Loose Lips

Playing the role of Amos Hart in Chicago is the realization of a deferred dream for two-time Tony Award nominee Kevin Chamberlin. “When I saw the show at Encores, the only time I’ve seen it, I became a fan of the role,” he says. “Rob Marshall talked to me about doing the film version while we were working on Seussical. My audition was the day after 9/11, which kind of sabotaged the mood. But then they gave it to John O’Reilly anyway.”

So what does he love about Amos? “It’s the easiest role in the show, in that you expend the least amount of energy for the most energy received by the audience. Everyone else is dancing up a storm, and you’re off stage for 45 minutes,” he says. “But the big trap not to fall into is having Amos be nothing but a sad sack, which gets boring very quickly. The biggest compliment I’ve gotten so far is from one of the guys in the band, who told me I’m getting laughs where no one else ever has. That’s real validation.”

Chamberlin first stepped into the role briefly back in April — with only seven hours of rehearsal — but his true trial by fire was his return on June 12, which was also the official opening of his co-star Rita Wilson as Roxie. “I was terrified, but mostly because Mike Nichols was there, and so were a lot of my friends,” he says. “I wasn’t scared about Tom Hanks [Wilson’s husband] being there because we did The Road to Perdition together. In fact, my opening night card to Rita said ‘Your husband killed me in Chicago, now you’re trying to frame me for murder in Chicago; what gives with Chicago?'”

Chamberlin is happy to be back on Broadway and in New York; later this summer, he’ll be doing a workshop of The Hudsucker Proxy directed by Jerry Zaks, and he’s looking for an apartment here. Nonetheless, he will return this fall to L.A., where he moved with his partner in 2002, to be part of the NBC-TV series Twenty Good Years with John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor. “It’s nice to be able to do a show with people I could learn something from. Jeffrey plays this semi-retired judge and I’m his bailiff. I get all the witty one-liners,” he says. Chamberlin will also continue his involvement with the Reprise! series, directing a concert version of the Maltby-Shire musical Baby. “We haven’t started the real casting yet, but I’d love to ask my friends John Michael Higgins and Faith Prince to play the older couple. Wouldn’t you just love to hear Faith sing ‘Patterns’?”

A WHOLE NEW WORLD
It’s true that Barbara Walsh has an in with the director of the new production of Songs for a New World at New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse; he’s her husband, Jack Cummings III. But it was more than familial loyalty that caused her to take a role in this much-admired revue of songs by Tony winner Jason Robert Brown. “It’s a great group of people to be working with; they’re so much fun,” she says of castmates Heather Ayers, Jack Donahue, Arthur Marks, Liz McCartney, and David Rappaport. “And the show is a singer’s smorgasbord, with some really great acting songs. I get to do ‘Stars and the Moon,’ which is just divine, and ‘The Flagmaker,’ about Betsy Ross, which really seems like the most true musical theater song in the show. I first saw the show in Toronto in 1994 and, even back then, I was really blown away by Jason’s ability to encapsulate one true story in each song.”

After the show’s run concludes on July 9, Walsh will get a couple of months to rest before beginning rehearsals for the Broadway revival of Company, in which she plays the pivotal role of Joanne. Walsh, along with the show’s 13 other cast members (including leading man Raul Esparza), first did the show earlier this year in Cincinnati to rave reviews. “I think it’s so exciting that our director John Doyle is having eight people making their Broadway debuts as principals, not just as the happy villager in Oklahoma! like I did,” she says. “Working with John is sheer heaven. He is a true artist and a true collaborator who provides a rehearsal room that is ego-free. It’s not that he gives any sort of speech, you just behave accordingly to his tone. He has this quiet strength that makes you want to follow him. You know, when you’re as old as I am, you have your own way of working that gets you from A to B, but John makes you want to experience something new and let go of the old.”

Walsh was rather nervous about auditioning for Doyle — who won a Tony for Sweeney Todd — primarily because she doesn’t play any instruments, which is a pivotal part of his working method. “Now I play triangle, glockenspiel, wood block, and tambourine,” she tells me. “I don’t have to practice around the house, fortunately; the rehearsal time they give me is good enough. And I figure Joanne is a little lazy on the instruments anyway.” As it turns out, Company marks the third time Walsh has become a member of the musicians’ union, Local 802: “In my first Broadway show, Rock ‘n Roll: The First 5000 Years, I had to fake playing a bass, and just because I was holding one, I had to join. And then I did it again while playing Velma in Hairspray. But I don’t need to be a full-time member.”

NIGHTS AND HER STARS

Former Bug leading lady Shannon Cochran will be featured in the Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of The Unmentionables; Sopranos star Lou Martini, Jr. will headline Penguin Rep’s production of the new comedy Centennial Casting; the brilliant Laila Robins will star in The Cherry Orchard at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey; kids show host Shaun Taylor-Corbett will be the newest Juan in the Off-Broadway production of Altar Boyz, starting July 3; former Moonlighting star Allyce Beasley will play Evangeline Harcourt in Anything Goes at Musical Theatre West; talented young thespians Lorenzo Pisoni, Heidi Armbruster, and Erik Heger will co-star in The Great Gatsby at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis; former teen idol Frankie Avalon will return to the Chicago-area production of Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding on July 18; and, in August, Austin Lysy will follow up his challenging turn in The Water’s Edge with the male title role in Williamstown’s Romeo and Juliet, opposite screen star Emmy Rossum.

Meanwhile, the stars continue to make the rounds around town: Chuck Cooper, Dallas Roberts, Tom Hulce, Judy Kuhn, John Slattery and wife Talia Balsam attended the opening of the Atlantic Theater Company’s Spring Awakening; Hal Holbrook and cabaret star John Wallowitch applauded the magnificent Dixie Carter (a.k.a. Mrs. Hal Holbrook) at the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s Master Class benefit; and Amanda Peet and Sarah Paulson headed backstage at Playwrights Horizons to congratulate the divine Jill Clayburgh, who’ s playing a minister in The Busy World is Hushed. Most intriguingly, we spotted former Days of Our Lives star Lisa Rinna at Chicago. (Is she the next Roxie Hart?)

For sheer star power, though, it was hard to beat the June 21 reception at Sardi’s for the Tony Randall Theatrical Fund’s presentation of a $100,000 grant to the New York Theatre Workshop for its upcoming presentation of Martha Clarke‘s Pirandello Project. On hand for the announcement, which was made by Randall’s best pal Jack Klugman and his widow Heather Randall, were such luminaries as Danny Burstein, Michael Cerveris, Maxwell Caulfield, Marian Seldes, Ana Reeder, and Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach.