Alison Stewart: You're listening to All of It on WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. On today's show, we are celebrating our Tony-nominated guests from this Broadway season. The awards are on Sunday night, with 29 plays and musicals up for awards out of 42 shows that were eligible. This hour, it's all about musicals. Later, you'll hear from Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen about how they transformed into robots for the Tony-nominated musical, Maybe a Happy Ending. Stick with us until the end of the hour to hear special live performances from the cast of Real Women Have Curves, along with a conversation with the Tony-nominated composers, Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez, but first, let's get this started with Gypsy. [music -- Gypsy]

Speaker B: I had a dream a dream about you, baby.

it's gonna come true, baby.

They think that we're through.

But baby, you'll be swell, you'll be great.

gonna have the whole world on the plate.

Starting here.

Alison Stewart: Gypsy, based on the true story of a momager who wants stardom for her two daughters, is back on Broadway. It's also nominated for five Tony Awards. That includes nominations for the two stars of the show, and my next guests, Audra McDonald and Joy Woods. It is Audra McDonald's 11th nomination, making her the most nominated in Tony's history. Audra plays Rose. She's tough as nails with dreams of getting her girls on the biggest stages during the Great Depression. Joy plays her sweet daughter Louise, who stays in the background until she discovers that exotic dancing is her way to becoming one of the biggest burlesque stars of her day.

That's what Rose wants, right? Gypsy is filled with classics from Together, Wherever We Go, Rose's Turn and Let Me Entertain You. Gypsy has been on Broadway five times, but this time with Black actors in the lead roles, and it adds a whole new layer to the script. Earlier this week, Gypsy was awarded the Drama Desk Award for Best Revival of a Musical and Audra McDonald won for outstanding lead performance in a musical. I began my conversation with Audra and Joy by asking Audra how the part of Mama Rose came to her.

Audra McDonald: Well, it first came to me, not in any official capacity, but a friend of mine, the late Gavin Creel, who just passed away this fall, a very dear friend of mine, was over at our house for Thanksgiving about it eight years ago. When he walked in, he said, "Honey, I want to talk to you about something." Then after dinner, he dragged me into my garage. He's like, "Honey, okay, here's what I want to talk to you about. I think you need to play Rose in Gypsy. I think you need to do it. You just need to do it. It should be a Black woman. It should be you. You need to do it. You need to do it."

He just had had a vision and was just absolutely determined, and that's what got the ball rolling. Then conversations began shortly after that with the estates, to make sure that they were interested, and they were. Stephen Sondheim was alive at the time, and he said, "I think that's a brilliant idea." Then it took a while to figure out who the right person to direct it was, and I knew in my heart that it needed to be George. The estates agreed and that took eight years, but here we are.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Gavin was such a sweetheart.

Audra McDonald: Yes, he was.

Alison Stewart: Joy, you were working on The Notebook when you realized that this was going to be your job, you win the audition. What was it like to work between the two shows?

Joy Woods: I think the most difficult thing during that time, rehearsing the show during the day and doing the other at night, probably was just getting enough sleep to show up and be present for both.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Joy Woods: It was definitely the first few phases of that process was finding the similarities between the two and then trying to separate them as individual people. Ally and Louise, because they're both young women that have a moment in the show where they have a self-actualization moment and come into their adulthood or just personhood. Yes, it was very interesting to go from one chapter of your life to the next in such a way. Sleep and eating and water are important, so definitely the main thing.

Alison Stewart: Audra, I follow you on Instagram. You had this great speech that you gave, it could be for anybody, but I think it was for women mostly, about not necessarily being liked. Would you share a little bit about that? I was going to get this later, but [chuckles] this is just too good.

Audra McDonald: Yes, no, I had. I had some people come to see the show the night before, and it was a group of people. We had them in the front couple of rows of the audience after the show, and they wanted to chat about it. One of them said, "You know, my husband just-- he said, "I don't really like her. I don't really like this character." In the moment, I said, "Yes, well, you know, that's valid, but Rose is who she is." What I was saying on Instagram, the reason I felt compelled to talk about it was not to shame the person who made the comment, because it's a perfectly valid comment. It's not the first time I've heard that comment either.

