Vanities Star Lauren Kennedy on Building a Life (and Love!) in Musicals

With her sunny smile and gorgeous voice, Lauren Kennedy has shifted with ease from modern musicals (the world premiere of The Last Five Years) to comic turns (as Spamalot’s Lady of the Lake) to musical classics (South Pacific at London’s National Theatre). She’s also had her share of bad luck with shows that didn’t reach New York, including the infamous Randy Quaid incarnation of Lone Star Love, which expired amid lawsuits after a Seattle run. For a while, it looked like her current show, Vanities, might suffer a similar fate. A planned Broadway mounting was scrapped last season, but the small-scale musical adaptation of Jack Heifner’s long-running 1976 play has found a home at Second Stage. Kennedy plays Mary, the most free-spirited and caustic among a trio of Texas pals, who go from high school seniors in 1963 to middle age in the course of the one-act show. (A southern accent isn’t a stretch for this native of Raleigh, NC.) Just before opening, Kennedy chatted about falling in love at first sight in the Sunset Boulevard rehearsal room with the man who became her husband (actor Alan Campbell), her passion for contemporary composers, her secret life as a director, and why she has no ambition to get into TV or film.

So, better late than never for Vanities, right? You must have been disappointed when the Broadway production was canceled last season.
It’s happened to me so many times that I was kind of like, “Of course! Of course! Because I’m in it!” [Laughs.] But [producers] Sue Frost and Randy Adams of Junkyard Dog Productions said, “We love this show, and we’re not going to give up.” It’s because of them that the show didn’t just fall away.

An off-Broadway house like Second Stage might actually be a better place for it.
Absolutely! It’s such a blessing in disguise, because it’s a small show based on an off-Broadway play. This is the perfect place for it. I just feel like Broadway should invite us there or not; it’s okay either way. Regardless, I’m really happy to have the chance to play this part in New York, so it’s all good.

What do you like about the show?
think it’s a beautiful character study of these three girls. And I love the play—it was literally the first play I ever saw, when I was seven years old, randomly! I saw it at a dinner theater that was doing a production of Vanities right before I did The Sound of Music. It really stuck with me.

Are you anything like Mary, who’s outspoken and eager to escape small-town life?
I don’t have the bitterness and anger that Mary ends up manifesting in her personality, but I can relate to wanting to do bigger and better things. I didn’t have a bad family life, but I knew I wanted to be an actress and I was driven by that. I couldn’t wait to get out of Raleigh to pursue it.

What’s the biggest challenge in doing the first full production of a musical?
Oooh, the changes! It’s a really, really delicate balance to get a show right. It’s like sausage: You don’t want to see what it looks like when it’s being made, but the end product is delicious [laughs]. It can be very difficult, but it’s also the reason I got into this business—I love being on the ground floor of creating something new.

You’ve had more than your share of new shows stall before getting to New York, haven’t you?
Omigod! Totally! [Laughs.] I guess if you ask anybody [in musical theater], they have, too, but mine have been kind of high-profile and weird. Listen, I don’t regret one second that I spent with Lone Star Love [a western adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor], even though the experience was literally crazy. I loved the Red Clay Ramblers and the music that they wrote. It’s a real shame, because it could have been so fun and interesting and different. But it wasn’t the right time, I guess.

What about Waiting for the Moon, the Frank Wildhorn show in which you played Zelda Fitzgerald?
It was so good! Frank Wildhorn wrote some great music, different from his normal thing; he was writing outside the box, and I loved it. It needs work, like all things do, but it deserves its chance. Even going back to a [2000] show called The Rhythm Club that Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin wrote—it was so good and just did not get its moment in the sun. Maybe it still should.

Let’s back up a bit. Did you leave college [at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music] to appear in Sunset Boulevard?
That’s exactly what happened. I went to CCM for two years and my agent—who is still my agent today—came to give a master class. We sang for him, and he said to me, “Come to New York. They’re seeing people for Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard and I’ll be sure they hear you.” I went to the open call, got a callback to meet [Sunset Boulevard director] Trevor Nunn, and that was it. I went to L.A. to do the American premiere for 10 months and then came to Broadway. I was really lucky right off the bat.

