A Little Bit Wicked by Rodgers Joni & Chenoweth Kristin

Author:Rodgers, Joni & Chenoweth, Kristin [Chenoweth, Kristin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2009-03-04T20:00:00+00:00

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.

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