Maureen McGovern
I saw the show last Sunday, and I have to say—it was so nice not to be the youngest person in the theater. There were so many kids!
It's every age. It's something you can bring your whole family to. We have grandmothers and mothers and daughters and great-grandchildren with their Little Women books.
Had you read the book?
I had read a condensed version when I was a young child, and of course had seen all the movies through the years many times. So I went back and started reading it again doing the first research for the project. What a delicious book! I loved it. I've actually started collecting different versions.
The show totally made me want to go back and read it again, because I was so young when I first read it.
It's long, of course, 500 or 600 pages. I think the creators [librettist Allan Knee, composer Jason Howland, and lyricist Mindi Dickstein] have done a masterful job in two hours and 40 minutes of focusing on Jo's story, framing it with her being in New York and trying to find her voice as a young woman and a writer.
They made it universal. Think about how many people in the audience moved to New York to pursue their dreams.
And how brave she was at that time. A young woman on her own coming to New York with these huge dreams, against all odds—some of the things that women are still facing today. I think that's the timelessness of Louisa May Alcott. The character I play—a strong woman raising her children while her husband is off at war—sad to say, is also very timeless and timely.
So when did you pull a Jo and go off to pursue your dreams?
That's kind of a Cinderella story.
And that song is still huge.
You're right. “There's got to be a morning after/If we can hold on through the night/We have a chance to find the sunshine/Let's keep on looking for the light.” It's the ultimate optimistic song.
What's your favorite kind of music to listen to?
I can't believe it's been more than 15 years since you've been on Broadway. I know you haven't been sitting around eating bon-bons or anything, but that's a long time!
You were also in the workshop of Carrie! I had no idea.
There's a bootleg? Wow.
Did you have any idea how infamous the show would become?
Now, tell me about this photo on the wall. I recognize this adorable duo from your website.
Mister Rockwell looks like her little twin brother. He's adorable!
You're kidding! But they're so tiny. What kind of damage could they do?
I have just my sister and I—she's seven years younger. My dad was a barbershop quartet singer. When I was little they would come and rehearse around our dining room table and I'd sing everybody's parts. I was five years old. That was my first hint of music and harmony.
In my early 20s, I had a manager from Warren, Ohio, who put me on the road in every lounge band across the country. [Laughs] I was working in a lounge on the outskirts of Cleveland and my first producer's barber heard me and encouraged him to come see me. He took a tape of my live performance, I guess, and sent it around to all the record companies. Everyone turned me down except for 20th Century Records. That was in October 1972, and in November they sent me “The Morning After” to record. Of course, The Poseidon Adventure was released and the movie took off but the song did nothing. Then it won an Oscar in the spring of 1973 and folks all across the country started requesting it and the record company had to re-release it. By August it was a gold record.
I mean, today they give records 10 seconds and then they move on.
It's the generic hope song. I mean, 32 years on I still get letters from people saying how the song has meant so many things at different times in their lives. That they put it on a loop and play it through surgery because of its life-affirming message. That's a real honor.
I was going through a divorce, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer—a battle she fought for nine years—I was going through a lawsuit with my first manager…my world is falling apart and I'm singing the generic hope song. I've worked with the Muscular Dystrophy Association for 25 years now, and 14 years ago my youngest niece was diagnosed with one of their muscular diseases. I've sung “The Morning After” every year on the telethon and I've seen how many other families would respond to it. I was grateful, but somewhat mystified to the extent that the song reached people. The year she was diagnosed I had to sing the song on the telethon and I could barely get through it. It was my “Aha!” moment, like I really heard the song for the first time.
I think that was in my heart for a long time. Over the years, I've received countless letters from people who need to cling to something hopeful. And music has always been a touchstone in my life. It's calmed me down, inspired me; I exercise to it. It has a physical and spiritual effect on the body. So I started reading about music therapy—there's a book called Sounds of Healing by Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, who's an oncologist, a complementary medicine doctor here in New York. I'm reading this book and he is scientifically spelling out all the things that I had seen or experienced personally. So I called and met with him, and I was also guided to the American Music Therapy Association. They're wonderfully sainted hopes who have a music degree and then a clinical degree on top of that. I've gone on rounds with them all across the country in hospitals and it's absolutely profound, the effect that music has on patients and caregivers. Just as an example—I'm getting on my soapbox here [Laughs]—a friend of mine's mother was in a coma. He stayed at her side, told her jokes, read to her, sang hymns they had sung when he was a kid. She came out of her coma briefly, and she couldn't remember anything he had said but she corrected him on a lyric! As only a mother can do, of course. I was also talking to a musical director friend of mine; he said a friend of his mother's had Alzheimer's and he went to visit. She doesn't recognize anyone or communicate; she's just been silent for weeks. But he sat down at the piano and started playing and she started singing! Music gets inside of you; it reaches some part of the brain, some part of the spirit. We're all water and vibrations, really, so we're attuned to music in an incredibly profound way.
Depends what mood I'm in. I think Sting is fascinating. I love everything he writes. I have such eclectic role models: Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Mel Torme. I toured with Mel, so he's a mentor and a great friend. One of the greatest singers ever to grace the planet. He really informed a lot of what I do in concert.
I try to do one or two pieces of theater a year along with my concerts because I love it; I really do. [Little Women director] Susan Schulman was my first director in 1981 for The Sound of Music. I did one week of summer stock then three weeks later I opened on Broadway, replacing Linda Ronstadt in The Pirates of Penzance. I hadn't even done a high school play! I played Mabel in Pirates for a year and two months and then Luisa Contini with Raul Julia in Nine. I replaced Karen Akers.
[Laughs wildly] Oh, that pesky little CD that's out there on the Internet.
I know, I know! It's hysterical. It's an underground kind of thing. Somebody had a tape recorder at one of the readings.
Actually, the workshop was quite wonderful. I don't know what happened. By the time it got to Broadway I didn't recognize anything. Even the music that I knew was gone. The beauty of the movie and the Stephen King story is that it's the horrific and the ordinary. But up on stage they had this Greek chorus and they had kids dancing in—space clothes? I don't know what they were. It was just bizarre. Did you see it?
It was like watching an accident. I sat there like this. [Opens her mouth, agape] It was so overblown and so bizarre.
Miss Hannah Kelly Tessitura and Mister Rockwell Doowop St. Armande. Hannah is my rescue dog, a Silkie-Yorkie-Cairn mix.
They're my buds. Unfortunately, the theater won't let me bring them here.
I brought them once and they just slept on the couch and people would come in. Talk about animal therapy. Animals definitely lift your spirits. You wake up and there's two little faces looking at you—how could it be a bad day? So, yes, they were here one day and they were very well-behaved but they were thrown out. That's my only complaint! Otherwise I'm very happy here.