Келли О'Хара рассказала о неловком инциденте с актрисой из «Фолиес» и воспоминаниях о начале карьеры

Speaking of Kelli, she was a guest on a live version of the SiriusXM radio show, Seth Speaks, along with Andrea McArdle and Adam Pascal. I asked Kelli to tell everyone about her experience with Joan Roberts (Laurie in the original 1943 production of Oklahoma!). Joan was in the late 1990s revival of Follies and, in the opening scene, Kelli played the role of her helper. Let me emphasize that was her role. She was acting. Well, Joan somehow got it in her head that Kelli was her actual helper and, every day after rehearsal, she would ask Kelli to get her a cab. However, Joan didn’t talk like Laurie from “where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain.” She talked like the girls I hung out with at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream. Yes, Joan Roberts had a thick Long Island accent. So on Follies, Kelli was in charge of Joan’s transportation after every rehearsal, until the stage manager noticed and told Kelli that he would help Joan get her cabs. Cut to many years later, when the wonderful Betty Garrett passed away, the Follies cast gathered to remember her. By this time, Kelli had done a lot of Broadway shows and been nominated for a Tony Award. Kelli said Joan was so happy to see her and told Kelli she had been following her wonderful career. Ah! She finally knew who she was. Joan then asked Kelli to go outside and see where her car was. Seriously. After Kelli regaled us with that tale, I asked her to tell everyone about being busted by the Brits. Turns out, when Kelli brought her (Tony award winning!) performance of Mrs. Anna in The King and I to London, she was told that the Julie Andrews-style British accent she was using was wonderful. However, that accent came to England decades after The King and I took place. So, she had to learn an entirely different accent or be shoved onto the Queen Mary with a one-way ticket. P.S. That’s an appropriation of a joke Roger Bart once told. We were doing a show with a British actor who we all suspected was about to be fired. When we passed each other backstage, he said, “Looks like our friend is getting a one-way ticket on the Queen Mary!” Anyhoo…I asked Kelli to sing “Getting to Know You” and do whatever accent I called out. Instead of asking Kelli to do Julie Andrews British, the correct Mrs. Anna British, and Joan Roberts’ Long Island, I added her original Oklahoma accent and then, randomly, Christina Aguilera. Kelli was such a sport and just went with it. I’m finally recovered from The Festival, which was an amazing weekend chock full of Broadway magic. Here are some of the highlights! The first event I did was a Broadway Shabbat. This is something I do every Friday night (usually at 6 PM ET) on the Jewish Broadway Alliance’s brand-new website here. Broadway Shabbat started because me and my fellow JBA members were having a Zoom about how to deal with the growing rise of antisemitism and someone asked, “Can we cleanse the palette once in a while and do something about Jewish joy?” So, every Friday we have our Broadway Shabbat featuring what I call “brachas and Broadway belting!” Our Shabbat for The Festival was supposed to star two of my Jewish pals, Adam Pascal and Mandy Gonzalez. But probably the biggest (and only) issue about the weekend was that it took place on large field upstate. Beautiful yes, but big enough that you needed a golf cart to get around quickly. Neither Adam nor Mandy could make it over in time for candle lighting. But I had help from my friend Thomas Ellenson! Thomas is a writer and actor. I first saw his one-person show (directed by Chris Hanke) and loved it. His first full-length play, Thomas and Me, will run from September 24–28 at The Sheen Center. Tickets are available here. Follow @ThomasAndMePlay on Instagram for more details. Thomas was born with cerebral palsy and can’t speak on his own. But his dad, Richard Ellenson, created this amazing machine that speaks for him! So, at Broadway Shabbat, Thomas’ bread blessing was spoken in his very not-Jewish sounding robot voice. Of course, I busted him non-stop. You can watch it here! P.S. The other issue at The Festival was the WiFi, so the quality of this ain’t great. But it’s still fun to watch! Tom does his blessing at around the 10-minute mark. Don’t Quit Your Night Job or Broadway’s Next Hit Musical has to hire her for their improv troupe! Andrea McArdle was my next guest, and she was hilarious and candid as always. Amazingly, in the audience that day, was my pal Stacey Lynn Brass. Here’s some backstory. When I was 13, my friend Barbara Brass was telling me about