Theater News

Beginning to See The Light

Christine Andreas has the plum role of Margaret Johnson in the national tour of The Light in the Piazza.

Christine Andreas(Photo © Michael Portantiere)
Christine Andreas
(Photo © Michael Portantiere)

Once Broadway’s ingenue of choice in stellar revivals of My Fair Lady (1976), Oklahoma! (1979), and On Your Toes (1983), Christine Andreas has now taken on the plum role of Margaret Johnson in The Light in the Piazza. She heads the first national touring company of the glorious Adam Guettel-Craig Lucas musical based on Elizabeth Spencer’s beloved novella of the same title, with Elena Shaddow playing her “special” child, Clara, and David Burnham as the lovestruck Fabrizio Nacarelli.

After a hiatus of several years, Christine returned to Broadway in 1997 as Marguerite St. Just in The Scarlet Pimpernel. During that hiatus, she cared for her son, Mac — who, like the fictional Clara, is developmentally disabled. I recently spoke with Christine about life, her career, and the year-long Piazza tour, which begins at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco on August 1.

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THEATERMANIA: Have you heard the news, Christine? Your My Fair Lady recording is finally coming out on CD.

CHRISTINE ANDREAS: I love that recording. It has a lot of good energy, if I do say so myself. Goddard Lieberson produced it. In those days, when you made a cast album, you basically had two shots at each song. That was it! I remember that I had just gotten back from lunch and I had a number coming up; the schedule was so tight that I still had half a sandwich in my mouth when they were ready to start recording.

TM: It’s a wonderful album, and so are your recordings of On Your Toes and Oklahoma! I was going to ask if The Light in the Piazza will be your first tour, but then I remembered that Oklahoma! toured before it came to New York.

CHRISTINE: Yes. It was always intended for Broadway, but they decided to tour it first to make some money. Then, after the Broadway run, it toured again. I ended up being in that show for two years. The first tour I ever did was the last leg of the very first bus-and-truck company of Fiddler on the Roof. Then I did a six month tour of Fair Lady in 1991. I was really happy about that because I was such a baby when I did the show the first time on Broadway. It was great to play Eliza again with a little more knowledge inside of me — though my son Mac hated it. He was three and a half at the time. We had a nanny on the road with us, but he really hated it. So he went back to stay with his dad, and I said, “No more touring.”

TM: What exactly is his condition?

CHRISTINE: Well, it falls under the umbrella term “Pervasive Developmental Delay” — which means that no one knows what the hell is wrong with you, except that everything is delayed. In Mac’s case, it was caused by oxygen deprivation at birth. That brought about brain damage, which created an autistic-like condition. Although he’s verbal, he has difficulty relating to people. He’s seriously attention-deficit; plus he has epilepsy and a little cerebral palsy. He has trouble delivering a complete thought, so it’s very difficult to carry on a conversation with him. He’s 19 now but, basically, he functions like a five year old.

TM: I was glad that I got to meet him briefly when you performed in The Broadway Musicals of 1956 as part of the “Broadway by the Year” series at The Town Hall in April.

CHRISTINE: He’s a lovely young man, and now he has his own life. He’s in a group home. Within days of placing him there, I got the offer for Piazza. It’s one of those magical things that sometimes happen. People kept asking me, “When are you going to do theater again?” My biggest dream was to play a transformational kind of part. I loved my ingénues, but I was very happy to move on and to be more adult. Well, what could more transformational than this role? And to have it so parallel my life is really wild, isn’t it? The show is cathartic. This is every mother’s tale, whether she has a special kid or not. It’s about opening Pandora’s Box and getting to the bottom of whatever’s got you bottled up — finally saying, “There’s so much to do in life. Let’s just move on.”

TM: This is difficult for me to understand, but it seems that some people are morally offended by Margaret’s choice not to explicitly tell Fabrizio and his family about Clara’s condition.

CHRISTINE: She tries to do that over and over again. At one point, she comes right out and says, “You. Have. To. Listen. To. Me!” Then, she looks at that beautiful boy and sees all the love he has for Clara. She wants to tell him, but there’s no way she can do it. So she makes the choice that love will find a way.

TM: Isn’t it one of the show’s points that we all have our handicaps, whether physical or emotional?

CHRISTINE: Amen! And we’ve all been let down by what looked like love. A lot of times, love and the connections you make with people aren’t supposed to last forever.

TM: “May it last forever” happens to be one of my favorite lines in the show. Margaret sings it right at the end, just before Clara and Fabrizio are married.

CHRISTINE: It’s a prayer. I pray a lot in my life — not an organized-religion way, but I know that some intelligence is out there listening. So I pray that Mac will have what he needs in life, and I’ll have what I need. I think Margaret does the same thing.

TM: Aside from everything else, Margaret must be a great gift to you in vocal terms. There are very few legit soprano roles in contemporary musicals. I remember reading that Renée Fleming attended a performance of Piazza and was thrilled that the leading roles weren’t written for belters.

CHRISTINE: She could do this part! The Light in the Piazza could probably be done in an opera house, but it would be a challenge, because some of the vocal lines are in a pretty low range.

TM: Will there be an alternate Margaret on the road?

CHRISTINE: No. But if I get tired, there’s somebody to cover me.

TM: When and how did you experience Piazza for the first time?

CHRISTINE: Actually, it was about four years ago. I was doing Pal Joey at the Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia, and [artistic director] Marjorie Samoff said to me, “This is what Adam’s working on.” Then, a few years later, I saw Vicki Clark give this iconic performance. There were moments that just ran through me like a river.

TM: I would imagine that it’s difficult to sing “Fable” without losing control of your emotions.

CHRISTINE: I don’t want to cry when I sing it. The song is not about how Christine feels; it’s about how Margaret feels.

TM: I can’t wait to hear you sing the part. And you’re so good with dialects — Cockney and upper-class British in My Fair Lady, Oklahoman in Oklahoma!, French in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Margaret is from Winston-Salem. You’re not from the South, are you?

CHRISTINE: South Jersey! It turns out that the dialect I need to use for Margaret is placed very well for my singing voice. I have a great teacher and a good support system. What a blessing, to have a year to do this role! I really wanted to do it — as an actor, as a person, as the mother of a special kid. I knew that if ever I was going to start a new book for me and for my son, I had to play things out fully. And I get to do that every night with this show. By the end of the tour, I’m not going to be the same person that I am now.