A Little Bit Wicked (11 page)

Denny and I were sharing another little studio apartment, and I kept him up late debating the issue, weighing my options.

“Bernadette Peters…Andrew Lippa. Guaranteed smash…potential burp in church. More money…more Lippa. More money plus
knife-throwing
…Lippa. Obviously, I have to do
Annie Get Your Gun
…right?”

“Obviously,” Denny agreed. “If you want to.”

“Of course, I do! I mean—who wouldn’t? It’s a great role.”

“It’s a terrific role.”

“But with
Charlie Brown,
I’d be creating something totally new.”

“That does sound like fun.”

“Dang it, Denny, do you have to be so neutral? It’s like sharing a closet with Switzerland.”

Marc Kudisch and I were still going strong, and I drove him crazy agonizing over it while the fun factor kept nudging, and Michael Mayer kept telling me, “Trust me. You want to do this show.”

“Marc, please,” I begged, “give me one sane, practical, all-about-the-business reason to do
Charlie Brown
.”

“You’ll get more stage time in the small ensemble show.”

Marc Kudisch, ladies and gentlemen. Handsome hunk of helpfulness.

I hadn’t really thought of it that way—small ensemble versus the cast of thousands. It wasn’t easy to let go of the knife-throwing. And Bernadette. But in my heart, it felt like the right call.

Though I’d originally auditioned for the role of Patty (not Pep
permint Patty; she was created in the comic strip after the original show was written), I arrived at the first rehearsal and found my chair marked
SALLY
. Part of Michael’s redux of the script was to eliminate Patty altogether and expand the role of Charlie Brown’s little sister. He was still noodling out how he wanted to do it and gave me reams of
Peanuts
comics to read in hopes of ferreting out a few inspired bits and pieces. While we workshopped the show, I experimented and played with the character, eventually coming up with a composite of fidgety tics and ball-bustery. Michael didn’t say much, so I figured it was okay. The creative process was such a toboggan ride, I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Denny about it every day.

The show has traditionally been owned by Snoopy, and it was clear from the beginning that Roger Bart was going to be brilliant. Ilana Levine was a fiery Lucy, B. D. Wong our lovable Linus, and Stanley Wayne Mathis the thoughtful Schroeder, with Anthony Rapp fearlessly leading the cast as Charlie Brown. A terrific ensemble of smart, seasoned, hilarious actors, and a wonderful group of friends to work with. The lone piano and building-block set from the original production had been supersized to include special effects and a full orchestra, and Lippa had written a song called “My New Philosophy” with a wealth of comic opportunities, Zen wisdom, and vocal range for Sally and Schroeder. It’s a little piece of genius. Sally is able to marshal all meaning necessary for living her life into a series of concise axioms:

Oh, yeah? That’s what YOU think.

Why are you telling ME?

No!

And
I can’t stand it!

Give it some thought. I defy you to come up with a life circumstance in which one of these doesn’t come in handy.

I have to give credit where credit is due: my inspiration for many of Sally’s little mannerisms was my brother’s bodacious blue-eyed baby
girl, Emily. She was a toddler right around this time, just beginning to discover her long, lean, and naturally athletic limbs. She’d tapped into the power of
“No!”
and wielded it without hesitation, her little arm straight out, index finger pointing slightly off to the side, as if to tell you how out of line you were in trying to boss her around. She’s a lovely fourteen-year-old now, and Betsye and I are doing our darndest to coax forth her inner girlie girl, but every once in a while I see a flash of the old Sally Brown determination that will undoubtedly serve Emily well in later life.

We opened the show in Skokee, Illinois, and the audience went ape wild for it. After the curtain call, Michael gave me a big hug and said, “See? See? What did I tell you?”

Nothing!
I wanted to yell at him.
You told me nothing! I thought I was part of the wallpaper.
The next night, I figured I should rein it in a bit, but after the show Michael came charging back again.

“What happened? Where was the character I saw last night?”

“I thought maybe the balance was off a little. I don’t want it to look like I’m trying to upstage people.”

“Those guys can take care of themselves. You play your role and respect them enough to let them play theirs.”

