Backstage
Head Over Heels in 'She Loves Me'
Stars of the Revival at Arena Stage Simply Adore the Quirky Romantic Musical
Wednesday, December 6, 2006; Page C05
The leads in "She Loves Me" -- Kevin Kraft, Brynn O'Malley, Nancy Lemenager and Sebastian La Cause -- seem to be having a blissed-out professional experience doing Arena Stage's revival of the 1963 musical. It runs through the end of the month.
Recalling director Kyle Donnelly's "beautiful" speech to the cast at the first rehearsal and remarks by Artistic Director Molly Smith and the show's designers, O'Malley says she's "never worked in a theater, especially a regional theater . . . where you come in and everyone cares so much."
  Director Jennifer L. Nelson says the 1959 "A Raisin in the Sun" needs no tinkering: "It turns out it's kind of visionary." (By Clifford Russell -- African Continuum Theatre) |
O'Malley plays Amalia, the new shopgirl at a perfumery in 1930s Budapest. Amalia quickly forms a hate-hate relationship with the senior salesclerk, Georg (Kraft). The two don't know it, but they're already in love -- via romantic lonely-hearts letters they've been exchanging anonymously, trying to muster the courage to meet.
(If that sounds familiar, it's because "She Loves Me," based on Miklos Laszlo's 1937 play "Parfumerie," has had several movie incarnations, including "You've Got Mail." The musical's book is by Joe Masteroff, with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick.)
Amalia's big Act 2 number, "Vanilla Ice Cream," was made famous by Barbara Cook in the original production, and she has been singing it in concert and cabaret every since. O'Malley refuses to be daunted by that.
"I know there's just no way anything I'm doing is going to be remotely like what she did," says the actress, but she adds that she actually finds the song the easiest to sing. "It's such an exciting moment acting-wise that I don't have time to think about the singing," she says.
The songs in "She Loves Me" are not written in typical verse-refrain form, which makes them less hummable but more fun to perform, observes Kraft, the singer-songwriter-actor who plays Georg. "These are little tiny soliloquies that are really musicalized monologues," the Springfield native says; they "are wonderful for actors, but they do take a slightly sophisticated audience to appreciate them."
Lemenager, as the unlucky-in-love shopgirl Ilona, sings the long number "A Trip to the Library," recounting how she finally met a good man. "It's so delicious to do because it's written so well and it's set up so beautifully," she says. "It's so delicious as an actor to get to tell that story every night."
Lemenager views the musical's score as "a gift more than a challenge" and not unlike singing Sondheim in that "so much of the work is done for you. Oftentimes in a musical, the song feels random or sort of out of place. . . . You have to do a lot of work to fill in the blanks." But "it feels like a treat" to do "She Loves Me."
La Cause, who plays Kodaly, the womanizing clerk who toys with Ilona, echoes the enthusiasm: "It feels really good to be in that environment that Kyle and the other actors created. We have a lot of fun." (La Cause will play another Lothario, the magician Marco the Magnificent, in the Kennedy Center's revival of "Carnival!" Feb. 17-March 11.)
Acting entirely in the round was new to some of the cast. Kraft says they were told to speak and sing as if they were not miked -- to "play this like outdoor Shakespeare." He says he felt "bombastic" at first, especially speaking dialogue.
La Cause likes the truthfulness in-the-round requires. "It's three-dimensional. There's no place to hide. You have to be on, as it were, every moment, because even if you're not in the forefront of the scene, three-quarters of the audience can see you," he says. "You can't get away with anything."
'Raisin' Redux
Jennifer L. Nelson had no intention of updating Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" for the African Continuum Theatre Company production, at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE through Jan. 7.
"I'm not making any attempts to modernize it in any way. In fact, one of the things I like most about it is it turns out it's kind of visionary," Nelson says. Hansberry was a "brilliant intellectual" and "very much in touch with the social movements of the times," the director says, "so in the play you see her kind of presaging what was to come in the years following her death" in 1965 at age 34.
Nelson, who will end her 10-year stint as the company's artistic director at the close of this season, says Hansberry showed particular foresight in her 1959 play by drawing a parallel between the civil rights movement in the United States and anti-colonial struggles in Africa, including "the violence and dissension that came out . . . because when you open a box and let loose the good things, there are maybe some other things as well."
The now-classic, oft-performed play, set in the early 1950s, takes a close-up look at the Youngers, an African American family living in a tiny apartment on Chicago's South Side and striving to better their lives despite their fears, foibles and a hostile society intent on marginalizing them.
The voice of the future is Beneatha, the college student who intends to be a doctor and isn't sure she'll ever marry. Unlike her more traditional brother, mother and sister-in-law, she expresses then-newfangled views on civil rights and feminism. "For her to be writing that at the time she was writing that, especially for a young black woman to aspire for that, was a little radical in its way," Nelson says of Hansberry.
Nelson does depart from tradition in the casting of the elegant, svelte Jewell Robinson as grandmother Lena. Ever since Claudia McNeil performed the role on Broadway and in the 1961 film, the character has been perceived as "this kind of bulwark matriarch who doesn't have a lot of emotional range," Nelson says. With Robinson, "we're trying to play Lena with more dimension."
Follow Spot
? A radio-theater-style benefit performance of "It's a Wonderful Life," directed by actress Susan Lynskey, will be presented by SoundIncentive on Dec. 11 and 18 at 7:30 p.m. at the H Street Playhouse, 1365 H St. NE. Donations will go to the N Street Village women's shelter. Stephen Schmidt will play George Bailey and Nancy Robinette will play the angel Clara. Visit http:/
