Interview: Broadway Veteran Liz Callaway of TO STEVE, WITH LOVE at Feinstein's 54 Below Talks Sondheim and More
LIZ CALLAWAY: TO STEVE, WITH LOVE plays Feinstein's/54 Below March 23-26
By: Ricky Pope Mar. 17, 2022
Once in a while in this job I have the unbelievable opportunity of talking to someone who influenced my life. I was in college the year Maltby and Shire's Baby performed a number on the Tony Awards telecast. The song, "I Want It All" featured three amazing women belting at the top of their voices and having a ball, a basketball to be specific. The most vibrant presence in the number was a young, blond woman, with a startlingly clear voice, who though roughly the age I was, was already starring in her second Broadway show. Watching her perform, I was determined that someday I would do what she was doing and I would sing with as much joyful abandon as she did.
That was my first glimpse of Broadway perennial Liz Callaway. Through the years her always impeccable voice has given me so many moments of happiness. From Miss Saigon, Cats, The Three Musketeers, The Look of Love, The Spitfire Grill, and The Look of Love on Broadway, to her many albums, both solo and with her sister, Ann Hampton Callaway. She has played some of the great heroines in regional theatre. Women like Evita, Norma Desmond, and Dot in Sunday in the Park With George. Most famously perhaps, her voice gave life to hit animated films like Anastasia and The Swan Princess as well as two Aladdin sequels and a follow-up to The Lion King. Her voice has been the soundtrack for so many of my important life mile markers. So imagine my delight and amazement when I picked up the phone and on the other end...was that voice...talking to me.
At every point of her career, she has been closely associated with the work of Stephen Sondheim. Her Broadway debut was in Merrily We Roll Along, which despite its sadly brief run has gone on to be the ultimate cult musical. Along with Merrily co-star, Jim Walton, she sang excerpts of Sondheim's work when he appeared on Bravo's Inside The Actors Studio. She has also appeared in a number of Sondheim tributes including You're Gonna Love Tomorrow and the much-heralded concert of Follies in which she played Young Sally. This month, Liz Callaway pays tribute to the recently departed maestro in a very personal evening entitled TO STEVE, WITH LOVE which will premiere at Feinstein's 54 Below on March 23. I had the pleasure of talking to Ms. Callaway about the show and her body of work with Stephen Sondheim. The following interview is very lightly edited for length and clarity.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me and Broadway World. I want to talk about your upcoming show at 54 Below, TO STEVE, WITH LOVE. You are so closely associated with Stephen Sondheim. What can fans expect from this show?
It's a very personal show. I wanted to celebrate his music and I, as you said, I had such a long history with him. I mean, I knew him for over 40 years. And his music was such a huge part of my life even before I ever worked with him. I'd been itching to do a Sondheim show in New York. Then when he passed away, I thought I needed to just concentrate on this and share his music. I'm going to be doing songs that I'm associated with, from shows and concerts that I did with him. But also I'm just going to sing some songs that I love. In addition to having worked with him and having these incredible experiences, I'm also such a fan. So it's just an excuse to get, to sing Sondheim for 75 minutes and tell stories. But I only have 75 minutes and that's absurd. I need to do part two and part three. There are so many songs I'm not going to be able to sing because there just isn't time. It's an embarrassment of riches.
Maybe that's something to look forward to? Part two and part three?
Why not? I seriously think I'm going to need to do that.
The Sondheim canon is obviously so vast. There aren't many clunkers in the bunch. They're all wonderfully rich songs. What is the process of narrowing that down to the ones that you really can fit into a set?
That's the challenge. There has to be an arc to the evening. It's not just a matter of singing a bunch of songs and talking. It's got to go somewhere. I owe it to my audiences to give them a really rich experience and I owe it to Steve. That's the compass for me. I have to do him proud. Don't take shortcuts and make it as good as it can be. I read a quote of his... I actually might have it right in front of me because like everyone else, I've been looking at all these YouTube videos and interviews. I can't get enough. I just watched for the very first time the Making of Follies concert documentary. I'd never seen it.
Oh my goodness. Really?
Yeah. You know, it's funny. I never like to watch anything I've done. That's just me. But I looked at Inside The Actors Studio and some of these other things that I had done that I had never seen before. OK, I'm gonna pull up this Sondheim quote. And this was from an interview he did at NPR. He was asked, did you learn anything from watching Bernstein work?" And he said, "Oh sure. A great deal. Yes. Mainly I learned something about courage. I learned Lenny was never afraid to make big mistakes. He was never afraid to fall off the top rung of the ladder. And I learned by implication that the worst thing you can do is fall off a low rung. If you're gonna make a mistake, make a huge one." So I'm just saying that whatever my choices are, I'm going to just dare. I think of this almost as "My Sondheim." It's not going to be a survey. Of course, there are shows I'm not going to be singing from. There's just no time. And it's also not that kind of show. There are going to be so many Sondheim tributes. The other concerts I've done in the past have been two acts, which is a very different experience. But it was also a feeling of wanting to educate an audience. I don't think I need to educate my audiences about Sondheim necessarily, but it's sort of like, well, what can I offer? What can I share with my experiences? It's just such rich material. And some of the songs that I sang years ago, oh my God, I understand these so much more now. I feel like as I get older, it's only better. I've always sung Sondheim in my concerts, but I just feel it's an opportunity to keep his music alive. There's nothing more enjoyable than singing Sondheim.
