Struthers and Mekka Keep Up The Tradition in Fiddler

Besides being a theatre and movie fanatic, I also love my TV shows. And for this interview, I got to talk with stars from two of my favorite classic TV shows, Sally Struthers of All In The Family and Gilmore Girls fame and Eddie Mekka of Laverne and Shirley, who are starring in the Ogunquit Playhouse's new production of Fiddler on the Roof, through June 21^st.

 

Struthers is a two-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner for her performances in television's groundbreaking series All in the Family, beloved star of stage and screen, and tireless advocate for underprivileged children throughout the world.  She appeared on the Broadway stage in Neil Simon's female version of THE ODD COUPLE, starred as Miss Hannigan in the 20th Anniversary National tour of ANNIE, starred as Miss Lynch on Broadway and in the National Tour of the Tommy Tune production of the musical GREASE.

Eddie Mekka was seen in Ogunquit's production of Hairspray last season as Wilbur Turnblad. Mekka is best remembered as Carmine Ragusa on the hit TV classic, Laverne & Shirley. He has performed in numerous television programs, feature films and Broadway shows as well as in the National Tours of "The Goodbye Girl," "Damn Yankees" with Ray Walston and Gwen Verdon, "Grease" with Cindy Williams and for the last 15 years in his favorite show, Fiddler On The Roof. Mekka most recently starred in "Hairspray" in Las Vegas. He keeps busy between stage and television shows touring the country with his night club act most recently performing in the North End of Boston in a concert for the Italian Festival. 

TJ:  You two sound like you're having a lot of fun up there in Ogunquit.

STRUTHERS:  We are! Where are you?

TJ: I'm actually calling you from Rhode Island.

STRUTHERS: Ah!! I love Rhode Island!!

MEKKA:  I was just down there yesterday on my day off. I was at Twin River as I am going to be appearing there doing my act in a couple of months.

TJ:  That's great. I will have to try to get over there to catch it. So, how's it going with Fiddler?

STRUTHERS:  We've got full houses. Everybody is crying when they're leaving but says what a wonderful time they had. It's a very touching show that I have always loved.  I never ever thought that I would be cast in the show. I was honored when they cast me as Golde and I said, "Are you sure you want me to play Golde???"  I think Golde is the universal mother…it doesn't matter what your ethnic background is. I'm playing a mother of five girls and Eddie Mekka's wife and I'm in a community with lots of traditions. I grew up that way. We Norwegian Lutherans have a lot of traditions too!

TJ:   A Norwegian Lutheran…

STRUTHERS:  What are you, TJ?

TJ:   A Catholic. But, not just that…an Irish Catholic! Now, you both have performed at Ogunquit before…as a matter of fact, just last season, right? Eddie, you were in Hairspray. That's must have been a lot of fun?

MEKKA:  It was!  As a matter of fact, we have trees in this show and the back of the trees, they have the floor from Hairspray.

STRUTHERS:  We have these beautiful birch trees that our scenic designer, Richard Ellis, created. He has made the stage twice as big as it really is and these gigantic ceiling to floor birch trees travel in and out on several different tracks. They're magnificent and they light them differently for all the different scenes. On the upstage side, they're all polka dots on the back! And I said to Eddie, "Why did they make the birch trees polka dot?"

MEKKA: And I said, "They're saving the world."

STRUTHERS: This is a green theatre. They're recycling.

MEKKA:  I love them for that!

TJ:  Sally, you're back this season after appearing last season in The Full Monty, which I was lucky enough to see.

STRUTHERS:  Did you make the pilgrimage here to see that?

TJ:  I did and it was wonderful. More than worth the trip!

STRUTHERS:  It's a very entertaining show. I love the music and, my god, how much fun is it to play the character of Jeannette.

TJ: Had the two of you worked together before this production of Fiddler?

MEKKA:  No. We touched paths. Last year, she was doing The Full Monty and I was doing Hairspray and we both said...

MEKKA and STRUTHERS:  Hello!

MEKKA:  And we said, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could do Fiddler together?" And a year later and here we are doing it!

TJ:  So, Eddie you've been doing Fiddler for a few years. Obviously, the show has a great place in your heart.

MEKKA:  Yes, it does. When I first saw it, I had no daughters and I wasn't even married. Now I have one daughter, so I can imagine how Tevye feels with five daughters. Each one of them breaks his heart.

STRUTHERS:  I have a daughter as well, so I know what it's like to parent a teenage daughter.

TJ:  Do your kids have any aspirations for the acting business?

MEKKA:  My daughter was actually in Fiddler on the Roof with me. She played Bielke at the Bucks County Playhouse.

STRUTHERS: Bielke is the youngest daughter.

MEKKA:  Bielke and Shprintze are the youngest…

STRUTHER: Who I kept not remembering their names at rehearsals and called them Sprinkles and Bialystock.

MEKKA:  And those were the toughest! The other ones are easy.

TJ:  What is it about this musical that really gets your creative juices flowing?

MEKKA:  It's just an old standard musical with great family values and we have since lost those values a long time ago. It's really nice to touch base with it. If a couple of people walk away feeling good about and we feel good that we actually did something.

STRUTHERS:  And I know watching Eddie, we're both cut from the same bolt of fabric. I watch him show after show and he never gives less than 100%. We just finished a 10AM show for middle school and high school kids. They filled the theatre and they were most appreciative and Eddie gave the same performance that he gives at night for the paying adult customers.

MEKKA:  You too, baby.

