Interview: LAURA BENANTI at Lesher Center for The Arts Is a Golden-Age Musical Theater Star for Our Times

For any musical theater afficionados out there who lament missing the opportunity to experience Broadway's Golden Age and its sui generis entertainers, I would like posit that we are currently in another golden age for musical theater with performers of unparalleled skill, artistry and quirk. Just one case in point: Laura Benanti. With her unique combination of a shimmering soprano bounded by gleaming top notes and a folk-ish lower register, offbeat comic sensibility, emotional transparency and keen intelligence as an actor, there is simply no one else quite like her. Never has been and never will be, so let's enjoy her talents while she's at the top of her game. Fortunately for Bay Area fans, Benanti will be performing in concert at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek on June 25th. You can expect a free-flowing evening of Broadway standards and pop tunes interspersed with cheeky tales from Benanti's more than 20 years in the business.

After making her Broadway debut in a revival of The Sound of Music at the ripe old age of 18, Benanti has gone on to star in scads of other musicals, including her Tony-winning performance as Louise in Gypsy opposite Patti LuPone, Nine with Antonio Banderas and Chita Rivera, My Fair Lady and She Loves Me. She has also starred in straight plays such as Steve Martin's Meteor Shower with Amy Schumer and Keegan-Michael Key. Her extensive screen credits include recurring roles on buzzy TV series like Gossip Girl, Younger and The Gilded Age. And of course there's her spot-on, riotously funny impression of Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. As if that weren't enough, she has recently used her celebrity to shine the spotlight on theater kids whose high school musicals were cancelled due to COVID, which led to her online "Sunshine Concert Series" and an HBO documentary Homeschool Musical: Class of 2020. The latter is a particular delight, and highly recommended viewing, but be sure to have some tissues at the ready, as each of its seven talented kids has their own touching backstory to share.

I had the pleasure of catching up with Benanti by phone earlier this week from her home base in New Jersey, where her family relocated during COVID to give her young daughter more space to just be a kid. We talked about her Walnut Creek show, the efforts that led up to Homeschool Musical, her experiences working with stage greats like Rebecca Luker, Patti LuPone and Chita Rivera, what a blast it's been to spend time with so many of her theater friends on The Gilded Age, and an especially beloved uncle with whom she once appeared as Maria Von Trapp opposite his Mother Abbess (really!). And, for any musical theater nerds out there, we also took a deep dive into her interpretation of her dream role, Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Talking to Benanti is a little like chatting with the unassuming mom next door - if said mom just happened to possess a silvery soprano, crack comic timing and a comfort level with sharing her own vulnerabilities, not to mention seemingly endless knowledge of musical theater. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What repertoire do you have planned for your concert in Walnut Creek?

It's like sort of the greatest hits from Broadway shows I've done, so it's a lot of musical theater. But then also my brilliant music director Todd Almond, who was just in Girl from the North Country, has arranged some songs that are more sort of American Songbook, stuff that we sing together, and then I sing some pop music. Well, I sing Joni Mitchell. To me, that's pop music. [laughs] I have a very eclectic taste in music and that is reflected in my performance. But I do feel like it's very cohesive, and then it's woven together by silly stories that I tell. Humor is very important to me. It's sort of the lens through which I see the world and how I can function in a world on fire. And there's a lot of improvisation, I really try to be very alive up there. It's not like "This is my show and if something happens in the audience, I will not address it." I'm constantly interacting.

I've seen you perform in cabaret a couple of times, and it does appear to me that you're just being yourself up there and living in the moment. But then I think, "Oh, she can't really be doing that, right?"

Oh, no, I honestly am. I hesitate to even call it cabaret because that brings to mind like a woman in sequins draped over a piano singing Michel Legrand. That's not what it is. For me it's like standup and singing. I want people to feel like they've come into my house and I'm just telling them stories and we're laughing together, and then I'm like "Hey, do you want to hear a song?" It's my favorite thing that I do, cause I love to connect with people, I love to make people laugh and I also love to inhabit a character. So I'm able to step into the character while singing, then step out of the character and communicate with people.