her cousin, Stacey, who was in Annie. Barbara also mentioned that Stacey was in a show on the weekends featuring kid performers. I immediately researched and found out it was called Beginnings and there were auditions happening. My Dad drove me into the city, I sang up a storm, and I got cast. It was an incredible time. I was surrounded by all the kids who were currently on Broadway in Evita, Peter Pan, and, my favorite, Annie. We had two Annies singing every weekend, Allison Smith and Sarah Jessica Parker. I can’t tell you how much I loved it. My friend Sasha Charnin was there every week, too. She is Martin Charnin’s daughter and, devastatingly, did not get cast in her dad’s show. I will never fully understand it, but I will say it was not because of her voice. She is an incredible singer! We are still pals and, a few years ago, she sent me this piece that was filmed for TV. I total forgot I was on! I enter around 30 seconds in…look for the Dorothy Hamill haircut. Before my Broadway Shabbat, I hosted a show at The Festival where various amazing performers sung songs from their dream roles, their first roles, or their audition songs. Tommy Bracco was one such performer and, in the week leading up to the Festival, he told me and Dan Lipton (The Festival’s music director) that he wanted to sing his Newsies audition song. The song was written by David Zippel and Alan Menken for Diamonds, a revue about baseball featuring songs by Kander and Ebb, Cy Coleman, and Comden and Green. And it was directed by Hal Prince. Even with that pedigree, the show’s been (mostly) forgotten, so when I texted David Zippel asking for the music, he was shocked anyone knew it! He was also so happy. He put me in touch with Alan Menken’s office, and the wonderful Aaron Kenny found a hand-written version that he then transcribed into beautiful sheet music! Tommy came onstage and told everyone that he grew up in Staten Island and, at the dance call for Newsies, he asked a question, sounding like the Staten Island native he is. Well, as soon as that 7-1-8 accent left his mouth, Jeff Calhoun pointed at him and told all everyone else auditioning, “Talk like him!” Since I had the newly printed music for “In the Cards” from Alan Menken’s office, I was able to play for Tommy so he could recreate his audition. Afterwards, I asked him to show everyone some of the dance sass he did eight times a week. Boy, did he! My last guest in my show at The Festival was Adam Pascal. He was not only there for my show, but he was also part of the 30th anniversary reunion of RENT that happened later that afternoon. It was so incredible to see the cast all together again! They sang so many songs that they haven’t done together in years. The title song was especially thrilling. And, omg, the stories they told! Daphne Rubin-Vega talked about Gilles Chiasson going on for the first time as Mark and forgetting all the lyrics to the opening song. Well, not all of them. She demonstrated how he sounded. He literally sang the melody of the song on a “da” from the get-go. "Da-da-da-da-" etc. He continued and continued with non-stop “da da da” until he finally got to the word he knew, “Rent!” Her imitation was hilarious. Back in 2016, I had a mini-RENT reunion on the Nederlander stage. While I was doing Disaster!, and during the BCEFA fundraising weeks, I’d ask audience members to bid to hear cast members recreate their original songs from other shows. One night, I had Daphne join Adam and we raised a lot of money for them to sing “Light my Candle” together. Watch! That night, I was a guest on Don’t Quit Your Night Job, David Rossmer and Steve Rosen’s hilarious improv show. David and Steve were the writers and stars of The Other Josh Cohen. P.S. The aforementioned Dan Lipton teamed up with David Rossmer years ago and wrote “Opera Country” for Kelli O’Hara. The song was inspired by Kelli’s Oklahoma roots and operatic training. Both the song and her performance are so brilliant! I feel swinging is a term a lot of people know in the Broadway context, but don’t quite understand how difficult a job it is to do. I wrote a show called Broadway 101 where I showed the audience a bunch of dancers performing “Hello 12, Hello 13…” from A Chorus Line and then told the audience that a swing must be prepared to go on for any of the dancers. I called up a person from the audience to pick a random dancer to get “injured” (a double turn, a fan kick…and their coccyx falls out) and then the swing must go on for them. I was the swing! The very first performance had the audience member picking future Broadway choreographer and director Lorin Latarro. I was so scared going on for her but had so much fun!