BWW Interviews: PRESENT LAUGHTER's Harriet Harris

Coffee. Hot chocolate. Cozy fireplaces. Hot buttered rum. Snuggies. All of these are excellent ways to warm oneself on a cold and snowy New York day. Another very effective manner to beat the winter chills is to receive a phone call from Harriet Harris, the Tony Award winning actress who starred in such Broadway shows as Old Acquaintance, THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, CRY-BABY and THOUROUGHLY MODERN MILLE, for which she received her coveted Tony. Currently co-starring with Victor Garber and Brooks Ashmanskas in the Roundabout Theatre's production of Noel Coward's comedy PRESENT LAUGHTER, Miss Harris took time out between matinee and evening performances for a conversation in the midst of a severe snowstorm. She was an excellent conversationalist and displayed great perception about theatre, human behavior and the production she is currently appearing in. Additionally, there's a warmth to her voice that made it easy to forget the inclement weather outside the window.

The Texas native credits her desire to perform to the Casa Manana Merry-Go-Round School where she was sent by her mother to overcome shyness. "It had a silly name," says the actress, "but it had a wonderful woman running it named Sharon Benge and she was just fabulous. She was probably responsible for enriching the lives of a lot of children. I enjoyed the atmosphere, the teachers, and it wasn't so much that I liked being on stage, but I relished the camaraderie with the other children and benefited from having a structured environment. I think it was a very good choice." The idea of performing as a profession probably clicked in Harris at that time. "It wasn't donning another personality so much as liking the atmosphere of the place," she explains.

Although the theatre is her first love, Harris has appeared in such films as THE ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES, NURSE BETTY, and MEMENTO, as well as several television series. "If someone is going to pay you to go some place and do something, you'll have a very short career if you don't go where work is offered you," she states with a laugh. "If you will only do what you always thought you'd be doing and refuse trying anything else to expand your horizons, then it's not a very intelligent way to go about things. I've been happily able to do a number of different kinds of projects and I've enjoyed them all."

Harris' first Broadway role was that of an understudy. "I was covering Stockard Channing in John Guare's play FOUR BABBOONS ADORING THE SUN. I don't think anyone back home would say that an understudy is a Broadway role, but it was at Lincoln Center and I did get to go on," Harris recalls. "It was a very challenging play and I was very thrilled to have that opportunity."

The show that won Harriet Harris her Tony Award was the stage adaptation of the movie THOUOUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. Did Harris think that she was going to win the award? "Oh no," she says in a manner that indicates she once was a very shy little girl. "I was surprised and thrilled that I got to do the show. Then I was surprised and amused that I was nominated. I was really struck when they called out my name as the winner. I was watching the nominations program at home with my boyfriend and he was yelling and was very excited. I was dumbfounded when they called my name out. Actually winning the award was a big unexpected thrill. I don't believe anybody thought I was going to receive that prize. The only people who were sure about my chances were Ken Leong and Francis Ju-- my two partners in crime in MILLIE. They were very sweet and supportive. Francis insisted that I write a speech and he repeated it a number of times. Eventually I thought I'd feel too stupid if I didn't have something ready. I had learned my lesson at the Drama Desks because I had gotten that award and I didn't have any speech prepared. At the cocktail reception before the ceremonies, many people I had never met were coming up to introduce themselves. I began to realize that they wouldn't be seeking me out if they didn't like what I did. At that point I began thinking very fast and was determined not to be embarrassed if they didn't say my name. When I went to the Tony's I was better prepared."

One of Harriet Harris' recent forays into musical comedy was in John Waters' CRY-BABY. It was in the context of this conversation that Harris learned the star of that show, James Snyder, had high praise for Harris in a recent Broadway World interview. He said, "I have to say that woman is sensational. In CRY-BABY she played the matriarch and as a performer she set the bar for the rest of us. She's a wonderful woman, too. She just has such grace. There are people who you watch work and they constantly amaze you. I'm so blessed to have worked with Harriet." In response, Harris laughs jovially and says, "That's very sweet of him. Maybe he thinks he's gonna wind up in my will!" she adds with more good-humored laughter. However she has her share of encomiums for Snyder: "What a wonderful young man he is. He's absolutely adorable and fun to work with. As Gary Essendine in PRESENT LAUGHTER says, he's ‘permanent pleasure on the eye.' I think James has got everything going for him."

CRY-BABY is a show that Harris had great fondness for. "I loved it!" she emphatically states. "I would really have to hate a job not to love it. Unless things are going really, really, really wrong, there's a way to improve something every day. There's a top notch creative team and that's a whole lot of talent and smarts who are going to try making The Situation better. I thought it was a thrill to work with some people who I already knew and it was fun to be with so many young actors, too. I truly enjoyed it. I thought it was funny and witty and that the music was great and the lyrics were hilarious. Mark O'Donnell and Tom Meehan wrote a very funny book. The dancing, I thought, was spectacular! John Waters was so much fun! He's an enormously talented man. I don't know why we weren't a hit. At the time I thought it was because John was already represented on Broadway with HAIRSPRAY and people felt it was a franchise and it took some of John's edginess away. He deserved to have two shows on Broadway simultaneously. He's such an enormously talented man. I truly admired the show and I was very sorry that we didn't have a longer run."