He told me to let it rip. Run with the big dogs or stay on the porch with the puppies.

In February 1999, we opened on Broadway. Mom, Dad, and Florence Birdwell all came up to see the show. We went out after and laughed and talked, but I couldn’t stay up late because my castmates and I were scheduled to perform Stanley’s big number, “Beethoven Day,” on
The Rosie O’Donnell Show
the next morning. (And can I just say here that I love Rosie O’Donnell? They didn’t used to call her the Queen of Nice for nothing, and even when they stopped calling her that, it didn’t stop being true. She’s one of the coolest, most generous people I’ve ever known, and she did for New York theater what J. K. Rowling did for magic hats, bringing Broadway to millions of folks who had previously never given it much thought.)

I was sound asleep when the phone rang at two in the morning, and I rattled it off the cradle, thinking somebody better be on fire.

“Kristin.” It was a friend—actually my doctor, but I got hurt often enough that we were on pretty familiar terms. “Go get the paper. Now.”

“What? Why?”

“Ben Brantley says you’re a star.”

My dad went out and returned with the
Times,
and he and Mom sat at the table reading, their heads close together, tears running down Mom’s face.

“What does it say?” I asked.

She held up the paper to show me the headline: “Your Sister’s Gutsy, Charlie Brown.”

“It says…it says ‘one of those breakout performances that send careers skyward.’”

“Oh.” I would have laughed had I been able to breathe. “What does it say about the rest of the show?”

Mom bit her bottom lip and shook her head. Basically the review started with some positive stuff about Sally, then trashed the show, tearing down the production values and either slamming the rest of the cast or damning them with faint praise. With a weird sort of survivor’s guilt, I allowed the blessing to wash over me. This didn’t bode well for the show, but something huge was happening for me, and I was way too grateful to pretend otherwise. I’ve ridden at the back of the hay wagon plenty of times and been genuinely glad for the person enjoying his or her moment in the sun. This show was going to be my moment.

It was a quiet gathering backstage at
Rosie
later that morning, but the moment B. D. Wong walked in the door, he wrapped his arms around me and said, “I’m so happy for you.” Out on the set, Rosie talked up the show like crazy, said great things about everybody, and flatly stated that the role was going to win me a Tony. Stanley blew the walls back with “Beethoven Day,” and the audience ate it up.

Just before the end credits rolled, Rosie looped her arm around me, pulled me toward the camera, and said, “I love this girl! I love her!”

It was a perfect nutshell of the entire day from my perspective.

And it was great, okay? What—am I Mother Teresa? Am I a wooden peg? Of course, I
loved loved loved
every second. It was thrilling. My agent’s phone was ringing all day. After the show that night, I sat in my studio apartment with Denny, trying to encompass how my life had changed in the hours since the sun had come up.

When the Tony nominations were announced,
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
was nominated for Best Revival (Musical). Michael was nominated for Best Director, Roger Bart for Featured Actor, and me for Featured Actress. Producers hoped this would overcome the bad buzz from the
Times
and other reviews to keep the show afloat, but as awards night approached, we all knew we were circling the drain. The Tony producers came to the show and asked us to do “My New Philosophy” plus a few bars of “Happiness,” which had been spiffed up from the original.

The week before the Tonys I was back on Rosie O’Donnell’s show, and she asked me what I was going to wear when I accepted the Tony, which she and my mom had already decided would be mine.

“Tommy Hilfiger made me a beautiful dress,” I said, “but we’re going to perform right before my category is announced, and they told me there wouldn’t be time to change.”

“What? No, no, no,” said Rosie. “You have to change.”

“Well, they’re telling me it’s only about thirty seconds.”

“Plenty of time. It’s theatre. People do quick changes all the time. Don’t you worry. I’m going to have my dresser back there for you. Bobbi’s a magician. He’ll have you out of the costume and dressed with time to smoke a cigarette and fall in love.”