Tell me a little about that. For you, what is the difference between singing a Sondheim song and singing another composer's song? You've sung so many composers' works, what's different about Sondheim?
I've always said that one of the things I like about singing Sondheim is that I get to be smarter than I am. His songs are so intricate and have so many different levels to explore, so many contradictions of human experience that we all understand. The challenge of doing an evening of all Sondheim of course, is that his songs are so show-specific and so character-specific. There are certain songs that I can sing as Liz with my story. And then there are certain times when I'm a character from the show he wrote or sometimes a character of my own making. It's very challenging.
Would you tell us about your first meeting with Sondheim and share your audition experience for Merrily We Roll Along. What was that like as a young performer to be in that sort of august company?
You know, to be perfectly honest, I don't know if I actually remember my first direct meeting with him. I had seen Company when I was a kid. It was my first Broadway show. I was nine or ten and my parents had seen it first and brought home the cast album. I was obsessed with that cast album and memorized it. And then we went to see the show. And so 10 years later, I found myself doing Merrily, with the same director, same writer, composer, book writer, in the same theatre. It was crazy. My audition experience. I had five for Merrily. Each time I never did more than 32 measures of "Be a Lion," my go-to audition song at the time. So by the time we got to the fifth audition, we didn't know it was the final callback. I mean, I'm sure you saw the documentary that Lonny Price made.
I did.
When I met him, I was so in awe. I'm definitely less shy than I was back then, but I was, I was pretty shy. I think I just worshiped him. Like so many people, right? I respected him so much and admired him. I never called him and said, "Hey, let's have lunch and hang out." I never had the courage to do that. I wish I had, because, you know, I think he would've said yes, He was so incredibly generous to people. Another thing I admire about him is how much he cared about teaching and mentoring people. That was a huge, huge part of his life. It was very important to him. We all have regrets in life. That might have been nice to have gotten to know him better. But I feel so blessed and lucky to live in the time of Stephen Sondheim, so lucky that after being a kid and falling in love with the score of Company then I got to have his music and have him be such a huge part of my career.
For those of us who didn't know him personally, what would you tell us that might be surprising about Sondheim?
I don't know if this would be a surprise. It's really random. Something I really, really liked about him, he had fantastic email etiquette. I know a lot of people hate email, and much has been said about the typewritten notes that he sent. And I have a whole stack of them that I actually just went through. But there are many times over the years, I'd have a question for him and I would send him an email and by golly, he'd get back to me right away. I really appreciated that.
That's interesting. He had so many stories about finding clever ways to procrastinate from his work. Maybe that was another tactic to keep from working.
Ha! That's actually..."Maybe I'll return this email." I was texting with my sister. Everyone knows I'm an incredibly indecisive person when it comes to what I'm doing. And choosing songs to do for any show is really, really challenging for me. For instance, I'm really close to this show. I still don't know what my opening is and I don't know what my closer is. The body of the show. I think it's about there. And Ann said to me, "You know you're just like Sondheim. He waited until the last second to write. Maybe I'm pretty good at procrastinating too.
That's interesting. Are you a Libra?
I'm an Aries.
I'm a Libra and indecision is one of our primary traits apparently.
It's actually a really big challenge for me. I do say though that all the hard work reveals something. Something will reveal itself. It can't be perfect. I have to always remind myself, my motive is just to share his music. I mean, we all are just craving, at least I'm craving his music. It just doesn't seem possible that he's not with us. I feel like I lost a member of my family.
It's interesting that you describe how your show comes together as something being revealed. . Would you consider yourself an instinctual artist rather than an artist who meticulously plans things?
I'm a combination. It really depends. There are certain things I want to know what I'm doing. I don't like having loose ends.
Right.
It's a little stressful. But I think you have to be open to serendipity. I've always kind of loved when things go wrong on stage and you have to immediately improvise.
I love that too. When I talk to people this way, I really love to talk about the pandemic and how they survived it. I think you had one of the best pandemic projects in Auto Tunes. That was just such a grand idea. How did that come to you?
