Loose Lips

Natascia Diaz has learned to expect the unexpected in her career, from the failure of the heavily hyped Seussical to being let go from the role of Nickie in the recent revival of Sweet Charity before the show got to Broadway. But sometimes the unexpected can be positive, as was the case with her casting in the new production of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris at the Zipper Theater.

“I went to audition for the Paper Mill Playhouse’s current revival of Carnival,” Diaz relates, “and I bumped into a friend of mine, [director] Gordon Greenberg, who urged me to audition for his show. We’ve been wanting to work together for a while, and he knew that this was a good fit.”

Being in Brel has been a revelatory experience for Diaz. “The show is so beautiful and poetic,” she says. “I think I did it in summer camp, but I really had no idea of the magic of the show, or the admiration people have for it, until we did our first preview. Gordon has taken a very expressive approach to the material. The four of us — Robert Cuccioli, Gay Marshall, and Rodney Hicks, and I — don’t just stand at the microphone and sing. We create a whole new scene for each song. And it’s a company with a very unique set of palettes to paint with; we’re not your typical musical-comedy types.

“I was really too young for Rosalie in Carnival,” Diaz remarks. “Maybe I’ll do it in 10 years. I had also done the workshop of Bernard Alba right after Sweet Charity. I was Angustias, but again, I wasn’t really the right person to play the oldest, frailest daughter. Still, it was such a wonderful salve after Charity to work with Graciela Daniele and Michael John LaChiusa.”

Another role that wouldn’t have happened for Diaz had she remained in Charity was Anita in the St. Louis Muny production of West Side Story. (Diaz is up for a Kevin Kline Award for her performance.) “It has always been my dream to that show,” she says. “For someone who dances, sings, and acts, it’s like being at a banquet or having dinner at Jean-Georges.” She is also grateful to have played Monica, the “Scottish Jewish Princess,” in the NYMF production of Paul Scott Goodman‘s Rooms — a show that the half-Puerto Rican, half-Italian actress says will be commercially produced later this year. “I felt that role allowed me to be the Meryl Streep of musical theater,” she tells me, “and I was thrilled that no one picked on my accent!”

OUR MISTER BROOKS
While writing Hope Runs Eternal, Richard Brooks considered doing a bio-play about the real-life R&B star Teddy Pendergrass, but he opted for fiction instead. “I thought I’d see what issues I could explore this way,” says Brooks, who also plays the leading role of Raymond. “The play has to do with the problems that older stars face in the music industry, like getting airplay, but it’s also about the struggle of wanting to settle down versus the temptations of the road. It sat in me for about a year, but I wrote the first draft in just six weeks.”

However, the project didn’t go directly from page to stage. “I found it really helpful to do a series of staged readings,” he says. “As the actors responded to each other, it really informed how I developed the characters. I even recently added a scene where the two sisters [played by Victoria Platt Tilford and Cynda Williams] confront each other about their past. I’m really happy with the female roles now.”

The show also gives Brooks, who played A.D.A. Paul Robinette in the early seasons of TV’s Law & Order, another chance to sing in public — and to write music: “Although we play some songs from my album Smooth Love at intermission, the rest of the music was written specifically for the show. The funny thing is, I wrote all these raps but I ended up going back to more traditional R&B songs for the show. Now, I’m thinking I might do a rap album.”

Putting the show up now meant that Brooks had to bow out of the Seattle and Baltimore productions of August Wilson‘s last play, Radio Golf, after having created the role of Harmond Wilks at the Mark Taper Forum. “It was a hard decision,” he says. “I loved August, and it was amazing to work with him on that play. I knew him for 20 years, ever since I did the original reading of Fences. His influences on me as a writer are tremendous. I really saw how he sculpted every word; even an ‘an’ or a ‘the’ was so important that taking it out could change the rhythm of a line. But I was afraid that, if I did his play again, I’d never get to do my own.”

HUMMING A BAR