I was a little ambivalent about assembling a team to quick-change
me backstage at the Tonys. The potential for humiliation here was not small. I had some stiff competition: Gretha Boston, Mary Testa, and Valarie Pettiford. If I didn’t win, it would be the most awkward moment in the history of all-dressed-up-with-no-place-to-go. I’d be in my Tommy Hilfiger dress just in time to wave to the winner as she breezed on by.

The night of the awards, we did our thing and trucked off the stage to huge applause. In the thirty-four seconds it took for Swoosie Kurtz and Ben Stiller to list the nominees and crack the seal on the envelope, two dressers peeled off my costume and poured me into an evening gown while the hair wrangler whipped off my short, mopsy wig and whipped on a long Farrah Fawcett hairdo. (B.D. said it turned me into someone he’d never seen before.) Somebody yanked off my Sally Brown clodhoppers and ankle socks and jammed high heels on my feet at the moment my name was called. A scream went up from my castmates, who surrounded me with a windstorm of congratulations and shoved me back onstage, breathless and elated as if I’d been shot out of a cannon.

Roger had won his Tony earlier that evening, and finally the moment came to announce the Best Revival. And the winner was…
Annie Get Your Gun.
Nothing left to do, we figured, but go out and party like rock stars.

We received our closing notice the following day.

My Tony sat on the piano at Mom’s house for several years.

“I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle,” I told her, but the truth is, I found it intimidating. The Oscar seems to be styled so that recipients are not tempted to sit on it. The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre—
Tony
for short, after the actress, producer, and World War II–era leader of the American Theatre Wing—features a nickel-plated brass and bronze medallion, suspended over a black
acrylic base on a pewter swivel. It looks a bit like the suspended garbage-can lid that Chuck Barris used to whack in
The Gong Show
when the contestant had worn out his or her welcome on the stage. Seeing it hovering there on the shelf impregnated the air with the possibility that all this could be over in the space of a single cymbal crash.

When I bought my apartment in New York, Mom brought it to me and insisted I put it on the bookshelf. After all those years of anywhere-I-hang-my-hat, I was settled in one place now, and she figured I should keep track of my own things. And it’s fine. Between then and now, I’ve won and lost enough awards to blow off
The Gong Show
pastiche.

In 2004, I was nominated alongside my castmate Idina Menzel for
Wicked.
I wasn’t at all surprised when she won, and I couldn’t have been happier. She’d been nominated for
Rent
and lost in 1996. This was her moment, and she earned it. I think everyone was a little surprised when
Avenue Q
kicked
Wicked
’s butt in every other category, but—there you go. It was their moment.

In 2006, I cared more than I like to admit about the Tony nominations. I’d invested blood, sweat, and tears in a revival of
The Apple Tree
. I played four roles, worked harder, sang stronger, and had more fun than I’d ever had in any show
ever
and received the best reviews of my life. After the nominations were announced, a fabulous photo of me in a spanglicious golden gown appeared in
New York
magazine online—right under the headline “Tony Nominations: Who Got Snubbed?” Below my fabulous photo, it said, “Kristin Chenoweth. The once-beloved pixie of Broadway fails to get nominated.”

Once. Beloved. Pixie.

In other words,
GONG-ng-ng-ng-ng.

The item asked, “Does Broadway resent her alternating stage projects with TV and film?” As if “Broadway” sat down at their Friday-night poker game and came to a collective decision about the earth-shattering question of whether I’m on TV? Ironically, the day of
my nomin-
not!
-tion, I was scheduled to do up-fronts for
Pushing Daisies
. Up-fronts are yearly press events at which each network has a day to trot out the shows for the next season. The actors and directors are seated at long tables in front of a firing squad of cameras and microphones. Entertainment journalists lob questions at us, and we lob answers back.

The very first question put to me was “How’d you feel about getting snubbed by the Tonys?”

A few answers unbecoming to Miss Congeniality sprang to mind.
How’d you feel about waking up with a fork in your eye?
Then I thought about Uncle Jimmy.
How’d you feel if I tear your leg off and beat you with it?

But I smiled and said, “A wise teacher once told me never to do anything with the expectation of an award.” Then I spent the rest of the day in a funk.

The next morning, my mom called: