Sarah Jane Everman has played Glinda in Wicked and is currently understudying the roles of Eve, Princess Barbára and Passionella in The Apple Tree, but she really isn't trying to copy Kristin Chenoweth. She can sort of gauge her career by Chenoweth, though. Everman was just graduating college when Wicked was starting its pre-Broadway run in San Francisco. A little more than three years later, Everman had already graduated from Wicked and was understudying Chenoweth in another Broadway show.
"I feel like I couldn't have even dreamed this for myself," says Everman. "Moving to New York, my goal was to make a decent living as an actor. I didn't care what it was, whether it was regionally or Broadway or not, so this is beyond what I imagined. I mean, I'm understudying Kristin Chenoweth. You go and you sit and watch them in shows—I saw her when they first opened in Wicked. I never would have thought that I would understudy her someday."
Whether she ever is actually deployed in Chenoweth's Apple Tree roles remains to be seen. With Chenoweth's rave reviews outstripping those for the show in general, producers may be reluctant to give ticket buyers an Apple Tree sans Kristin. Two performances in mid-January were canceled when Chenoweth needed time off for her Metropolitan Opera engagement. "I think it's the best worst job on Broadway," Everman says. "It's an honor and it's amazing; at the same time, it's scary to understudy someone like that, when everyone comes to the theater anxious to see her."
Everman is on stage every night in a variety of roles in Parts 2 and 3 of The Apple Tree, including a short solo dance as the Prisoner's Bride in "The Lady or the Tiger." She came to the show straight from the Broadway cast of Wicked, where she was in the ensemble and understudied Kate Reinders as Glinda. She had done the same while in the Chicago company of Wicked for ten months in 2005-06. Then, she did get to cover the lead role—for several weeks, in fact, after Reinders injured her foot three or four months into the run. Everman had rehearsed the role and was prepared, unlike in previews when Reinders was out sick once and she had to go on before she'd fully learned the role. "We had yet to rehearse at all. So they pulled me into a studio and gave me about two or three hours of blocking rehearsal." Everman says she can barely remember that performance: "I think I was on autopilot. It was very much about 'I need to be here, and I need to say this line.'"
Inspired by compliments she had received wearing a brunette wig for the Wicked ensemble, Everman last fall dyed her naturally golden hair brown. (It was also a reaction to "a horrible breakup," she admits.) De-blonded, she says, "People view me as sassier and treat me like I'm a little older. They expect me to have this fire in me because I have this dark hair now."
But another, less-cosmetic change has started to take her career in new directions. When she was cast in the Chicago company of Wicked, it was the first time she got a job without a dance audition. "It was a big feat: They hired me and they didn't even see me dance." The same thing happened with her next job, playing Gloria, Patrick's snooty fiancée in the Kennedy Center's Mame. "I got hired through singing and acting. This transition is a big deal to me. Dancing was my 'in' for this business. It got me on Broadway.
"Dancing will always be my passion," she continues, "but, you know, I want the spotlight and the microphone. I want to be playing roles. Regionally, that's fine. I would just love to feel that—to build a character and have permission to use my creative juices outside of an ensemble."
She's had the chance to do that in The Apple Tree understudy rehearsals, especially with Ella, the chimney sweep who becomes Passionella the glamorous star. "It's a very extreme character," Everman says, "so that's fun trying to find your own Ella and what your nerdy, sort-of-unfortunate soul is."
