By Harry Haun
03 May 2005

Both characters are dressed, cartoon-like, for guffaws. "Anthony Ward, who's behind the sets and costumes, came over and said, 'I want you all to have as much input as you can. We've done it London. We've seen what works and what doesn't. What do you think?' He was very open so I said, 'I think we should be as odd and as iconic and as strange-looking as we can.' I didn't want to just look like a regular guy so we played with all sorts looks and settled on this cross between Prince Valiant and Theda Bara."

Brand new dad in town, Sella said son Valentino Sella was upstairs, sleeping. "We [actress-wife Enid Graham] are staying the night. We have a babysitter watching so we wouldn't have to go back to Washington Heights tonight. Enid was in rehearsal [for The Constant Wife with Kate Burton and Vanessa Redgrave] right up to curtain. She came over after the rehearsal, saw the show, went up and fed him and now is in the food lines."

Occupying yet another comedy ring in the musical are Marc Kudisch and Jan Maxwell, swiping scenes right and left as the well-named Baron and Baroness Bomburst. Maxwell's baroness is not appreciatively different from her countess in the last Broadway revival of The Sound of Music: she loathes the small fry. "I don't know why this is because I get along so well with the kids, and I have a nine-year-old son myself, but, for some reason, I'm the child-hating bitch."

Both are up for Outer Critics Awards, and Maxwell is Drama Desk Award nominated also. She pooh-poohs the notion of more nominations. "I don't think so. I insult everyone who sings and dances in this show. I'm the 'trained actress' who sings and dances."

What does she like—other than lines like "I should not have allowed toys into this marriage"—about the zany aristocrat she plays? "I like that she's highly medicated. There's a lot of Madame Ceausescu and Eva Peron and Laura Bush and Theresa Heinz Kerry in her. You always wanted Theresa to have the wine after the rally, but she never did. I took from every first lady from any country I know of who's crazy and put them together."

She gave Kudisch credit for helping her characterization work as well as it does. "We're very different. We come from different energies. He's a very ambitious, energetic guy, and I'm a lazy, unmotivated woman. For some mysterious reason, that works on stage."

Kudisch seconded that motion. "We never do anything without each other. It wouldn't work otherwise. We found that we just have different approaches and that they just happen to really compliment each other. We're a team, a couple on that stage. Characters define other characters so it's great to have someone you can bounce back and forth off of. Sometimes it is possible that you can find your performance through someone else."

Three guesses what Dilly's favorite moment in the show is. Still, she hesitated. "Would it be cliche to say `When we fly?' My second most favorite is singing 'Truly Scrumptious' with the children. It is such a remarkable experience to sing the Sherman songs. In this very jaded world, it's a very rare opportunity. They have such guileless innocence."

Esparza agreed. "Something happened with the show a few weeks ago where we suddenly found, as actors, this innocence—the idea that it's wonderful and we're discovering it for the first time. This has changed the quality of the show completely." Chitty is more relentlessly G-rated that Esparza's usual run of shows, but he jumped in with both feet and generated a genuine sense of fun. "It's especially necessary," he insisted. "If I'm not having a good time, then you would be bored out of your mind." The other ace up his sleeve is a likeness, visually and vocally, of the late Anthony Newley—a smart little fillip since, if Van Dyke had not done the movie, Newley would have been the logical second choice. Esparza holds the position that any similarity is unintentional and in the eye and ear of the beholder.

"People keep saying I remind them of him. I was offered Stop the World and Roar of the Greasepaint to do in rep as an idea once, and I think I'd like to try it, but those are big shoes to fill. I have never actually seen him do anything, but I will say that there was a gesture I did in rehearsal and Gillian [Lynne, the choreographer] said, 'Tony, don't do that.' Then she stopped, and she said, 'I can't believe it. I just called you Tony.' I said, 'So let's leave it in.' So, from someone who never saw Anthony Newley, there's an Anthony Newley tribute in the show."

The classy company he keeps on stage, Esparza contended, is another way of taking the curse off the show's sweetness and light, hopefully providing a view beyond that. "First of all, working with Phil Bosco is an absolute honor. I've admired him for years and years. and Erin's a thrill. We have great chemistry together, and it's been lovely to work with her. For all of us to do these kinds of parts is part of the fun of taking it on in the first place. I saw Robbie play Prior in Angels in America, and the first Broadway musical I ever saw was Into the Woods [with Chip Zien] so it's just amazing to be on stage with these guys every night. I think they were very smart to try to take good care of the show because the strike against it is that people will perceive it as a children's show and nothing else, and they brought in a cast that had such quality that maybe regular theatregoers will not be turned off and they won't miss the extraordinary spectacle that it has. It has a lot of good heart, and it's a real throwback to an old-fashioned wonderful kind of writing that the Sherman brothers perfected in the films and what Broadway used to do extraordinarily well. And I think there's room for that. I really do. I think we should have all kinds of shows on Broadway, and I think there's room for this kind of spectacle."

The cast gives their opening night curtain call
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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