Loose Lips

WILL POWER
Amanda McBroom may be best known as a songwriter (she penned the Grammy-winning hit “The Rose”) and a cabaret performer, but her new theater piece A Woman of Will — in which she plays Kate, a troubled songwriter who turns to the heroines of Shakespeare’s plays for inspiration — is in many ways a return to her roots. “Long before I was a songwriter, I was a Shakespearean actress, and his work has always been close to my heart,” she says. “My dad was an actor and my mother was a drama teacher; they actually met while they were doing Henry IV in college. So, like Kate in the play, I learned a couple of Shakespearean speeches when I was a child, including Portia’s big speech from The Merchant of Venice. It was really cute when I was 4, though I had no idea what it meant.”

In the show — which marks McBroom’s first New York stage appearance since she was in the chorus of Broadway’s Seesaw in 1973 — Kate is trying to write a big showstopper for Portia, who is to be played in a fictional musical by Jennifer Lopez. Why is that character the focus of the show? “When I was younger, I loved Rosalind, but I’ve become more and more appreciative of Portia over the years,” says McBroom. “I am struck by her honesty and integrity; she’s the one person who keeps her word when all around her are falling by the wayside. Plus, she’s smart and has compassion and a great sense of humor. While I was working on this, I saw the Al Pacino movie version of Merchant (which starred Lynn Collins as Portia), and I think it was the best version I’ve ever seen.”

One of the most intriguing bits in A Woman of Will is that Kate, who’s holed up in a hotel room in Cleveland, keeps receiving answering machine messages from the main people in her life, voiced by such actors as Andre De Shields, Patrick Cassidy, Alix Korey, Jay Rogers, and McBroom’s real-life spouse, George Ball. Remarks McBroom, “My collaborator Joel Silberman knows so many wonderful people, and I think it was easy for them to say yes because they don’t have to show up every night.” But one guest voice stands out for McBroom: Tony Award winner Jim Dale as the Bard himself. “I love him so much from those Harry Potter books on tape,” she gushes. “When he said yes, I was beside myself.”

BILL OF FARE
Bill Brochtrup isn’t heeding Stephen Sondheim‘s advice about never doing anything twice. He’s now in Boston, starring in the SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of Richard Kramer‘s Theater District, a play he did just last year in California. In fact, he’s happy to be revisiting the role of George, an actor turned restaurateur whose life is turned upside down when his partner’s 16-year-old son moves in with them.

“It’s a great chance to change what I wasn’t satisfied with before,” says Brochtrup, best known for his role as gay receptionist John Irvin on the TV series NYPD Blue. “At first, it was weird to revisit the play with a different cast and a different set. And I didn’t want to be the guy who keeps saying, ‘This is how we did it before.’ Not only has everyone been really gracious, but the director, Wes Savick, has asked me completely different questions. And he’s really detail-oriented, which I like.”

There are other significant differences in the productions as well. “In L.A., the theater was only 30 seats — you could do the whole show in close-up — and here we have 200 seats,” he notes. “And maybe it’s because we’re in the Northeast, but I think the whole thing is now a little bit edgier. Of course, in L.A, everyone in the audience knew someone like the characters in the show, because it’s such an industry town. But I think anyone who works or lives in a big city will know these people.”

The actor would also like a second shot at Pera Palas, another play in which he appeared in L.A., which just garnered a bunch of Ovation Award nominations (including Best Ensemble). Meanwhile, his next vacation will probably take him back to Las Vegas. A devoted card player and gambler (yet one who favors, of all games, roulette), Brochtrup recently filmed an episode of Bravo’s Celebrity Poker Showdown. “All I will say about how I did is that the host, Phil Gordon, picked me as the winner,” he laughs. “I had such a great time that I’m really angling to go back and do it again.”

GETTING THE KINK OUT
Trey Anthony conceived the beauty salon setting of her musical ‘da Kink in my Hair, now at San Diego Rep, long before such popular movies as Barbershop and Beauty Shop hit the screen. “I needed to find someplace where a 12-year-old immigrant could realistically meet a 30-year-old businesswoman and a 60-year-old grandmother,” she says. “Plus, a lot of women have intense relationships with their hairdresser as best friend, therapist, and confessor, so it makes sense that they would have monologues there.”

When Anthony — a British-born comic of Jamaican heritage who moved to Toronto as a child — first wrote the show, she envisioned playing all of the characters. “It was going to be my calling card to get people to see me,” she explains. “But when I did the first reading, I invited seven women to do the show so I could really hear it, and a lot of the feedback I got was to keep them. So then I had to go write myself another part! Since so many of the subjects were heavy, a lot of people felt the piece needed a comic touch, so I came up with playing the salon’s owner.”

Anthony has been heartened by the show’s reception in San Diego. “We’ve had a lot of men come,” she tells me. “I think they’ve probably been dragged by their wives and girlfriends but, by the end, they’re converted. We’ve also had a few Hollywood types in the house, including Louis Gossett, Jr. and Sheryl Lee Ralph, who is really trying to push the show further. I hope we can bring it to L.A. and New York.”

STARS IN THE SEATS
Who needs to attend opening nights to see celebrities in the audience? Over the past 10 days, here’s who I’ve seen at the theater: Kevin Anderson at Miracle Brothers; Betty Buckley at The Great American Trailer Park Musical; Marylouise Burke at Fran’s Bed; Jill Clayburgh, Marian Seldes, Cherry Jones, and Heather Goldenhersh at Colder Than Here; Michael Arden and Shirley Knight at the National Alliance of Musical Theater Festival; and Malcolm Gets at Knight’s show, Cycling Past the Matterhorn.

But, for sheer star power, it was hard to beat the crowd at the Actors’ Fund benefit concert of On the Twentieth Century: Lauren Bacall, Kathy Brier, Danny Burstein and Rebecca Luker, Mario Cantone, Shawn Elliott and Donna Murphy, Harvey Evans, Barrett Foa, Howard McGillin, Jerry Mitchell, and Laila Robins were among those present. Also on hand, of course, was the great Phyllis Newman, who wowed the crowd with a hilarious pre-curtain speech. The Tony-winning actress joked that, while the jewels given to her by her late husband — Century co-creator Adolph Green — were beautiful, “Perhaps I should have married Andrew Lloyd Webber.”