine handed me. It was amazing. I did it with the Broadway cast. We were out on the road for six months, and I had two weeks off between cities. My son would either come to me or I would go to him, so I wasn't a bad mommy.

Question: Had you been a Mae West fan? Did you know her work?
Mayes: I kind of was aware of her. I had done a little bitty reading of a piece and I kept saying, "She sounds like a black blues singer. She sounds a little bit Southern." The director of that reading was like, "No, you're totally off base. That's wrong." And then when I started rehearsing with Bob Stillman, he was like, "That's exactly right!" It was a challenge because that character was really all about sex. She was all about sex, and it was so much fun to find your way in there. She was a sexual being. She was much more like a man than a woman of that period — the way she discarded lovers and took lovers. It was such an interesting piece to me, because it started out with Mae always changing and evolving and becoming whatever she needed to be to become this big star, and then she froze herself at some point, which is when it stopped being great. And then the other character, Jo, starts out totally frozen and unable to do anything, and she ends up blossoming. It was really fun because it was like an X. They were going across each other. It was so much fun to play with Tom Riis Farrell and Bob Stillman. I can't complain about anything really. I've been so lucky. Maybe, if anything, that I had a few more shows. But Hal Prince told me years and years ago, "You're quirky and you're unique, and you're gonna have long periods where you don't work. And then you're gonna hit big with something, and then you're gonna work a lot." He's been right so far. I turn down things if I feel like I've already done that, or if it's not great money. The thing that I'm trying to be careful about now is Southern roles, which is why I really considered this carefully. I don't wanna be the battleaxe. That's not where I want to go. [Laughs.] I want people to remember that I did do She Loves Me and I didn't play a Southern character in that. I did do Dirty Blonde where I didn't play a Southern character. I don't want to be typed, so I always try to find really diversely different things to work on. I'm trying to move more into doing plays because I don't wanna be 70 years old and belting D's. That's what I trained to do. It's changed a lot. There have been people who have been able to go back and forth, like Chris Ebersole and Boyd Gaines, but for the most part they think if you do musicals, you can't do plays. It's nice to be able to go back and forth. That's what I'm trying for. It also opens up more opportunities. It's a good life. What can I tell ya?

[For tickets to Good Ol' Girls, priced $70, call (212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111. The Black Box Theatre at The Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre is located at 111 West 46th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. For more information visit www.goodolgirls.com.]

Well, that's all for now. Happy diva-watching! E-mail questions or comments to agans@playbill.com.