DIVA TALK: Christine Pedi Chats About Miss Abigail, NEWSical, Forbidden Broadway and More

By Andrew Gans
23 Dec 2011

Christine Pedi
Christine Pedi

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

CHRISTINE PEDI
Funny gal Christine Pedi, whose impressions of a host of Broadway leading ladies have earned her raves in more than a dozen companies of Forbidden Broadway, is doing double-duty these days appearing in the Off-Broadway productions of both Miss Abigail's Guide to Dating, Mating & Marriage! (Saturdays at 5 PM at the Downstairs Cabaret Theatre at Sofia's) and NEWSical the Musical (eight times a week at The Kirk at Theatre Row). Pedi, who has been seen on Broadway in Talk Radio and in the Martin Short revival of Little Me, is also offering her critically acclaimed holiday solo show There's No Bizness Like Snow Bizness, which will play its final performance Dec. 26 at 7:30 PM at Don't Tell Mama. Last week, I had the pleasure of chatting with the Drama Desk and Ovation Award nominee, who spoke about her current jobs, her road to Forbidden Broadway and more; that interview follows.

Question: Although we've e-mailed, we've never spoken before, so let's go back to the beginning. Where were you born and raised?
Christine Pedi: I was born at a hospital in Yonkers, but I started out in the Bronx for the first couple of years with my family. Then we moved to Eastchester, NY.

Question: When did you start performing?
Pedi: Well, I did the high school plays. I went to a parochial girls school. I did the high school plays at the local boys school. They'd farm in the girls from the local schools. The first musical I did was at my high school—an all-girls version of Godspell. They brought in one boy to be Jesus because they weren't that cutting edge—having a girl be Jesus. After that, I did the plays at the boys high school—that was a big thing to do—auditioning and waiting for the list to come up and all the drama and so forth, wondering if you were cast or not. The first show I did was Bye Bye Birdie in the chorus. I wore one of the bridesmaid dresses from my mother's wedding. She was actually married the year Bye Bye Birdie opened on Broadway. Then I was in the chorus of Very Good Eddie. God only knows why, but it had been on Broadway, I guess… Then I got the lead my senior year—not the lead, but I got a lead in Hello, Dolly! Back then I was singing soprano because I had taken singing lessons. The director of Godspell said to my mother, "She should take singing lessons." She recommended a sweet old—not old, but to me she was old because I was 14 or 15—[woman named] Evelyn Hancock, and she was the second Laurie in Oklahoma! So, I was learning soprano, and she was teaching me Italian art songs and "We Kiss in the Shadow." I didn't know from belting… I never belted a note until I was in college. I didn't even know I could.

Pedi in Miss Abigail's Guide.
photo by Jeremy Daniel

Question: Who were the artists that influenced you growing up or in high school?
Pedi: You know, I have this radio show on Sirius XM Radio. I play show tunes six hours a day and talk about them. I think back to when I was in grammar school and high school. In particular, high school would have been the formative years for me. There were not a lot of performers certainly on the radio that inspired me, and I didn't really know what a Broadway show was until high school—didn't see one until high school. It was just all flooding in very quickly, but it's almost as if the recordings were the stars for me. And, the stars on the recordings, obviously. Who didn't love Liza Minnelli or listening to Chita Rivera in Bye Bye Birdie or Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady—it was the whole package, honestly. There were the usual suspects as far as divas that just thrilled me to no end like Liza and Bernadette [Peters] and Chita. Bette Midler, when I was growing up, was a bit of a sanctuary. She would sing the "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," and that was on the radio, and it would make me feel validated. Anyway, even somebody like Barry Manilow, in his own way, played songs that, to me, were approachable, in a world where I didn't get to see any Broadway and I didn't feel like music I liked was validated by my friends—this goes through college as well, of course. I think the plays and the composers and the stories, they were more my influences than necessarily the people… I mean I paid close attention to the people, but I never got obsessed about the people—like I never got obsessed about Donny Osmond or David Cassidy. Loved them, but never lost my mind.

 Continued...