I've always loved to sing in my car. I like to sing in motion and it's actually really hard for me just stand and sing at home. I thought wouldn't it be funny if I could film myself singing. And of course, with the iPhones, I have a mount on my windshield if I need directions or something. I thought I could film this just for fun. One of my first Auto Tunes songs was "Children Will Listen." I actually sent it to Sondheim,
Really?
He enjoyed it. He told me, I looked very much like his friend Mia Farrow in the video.
That's a compliment for sure.
People really seemed to like it. So I did some more. During the pandemic, I was trying to work on my YouTube channel because it just seemed like, okay, here's something to do. It's very peaceful and it's not like a performance. I'm very, very careful obviously when I'm driving. God knows I've been singing a lot of Sondheim in the car. Actually, the day that we got the news that he passed away was the day after Thanksgiving. I had a gig in Quincy, Massachusetts for their tree-trimming ceremony. And I had my CDs of tracks of things I was doing for that. It was a long drive. And I stuck my hand in the side where I have all these different CDs of tracks and I pulled one out and just stuck it in. It was a CD I had made called Sunday In the car With Sondheim. And it was just like minutes of all my Sondheim piano tracks. And then for the next 75 minutes, I just sang all these Sondheim songs for absolutely no reason, but just for the sheer pleasure it. I got to Quincy two hours later, and about 20 minutes before I had to go on and sing "Joy to the World" I got a text that he had passed away.
Oh my gosh.
I thought how wild is it that I was just singing his songs?
I loved Auto Tunes because I used to live in Texas before I moved to New York. Every day I would drive from Fort Worth to Dallas which was about 45 minutes if the traffic was good. And that's exactly what I would do. I gave full-on performances in my car for all the people on I-35.
There's something so freeing about it. During the pandemic, we all felt, and frankly, we all are still feeling a great deal of anxiety. Having something else to focus on and singing definitely helped. Now, I find I've been singing a lot. I've been vocalizing to a cassette tape I found that my late mom, who was a wonderful voice teacher made for her students. I've been vocalizing while I'm prepping dinner because I love to cook. I've been cooking up a storm and trying new recipes all the time. And then I sing because of the year and a half layoff. Every singer will tell you we still have a way to go to get back our stamina. think maybe I might start sharing some videos while I'm, you know, dicing onions.
If you can sing while slicing onions, that's something.
Yes. And why is she crying? She's emoting or is it the onions?
That's exactly right. Speaking of stamina, I wanna talk about your voice, which I think is quite distinctive. It's one of those voices that you only have to hear a few notes and you go, "Well, that's Liz Callaway."The thing that I find remarkable about your voice is that it is very youthful. I mean, it sounds as youthful as it did when you were doing Baby or Merrily We Roll Along or any of those very early shows. What do you do to keep your voice in that sort of shape?
I think it's just the way I'm constructed. I don't know. It's just the quality of my voice. It's just what it is. I'm very careful. I've been hydrating. I'm very careful not to push or belt things that I can't belt and obviously I take very good care of my voice. It's, I feel, my gift from God that I need to really take care of. But in terms of still sounding young, it's just what my voice is. I can sing a little lower now than I used to be able to, but it's still the same quality. It's not as easy to sing as it used to be. I look at some of these old things. I watched some of the Inside the Actors Studio when Sondheim was interviewed. He was like four feet away from me and it was terrifying. But I listen to myself like, "Man, I sounded good. That sounded so easy." As you get older, nothing is as easy as it used to be. But we bring all our life experiences. I'm very grateful that I still can sing all those songs I've always sung. It's not as effortless as it was when I was younger. That's the sad part. Nothing is.
Nothing is.
But the trade-off is that what you bring to songs is so much deeper. It may not be as simple. It may not be as pretty all the time. But that might be a good thing. You know, the first live performance for people I had after the pandemic was in April of '21. And I sang the anthem for the Mets. I'm a huge Mets fan. And instead of being on the field, because of all the COVID protocols, they filmed me in the food court. You could see the field behind me. I was just nervous. As I started to sing, about 30 people gathered around when they realized the anthem was being sung and they had their beers and their Shake Shacks in their hands. And they all gathered around me. And I was so relaxed because it's not just me now. I can sing to people and it's a two-way street. I don't know if they realize when they come to a show or a concert, particularly a cabaret venue, how important they are, how much it's such a shared experience. I really feel that in this show too.
I have kept you on the phone for far too long. But this has been delightful. I'm such an admirer of you and of Sondheim. I'm looking forward to the show. It was so nice talking to you about it.
So nice to talk to you too.
Liz Callaway: TO STEVE, WITH LOVE plays at 54 Below at 7 pm Wednesday, March 23- Saturday, March 26 with musical direction by Alex Rybeck. Tickets are also available for a special live-streamed performance on March 26. For tickets and information, go to 54below.com. To learn more about Liz Callaway, visit lizcallway.com or follow her @LizGoesOn on Instagram or @lizgoeson on Instagram.
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