I'm not faking it, like what you see is what you get. It's funny because my husband didn't see me do a show like that until further along into our relationship, and he was like "Whoa! I did not expect you to just completely be yourself onstage. That's a pretty awesome way to make a living!" [laughs] And he's right.

I've heard you tell the story about how when you were in Nine, Chita Rivera literally had to teach you how to bow because you were just that awkward being yourself onstage.

Yeah, I was.

So how did you go from being that person to being someone who is so relaxed and comfortable being yourself in front of an audience?

Time. I started when I was 18 and I was living in a world of grownups, trying to act like a grownup. But when you're 18, you're still a kid, you know? At that point in Nine, I was 23, and that's still a baby. And I'd just been through a real hardship with Into the Woods and breaking my neck [in an onstage accident], and all the sort of mudslinging that went along with it. I was feeling really tender and afraid, and so I was able to go onstage and perform, and when I was backstage I was able to be myself, but something about the vulnerability of coming out of character and bowing made me feel deeply embarrassed. And Chita was just like "No! We're not doing that today, ma'am! [laughs] This is not you saying 'you're welcome.' This is you saying 'thank you.'" And that I was able to hear, cause gratitude has always been a huge part of my life and how I'm able to move through the world.

Speaking of being so young and into musical theater, I have to admit I'm feeling a little verklempt this morning because I just watched your HBO documentary Homeschool Musical: Class of 2020.

Oh, you did?! That makes me so happy.

Back in March 2020 you posted a video online telling kids, "If your high school musical has been canceled, send me your video and I will watch it. I will be your audience." What was your thinking when you posted that video?

Theater for me was a lifeline. I came from a very small, homogenous town. There were 89 kids in my graduating class, and theater was not a big part of our school. Sports and soccer, that was a big part of our school. Our science teacher directed the musicals. [laughs] So that was the one time of year where I felt like my town was like "Whoa, that weird girl is talented!" And then the rest of the time, I just felt like an outsider. I felt like I love this very specific thing that other people do not give a shit about (excuse my language). You know, they just want to listen to Phish and like make hemp necklaces and get drunk around a bonfire. And I was like "I'm sorry, I'll be listening to Donna Murphy in Passion instead..."

So I felt lonely. And that first day [of the pandemic shutdown] was scary, because nobody knew really what it was, what it was going to be. And, look, this generation in general self-identifies as anxious, more so than any previous generation. I do think some of that is the language that we now have, but I also think it has been one thing after another, and social media, for all the good it can do, also keeps us in a cycle of fight or flight that is hard to get out of. So I was like how can I use this platform that can cause so much stress and anxiety? Everything everybody is posting is terrifying and terrified, and I don't want these kids to go into their rooms and feel like ghosts. I want them to feel like they're still being seen, that they still have something to look forward to.

And honestly? I thought I'd get like 20 videos [in response]. I really did.

You do know you're "Laura Benanti," right? I mean...

I don't. Honestly, that is not a thing for me. Anytime anyone recognizes me, I'm like "Wow!" I'm shocked. People ask my daughter what I do, and she's like "I don't know." [laughs]

So how did you deal with the thousands of videos you ended up receiving?

You know, I was a little overwhelmed at first, because I had promised these kids I was going to watch them all. And I did.

Unbelievable!

I watched them all, and I commented on them all. I brought my family in, cause I was like I can't just be scrolling through my phone and not paying attention. So I would do it mostly when my daughter went to sleep, and then I would take pockets throughout the day and Ella and I would to it together. And she got so funny with the emojis. She'd be like "yellow heart, microphone, clap" and then if someone was really incredible, she'd be like "Write them words."

And then out of that came my friend Kate Deiter-Maradei, who is a mediator outside of Raleigh. She's just constantly putting good into the world in a way that is unfathomable to me. I do not know how she has the time. She and I were talking about our most vulnerable members of society at that point, our most isolated, and we narrowed it down to senior citizens and children in hospitals, some of whom literally could not see their parents, cause at that time people were in like hazmat suits. So we put together these online "Sunshine Concerts," with the help of Seniorly and K4Connect. They just have this incredible network of senior living facilities, so we hooked into that.

