Juggling is the Secret
The Jet-Propelled Career of Carolee Carmello
by Lee Davis
The stage of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre is a tangled jungle of cables and winches and rigging, the technical dimension of the piecing together of a major musical - in this case, Parade, the Hal Prince/Alfred Uhry/Jason Robert Brown retelling of Southern injustice in the 1920s.
But in the Vivian Beaumont's lobby, life is considerably calmer. Carolee Carmello, one of Parade's two stars, is an oasis of serenity. Tall and fair and delicately lovely, like a hostess presiding over a well-ordered dinner party, she's articulate tranquility personified. And yet, the eyes betray something decidedly and devilishly more. There's anarchic mischief lurking behind them; roguery poised like a sprinter, ready to dash past the hostess.
And it does, regularly, arriving in subtle ways. "The challenge for me is always to do less," she confesses. "Lucille, my character in Parade, is contained, a very proper, Southern woman who knows her place in the world, and has to deal with a shattering happening within the confines of her society.
"But you know," - and here comes the marauding mischief - "I do great things like Das Barbecu, flamboyant and overboard. Even Remember WENN - that kind of broad comedy comes easier to me than a sort of still, contained woman. But," she sighs. "I'm getting there."
Carolee Carmello's pursuit of the brass ring of fame has been relatively short, thoroughly high-speed, and wildly varied. Ticking off the divergent roles she's played only serves to underline that fact that she may feel flamboyant, but her record shows that flamboyance is only a portion of a various talent that can run the gamut from historical to hysterical, profound to ditsy, sophisticated to slapstick.
For instance, while she was portraying the rockbound and reasonable Abigail Adams in the latest revival of 1776, she was simultaneously cavorting as Maple LaMarsh, a wacky, gum-chewing, 1940s radio personality on American Movie Classics' Remember WENN. While she was an ensemble member of City of Angels in 1989, she was actively campaigning for a starring role in the national company of Chess. While she was at Albany State University pursuing a degree in business administration, she was acting and singing her way into her present profession.
True, backing into show business isn't unusual, but Carmello's reverse entrance was wholly unique. "I had a degree in business administration," she recalls, "and if some series of accidents hadn't happened, I probably would have been happy being a personnel manager at IBM or something.
"But I always sang in choirs and stuff, and in college, as a hobby and to get away from my studies, I did local community theatre. And that's how I ended up in the business. Ass backwards."
And like the opening moments of an early movie musical plot. In Albany, a producer wandered into the audience of a production in which she was appearing, came backstage, and offered her a summer job in an Equity stock house.
"It was a life decision," she admits, then defines what would become a lifelong pattern. "But I thought, well, I'll do it for the summer, and see if I like it, and take the summer dot decide if I want to go to law school or what--"
The theatre was in Lake George, the production was They're Playing Our Song, and the effect was mildly encouraging. "I had my Equity card, and I thought I'd try [acting] for a little while. I figured, if I don't get it out of my system, I'll be a grandma, and I'll be thinking, 'If I'd just gone to New York, I'd be a big star.'"
High hopes. Large ambitions that, characteristically for Carmello, had a backup. "I had a fallback into business," she says, smiling, "which I haven't had to use yet. Though there have been times when I've definitely considered the possibility of a change. You know. Dark times."
Which, as the Sondheim lyric says, have been damned few.
She nods, smiles again. "Yeah. I've been pretty busy."
An understatement. During the time most actors are preparing themselves by taking classes, she was auditioning. In fact, she confesses, astonishingly, to never having had a single singing lesson. Not one. "I just kept plugging away," she says, cheerily.
There were the usual regional roles, Amalia in She Loves Me at the Berkshire Theater Festival, Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors in Boston - and then, in 1989, Broadway and City of Angels.
"[I was] in the ensemble and covering a couple of roles. And I was frustrated with being in the ensemble, and even before the show opened, I auditioned for other shows," she admits.
Again, she juggled two choices, and again, it paid off. One of the offers she received was for the national tour of Chess.
It was a choice that turned out to be as distressing as it was exhilarating. "They were rewriting Chess, and Des McAnuff was directing, and Tim Rice was doing some rewrites," she remembers, "and it was going to be a combination of the London and Broadway versions, and they offered me the part of Florence, and it was a really exciting time.
"But --" and she pauses -- "I remember having a very painful discussion with Michael Blakemore [City of Angels' director], before the show even opened, and I said, 'I'm gong to be leaving and I'm really sorry, and I know it's my first Broadway show, but I'm also really not happy being in the ensemble.'"
