Loose Lips
and Jenna Coker in Doctor Doolittle
(Photo © Joan Marcus)
THE DOCTOR IS IN
Playing one of the most beloved characters in children’s literature might scare off a lesser actor than Tom Hewitt. But once you’ve played both the sweet transvestite from Transylvania and that country’s most famous aristocrat, Count Dracula, taking on the title role in the new musical Doctor Doolittle isn’t so daunting. Even if his most vivid childhood memory of the character is a “Doctor Doolittle” pictorial in a neighbor’s copy of Playboy. “The character has always been kind of eroticized for me,” he says.
Hewitt says talking to the animals is nothing new for him. “As a kid, I had all sort of animals, rabbits, hamsters, chameleons,” he says. “And I’ve always been fascinated by people like the animal behaviorists Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. I am definitely a Discovery Channel/Animal Planet sort of guy.” Still, once he nabbed the role, Hewitt made a special trip to the Bronx Zoo to help get into character. “I looked at zoo animals in a way I’ve never done before, and started to think about how we treat them. I learned that animals don’t like being looked down on,” he says.
Fortunately, the character’s British accent came more easily, since Hewitt had just used one in the Long Wharf production of Travesties. And flying onstage — as he does twice — didn’t spook him either, not surprisingly considering how much time he spent in the air during Dracula. “Please, I feel more comfortable in a flying harness than in anything else,” he says with a laugh. Hewitt is also unusual in that he’s also most comfortable playing roles where you don’t recognize him. He looks no more like his offstage self in Doolittle than he did in Dracula, The Rocky Horror Show, or The Lion King, in which he was a memorable Scar. “Not only do I love being able to come into work and end up completely transformed, but it makes it so much easier at parties,” he says. You can make a quick beeline for the food because no one recognizes you.”
The show’s current run in Pittsburgh is the beginning of a many-many-months long tour (next stop is, St..Paul, Minnesota), and Hewitt says he couldn’t have better traveling companions than the show’s cast. He’s especially thrilled to be sharing the stage (and the bus and the plane) with leading lady Nancy Anderson. “We auditioned together, and the minute she opened her mouth, I knew she was Emma. During the whole negotiation process, I kept asking my agent, is it going to be Nancy?” he says. “We have amazing chemistry. Our characters have this very witty, very evil repartee — we don’t fall in love, we fall in hate — and I think we’ve made it this Noel Coward-like Private Lives-y banter.”
WHAT A TREASURE
There are many good reasons to stay in your air-conditioned home during the sultry nights of August, but none better than watching Broadway’s Lost Treasures III, which is now airing on PBS stations nationwide. This third collection of “greatest hits” from past Tony Award broadcasts is hosted by Carol Channing, Harvey Fierstein, Robert Goulet, and Tommy Tune, and includes performances by such Broadway legends as Gwen Verdon, Ethel Merman, Chita Rivera, Alfred Drake, and Julie Andrews.
And who gets to choose what you see on this very special special? Producer Christopher Cohen, the son of the late Tony Awards producer Alexander Cohen and his wife, writer Hildy Parks. “My dad was the one who dreamed up this idea about how to package this material, but we didn’t come up with this particular series with PBS until shortly after he passed away,” he says. “It took about two years of meetings to get everyone’s permission. And now it’s just an accounting nightmare. We sent out 705 checks for the first two editions, and we’ll be sending over 1,000 for this one.”
But it’s all worth it, Cohen says, to let audiences see these glorious moments once more. “It really takes me back in time to the golden era of theater. I’m so glad we have Jerry Orbach on tape (singing “She Likes Basketball” from Promises, Promises). But I’m also really glad we can show newer pieces like “Sing, Sing, Sing” from Fosse, the company of Ragtime singing the opening number, and “Caldonia” from Five Guys Named Moe. It’s all about giving our public what they want.”
(Photo © Dixie Sheridan)
GIRL INTERRUPTED
Some child actors happily fade into obscurity. But Anna Chlumsky, who gained worldwide fame as the 11-year-old star of the film My Girl, has decided not to follow that route. After a few years away from professional acting — during which time she graduated from the University of Chicago and then worked as a fact-checker for the Zagat Guide in New York — the now 24-year-old actress is doing two plays this month: Half Life at the New York International Fringe Festival, followed by the title role in Iphigenia at Aulis at the Red Room.
In Half Life, Chlumsky plays the 19-year-old, already-married-with-a-kid daughter of a man who was just released from prison after serving a two-year sentence for child molestation. “She doesn’t know how to handle this relationship, because she put it on hold while he was away, and it’s frightening to her now that she has a baby that her father may be a predator against children,” she says of the role. As for moving directly from such an intense part to the even more intense heroine of Euripides’ Greek tragedy, she says simply. “It’s not every day that someone offers you that opportunity, so you take it if someone does.”
Indeed, Chlumsky says she’d like to spend more time on the classics, having starred last year in a Queens production of Measure for Measure. “I’d love to do Kate in The Taming of the Shrew or Nina in The Seagull. I think it’s a question of confidence; once you know you can do it you can do it more and more.” But there’s one modern playwright whose works she’s particularly interested in exploring: Edward Albee. “Actually, when I wasn’t acting, I went to see The Goat, and when I saw Mercedes Ruehl on that stage, I thought ‘I have to be a goddess like that,'” she says. “In fact, that play was one of the signs that it was time to go back to acting full-time.”
STAR SEARCHING
Drama Desk winner Isabel Keating will star in a reading of Lawrence Klavan‘s screenplay Toil and Trouble at the Williamstown Theater Festival on August 13. Former Parade leading lady Andrea Burns will join singer Matt Sigl at Don’t Tell Mama for his cabaret show Unstuck in Time, August 14-15. The fabulous Sally Mayes will make a return visit to Birdland on August 22, singing selections from her CD Valentine.
Looking ahead, Grammy Award-winner Sylvia McNair will perform on September 3 as part of the 22nd Annual Roots of American Music Festival at Lincoln Center. Rip Crystal (Billy’s bro), Joan Rivers, and Kathryn Grant Crosby will be making one-night appearances this fall at Feinstein’s at the Regency. Angela Gaylor and Paolo Montalban will co-star in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of Cinderella, beginning October 19.
