Interview: Theatre Life with Judy Kaye

Today’s subject Judy Kaye has been living her theatre life for over half a century. The Tony Award winning performer has been seen on Broadway, on tour, in regional theatres and has been heard on many recordings. Currently Ms. Kaye can be seen onstage at Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) in Babbitt where she plays a plethora of roles. The show runs through November 3rd at Harman Hall.

Judy Kaye has won two Tony Awards for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her work in The Phantom of The Opera and Nice Work if You Can Get It. She shot to fame when she replaced Madeline Kahn in On The Twentieth Century. Other Broadway credits include Diana: The Musical, Souvenir, Mamma Mia!, Anastasia, and Wicked (also on tour.)

Regional credits include Annie Get Your Gun and The Merry Widow at Paper Mill Playhouse and Lost in Yonkers at The Old Globe and Arizona Theatre Company.

Her many recordings include the complete versions of The Pajama Game, Magdalena and Annie Get Your Gun. Solo recordings include Songs of The Silver Screen, Where, Oh, Where Rare Songs of the American Theater, and Diva by Diva. Other cast recordings include What About Luv, and The Secret Garden.

To say that Judy Kaye is a legend of the theatre is a true understatement. As many times as I watch her perform, I can’t help but be impressed. We don’t get to see her in non-musicals very much, so I highly suggest you grab some tickets to Babbitt and witness this truly amazing performer in action. She shares the stage with a cast that stars Matthew Broderick and includes Ann Harada, Ali Stroker, Nehal Joshi, and other very talented theatre types.

Judy Kaye is a true theatrical artist who has and continues to live her theatre life to the fullest.

Growing up, did you have any idea that you were going to make theatre your chosen profession?

Oh, I had dreams about it. but pretty early on I was performing. Evidently when I was in first grade at Encanto Grammar School in Phoenix, Arizona I must've been singing and my mother must've been there because my mother related to me years later that one of my teachers had gone up to her and said, “This is what she's going to do.” So yes, I had a little inkling even though I totally didn’t understand it.

Where did you receive your training?

I had a man named Harvey Smith, who was our choral instructor at Central High School in Phoenix, Arizona. He was brilliant. He absolutely mentored me and then I went off to UCLA and I just studied with everybody. I'm not sure any one person took me by the hand. I think I just was a sponge.  I started working right away while I was a freshman. They didn't want me to do it, but I had to. I went off and auditioned for You’re Good Man Charlie Brown I got the LA company. I was learning in front of an audience. I kept going to classes at UCLA, but finally work won out. I have a five year non-degree in theatre arts and UCLA still calls me to do things for them even though I never actually got the piece of paper.

What was your first professional job as a performer?

My very first equity job was at Melodyland Theater in Anaheim, California, which is now a church that's across the street from Disneyland. I did a season of stock in the chorus.

Can you please tell us a little something about Babbitt and also something about the characters you play in the show?

Babbitt was written by Sinclair Lewis and is a political satire. He’s an everyman living in a make believe city somewhere in the Midwest called Zenith. He's unhappy with his life and he has aspirations of people taking him seriously which leads him on this journey to becoming the mouthpiece for a Republican candidate who hits baseballs out of the park. That’s his only claim to fame. He’s an athlete. Kind of rings true, doesn't it. it's the story of a guy who is kind of like Candide.

He gets a girlfriend, destroys his life, and then puts it all back together again so that he still cannot lose his family and his business.

I play a number of characters. I play the head of the school board. She's very old fashioned and believes that all girls should be married by the time they graduate high school. I also play a bohemian who just loves to play. Then I play Opal Emerson Mudge, who is an evangelist for women and is selling her magazine. She sells a monthly periodical, which I make money off of, and Babbitt's wife Myra attends a week long session with Mudge.  She then takes Mudge’s advice and moves out on her husband because Mudge says to her the he is her problem. I also play Babbitt's long suffering secretary Miss McGown, who every now and then drops in on a scene. I also play a society woman. who just wishes that people wouldn't give speeches based on ignorance which is exactly what Babbitt does. It's a fun package of things to do.

What were your impressions after your first read of the script?

I loved it immediately. I think Joe DiPietro has done a magnificent job of bringing this story to the stage with great humor and humanity He's a very funny man. He writes funny and knows how to bring laughter to an audience.

Besides doing musical theatre, you have performed in operettas as well as recorded a cd of Bernstein arias.  At any point, did you ever consider becoming an opera singer?

I sang twice at Santa Fe Opera at the very beginning of my schooling. I auditioned for the opera workshop at UCLA, as well as the musical comedy workshop, which was a sideline of it. To my surprise, I was accepted into the opera workshop, but very quickly I realized that wasn't going to be the life for me.

I wanted to tell stories. I loved the whole panorama of theatre. Opera is one area that is all about the voice and that's great, but I like to make ugly sounds too.

I suppose if somebody wanted me to do an opera again, I might try. I don't have the voice that I had when I was in my forties, but it was a lot of fun dabbling in it.

You are married to the wonderful actor David Green. At the end of a long day at rehearsal, does it help that your spouse is in the same profession?

Oh yes! He gets it.  He's sympathetic, attentive, supportive, loving and all the things that a good partner should be. Because he’s trod the boards himself, he understands when you don't get the job and when you do get the job. We have a lot of fun together in and out of the theatre.

You played Queen Elizabeth in Diana The Musical. That show seemed to have a very loyal fan base while most reviewers were not kind. Do you feel that show was unjustly treated by the press?

I actually do. I loved that show very, very much. I think everybody was angry and there were a lot of people that were angry that we were telling the story in a musical. I think some of the critics, the preponderance of critics actually, really thought we should have left it alone. So right off the bat they were angry at us for that.

We worked on it all through the pandemic, but it was hard. We did zooms like this with all of us rehearsing that’s not easy. The delay doesn't work when you're trying to sing and learn music together.

Possibly it was a mistake to have let the movie come out before we opened but they wanted to keep everybody working through the pandemic, which I think was very laudable. May I say. Even though we won Razzie's for that movie, it is still the most watched thing on Netflix around the world.

I think it was unfairly treated and I disagreed with pretty much all of it. I thought it was wonderful. The cast was great, and the dancing was phenomenal.

For an audience member that might be on the fence about seeing Babbitt, what would you say to convince them to attend a performance?

They're going to have a wonderful time. They're going to laugh a lot. It's a very very funny evening. I think some of our audiences have been surprised. My husband was sitting next to a couple on opening night who said, “I had no idea this was this was going to be so funny.” Matthew Broderick is brilliant, so I think that right there is worth it.

After Babbitt finishes it’s run here in DC, what is in store for you for the rest of 2024 and into 2025?

Right now, I'm just going to do some wonderful life stuff. As actors, we put our personal lives on the back burner at all times if work comes up. I've sort of decided to stop doing that to grab life and see some more of the world that I haven't seen.  My husband and I are going to Europe next spring.

In the near term, we're going to go down to the Dominican Republic, where we have been many times, to see some friends and family. I haven't anything theatrical set right now. It would have to work around the other things I am doing.

Special Thanks to STC's publicist Heather C. Jackson for her assistance in coordinating this interview.

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