It was more about what happened to me in that moment and in the hours following, when I went home. In the moment, I immediately defended her and just said, "Well, she is who she is." When I went home that night, I started thinking, "Wow, I'm glad I'm not 25 a 25-year-old Audra because 25-year-old Audra would have totally been like, 'Oh God, what am I doing wrong? I got to make her more likable. How do I make her more likable?" Because of the fact that I had the incredible opportunity of working with Zoe Caldwell years and years ago in the play Masterclass. She became a mentor and a friend, a very, very dear person, important person in my life. She had come to see me do Marie Christine, which was the musical version of Medea, written by Michael John Lachiusa and, of course, the great Phil Caldwell, who had won four Tony Awards and was one of the greatest Medeas of our time, great classical actress, Shakespearean actress.

She came because I asked her to come, early in the previews, and she came backstage afterwards. After being very lovely, shut the door and stuck her finger in my face and said, "Stop trying to make the audience like you." Iit was a huge, huge, huge lesson for me. She said, "The point is not for the audience to like Medea. It was for them to understand why she does what she has to do." I wanted to relay that, meshed in this lesson with what happened a couple nights ago at Gypsy. You're not meant to like Rose. You're meant to understand why she does what she does, and it's interesting.

I'm not going to go there, but in a sort of way, I will go there. You don't ever hear people saying, "Gosh, I just don't like Macbeth."

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Audra McDonald: "King Lear, he's just an unlikable character," because honestly, given that it's a patriarchy, it's not supposed to be a problem if you don't like male characters. Like, well, they're just doing what they have to do, but God forbid it be a woman. Then all of a sudden it's like, "Well, I just don't like her. She's not smiling enough," or whatever. It's like, neither did Macbeth, neither did Lear, neither did Richard III, half of these people. We learn about ourselves as human beings. We learn about our own humanity through all types of behavior that are shown to us on stage. That is the point of theater.

The Greeks got it right. The Greeks knew. This is how you're going to get this out so you don't end up doing all these horrible things. You're going to learn about who you are on the inside. It's our jobs, as actors, to understand who these characters are, defend them to the hilt, and play the role.

Alison Stewart: Joy, when we meet Louise, what do you think is important to her?

Joy Woods: Keeping peace, keeping the kids in check when Mama isn't around. I think when we meet Louise at my age, it's just before her birthday. Then we see her on her birthday, and they ask her to make a wish and blow out candles. I have a very specific picture of what I imagine in my mind when I go to blow out those candles and what I want from that day, just one specific thing. I think the rest of the show, she's trying to get that picture. It's like a kid wants to be an astronaut someday, and it's so far away and it seems so out of reach, but they still wish for it.

In Louise's mind, it's just Mama standing behind her, showing her what her dreams are, and Louise being included in that. It's just her wishing to be included in other people's dreams. I think that's where we meet her, and that's where we see her fight for and then slowly release the need for that, to be happy in the show. That's the coming into herself that I think Louise goes through.

Alison Stewart: Audra, there's a whole other layer to this show with the leads being Black. It's incredible, actually, because as you really start to think about what it means for Rose, it means for her to take care of her children during this period. What is a decision that you made for your character, that you made for her considering that this Rose is a Black woman?

Audra McDonald: There's so many different decisions. I'll speak to two of the decisions that she makes. One is a decision, I think, made out of incredible luck, kismet, convenience, whatever you want to call it. She meets Herbie, and we play it in the show that by the time we get to this particular theater where Mr. Weber, she keeps sort of hounding the theater owner there and he's just trying to get her out of his face. I don't think she thinks she's going to be very successful with that, but she's going to keep trying because she doesn't have an off button, so she knows she's going to keep trying, keep trying.

Then Herbie comes into the picture and she sees that he sees her. That's the first thing. Mr. Weber doesn't see her. He sees a Black tornado. He's got to get out of the way and try not to have an altercation. Herbie sees Rose and because he sees her, Rose seizes upon that opportunity.

Alison Stewart: Right.

Audra McDonald: She's taken aback by the fact that he sees her and still wants to be in her presence even though she is a Black woman, which makes her think, "What's that all about?" and "I see you seeing me, I'm going to grab on in whatever way I can," so that's one decision that she makes as a Black woman. Seeing that she's being recognized. Another one which is very, very harsh, is what she chooses to do with the little Black boys when they start to grow up, that she decides to make the act look like an all-white act. Up until that point, you don't see where they're performing really because then we just have June in the front who's this very, very light-skinned Black girl who could pass as white and these little Black boys behind them.