STRUTHERS:  It's nice to see someone with that much professionalism and it makes me love Eddie all the more. The challenge for me is the first time doing this show and Eddie has done it so many times is to live up to the show and the traditions it represents.

MEKKA:  And Sally is the best Golde I've ever had…I've got to be honest with you. Our Tevye and Golde are Ralph and Alice, The Honeymooners. It's Archie and Edith. Golde will bring him down a notch but when it comes down to the end, she shuts up and listens to him.

TJ: Sally, I understand that this is a role you've been waiting to play for a long time.

STRUTHERS:  Well, to tell you the truth, I've known the show a long time but I never entertained the thought of being in this production. It's because I remember when it was done a couple of years ago on Broadway…the jokes that were made about Rosie O'Donnell with her round smiling Irish face and how not Semitic she would look on stage. And that seemed to bother people. So when Brad Kenney, the artistic director here, asked me to do it, I said, "I've got the same round face and sparkling blue eyes. Are you sure you want me?" And he said, "Absolutely! This role calls for an actress and an entertainer and you're both. You'll be great!"  And they don't see my blonde hair in Tradition in Russia. The tradition was when a woman got married, her head was shaved. She went the rest of her adult live with no hair which is why they wear a babushka and why at Sabbath they put those crazy wigs on, so unattractive. So I am always in a babushka and a black wig.

MEKKA:  But I have to thank Brad because he had the concept that you and I would be wonderful in these roles.

STRUTHERS:  Eddie Mekka and I are both vertically challenged. And they cast the daughters for us, including the two youngest ones, are five of them all taller than the two of us.

MEKKA:  We're on stilts. (laughing)

TJ: It could happen. Genetics are a strange thing.

STRUTHERS: Absolutely!

TJ:  Now, you both are widely known for your TV work. Do you still get stopped on the street by people yelling out Gloria, your character on All In The Family or Carmine from Laverne and Shirley?

STRUTHERS:  All the time and I love it!

MEKKA:  Yes, we do and it's kind of nice. You know, after the show, they don't say Carmine and Gloria. They call us by our real names.

STRUTHERS:  And it was interesting the phenomenon that started happening for me eight years ago with The Gilmore Girls, which I was on the whole seven years. I would see a mother and a daughter out together and the mother would say, "Oh! I always watched you on All In The Family and you were so great as Gloria. And the daughter would say, "No…she's Babette on The Gilmore Girls!"

TJ:  I have to tell you, Sally, I have to have my daily fix of Still Standing and love your character of Louise, the doting mother-in-law.

STRUTHERS:  Thank you so much, TJ!

TJ:  You have an upcoming gig closer to me July 10^th through the 19^th in Annie with the Reagle Players (www.reagleplayers.com) in Waltham, Massachusetts. I know you've played the role of Miss Hannigan many times.

STRUTHERS:  I replaced Nell Carter on Broadway in the revival and I went out on tour with the company. I did the role for a year and a half. I've also done it in Las Vegas and also in San Jose, California. That is a role I had waited to play. I saw it on Broadway in the early 70's with Dorothy Loudon and fell madly in love with her and the show. I was so young at the time and said that if I live long enough, I am going to play Miss Hannigan. And then, I go the opportunity which was really cool.

TJ:  You are both very involved with theatre now. Do you have a preference between theatre or television?

MEKKA:  I like theatre. It doesn't pay as much as TV. You only get once shot to get it right. In television, you get many chances to get it right and you get paid ten times more.

STRUTHERS:  I wish we could mix all the mediums together. I love the immediacy of live theatre of being a tightrope walker without a net. And I love the steady work of a TV series. I guess it would be doing live TV like a Saturday Night Live.

MEKKA: You know, people come out of their houses to see you and they don't care if you were on television and you mess up. If you mess up, they want to see more! And a lot of actors from television can't do that.  We're from theatre so we can do it.

STRUTHERS:  I feel like theatre, for us, separates the men from the boys.

TJ:  Eddie, what's up for you after this gig?

MEKKA:  I'm going to off Broadway in New York to do a show called My Mothers Italian, My Fathers Jewish And I'm In Therapy.

STRUTHERS:  And I am going to see him in it. I am going to be in New York rehearsing for a six month tour of Nunsense. We'll be rehearsing in August and going out in September. I think we open in Wyoming.

TJ: Ok, now the hard questions now. What do you like to do when you're not performing?

MEKKA:  I like to fish. I've been fishing here twice already. If I'm not doing theatre, I build…I'm a carpenter. I'll take a closet and make it into a kitchen.

TJ:  How about you, Sally?

STRUTHERS:  Me? I like to fish and build kitchens out of closets. (laughing) I like to paint and draw. I love writing letters. I don't have a computer…I choose not to have one. I actually enjoy stationery and greeting cards. I write to everyone I know...they get an actual letter in writing. And I'm a crossword puzzle fanatic. Last year, I missed an entrance of stage because I was doing crossword puzzles in my dressing room.

TJ: If the two of you weren't in the acting business, what would you be doing?

STRUTHERS:  I would have been an interior decorator.

MEKKA:  I would do the same thing. (laughing). No, I would have been a carpenter.

Many thanks to these two multi-talented people. We had a lot of laughs and you have until June 21 to see them together on stage in Fiddler On The Roof at the Ogunquit Playhouse, 10 Main Street in Ogunquit, Maine. You can get tickets through the website at www.ogunquitplayhouse.org or by calling the theatre at (207) 646-5511.  So, as always, ciao for now, folks and remember, theatre is my life!