Blakemore is apparently a director who doesn't hold grudges, because before City of Angels ended its long run, Carmello was back, not in the ensemble, but as Oolie/Donna, the part originated by Randy Graff.
The decision to move onward and upward with Chess also meant leaving a nascent relationship with Gregg Edelman, the Stine to Janes Naughton's Stone in City of Angels. But the world and life and Carmello's career contain second chances. In November 1990, she joined the cast of Marta Kaufman, David Crane, and Michael Skloff's Arthur: The Musical at Goodspeed-at-Chester/The Norma Terris Theatre. After a stint in I Can Get It for You Wholesale off-Broadway, she returned in the summer of 1991 to Goodspeed where Arthur was moving to the mainstage. And the Arthur in that production was - you guessed it - Gregg Edelman. During the run of the show they began to date, and soon after that, they were married.
And both of their careers began to soar. Carmello did the female lead in john & jen, a two-person musical by Tom Grunwald and Andrew Lippa, at Goodspeed-at-Chester, and sometime during the run of this show, she received a call to audition for Hello Again, the Michael John LaChiusa musical updating of Schnitzler's La Ronde, at the Mitzi Newhouse. Once again, she turned to juggling to achieve the next step up.
"I learned the material for Hello Again, but I was doing another show, so I couldn't really concentrate on the new material that much. And the song..." she smiles. "I really didn't feel very solid in the song. Michael John's music isn't like learning 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning...' So, I came in sort of apologetic."
But again, luck and talent converge in the crapshoot that is theatre, and before she'd even boarded the train heading back to the Goodspeed, her agent had been contacted, and an offer had been made.
"That never happens," she says, in wonder, then modifies her enthusiasm. "It was one of those rare times when they knew what they needed. And for some miraculous reason, I had the right package of things."
It all turned out considerably better than that. Her portrayal of The Young Wife set upon by a young lover and ignored by an older husband in Hello Again won her an Obie Award. She got news of her nomination in Los Angeles, where she had rejoined Falsettos.
At first, she thanked her caller, and explained that she only had one day a week off, and flying to New York --
"But then," she remembers, "she said, 'I think you'll want to be there.'
"And I thought, "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"
So Carmello made the trip, but not without some trepidation. "My parents were there and everything," she remembers, "and I thought, 'My God. What if I totally misinterpret what she said?'"
She didn't. She won, and it was, she admits, one of the two high points of her life so far. The other was the birth of her daughter Zoe, which nearly happened onstage at the Lamb's Theatre.
"I was there in john & jen, and I was pregnant. I stayed until I couldn't hide my belly anymore," is the way she remembers that pivotal tine, during which Hal Prince first saw her perform.
"I heard he was there, but I didn't meet him," is the way she recalls it. Prince was in the audience, it seems, because Parade's composer, Jason Robert Brown, whom Prince was informally mentoring, had done the musical arrangements for john & jen.
But she'd been well noticed, and a year, she was called to audition for the first reading of Parade. "It was a really quick audition," she remembers, "and sometimes when you're an actor, leaving the room is the hardest part. You don't know what to say. I said, 'Do you need to hear anything else?' and Hal said, 'No No No. It was great. I knew it would be great. It was great."
So, she got the call to go to Philadelphia "...and I didn't know anything about Parade except that it was Jason, and then I read it and..." and she pauses, and her eyes, incandescent at all times, turn up their candlepower, "I was reminiscing with Herndon Lackey, who's in the production now and was in the reading then, and we remembered going to lunch during rehearsals [in Philadelphia] and we'd say, 'Is this really really brilliant, or is it just me?' And then we thought, 'Oh my God. This is the best thing we've ever been in.'"
Now, it's natural and necessary for actors to believe that their present play is the high point of their careers. But there seems to be another definite dimension to Carmello's devotion to Parade.
She has, after all, paid her dues with a diversity of directors and roles, and, characteristically, she counts herself lucky for having done so: James Lapine, Scott Ellis, Michael Blakemore, Des McAnuff, and Graciela Danielle. Danielle is a woman she adores and for whom she would "do anything to work with again."
Why? "She's so loving and so nurturing, and she's so much fun, too. She has a warmth about her that makes people comfortable, and she creates a working environment and an ensemble feeling that's warm and fun, too."