That was not all that unusual in different places and vaudeville theaters that they could have performed, not on the Orpheum circuit because you see, they're not on the Orpheum circuit yet. Herbie comes into the picture, and those kids start to grow up and Rose realizes that if she can make the act look more-- [laughs] I'm on the radio trying to give air quotes- but quotes-

Alison Stewart: We got you.

Audra McDonald: "palatable to a mainstream audience." Get her on the Orpheum circuit. She's got to switch it up because there was only one Bert Williams. There was only one Ada Overton Walker. There were very few opportunities for Black people to actually get on the Orpheum circuit. Usually, it was just one act, first year, whatever. The very harsh choice that she makes to yank those Black boys out of the show and replace them with white boys and basically step over into these are all American white kids. I've got my little 'white' girl-- quotes again- ressed up as the Statue of Liberties, belting high Cs.

I've got one kid that looks like Theodore Roosevelt. You got one looking like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. I'd done before with my little Black boys when they thought that was cute, but they're growing up, so I got to make them all white. Then, the other harsh thing she does is she takes Louise, pulls her out of the act, and puts her in the rear of a cow, so she's now hidden. This is now, for all intents and purposes, a white act. Then what's the first thing that we see happen to them after it becomes a white act? They get on the Orpheum circut, so those are harsh, harsh choices that Rose has made that she felt she needed to make-- again in her mind- all for her kids.

Alison Stewart: Louise, in the first half of the show, takes backstage. She's not a showstopper like June, but in the second half, Joy, you are a bombshell. You come out. First of all, how do you hide your talents in the first half of the show?

Joy Woods: I think the show was written well enough where it isn't something that I have to hide. I think there's a distinct difference between singing as an internal dialogue, singing out Louise, singing out into the real world. I think the material does a great job at distinguishing between the two and what is what, and the same goes for the dancing, what's happening in her head versus what's happening in real life. I guess that means I just am able to use a little less technique in [unintelligible 00:16:16] and try a little harder to send a message that she's finding her bearings and getting into her body because these kids are growing up, they're going through puberty.

Audra McDonald: Sure.

Joy Woods: They're probably having growing pains. Their bones hurt, they don't know how to use their limbs. I'm pretty sure that Louise is no exception to that, so that's more so of what is played into when she's growing up and coming into herself.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Audra, I wanted to ask you about the book because this is often called the great book for musicals. What is something that you, as an actor, would understand about the book? Why is it considered a great book that we nonmusical people wouldn't necessarily understand?

Audra McDonald: I think I can best answer that by telling you what we did on the first day of rehearsal.

Alison Stewart: Sure.

Audra McDonald: On the first day of rehearsal, we were all gathered. After we did all the introductions and whatnot, George sat us all down, big tables where we were all facing each other. He said, "Okay, we're going to read this, but without music, but we're not skipping any of the lyrics when we get to the songs. You're still reading it. Read the lyrics," and so we read the whole thing tip to toe as if it were only a play.

Joy Woods: Yes. We could have put that thing up that day.

Audra McDonald: That day.

Joy Woods: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Audra McDonald: It is seamless the way the dialogue goes into these songs and that's what's so brilliant about the book. I mean, except for the fact that these legends of being Arthur Lawrence and Steve Sondheim and Julie Stein, you almost cannot even see the connective tissue. A lot of when they are singing in the show, they are actually singing in real life. That's also what makes it so wonderfulm so that's what I would say. Then if you wanted to look just at the scenes-- if you were to look just at the scenes, the stuff that is not sung- it's very lean. This is a lean, lean machine as far as a book is concerned.

You are given very little dialogue and very little time and amount of lines in which to convey an emotion, to get to a thought, to have an idea, to react to something that has happened. Arthur Lawrence has made this very, very, very, very leanm which means there's not a lot of time for [chuckles] doing obnoxious actory things. You got to get to it, get to it.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Audra McDonald: The amount of time that Rose and Herbie meet and find that they have an attraction and mutual interest, all of that is two pages, at the most. It's so quick. Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Audra McDonald: Also because the writing is so beautiful, they've done all the work for you. It's that great Terrence McNally line of "Follow the composer. The composer is God," same with the playwright, apply in many ways. The work has been done for you. It really has.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with Tony-nominated actors Audra McDonald and Joy Woods. They star as Rose and Louise in the current revival of Gypsy.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Up next, the brand new musical, Maybe Happy Ending, has been capturing the hearts of theatergoers with its charming love story between two robots. Stars Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen discuss the show, next.