By Andrew Gans
07 Sep 2007

Nancy Anderson

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

NANCY ANDERSON
In the liner notes for her wonderful debut solo recording, "Ten Cents a Dance," which celebrates the songs of the '20s and '30s, the charming Nancy Anderson writes, "People have always told me I was born in the wrong era." That thought may be due to her rangy, lilting soprano, which has a decidedly period flavor, but Anderson is doing quite well for herself in this era. The singing actress was a standout as Mona in the bio musical A Class Act, which marked her Broadway debut; and, for her West End debut in the revival of Kiss Me, Kate, Anderson nabbed an Olivier nomination for her work as Lois/Bianca. She also had the chance to play two parts in the recent Broadway revival of Wonderful Town: Anderson created the role of Helen for the Kathleen Marshall-directed production and eventually succeeded Jennifer Westfeldt in the leading role of Eileen Sherwood. The gifted singer has also brightened up many a concert stage; she is a favorite of Scott Siegel, the cabaret critic and producer who created the acclaimed "Broadway By the Year" series at Town Hall. In fact, Siegel penned the opening notes for Anderson's CD. He writes, "Kittenish, brassy, innocent, world-weary, romantic, funny — she brings all of [these songs] to life because she is one of American musical theatre's young and beautiful treasures." Currently, Anderson is in rehearsals for the new musical Piper, a Victorian melodrama that will be presented Sept. 18-29 as part of the New York Musical Theater Festival; she will also be seen in the Gallery Players upcoming production of Yank! — A New Musical, and she will go it solo at Birdland three evenings this fall. My recent interview with the actress, whose Off-Broadway credits include Jolson & Co. and Fanny Hill, follows.

Question: How was your rehearsal today for Piper?
Nancy Anderson: It was great. The composer came in today. The composer is Marcus Hummon, who has won a ton of Grammys for country writing. He wrote the Dixie Chicks song "Cowboy Take Me Away." I had to play my fiddle in front of him today, so I was a little nervous.

Question: How did the fiddle-playing go?
Anderson: Well, it would have gone a little better if the A, C and E trains weren't stopped dead this morning. [Laughs.] I'm not an early person. I make it there at 10 o'clock on the dot, if not 10:02. I left my house a quarter past nine, so I could get there a half an hour early. . . I figured, "Oh, I'll get there shortly past 9:30, and I'll go in the next room and really warm up." There were signal problems at 59th Street, and so the A and the C just weren't happening. I sat on the train at 14th Street for like ten minutes and then at 23rd for ten minutes, and then I got out and walked from 23rd to 48th — with my fiddle and my big Irish drum. [Laughs.]

Question: Did everything turn out okay?
Anderson: Yeah — it was fun to meet him and to become more comfortable. For me, it's all about that next step of who I'm playing the fiddle in front of because I'm not that used to playing in front of people.

Question: Is that an instrument you had trained on at some point?
Anderson: I grew up playing the violin. And then all this time that everybody's been playing their instruments [on stage] for these Broadway shows, I was the one that didn't really have the time to practice or make the time to practice. So I was always getting beat out [for roles]. . . There are some fiddle players in town that are really good! And, finally, [Piper director] Michael Bush said, "How about if you were part of the band?" It kind of gave me that challenge to practice every day, so I practice every day for two hours.

Question: Have you been involved in other productions for New York Musical Theatre Festival?
Anderson: I did something years ago called Democracy. That was a Lewis Flinn show, [but] I don't think I've done anything else at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. The show Yank! that I'm about to do at the Gallery Players — that was done at NYMF, but I couldn't do it there because I was on tour with Dr. Doolittle.

Question: What is the rehearsal process like for a NYMF production?
Anderson: It's just about three to four weeks, and it's 10 to 4 everyday. It's kind of a hefty process, I think. In college I did a thing called the College Light Opera Company, where we did nine shows every summer — one every week, so anything longer than a week seems long to me. [Laughs.]

Question: Tell me a little more about Piper and the character you're playing.
Anderson: The character's name is Ma Kelly, so, of course, she's supposed to be a 65-year-old blousy Irish woman. I was actually called in to audition for Christiane Noll's part. They had put the offer out to her, but they weren't sure she could do it, so I think that they were calling people in to see who else was out there. And then when Michael saw me, he was like, "You know, I'd really like it if you could be in the show." So he said, "How about reading Ma Kelly?" I tried to figure out a way to play Ma Kelly so I wasn't [just] doing my imitation of a 65-year-old blousy Irish woman. He called me on the phone and said, "How would you feel about playing this part?" and I was like, "Well, talk to me. Give me a good reason [to] play the part."

We talked about how Ma Kelly really is the storyteller of the show. The show is about storytelling and music playing and that sort of Irish tradition. It takes place in Boston. It's about a storyteller who used to be a whore, and she's got a daughter who plays the penny whistle, who is crippled. They run a boarding house, and one of the Brothers Grimm comes to work on the Grimm fairytales, and he's accused of being this murderer who is strangling whores all throughout Boston at the turn of the century. It's sort of an interesting and complicated story, and they thought, [I could] bring my fiddle and open the show and bring everybody into this world where the band is onstage and it's set in an Irish pub. What would that be like if I watched the action, if I was the force that ties everything together? So, it's fun for me because I get to be a part of the energy of the show all the time. That's sort of poetic to me in a way that I enjoy.

