By Harry Haun
13 Sep 2008

The daughter of a former district judge, Maxwell stage-bowed in high school as Calamity Jane in Deadwood Dick. ("In West Fargo, North Dakota, we didn't have many scripts coming there.") At 16 she caught a life-defining Streetcar Named Desire at the Guthrie, and that put her on the right professional track.

She attended Moorhead State University in Moorhead, MN, and for five years did eight shows in ten weeks every summer at the university as a member of The Straw Hat Players. It was true love, "so I found many ways to get to New York. One was pretending I was religious and joining the United Campus Ministry, because they were coming here for $50. I think I left them in a church in Brooklyn."

She entered Broadway at a replacement level — first for Dee Hoty in City of Angels, then for Tony winner Brid Brennan in Dancing at Lughnasa — and worked her way up to originating roles in A Doll's House with Janet McTeer and The Dinner Party.

Her favorite role was done for "the provinces" (i.e., Maryland's Olney Theatre): an exquisite Camille directed by Richard Romagnoli, who recently steered her through a fiercely dramatic performance in Howard Barker's Scenes from an Execution.

Maxwell did not marry her Armand but rather his jealous predecessor — would you believe Baron de Varville (played by Robert Emmet Lunney)? "Rob gave me my engagement ring onstage during the curtain call for the final performance of Lughnasa. He grabbed my hand and started pushing this thing into it. I thought, 'What infantile college ritual could this be?' It was like a peanut. I finally turned to him and, through gritted teeth, said, 'I've got it!' and stormed offstage, wondering, 'Why would he ruin these final moments we have?' I looked down, and there was a diamond ring. Of course, I started crying so there's a thousand people out there going, 'Boy, y'know, unemployment's going to be tough on that bitch. She's upset!'"