A Golden Night with the New York Pops: Kelli O'Hara on Celebrating Longtime Friend Kathleen Marshall

Six-time Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara is back on Broadway - and tomorrow, Monday, May 4 she'll honor a woman who's helped shape and support her stage career for over a decade.

Their working relationship began in 2001, when O'Hara, a young theatre actress with only a single Broadway credit to her name, entered the company of FOLLIES at the Belasco Theatre, where Kathleen Marshall, who served as the revival's choreographer, proved to her then and there why she's become a staple of the industry.

To this day, O'Hara can recall the way Marshall arrived: organized, patient, and sincere. Ready to work, ready to push, ready to help performers nail her notoriously "intense" choreography, according to O'Hara. Marshall, even then, was a leader.

"Kathleen came [into the theater] with all of this dramaturgy, history, and style," O'Hara said, who went on to turn out striking performances in Marshall's NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT and THE PAJAMA GAME. "A style that not only was reflected in her choreography, but with the clothing and costumes, everything she touched. She really knows how to look at a piece from all angels, build a world, and allow the actors to step right into it."

In honor of her contributions to Broadway and those she's worked with, The New York Pops, lead by Steven Reineke, will salute Kathleen and Rob Marshall at their annual gala with an all-star lineup of perfomers, which O'Hara, a board member, said joining was a "no brainer."

Longtime friends, the pair have partnered for various benefits and galas throughout New York City for years, the beloved stage actress, currently appearing in Bartlett Sher's stunning new production of THE KING AND I, even performed at the director's wedding to producer Scott Landis.

O'Hara typically takes part in the Pops' gala, but this year was something special she said, being beyond "excited to celebrate an honoree who I'm actually very close with. Kathleen is wonderful. She's a real force of nature, and working with her is a tour de force. She's a creative mastermind. We're both women of the theatre, we're both moms, and we both want to be creative and taken seriously. We get each other."

Since her Broadway debut, O'Hara has shared the stage with the best of the best - Matthew Broderick, Steven Pasquale, Harry Connick, Jr - in productions helmed by the stage's most innovative inspiring directors, including Bartlett Sher and Matthew Warchus. The Great White Way boasts some of the most visionary, talented people on the planet, and Marshall is undboutedly on the top, she said.

"You work with so many different kinds of directors," O'Hara said. "And they can literally be directing everybody to do everything. But I think the best directors that I've worked with are people that come in as leaders and allow all of the artists to find what they can bring to the piece. They're the mastermind. They keep it together, they put it all in place. [Kathleen] is like that. It's different working with her than a lot of other directors - and I really quite love it."

Before the first preview curtain comes down, before the actors take their marks in front of thousands, Marshall is 100 percent there, as if opening night was a day away.

"There's no wasting time with her," O'Hara said. "She knows what she wants. Kathleen comes into rehearsals with a lot of wonderful ideas. Being the choreographer and director, she already has a lot of physical language already taken care of. I'm not a dancer, but she's asked me to do dancing that I've never been asked to do! Which is a lot of fun. It's a real challenge. But then she's also easily able to go slow and listen to everyone's opinions."

Marshall's choreography is thrilling, intense. It demands a of the performers, but she's right there the whole way, O'Hara said, intent on making sure each individual feels comfortable and at home in her fleet-footed steps.

"She creates this language that we have to get in our bodies somehow," she said. "As we learn, it might not be exactly what the number will turn out to be, but she's there, she's teaching you the steps, and she really takes her time with it. Honestly, I've never met a more patient person than Kathleen Marshall."

Again, it was all proved to her immediately. In FOLLIES, O'Hara first observed Marshall's dedication to her dancers, saw the way she was able to slow it down, draw it out, take time for perfection.

"In the show, she was teaching these 90-year old women this big dance ensemble number for 'Mirror, Mirror.' I swear, it took us a thousand years to learn it," she said, laughing. "But she just went over it and over it. Again and again. And we came out with a number that was quite thrilling. And those women were very proud of themselves, because Kathleen refused to give up on them, and they succeeded!"

A mutual love for Broadway's classics have brought the two show women together again and again. "We were raised on classic dance and musical theatre," she said. "It's something we both love to pay homage to. Kathleen is so very smart with the 'language of yesterday,' what made people fall in love with musical theatre in the first place. It's that Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers feeling. Katheen takes that, and she brings that into today."

The theatre, like O'Hara said, is full of many. Many talented, many inspirational, all devoted to the stage and the story and the song and the dance. But only so many are capable of leading, of proving what it means to be equally capable and inspirational.

"I always want to thank Kathleen for being an example, for being one of those few," O'Hara said. "Thank you for being a creative song-woman, a leader, and thank you for teaching me how to be one myself. We all need examples like that."

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Below, check out performance clips from Marshall's productions starring O'Hara and others, proving just why the duo work together so well.

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Single tickets for the concert range from $65 to $160 and are available at http://www.carnegiehall.org/, by calling CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800 or at the Carnegie Hall Box Office, at 57th Street and 7th Avenue.

Photo of Marshall & O'Hara by Walter McBride