And then I just straight up cold-called children's hospitals, and said, "Hi, we'd like to offer this free content and you can have it into perpetuity. And if possible, if you'd like to get the kids involved, that would be great." Then I connected with my friend Stephanie Epstein who is a music therapist down in Florida, who happened to play Amalia Balash at her local community theater. So it was just ... being of service, you know? It's like, if I'm not being a helper, I don't know what else I'll do. Like I feel like I won't get out of bed if I can't be helping.

So that was so beautiful. We did eight of them, and we had senior citizens interviewing kids, kids interviewing senior citizens. It was just so meaningful to me. And then out of that was born Homeschool Musical: Class of 2020. We chose a diverse group of graduated high school seniors from the class of 2020, sent them like 11 cases-worth of recording equipment, and via Zoom we walked their friends and family through how to, in a COVID-safe way, film these extraordinary performances.

And you know - we have such a fast news cycle that it [Homeschool Musical] got sort of left behind and didn't really get viewed in the way that I wished it had. But I'm so proud of it, and I'm so proud of these young people and I'm following their careers. Jeffrey Cornelius is actually doing the national tour of Dear Evan Hansen as the cover for Evan. And Alana Bright is on a television show now, she got an agent from that so, yeah, it's something I'm really proud of. I'm sorry for the long-winded answer. [laughs]

And there's just something so darned inspiring about seeing that, yes, there are still those kids out there for whom music and theater are providing a lifeline.

Yes! You know, it's primal, it's the way we have connected since we started walking on both legs. It's cave paintings and passing down stories around campfires. It is an artform that I believe will never die because of that. It's in our bones, it's in our blood.

What musicals did you do in high school?

So my freshman year, I played Golde in Fiddler on the Roof.

Oh, wow!

[laughs] Mm-hmm.

Which is not really a singing role.

It isn't, it's a comedic part. But that was the first time I really realized I was funny. And I didn't even realize I was being funny until the audience was like hysterically laughing. And I was like "Oh, I guess I'm bein' funny."

And then sophomore year, I played Fiona in Brigadoon, and junior year I played Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! ... up the octave - [breaks into song, singing in a soprano range] "I'm gonna Raise the Roof, I'm gonna carry on." You know, Patrice Munsel had done it, too, so it was in her keys.

I just happen to be reading Harvey Fierstein's autobiography right now, and he claims that Jerry Herman told him he originally wanted Montserrat Caballé as his Dolly, so there ya go...

Wow, that's so interesting! And it's funny because it was really powerful in that range. And then I won the very first Papermill Playhouse Rising Star Award, which is like the Tony Awards of New Jersey for high schools. Then I didn't do my senior show, because part of winning it is that Papermill had me do a straight play called "Jane Eyre." Anne Hathaway was my understudy.

Now, that's something to put on your resume!

And I did Man of La Mancha that summer at Papermill. Then they recommended me to audition for Liesl in the Broadway revival of The Sound of Music, and instead they cast me as the understudy to Maria. So you know, in a way, I really do owe it to my high school, which had zero arts program to speak of. But it was because of doing that show that I won that award and then that led to my Broadway debut. Nobody does anything alone, you know? I have so much gratitude for the people who brought me to the life I get to live now.

So with The Sound of Music, there you are, still just a teenager and yet you're on Broadway and understudying the amazing (and now dearly missed) Rebecca Luker?! What was it like to work with her at such a young age?

I could not have asked for a better example of what a leading lady should be. She was down to earth, knew everybody's name, there was no exclusivity, no hierarchy. She would come upstairs, climb the six flights in between shows to check in with all the nuns, the women of the ensemble, and see how we were doing, when she could have been resting.

She was so generous with me, so warm and welcoming. And I was 18 and she was 38, so I don't think it would be out of the question for a 38-year-old actress to be like "Wait, I'm sorry, you're my what?!" And she never behaved that way for a single, solitary moment. She just was always ... a little too good to be here. [tears up] She's really deeply missed. She was just an incredible person. And, you know, she replaced me as Claudia in Nine, so it was like we were sort of always floating around each other, with nary a speck of animosity or weirdness.

