DIVA TALK: Chats with Encores! Stars Patti LuPone, Victoria Clark, Christine Ebersole & Donna Murphy

By Andrew Gans
01 Feb 2008

Patti LuPone in the Encores! production of Gypsy.
Patti LuPone in the Encores! production of Gypsy.
Photo by Joan Marcus

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

CITY CENTER ENCORES!
This week four Tony-winning actresses who have starred in a multitude of City Center Encores! productions — Patti LuPone, Victoria Clark, Christine Ebersole and Donna Murphy — reflect on their roles in the acclaimed series, which kicks off its 15th season Feb. 7-10 with Applause (starring Ebersole, Erin Davie, Kate Burton, Mario Cantone, Tom Hewitt, Michael Park, Megan Sikora and Chip Zien). The upcoming season of the hit series — which gave birth to the long-running, Tony-winning revival of Kander and Ebb's Chicago — will also include Juno (March 27-30 with Clark, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Michael Arden and Conrad John Schuck) and No, No, Nanette (May 8-12 with Beth Leavel, Rosie O'Donnell, Sandy Duncan, Fred Willard, Shonn Wiley and Mara Davi).

Christine Ebersole
Tony Award winner Christine Ebersole has been involved with the City Center Encores! series — which presents a mix of rare and classic American musicals in semi-staged concert form — since its inception in 1994. In fact, Ebersole starred in two of the three musicals offered that first season: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro and Ira Gershwin, Kurt Weill and Moss Hart's Lady in the Dark.

One of the trademarks of the series — currently headed by artistic director Jack Viertel and music director Rob Berman — is having a large orchestra, often boasting more than 30 players, situated onstage with the actors. "It's very powerful," Ebersole says of sharing the stage with the numerous musicians. "You're right there with them . . . and it creates a different kind of sensation." Donna Murphy, who starred in the Encores! productions of Wonderful Town — the show later transferred to Broadway with Murphy nabbing a Tony nomination for her work as Ruth Sherwood — and Follies, agrees. "It is unspeakably glorious. . . The music is another character or another collection of characters that you are experiencing in that setting. . . It is so exciting to just have that music either flowing over the footlights toward you or surrounding you. It's really quite heavenly."

Victoria Clark, who co-starred with Murphy in the Encores! Follies — Clark was a heartbreaking, deluded Sally to Murphy's regal, forthright Phyllis — and was also seen as Mrs. MacAfee in the Encores! Bye Bye Birdie, concurs. "Thrilling! Thrilling!," Clark says about working onstage while surrounded by the lush sounds of the orchestra. "For musical actors, the entire subtext is in the music." And, Tony and Olivier Award winner Patti LuPone, who triumphed in the Encores! stagings of Pal Joey, Can-Can and Gypsy (the latter begins an open-ended run at Broadway's St. James Theatre March 3), says that although having the orchestra onstage makes it difficult to see the conductor, she loves working on the vast stage of the 2,753-seat house. "It's one of the better-built theatres," says LuPone, "because it's deep and it's high. Ultimately it becomes an intimate space because it's well built. It's not too wide, and it's high [and] the audience [seems] closer [to the stage]."

Victoria Clark and Victor Garber in the Encores! Follies
photo by Joan Marcus
Unlike a Broadway opening, which is usually preceded by a six-week rehearsal process and a few weeks of previews, Encores! productions are up and running and presented to the New York critics within two weeks. "I think there's always a sort of level of denial leading up to [the start of rehearsals]," says Ebersole. "You don't really understand the reality until you're in it, and then you [think], 'Oh my God, this is really happening!' There's something thrilling about that as well because it keeps you very present. You don't have a lot of time to think and plod." Murphy — who won Tonys for her performances in Passion and The King and I — admits she was a bit overwhelmed during rehearsals for her first Encores! experience in Wonderful Town. "I will say that the first two days [of rehearsal] are a blast, but the third day you're kind of going, 'Holy God, what have I done?' I did make that call to my theatre agent at the time and I just said, 'I think I made the biggest mistake of my life,'" she laughs. "He said, 'Look everybody calls me right around this time and says, 'What the hell have I done?'"  Continued...