	Nancy Anderson from her album "Ten Cents a Dance."

Question: You're also going to be at Birdland for three one-night shows.
Anderson: That's right, the last Sunday of every month.

Question: Will it be your Ten Cents a Dance show?
Anderson: It's going to be some of the stuff from Ten Cents a Dance, but I've done that show several times now. So now I'm going to be adding some [new material and] bringing in some guests. The first one, probably two-thirds of it will be my album, and then I'm going to sing some songs by composers that are writing today but who sound like they are from the twenties and thirties. I kind of want to stay in that '20s and '30s vein and explore what else I can do with it.

Question: Who are some of those composers?
Anderson: Well, [brothers] David and Joe Zellnik, who wrote Yank! [are included]. That's a World War II musical. They set out to write an entire show of standards, and they really succeeded. I'm singing a couple of their songs that are absolutely exquisite and just dead ringers for period songs. They are such incredible writers, those two. They've been my best friends since I moved to the city. In fact, David Zellnik and I met at that summer stock where we did nine shows a summer. And I'm going to sing a song or two of Jeff Blumenkrantz's and a song by Peter Laurie. Actually, David Yazbeck wrote me an email and sent me a song that Peter Laurie wrote. He said, "I think you might like this song — it might fit in with your theme." And, at that point I don't think he even knew I was going to do new composers that sound old. But I heard it and I thought, "Wow, this really is a good tune!" I worked with Peter Laurie back when he was in the BMI program and I had first moved to the city, and I sang a ten-minute musical of his. I think I'm going to fit into my show that he actually remains to be the only composer that I've ever worked for that accused me of singing out of tune. [Laughs.] I was like, "I do not sing out of tune." But he thought I did, so I'm going to give him a little bit of a hard time about that.

Question: Tell me about the challenges of working in cabaret versus working in a musical. Do you have a preference for one or the other?
Anderson: Well, it's been a really big challenge for me because I like to have somebody else come up with the project, hire me and tell me when to show up. It's not my favorite thing to do to generate my own audience and be in charge of the gig. But it's been a great year or two of learning how to do that and learning that I'm capable of running the show, I'm capable of being in charge. Actors can be such children. In fact, it's preferable if they are because you have to be told what to do and where to stand. You have to be told what to do your whole life, so it's better if you stay in that vein of just waiting to be told. I'm the one who has to do the telling for this, so it's complicated.

Cabaret sort of lends itself to what I do best, though, which is interpreting lyrics. That's what I love to do. You'd think I would have done it earlier, but I find that it's hard to do both [cabaret and theatre]. In order to schedule a cabaret, you have to say, "Well, I'm not going to audition or book any theatre," and I'm used to booking things [in advance]. Today I might not have a gig, but a month-and-a-half from now, I might. Ross Patterson, my musical director, said, "Just book the gigs and deal with it later." And, strangely enough, that's what I've been doing. This year is just concerts, almost exclusively. And it just kind of turned out that way. There haven't been [theatre] projects . . . so it's good that I've had this.

Question: How about the intimacy of working in a cabaret? Do you like the audience being so close versus the theatre where the audience is a little more removed?
Anderson: I like both. When I work in the theatre, I pretend that the audience is close. Although, when I'm in a theatre, I certainly shoot to the rafters, and you don't have to do that in cabaret. I guess what I do is I communicate to the audience at hand. I don't have a performance mode that I lock into and go. I'm always performing to either the audience that's right there in front of me or the one that I can't see. I remember, actually, I [went to] this creative arts summer camp. . . . We used to have this thing called the Noontime Show, which was a half-hour performance after lunch everyday, and anybody could get up and sing a song or read a poem that they wrote or do a dance that they made up. That was up on a stage that was like a table, and the audience was right there. I mean, they were leaning on the stage, and it was in the daylight. So, from the time I was seven, that's how I learned to perform . . . and I'd look at them directly in the face. I remember when I was 14 was the first time I performed in a dark theatre, and I had to pretend that I could see people's faces because the dark theatre was sort of off-putting. I guess my training was with an audience up close, so it's pretty comfortable for me.

Question: You've also done a lot of work at the York Theatre. You're sort of their artist-in-residence.
Anderson: I know! [Laughs.] They keep finding things for me to do. I just did I and Albert there, which was a total gift. Not many people would entrust that material to me because that's not how people normally see me in a very dramatic role. But, in fact, that part is similar to what I did in Jolson & Co. and similar to what I'm about to do in Yank! at the Gallery Players. It's a transformation piece. Even though in I and Albert it's one [character], Queen Victoria [but] the [changes] she has to go through — from the age of 18 through her love affair with Albert, through the death and mourning of Albert, all the way until she's 75 — is truly a study in transformation, especially when you have no costumes or makeup. That kind of work interests me. Whether it's a different character or whether it's the same character aging and getting smacked by life, the feeling in the body changes. That's always what interests me is how your body carries the weight of the character or carries the psychological makeup of the character. To me it's all the same — a character that ages from age 18 to 75, or a show in which I play eight different characters, taps into the same interests that I have. Continued...

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