I did literally bump into her once at 54 Below, and I was taken aback, like "You're Rebecca Luker!" But she was having none of it, she was just like a normal person.

Exactly. It's like she had a spotlight on her at all times, that's how much she glowed. But she wasn't like "Watch me glow." She was like "Here - have some of this glow." She was always just the most generous and the most down to earth.

When you took over the role of Maria after she left the show, that meant you were playing opposite Richard Chamberlain who was more than three times your age. Did that seem weird to you at the time?

Honestly, no, it didn't strike me as odd. We had a great chemistry and I loved performing with him. Also, it was a different time, and that type of an age difference was not that shocking then.

I've always been an old soul, I really have. I feel like I seem, feel and look younger now, at almost 43, than I did at 18. And I think it's because I was trying to prove to everybody I was a grownup. And also, I sort of just looked old. I don't know why, but I was born the way I look now, and I just finally have grown into it.

One of the best things I've ever seen you in was A Little Night Music at the Dorothy Chandler in LA. You played Anne, alongside an incredible cast including Victor Garber, Judith Ivey, Zoe Caldwell, Michelle Pawk and Marc Kudisch.

And Scott Ellis was our director! Oh, I loved that show so much.

It's a favorite show of mine -

Mine, too!

but I'll be honest that I've seen many less-than-Wonderful Productions of it.

Same.

I think it's really hard show to get the tone of that show right, so how do you think you all managed to do that? With such a high-powered cast, you could have all been going in different directions.

You know, we were just aligned. I feel like sometimes there's just magic and chemistry that happens. I know that sounds real woo-woo, but first of all, we had an amazing leader in Scott. He knew exactly what he wanted and he knew how to get us there. Same thing with She Loves Me. He is watching everything. I mean, that's literally his job, but he's watching all of the individual performances and how they merge together. It's like he creates this beautiful sort of salad, where everybody has a different flavor, but it all works beautifully.

I loved working with Victor, and it was such a magical production. And Steve came, Steven Sondheim, and oh my god, he was so generous to me. He has always been so generous to me.

You've done two Broadway shows with Patti LuPone, who just won her third Tony. When you are onstage performing with her, how is that not just like totally intimidating?

Because we just were family from the day we met. I don't know if it's because she's 100% Sicilian, and my stepdad, Sal, is 100% Sicilian. I don't know what it is, but we were just like "I see you, I love you, I respect you" from day one. Of course, I was so nervous the first day I met her, like fully sweating, but she made me feel comfortable in a single moment. And to have the kind of relationship that me and Patti and Boyd [Gaines] had onstage, we had to have that offstage, we really did. Yeah, it's just some people are family.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Yours was the only production of Gypsy I've ever seen where that family relationship really worked, where it wasn't just three actors being great in their own way.

Exactly. Well, she was like the sun, and we moved around her. And I feel like we were just so blessed in that production - to have Arthur [Laurents as director] and Patti and Boyd and all the remarkable ensemble performers and supporting cast. I don't know if I'll have the honor of doing something that special ever again.

The other Broadway show you did with Patti, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, was not particularly well received. I've never actually seen that show, but the original cast album is one of my all-time favorites from a "flop" musical.

So, this is the thing that bummed me out. We didn't go out of town, or really shape it somewhere else and work out the kinks, and this was an incredibly ambitious project. I mean, Pedro Almodóvar is not for everybody, and to get that tone right onstage and make it accessible to a non-Spanish audience was a challenge. And we were still putting in so many changes right up until the main critics came. Our "final rehearsal" of the show was on a Saturday matinee, and Ben Brantley [of "The New York Times"] came on Saturday night.

So we weren't gelling yet, we weren't cohesive yet. But people who saw it around that time and then when we closed were like "This is an entirely different show." We needed those two months to get us where it ended up, cause it really ended up pretty incredible. And to me, that was a really good lesson in asking how are we going to work out the kinks in this brand-new show, how are we gonna figure it out in a safe space?

A few years later, you worked with director Bartlett Sher again in My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center. I had expected you to sing the role beautifully - cause let's face it, that's largely why I was there - but what really caught me by surprise was how brilliantly you portrayed the character progression of Eliza. I felt like it was the first time I ever fully understood her.