And you ended up in the ultimate showmance with the star [Tony nominee Alan Campbell].
I literally fell in love with him the first day of rehearsal. He walked in the door and I said, “Yeah, OK, I’m interested in that!” [Laughs.] I didn’t realize he was much older than me—he was 36 and I was 20. He looked like he was 25, so by the time I figured out how old he was, I had a huge crush on him anyway. But he had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend, so we weren’t involved until much, much later. After we’d been doing the show for a while in New York and I left to play Betty Schaefer on tour, that’s when we solidified our relationship and we’ve been together ever since. We’ve been married for 10 years in October!

I bet he was more concerned about the age difference at first than you were.
He absolutely was, but there comes a time when you say, “OK, age is just a state of mind.” We have so much in common, and we became such good friends first. Honestly, it was never really an issue with his family or my family because we’re so suited for each other. And we have our beautiful daughter [five-year-old Riley], who keeps us young and on our toes.

What’s the secret to juggling parenthood and two performing careers?
We’ve tag-teamed a lot, and we have great babysitters and friends to lean on in the city. Because he is at a different place in his career, he’s much more willing to say, “I’m going to turn that down so I can stay at home with Riley.” He’s been incredibly gracious that way, because he’s had great success and he doesn’t have the same kind of burning passion to do regional theater like I do. He’s still passionate about acting, don’t get me wrong—he spent three months at the Goodspeed last fall and I was at home with Riley, but I wasn’t working so it was fine.

Is Riley headed for kindergarten this year?
Yes! She’s going to a New York City public school five blocks from our house. All of her friends from preschool are going; we have a great community where we live. I think city kids are the best.

Does she enjoy seeing you and Alan perform?
She loves it, and she’s a little performer herself. She’s got a cute voice and she definitely loves being around the theater and putting on shows for us. It’s kind of genetic.

Do you ever wish you’d launched your career in another era when there were more musicals and leading lady roles?
I don’t think so. I think this is a good time for me, because there are so many good writers and so much good stuff out there that should be produced; I feel passionate about helping the composers of my generation make a statement.

You did that by spotlighting new composers on your recent CD [Here and Now, featuring songs by Andrew Lippa, David Yazbek, Vanities composer David Kirshenbaum, Adam Guettel, Jason Robert Brown and others].
I want to continue to do that. I’m a huge fan of Jason Robert Brown, and he’s also a good friend, so I really hope that some of the things he’s working on will come to fruition.

It must have been difficult to leave The Last Five Years [after its Chicago premiere] to do South Pacific in London for Trevor Nunn.
Well, those are the problems to have, right? That was a hard decision, but at that time we didn’t know what was going to happen with [Last Five Years] in New York, so I had to take this great life opportunity. Jason was incredibly cool and understanding about it, and actually if I had done the show, I wouldn’t have made the [solo] record [Songs of Jason Robert Brown] with him, so in some ways it feels right.

Are there any classic musicals you’d like to have a crack at?
I did Annie Get Your Gun last year, and I had the time of my life. And I’d love to play Eva Peron again [in Evita]. I did both of those at the North Carolina Theatre, which has been my home theater and has given me many opportunities.

You and Alan moonlight at a small theater in Raleigh named for your family, right?
Yes, my dad raised a lot of money for the city to build a huge arts complex, so they named the black box theater after my parents. We started a series five years ago called “Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy” that does very cool musicals and plays. I directed Romance/Romance [in 2007], and then I directed True West last year with [Jersey Boys star] Matt Bogart and his brother Daniel. This year I’m directing a new show by Jeremy Schonfeld called Drift. I’m having the busiest summer of my life!

You directed True West?
Isn’t that crazy? [Laughs.] It’s one of those plays that I was obsessed with in college. Matt Bogart and I went to school together, and I thought it would be perfect for him; I loved the idea of him doing it with his brother. It was very well received, and those boys were amazing.

Any interest in acting in plays yourself?
I would love to, but it’s hard to cross over. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking “why aren’t I getting seen” for this or that, because the people who have trained to do plays are getting seen, and that’s the way it should be. But I love plays. The only thing I don’t have any interest in doing is TV and film.

You may be the first Broadway actor who has ever said that!
I feel like you have to make a choice, in some ways, to be committed to going out for TV and film auditions, or spending time in L.A., and I don’t have that desire. I love singing and creating live theater, so I’d rather focus on that, and on my family. I just want to do what I love.

See Lauren Kennedy in Vanities at Second Stage.