Donna Lynne Champlin's Finishing The Hat: Attend The Tales

By: Michael Dale Feb. 15, 2007

The Watergate tapes helped bring down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. The tapes Michael Bennett recorded of Broadway dancers telling intimate details of their lives led to the creation of A Chorus Line. But this past Monday night at Birdland, a captivated audience thrilled to the sounds of the most historically significant tape in the history of American culture. Yes, I'm writing of the mixtape a young Donna Lynne Champlin recorded and sent anonymously to the boy she was crushing on, Broadway star-to-be Brian d'Arcy James. In one of the more deliriously mad episodes of her debut cabaret show, Finishing The Hat, Champlin sings along with an excerpt from the legendary B-side of this musical love confessional, where she edited bits of different songs to give her massively-eyebrowed heartthrob clues to her identity. She then explains how she systematically stalked d'Arcy James during his Broadway runs of Blood Brothers and Carousel, before eventually being cast opposite the lad in a play reading where her character was required to seduce him.

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And at that point of the show, she's only just started.
Though she's most know for her work in musical theatre (even her straight play role in Broadway's Hollywood Arms featured her vocal prowess) there is surprisingly little singing in the showcase Donna Lynne Champlin devised for herself. Oh, yes we do get treated to her piercingly expressive belt and intelligent phrasing, but Finishing The Hat is truly centered on her talents as an engaging storyteller. There is a hat filled with index cards, each referring to an amusing, and more typically embarrassing moment in Champlin's life. Audience members are invited to pick a card to determine what story she'll tell next, making each performance a unique experience.
With the skill of a seasoned physical comic and the wry sense of humor of someone who has been there and back, she tells us of career misadventures, disappointing boyfriends and freakishly odd personal experiences without ever seeming self-indulgent. The bravery she shows in talking about some very personal matters is quite endearing and her natural sincerity makes the evening seem less of a performance and more of a casual gabfest you might have with a pal over a couple of beers. And, of course, every story is capped off with an appropriate song.

Since revealing too much of her material would be a bit like telling you a stand-up comic's jokes in advance, I'll simply let you know that an audition miscommunication led to her being cast in an Off-Broadway show as a dancer/singer instead of the more appropriate singer/dancer, thrusting Champlin into a rehearsal horror story that dissolves into a soulful and sweet rendering of the Charlie Chaplin/John Turner/Geoffrey Parsons classic "Smile." Several times she clearly announces the name and phone number of the spineless ex-fiancé who screwed her over (I think it was 212-330-68 something something) before summing up their relationship with Stephen Sondheim's "I Know Things Now." You'll have to find out for yourself what the problem was at airport security that sent her soaring into "The Air Is Free", the Robert Lindsey-Nassif anthem from Flight of the Lawnchair Man that can certainly be considered a signature tune, but I won't breath a word about the scandalous antics that lead up to a gleefully perverse interpretation of Stephen Schwartz's "Popular."

The Brian d'Arcy James story always comes first and she always closes with a touching remembrance of the support she felt from her castmates the day she made her Broadway debut, stepping on stage as an unrehearsed understudy after being called at 12:30pm to do that afternoon's matinee. Though it was certainly "comedy night" the evening I attended, she also has some more somber moments in her hat involving tragic experiences and unhealthy relationships. A color-coding system helps her control what types of stories will be included when.

Piano accompaniment is supplied by Andrew Gerle, composer of Meet John Doe, a terrific musical I raved about when Champlin starred in its 2004 New York Musical Theatre Festival production. They opened the evening with that show's jazzy character number (with hard-boiled lyrics by Eddie Sugarman) "I'm Your Man."

Though there are no additional performances of Finishing The Hat scheduled at the moment, Champlin seems certain that we haven't heard the last of this one. After all, life keeps adding new material all the time.

Photos of Donna Lynne Champlin by Mark Rupp

Top: Singing "The Air Is Free"

Bottom: Demonstrating how her ex-fiancé proposed

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