That means so much to me. Thank you.

So how did you come to that?

Well, that was my dream part for my entire life. It was the show where I was like "I will play this part." So I'd been crafting that part since I was five years old, honestly, in my imagination. I had been figuring her out for, you know I can't do math, but 30 years? When I read that they were doing the revival, I had just had my daughter, Ella, and then Bart called and asked me to audition. In my show, I do a joke where I say, "He asked me to audition. First of all, rude." [laughs]

I think that's just his way, though, isn't it?

Frankly, I prefer to audition, because then you know it's the right fit, instead of being sort of forced on somebody. So he gave me forty pages of material, and then that just sat there for a month. And I was like "You know what? If I can't get it together to audition, how am I gonna play this role in the way I've always dreamed of, and be the kind of mom I want to be?" So I declined to audition, which was a heartbreaking choice.

But then I got Meteor Shower on Broadway, where I met Amy Schumer and Steve Martin, and it was great for a new mom. It was only 75 minutes long, so I was literally home by like 9:30. And I got to work with all these really funny people.

And wear a really fabulous dress.

I know. But I was like "Everybody, I just had a baby. Can we not put me in silk? Thank you!" It's the least forgiving fabric in the world.

So - then when Lauren Ambrose left [My Fair Lady] on the early side because she got a TV show, Bart was like "Do you want to come and do it?" And I just could not believe my good fortune. It was again such a lesson in letting things go, like what is meant to be yours will come back to you. Cause I'd genuinely let it go. I was sad, but I'd made peace with it.

Unfortunately, I really didn't have [rehearsal] time with Bart at all. He didn't even really come see me until I'd been doing it for six weeks. I think Harry Hadden-Paton, who played Higgins, was maybe a little perturbed by that, because you know he'd been doing the show with the same person for a really long time, and it was now a very different performance, a very different show. Understandably, I think at first he was like, "What?" And then the reviews came out, and he was like "Oh, OK." [laughs]

But honestly, it was the same with Louise in Gypsy. I had been tracking the important moments that shift Eliza, for my whole life. Transformation is the thing I most love to play, and it's really hard to do authentically. To go from A to Z and hit all the letters in between is like a puzzle, and I love doing it.

And look, I turned 40 playing that part, and Lauren was even a little older than me. To choose a woman, rather than a girl, for me made it even more interesting, because it was less about the power dynamic of age difference and more about socioeconomics and privilege. And she had been living sort of on the street, in this way, for longer. So there was more to undo, more to unpack, because she had been living that way even as a grownup. So that to me was so fun, and I will say when Bart came back to see it, he really helped me by giving me the permission to be way more wild in the beginning, to allow her to be almost feral. Which helped that journey even more, so I was really grateful for that.

What I appreciated about your Eliza at the beginning was that, even though she wasn't in total control of her situation, I didn't feel like I needed to take care of her, I didn't have to worry that something really horrible was about to happen to her. I hate watching women get abused onstage.

Me, too. Trauma porn. Don't love it.

But you still played the scenes as written. It wasn't like you were this fully emancipated woman from 2019 who had somehow been transported back in time to the early 20th century. You were playing a woman of her time, but one who did have within her some core strength, some agency.

She had to. I mean, that's always been my thing. It's impossible to go from some cowering victim to what she ultimately becomes, especially with that ending [where Eliza leaves Higgins' world behind]. There has to be some spark in her that we see, there has to be strength. Also, how the heck would she survive on the street without strength and savvy? And to me it's that she was so smart.

Even in the very beginning, when he calls me a bilious pigeon, to make the pigeon sounds back to him, that was a choice from me, in terms of showing how she is able to sort of parrot him, she finally is able to sort of like wrap her mouth around these words. And for me, the idea of her even having that noise in her mind, and being able to do it, was like the first spark of that. That she wasn't afraid of him. Why would she go to his house when she was afraid of him? I mean, this is a woman taking her life in her own hands. It's like "You tell me you can fix me? Great - fix me!"