A contrast, perhaps, to prince, who carries a reputation for having a charisma composed of some pretty stern and stentorian qualities. "Hal is wonderful, too," she enthuses. "He's the king of the castle. He's a wonder to watch. You know there's so much going on in his head, and he has it all there. He's just got to get all the pieces together. He knows what he wants. He has a really clear vision, [and] he's had it from the beginning," she pauses again, "Hal is such a visionary, [too]. He's been a huge help to me in this role..."
And to think that role almost wasn't hers. Nine months after the first reading, news filtered down through the grapevine that there were other actresses auditioning for Lucille. At the time, Matthew Broderick was being considered for Leo, the male lead, and they were looking for an actress in her early twenties to play opposite him.
It was a blow, akin to other darker moments in Carmello's career. When she didn't make the last cut in Ragtime. Or just missed doing Eliza Doolittle in the latest revival of My Fair Lady, a role she wants to do, "... that I have to do. Someday."
And then, once again, what Carmello disarmingly defines as luck visited her career and her life. She was called back, by Prince, to do the part once more in a reading, as a personal favor. "I understood he wasn't making any promises, but I'd do it just to sing his music for another couple of weeks..."
It paid off. At the end of the two weeks, the part was hers. The conclusion was that she was right, but Matthew Broderick was wrong. And so, yet another varying role was added to her roster of many, a happening that she says is "...another thing that's really luck. Some actors are so specific in what they do, and they're brilliant. And it's hard for them to do something outside of that. They have a very specific look or sound. I've been lucky enough to be given a sort of face that can be malleable, that can change into different time periods and people. But I think it's the luck of the draw. If I were six feet tall, I wouldn't have had the opportunities."
True enough. But then, he talent is put on the line. "Yes," she agrees, "you have to be willing to step up to the plate when you get those chances."
And to be an expert juggler, too. Carmello and Edelman live in the suburbs ("I always feel like a city girl, but Gregg wanted a house and a lawn," she says, not at all gloomy about it.) "I have so much respect for anyone who's in the business who has children," she adds, "because it's so unpredictable, and each day is so different. For instance, the same day I started rehearsals for Parade, [our daughter] Zoe started preschool. It was a big day in our house, and I thought, 'Kids like to have structure, and predictability, and they'll never get it if they have two actors for parents, juggling our lives, and making sure that she gets enough of what she needs.' That's difficult."
But not impossible. "Oh, she gets lots of love," Carmello adds. "From both of us. Lots of love."
And it occurs while the careers of both parents are on a continuing ascendancy that is always, always, fraught with uncertainty. "That's the thing about this business," Carmello muses. "You think you've reached a certain plateau and have a right to some other level of work. And that's not really true. There's no real hierarchy..."
At least not in the 1990s, where scenery and technology sometimes challenge the places that were formerly reserved for stars. There's excitement now, for instance, in getting on the stage of the Vivian Beaumont, an intimate space, very much like that of the Goodspeed.
"That's what I loved about Goodspeed, besides its nurturing environment," she says, "and it's what I'm looking forward to about the Vivian Beaumont. Intimacy. I like to feel the audience there, and to know what effect the show is having on them."
She knows the difference, having played 5,000 seat arenas on the road and the Gershwin in New York. "You feel the distance in places like these," she continues. "The bulk of the people [in the audience] aren't really reading everything that's going on in your face. And yet, you don't want to make everything so big, because then it'll lose it's truth." She pauses. "Being really there is seeing somebody's eyebrows, and feeling the distance between the actors. That's why this theatre is so great."
Eagerness and anticipation fairly flow from her as she turns, finally, to her feelings about her current place and time. Brooks Atkinson captured it a long time ago: "No one would undertake the intricate, painful, gargantuan, hysterical task of putting on a musical play unless he had more enthusiasm than most people have about anything."
"What I feel is gratitude," says Carmello now, manifesting that enthusiasm. "I'm feeling grateful. As an actor, you so rarely get opportunities like this, where you really believe you're in a good role in a good show. It doesn't happen that often. I have to keep reminding myself, I'm just so grateful to have this job!"
"And I love this brilliant show, and everyone who has anything to do with it," she adds, "but more: Sometimes you get a break and you don't make the most of it. I want to make the most of it. And I have such faith in this material. That's 90 percent of the game."
Once again, the brilliance of her eyes increases its candlepower, as she reaches into a private and essential place that matters. "If you're an actor," she concludes, "that's it. That's really it. Having faith. You just say the lines and sing the notes, and you'll be there."