October 13th 2005 (
www.boston.com) by Michael Kuchwara
Julie Andrews -- director -- puts `The Boy Friend' on the road
NEW YORK --On a warm mid-May morning in a drab, sixth-floor rehearsal studio on West 26th Street, a young woman stands in the middle of the room and sings a plaintive song of yearning called "Is It Really Me?" from the musical "110 in the Shade."
"Lovely. Lovely," murmurs a distinctly proper and very British voice that theater and movie-musical buffs instantly would recognize. Eliza Doolittle. Guenevere. Mary Poppins. Maria von Trapp.
Julie Andrews is offering encouragement to a hopeful performer auditioning for a role in a production of "The Boy Friend," the Sandy Wilson musical that will play the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn., and then tour the country.
For singer Jessica Grove, it is the beginning of a new chapter in her budding career. For Andrews, it is something new, too. She is now Julie Andrews -- director.
"It just feels that every single thing I've ever done in my life is now brought to bear on this aspect of my career," the star of "My Fair Lady," "Camelot" and "The Sound of Music" says months later -- after "The Boy Friend" had opened its summer run in Connecticut and was preparing to go on the road. "And I'm enjoying it immensely."
Andrews sits in a corner suite (complete with piano) in the Carlyle, a swank Upper East Side hotel. Dressed entirely in white -- white pants, white blouse and a white baseball cap -- she talks about her introduction to New York and "The Boy Friend," the show that first brought her to Broadway from England in 1954.
"New York was an assault on my senses in every way," recalls Andrews, who turned 19 the day after her Broadway debut. "We didn't have enough money for my parents to come. I came alone, unchaperoned.
"I was very green and very green about being in America. An 18-year-old girl is like a 16-year-old girl over here. I felt very young and out of my depth. I would stop in shop doorways because I would get so dizzy from the pace."
Yet Andrews not only survived, she triumphed in Wilson's affectionate spoof of 1920s musicals, a loving lampoon of classic shows of the period such as "No, No, Nanette."
Ask the 81-year-old Wilson, who wrote the show's book, music and lyrics, to describe Andrews' performance of more than 50 years ago, he smiles and sighs, saying only, "Pure silver. Pure silver."
Andrews has brought her intimate knowledge of the show to the Goodspeed revival, a journey that first began in 2003. The place: the Bay Street Theatre, a Long Island playhouse in Sag Harbor, N.Y., run by daughter Emma Walton, Walton's husband Stephen Hamilton and Sybil Burton, the ex-wife of Richard Burton.
It was Walton, who first suggested that her mother direct "The Boy Friend," persisting while Andrews came up with reasons not to do it, particularly the thought of possibly failing at a theater run by her daughter.
"We told her we would surround her with so much support and love that she couldn't possibly fail," Walton said, offering the best actors and production assistance she could find. "We would be there every day for her. And truthfully, if not here, where? She would be surrounded by people rooting for her."
The engagement proved so successful that Goodspeed Musicals, which operates the quaint Victorian theater on the banks of the Connecticut River, came calling, offering a production there in the summer of 2005 and then a North American tour.
"When we heard about the Bay Street production and how wonderful it was, we knew audiences would love this musical and that it would be perfect for our first touring venture across the country," said Michael Price, executive director of Goodspeed Musicals.
How did Andrews approach a new production of "The Boy Friend"?
"The only thing I knew was that it should be as truthful and gentle as possible," she says simply. "I'd like the piece to represent a time of complete innocence between the two world wars."
The musical is set in the south of France, in a fairy-tale enclave of rich girls and boys whose thoughts of romance dominate the airiest of plots of love, both lost and found.
Andrews enlisted the help of her ex-husband, Tony Walton, a veteran set and costume designer and father of Emma. The director suggested the show look like a Raoul Dufy watercolor, with a design emulating the French painter's transparent, light-searing images. Tony Walton readily agreed.
Auditioning performers was not easy for Andrews. She calls the process "painful."
"I've been there and done that, so I do have enormous empathy for actors," she says. "I guess I draw on my own experience. I think I'm able to sense insecurities."
For the actors, "The Boy Friend" was more than just an audition.
"The difference is I grew up watching her in the movies," says Grove, who, until now, was best known for playing Dorothy in a touring version of "The Wizard of Oz."
"She was an actor first and somebody I've always looked up to. You walk into the room and you think `I want Julie Andrews to think I am good enough.' I probably was more nervous than I've ever been for any audition."
Nervous or not, Grove got the role of Polly, the same part Andrews played a half-century ago.
On the first day of rehearsals in June, the director asked the cast to jot down on a piece of paper where they thought their characters might be coming from.
"What it did was bring us together as a company," Andrews says of the descriptions.
Everyone got a moment center stage to read what they had written, and it gave Andrews an idea of how well the performers understood the musical.
"They all complied brilliantly," she says, "and some of them were so outrageously funny. A silly exercise, but it worked. It was a great moment for the whole company to get to know each other. And from then on, we were away and blocking scenes."
If the songs and the situations could be thought of as frivolous, Andrews doesn't think of them as such. She is a stickler for absolute fidelity to the lyricist's intentions.
"Lyrics are really part of the scripted storytelling put to music," she says, adding that she urged performers to carefully think them through before they sing.
"If you've got the right image and the right picture in your head, it makes a huge difference. The more you work with words in songs, the more you will find your texture. These are light, light songs, but if you really infuse them with a genuine character and reality, they will hold up much stronger."
But Andrews' rehearsals were anything but dogmatic.
"She is very nurturing," says Grove. "In a way, she thinks of us as her children. She is very calm, she never raised her voice once. She is very positive and I feel her positive energy brought the company together."
Andrews didn't ask her husband, movie director Blake Edwards, for advice and he didn't offer any. "This one's yours," he told her.
"However, I have to say, based on having watched him -- we've done seven movies together -- and I've watched him on many another set, I can't say that I didn't pinch a couple of things."
She also remembered working with Moss Hart, the legendary theater director who guided her on stage in both "My Fair Lady" and "Camelot."
"That's the best learning experience I've ever had. Moss was my mentor. He gave me a great gift. I actually say to myself, `I wonder if Moss would approve -- or Alan Jay Lerner (book writer and lyricist of "My Fair Lady"). What would they think?' It's just a little reminder that they were the giants, and I was lucky to work with them.