That interpretation also ultimately made her final exit through the audience pay off. Because the first time I saw the show, I had really enjoyed Lauren Ambrose's performance, but the ending had confused me a little. And when I saw you play the same scene, it was like "Of course! She has no choice but to just leave that whole world. So that's what Bart Sher meant by staging it that way."

Well, thank you. And what's interesting, and I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here, is Lauren had decided that she wasn't in love with Higgins. And I decided that I was, so I think it was really hard for me to say goodbye to him. That pain of loving someone who can never love you in return, in the way that's meaningful to you, that made it hard. But I think that tension was helpful.

Because then there's a real cost to Eliza's leaving.

Exactly! That's how I felt about it.

Since it's Pride month, I have to ask about a gay uncle of yours who was an important influence in your growing up.

He was one of the founding members of the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, D.C. He was also an incredible drag artist, who went by Wanda May Wannaburger.

[laughs] He sounds like quite a kick!

He was ... just an absolutely remarkable person, [tears up] one of the people who really saw me as a child. And he was so funny, my god, so loving, and I'm so grateful that I had the example of him and his partner at the time growing up in the 80's. That wasn't an easy time. It's still not now, but boy, that was really the height of the AIDS epidemic.

He died very suddenly [from sepsis], and I recently had been with him. I sang with the Gay Men's Chorus of DC about a month before he passed. I sang Maria, he sang the Mother Abbess.

That must have been something!

It was so beautiful, and then I stayed with him that night. He made us steak and we stayed up all night talking, and it was just ... I didn't know I was saying goodbye, but what a beautiful goodbye.

Is it true that you'll be on season 2 of HBO's The Gilded Age?

Yeah, I have an arc on Season 2 of Gilded Age and I'm so excited about it. I filmed for two weeks up in Newport, then I have one day with Carrie Coon next week, and like two days in August, and then I'm done... until the audience demands that my character come back! [laughs] I don't think that's going to happen with this character, because of the way that she leaves, which I don't want to give away, but it's very cool. I've always wanted to do a period piece on film. I've done it onstage, but I feel like my old-fashioned face was sort of designed for that kind of work. [laughs] So it was really a thrill.

And to be part of that amazing cast, chock full of incredible stage actors!

Omigosh, I know! It was just such a joy to see my friends - Kelli O'Hara and Celia Keenan-Bolger and Michael Cerveris and Nathan Lane, and you know just have time up there, frankly without our children, to go to dinner and have some chats. Oof! It was amazing.

I just have to ask - Bart Sher will be directing Camelot at Lincoln Center this fall, so ... any chance?

You know, Jim, I hope they cast a woman of color. I really feel like we are all making a commitment to anti-racism and to true diversity, and Broadway is still a really white space. So, while I would absolutely love to play that part - my mom actually played that part when she was pregnant with me - I really hope that they go with a woman of color.

And even just looking within your Gilded Age cast, I know Denée Benton would certainly sing the role of Guenevere beautifully.

Oh, she'd be incredible. Absolutely! There are just so many [women of color who would be great in the role]. And I want revivals to be more diverse. Otherwise they're going to go away, and I don't want revivals to go away. They're a part of our history, part of our culture, and I think in order for them to maintain viability and interest, they need to grow.

Finally, as a point of personal privilege, I just wanted to say thank you for all the high notes, like at the end of "Ice Cream" or "I Could Have Danced All Night." There is something so insanely pleasurable as an audience member that when you hit those notes it's never like "Ooh, is she gonna make it?" Instead, it seems like the joyous culmination of everything your character is feeling in that moment, and it's just so thrilling.

That means so much to me! You know, I do this whole "Soprano Isle" bit about how like we're going to be belted off the face of the earth, and Kelli O'Hara, Audra McDonald and I, we're just holding down the fort. We're not gonna let it die, because singing affects our nervous system, not only the person singing, but the person listening. While I love to listen to a belted high note, sustained, all day long, there's something that a beautiful, joyous high note does to like our cells that I just think is so incredible. It's one of my favorite things to do, and I'm glad that it's meaningful to you as well.

Laura Benanti will perform at 7:30pm on June 25, 2022 at the Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Dr, Walnut Creek. To purchase tickets or for further information, click here.

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