Movies

Angela Lansbury has played some of musical theater’s most sensational roles

October 12, 2022

The queen is dead, aged 96. No, no, I mean our queen, the one who ruled the hearts of the theatre. Ageless Angela Lansbury may have been celebrated in TV and film culture as Jessica Fletcher and Mrs. Potts, but Broadway history has claimed her much more centrally, as some of the most iconic characters. most flamboyant of the musical theater canon: Mame. Mom Pink. Mrs Lovett.

I’m sure many British subjects felt the same way about their queen, that the universe could step in and allow her to go on and on. It was my selfish wish for Lansbury. Not only was she Angela Lansbury for so long, but she was also — still — the best Angela Lansbury any audience could hope for.

Whether it was a role called for courage or grace, grit or poise, Lansbury could summon qualities that drove a show beyond exceptional and down to unforgettable. To me, she’s forever the pragmatic, homicidal pastry chef of “Sweeney Todd,” madly cooking in meat pies the tonsorial customers dispatched by Len Cariou’s wild-eyed Sweeney in the original 1979 Broadway incarnation of the musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.

It’s, quite simply, one of my favorite performances of all time, a flawless ride frozen in memory: monstrous yet hilarious, flirtatious and still heartbreaking. She is rightly hailed for Ms. Lovett’s priceless intro song, ‘The Worst Pies in London’: “Is that just disgusting? / You have to admit / It’s just a crust / Here, drink this, you’ll need it!”

But it’s an image in the final minutes of the musical that has haunted me over the decades: a panicked Mrs. Lovett maniacally waltzed by Sweeney into fiery oblivion, after he discovers she’s been hiding fate. calamity of his wife.

I left the theater that day – the Uris, then renamed the Gershwin – in a daze.

Angela Lansbury, Broadway star, film actress and TV star, dies at 96

In 2010, Lansbury told me about the circumstances of her casting in ‘Sweeney’: a telegram in Ireland, where she had a home, from director Harold Prince: ”Dear Angela, Steve Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler and I are preparing a production of ‘Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street.” We would be interested to know if you would be interested in reading for the role of Nellie Lovett. ”

Lansbury had to “read for the role”! She had already won three Tony Awards (out of five, plus a lifetime achievement award earlier this year), for the originals “Mame” and “Dear World” and a beloved cover of “Gypsy.” Such were the rigors of booking a job in the good old days; it is now rare for stars of his accomplishment to submit to auditions. Back in New York, Lansbury said, Sondheim sang “The Worst Pies” for her — a rhythmically delicate song, involving the syncopated efforts of kneading pie dough. Lansbury was delighted. “’That’s something I would have a lot of fun doing,’” she remembers thinking.

Our interview took place on the occasion of Lansbury’s receipt of the Stephen Sondheim Award from the Signature Theater in Arlington, Va. – the first person to be so honored after Sondheim himself. (And to be followed by Bernadette Peters, Carol Burnett, Harold Prince and other key figures in Sondheim’s orbit.) We sat in her downtown Manhattan apartment, a comfortable, no-frills base. pretension, with a breathtaking view of the brick wall. the next door. She was both grandmother and daughter at the tender age of 85 and had yet to perform what would be her final Broadway role, in Gore Vidal’s 2012 “The Best Man.” The prospect of work still illuminated him, as did memories of indelible triumphs like “Sweeney.”

“When I hear the recording, I’m like, ‘How could I do that?’ “Lansbury watched that day with a laugh. Well, ambition, discipline and self-confidence, of course. You look at the variety and volume of his resume – film roles dating back to ‘Gaslight’ and “National Velvet” during World War II, and 12 seasons as the star of CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote” in the 1980s and 90s — and you can feel the voracious, Streep appetite for work.

His collaboration with Sondheim, who died 11 months ago at 91, spanned unrivaled hits — “Sweeney Todd” is being revived on Broadway this season, starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford — and legendary flops. “Anyone Can Whistle,” a nonsensical satire featuring Lansbury as the corrupt mayor of a dying town, ran for just seven days at the Majestic Theater in 1964. It’s a flawed musical that no creative team to the agile mind has never been able to mend.

But soon after playing Laurence Harvey’s evil mother in director John Frankenheimer’s 1962 “The Manchurian Candidate” — Lansbury was only three years older than Harvey — the musical gave her new life on Broadway ( she had only acted in straight plays on Broadway before “Whistle”).

Possessing what she described as “a natural singing voice,” Lansbury told me that acting in a full-fledged musical was basically a matter of training “and figuring out how loud I had to be to be heard by the orchestra”.

In her possession, too, it seems, was a very reliable fearlessness: she was born in 1925 to a wealthy London family who left for the United States at the start of the Blitz. A hint of natural British courage never wore off.

“What you have to agree with me is that I would do anything I was interested in trying; it’s the feeling of ‘I would love to do this,’” she recalled that afternoon a dozen years ago. “I’m also thrilled and proud that someone thinks I can do a certain thing and then gives me a chance. It’s happened time and time again. It gave me confidence – that they believed that I would give them anything they wanted.

In Lansbury’s juiciest corners, that confidence was palpable. I only know his 1966 “Mame” from endless replays of his voice on the cast album, singing the catchy tunes of Jerry Herman, and his 1974 “Gypsy” from stories of friends who l ‘have seen. But as recently as 2009, when audiences got to see her as Madame Armfeldt in Catherine Zeta-Jones’ revival of “A Little Night Music,” she still gave us all something. that we wanted. His inimitable and irresistible self.