There's another plausible reason for CRY-BABY's short life: the internet. "Possibly a show with a strong youth appeal finds that it has bloggers writing about it and people discussing it in chat rooms. This reveals that many of the people are well-informed and well-intentioned but some of them aren't," says Harris. "It's hard enough to have people who with a real history with the theatre and put things in perspective while they discuss your work, however, many times you'll find that there are individuals out there just to amuse themselves for ten minutes on the internet. I don't know if that had anything to do with CRY-BABY but some people were speculating that the actual word-of-mouth generated by audiences leaving the theatre was very good yet some of the things that were being said on message boards were so ill-informed that they seemed happy to watch a project fail. These people appeared rather thrilled to have that effect on something, too. It does surprise me when individuals are ungenerous and aren't waiting for something to develop during the cruciAl Weeks of previews. That's just very dangerous."

Continuing on the subject, Harris said: "If you're having a preview period, you have to let things simmer and develop. That was something that James had to confront a great deal with in CRY-BABY as new numbers and new verses were being given to him continually. That's something that everybody has to do all the time in musicals anyway. People learn new dances and routines are being yanked while other are put in. You don't judge that yet. We're getting ready for you and you have to wait and let it become theatre."

Many actors claim that they don't read reviews of their performances and Harriet Harris has a unique slant on The Situation. She laughs heartily as she recalls, "Oh sure I've read them! When I was starting out as an actress I did a show and everyone was telling me I was good in it and that it would be so much fun to read the reviews. I loved the production very much and I remember going out and getting coffee and bagels for myself and buying the three papers that were available that day. I read them when I got home and it just went from bad to worse! I couldn't believe it! By the time I got to the third paper I kept wondering if they were reviewing the same show I was in. As a rule, I don't read reviews. In the past twenty-five years I have read reviews for only three productions I've done." Harris did, most assuredly, read the reviews for PRESENT LAUGHTER. They were glowing.

At the mere mention of the Kennedy Center's mounting of Jerry Herman's musical MAME, Harris lets out a wonderful sigh. It was obviously a project that she had great fondness for. There had been talk in the New York Times that it would head to Broadway's Palace Theatre but the transfer never materialized. "It was something that people were hoping would happen but we didn't have a move-to-Broadway clause in our contracts. Yet there were great hopes that such a move would happen. There was a lot of talk about it at the time. People were really on tenterhooks; especially the ensemble members who had other jobs to go on to. They had to put off saying ‘yes' or ‘no' to other offers as long as possible because every day we felt we'd hear that we were going to New York. Sadly, it just didn't materialize." Harris mentions that Jerry Herman was very supportive of the production and stayed for quite a bit of time during the previews. "He's so much fun to have around," she states.

Harriet Harris seemed to get all of America to notice her when she played Frasier Crane's cut-throat agent in the latter years of the long-running sitcom FRASIER. Bebe was the woman America loved to hate and Harris had a grand time playing her. "Oh, I loved that show! I loved the writers and I had gone to school with Kelsey Grammar-we were at Julliard together. I'd done a number of plays with David Hyde Pierce and knew Peri Gilpen a little bit, so I felt quite at home there. I grew to know some of the writers, too. It was all very happy when they asked me to come back after my first episode. It was a great group to be with. They were very clever about how they did that show and how they brought out various facets of Bebe's character."

Like many other actors, Harriet Harris is a "repeat offender" when it comes to performing at The Roundabout Theatre. "I like the plays they do," she readily explains. "I think Todd Haimes is wonderful and I'm always eager to see what his season is going to be; not looking for a job necessarily but I like that he really does try to offer variety to an audience. I've only worked for them here at the American Airlines Theatre and I love the way it is set up, as well as the way they take care of us here. Everybody does more than they really need to do in order to make something work well. For example, the marvelous Wardrobe Supervisor, Susan Fallon, does these wonderful brunches that they have every Sunday. To get all these people to bring food and then cook and do things down in the belly of the theatre is way beyond the call of duty. I keep thinking, ‘What other theatre does this?' I've worked in a lot of places and nobody does. Sue and the dressers who work with her make the dressing rooms look so pretty. They bring flowers and have my room decked out as though I were a Russian émigré. You know, like some white Russian princess. People come in and think I've brought all this stuff in. It does look like an actress has traveled with her trunk. It's a lovely place to work and a lot of the same people are here from when the theatre first opened and I did THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. So they're happy here. The front-of-house is happy and there's a group here who just wants to make theatre happen. I've always had a good time here."

Audience reaction to PRESENT LAUGHTER has been excellent. "This show is great fun to do. With weather conditions being what they've been in New York, we usually win over even the frost bitten! A lot of the cast was ‘up and ready' from the very first preview because they had done the play at the Huntington and only Richard Poe and I were new. Another thing that we have going for us is that we all really like being onstage with the other people. It's a fun group and I think we play together fairly well."

Harris has nothing but praise for her fellow cast members. "This is really a silly, funny cast and we do go out afterwards and have dinner together. They've put some couches backstage for us because there's no real ‘green room' in this theatre. We get to the theatre early and talk about the day's events and someone's always had some ridiculous adventure. It's a really great atmosphere. It's not only good for comedy but good for us as well."

One thing that a conversation with Harriet Harris reveals is that she truly loves her profession and is dedicated to the craft of acting. "I have a sense of wonderment about it," she reflects. "That's what's attractive about the theatre. It can inspire awe and wonder and it can lift one out of oneself." The current weather conditions in the tri-state area find many people wanting to get out of themselves and PRESENT LAUGHTER at the American Airlines Theatre might be just the place to achieve that. It has Noel Coward's brilliant one-liners, an excellent cast and the warmth and zaniness of Harriet Harris' delightful performance to melt the icicles that have been all too common in New York this season.

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PRESENT LAUGHTER is playing at The Roundabout Theatre's American Airlines Theatre located at 227 West 42nd Street. For tickets and more information, visit www.roundabouttheatre.org.