March 14, 2002
by Rob Kendt
Isn't Susan Egan a star? I guess headlining a Broadway hit for
years in New York and L.A. doesn't cut it anymore, as of course Egan did in
that big furry Disney musical. I mention this because she refers to herself
with a mixture of humility and pride as "the only non-star Sally
Bowles" to top the Roundabout revival of Cabaret, still
running at Studio 54 in New York (and currently featuring Molly Ringwald, whom
a friend of mine termed "tentative" in the role). Egan did the role
for a year; I happened to catch it, and I have to report she had the best
damaged-pixie take on Sally I've seen since Julie Harris' non-musical film
version. (In the more severe, Liza-like Sally mold, I give a nod to Jessica
Pennington's turn in West Coast Ensemble's rendition years ago.)
"Bernadette Peters was the last of them," Egan said recentlyÑmeaning
the last bona fide star whose star power was minted on the stage. "Patti
LuPone, to an extent." That's part of why Egan is in L.A., she explained:
to get film and TV credits that will make herself "more valuable" to
Broadway producers who are now so famously reliant on the box-office insurance
of film and TV names. She points to examples like Nathan Lane and Victor
Garber, or Megan Mullally. "She is so coolÑshe totally deserves her
success," said Egan, who speculates that Mullally will use her fame to
return to Broadway and "keep 150 people employed."
We're a little floored by this eminently practical career
approach, but then Egan's type has always been ingŽnue-with-brains, and she
knows it. "If Meg Ryan were a musical-theatre singer" is one way she
sums up her natural type. She has chafed a bit at the Disney-clean image, though
her attempts to play against itÑthe L.A. premiere of Hello Again, CabaretÑmay have
succeeded too well: She was recently offered the part of Petra in A Little
Night Music, though she's still right for Anne. "It's like people have
forgotten I'm a soprano," she joked.
A good reminder of her type, vocally and otherwise, is her debut
solo CD, So Far, just out on Jay Records. Indeed, it's the portable Susan Egan:
Everything from Nellie Forbush to Bye Bye Birdie's Kim, from
Sally Bowles to the adulterous wife in Hello Again. There's also
a striking novelty: "A Change in Me," a song Alan Menken added to the
Broadway Beauty when pop diva Toni Braxton joined the cast; a label dispute
prevented a recording, so Egan's CD marks the song's debut on record. (She gets
extra credit for including one of my favorite showtunes, "Frank
Mills.")
But the biggest surprise about her vibrant new record, produced by
John Yap, is that it's her first. She's done racks of cast albums and
anthologies, but despite landing steady cabaret and symphony gigs, she's had no
product to peddle to fans. "Brian Stokes Mitchell told me that every day
you don't have a CD you're losing money, and growth of fans," she said.
One of the cast albums she did for Varese Sarabande will come to life in June: Drat
the Cat, a lost late-'60s Ira Levin tuner that originally starred Elliott
Gould and Lesley Anne Warren. Egan plans to perform it in a concert format with
pal Jason Graae, likely at Beverly Hills Playhouse. Star, schmarÑthis busy
chick is the real thing.
¥ Speaking of musicals for the summer: Jillian Armenante told me
she's working on a new musical with her Circle X Theatre accomplices about the
early days of cinema, Laura Comstock's Bag-Punching Dog, named after
a novelty short filmed by Thomas Edison in 1901. If it's half as good as In
Flagrante Gothicto, Armenante's and Alice Dodd's Goth-lit sendup of 2000, we're
saving the date.
¥ Last year's hit production of Orson's Shadow, a big winner
at our recent Garland Awards, aroused interest in future productions of this
Austin Pendleton-penned play about the infamous 1960 collaboration between
Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles on a production of Rhinoceros. Actor Bob
Balaban, Oscar-nominated as a producer of the film Gosford Park, has bought
the world rights to the play and is in talks to take it to London, where it's
likely to resonate clangingly, as that is where it's set. Andrew Ableson, who
brought critic Kenneth Tynan to definitive near-life in the Black Dahlia
Theatre's production, may have an edge on the competition for the role
overseas, since he has his British Equity card. Meantime, Ableson is in Torn at
Theatre/Theater, an improvised drama that sounds fascinatingly risky and is
scheduled to play Apr. 6 through May 18.