Annie Golden

Annie Golden is the only Broadway baby to be immortalized at CBGB, the legendary East Village rock club that launched the punk revolution. The joint closed on October 16 after a decades-long run as the rank, raunchy ground zero of hard-hitting three-chord rock, the casualty of rising rents. But on the CBGB website's "Shrine," a virtual hall of fame, Annie Golden is right up there with Richard Hell, the Ramones, Joan Jett and Blondie. Not what you'd expect of an actor who has done O'Neill with Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards and played a tough-but-loving housefrau in The Full Monty, adenoidal noodge Lucy Schmeeler in On the Town, a bewildered flower child in the movie version of Hair and the goofy girlfriend of motormouth mailman Cliff Clavin on TV's Cheers. But Golden has made a career of surprising audiences. She's got crack coming timing and a belt that pings off the back wall of any theater, but she always reveals the heart of the eccentric characters she specializes in playing. In the original off-Broadway cast of Sondheim's Assassins, she made murderous oddball Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme understandable—crazy, sure, but a victim of her own delusions. Now Golden is playing someone who wouldn't know Squeaky Fromme from squeaky clean: Miriam, a discontented Mormon housewife who winds up living la vie bohème in a very whimsical Paris in the new off-Broadway musical Mimi le Duck at New World Stages. It's a fey, fanciful concoction bolstered by Golden and a cast of solid veterans including yes Eartha Kitt. In her charming stream-of-consciousness manner, Golden recently chatted about her most memorable roles, both uptown and downtown.

You've been involved with Mimi le Duck from the get-go, right?
Well, nearly so. I met our director, Tom Caruso, when he worked as associate director to dear Mike Ockrent on what turned out to be Mike's last project, La Terrasse at Manhattan Theater Club. The play was wonderful, it was a love fest with that cast [including Golden's Mimi le Duck co-star Tom Aldredge] and the run was extended, but it was just tragic to lose Mike. He had been sick, and we all thought he would beat it, but at a certain point his lovely widow, Susan Stroman, realized it was not to be. When Mike's leukemia returned before first night, young Tom Caruso stepped up and put the show in order. Nobody knows the things theater people go through to put on a show and do our best work. We had been through quite a tragic time together, and Tom and I remained friends.

So he thought of you when Mimi came his way.
Tom was on board with Mimi le Duck when it was being developed by [composer/writers] Brian Feinstein and Diana Hansen-Young, a first time-team out of NYU. God bless him, Tom felt strongly that I should play the title character. I learned a song from a CD they provided, and I told Tom and the writers, "I do not sing like those other sopranos. I've got a different spin on this music." They had never heard their songs sung like that, but they loved it, and I got the role.

And last year's Fringe Festival run set the stage for this production.
Mimi had its debut at Adirondack Theatre Festival, then we got on the radar with the Fringe Festival, and I was so happy to do some performances in town. Finally, I had the title role of a new musical. I got all this wonderful response from people: "Annie Golden has a title role." Agents just love me, because—oops—I tend to book jobs for myself without asking for their input. But once I explained that it was a title role in a new musical and might be heading off-Broadway—well, hello.

How did the current cast come together?
Alan Fitzpatrick and Robert DuSold came along from the Fringe, but once we were going to present the show off Broadway, that's when Eartha Kitt got on board. I was so excited. When I was told we had Eartha Kitt, I thought that if we were going to go age-appropriate with that role, I'd like to see Tom Aldredge opposite her. Tom said, "I'm there if you want me." Then we got Marcus Neville to play my husband. Well, I couldn't be happier. He and I had done The Full Monty together, and we went through a lot on that show, what with losing Kathleen Freeman [who passed away during the run] and giving performances after 9/11.

OK, I need to know: Eartha Kitt? What's it like working on a new show with her?
All I have to say about that is, well, Yeah! She's Eartha Kitt—she's a legend, and she is great. Her being in the cast really piqued interest in the show. She's playing the toast of Paris, a world-renowned cabaret singer. How perfect is that? We have been working on the show during previews—they gave her a song a few days ago, and they gave me a new opening number the next day. The two of us were just stepping up to the plate in performance, and she took the whole thing in stride. In rehearsal, if she would question something, first she would apologize to her scene partner. And I thought, "You're Eartha Kitt. We can stop. It's worth the wait." We're so happy to have her. You know, in my personal life I lost my mother a long time ago, at an early age. I befriended Kathleen Freeman on Full Monty, and now to befriend Eartha Kitt is so satisfying to me. To have that demographic of diva in my life is very fulfilling.

You always seem to come up with an interesting take on the characters you play, whether it's a dreamer like Mimi le Duck or Squeaky Fromme in Assassins.
It has to be really naturalistic. Besides, you can't play people as villains or heroines. You can only play them as this person in this circumstance. For Assassins, that's the way I envisioned Squeaky Fromme: She was a misguided groupie obsessed with Charles Manson. She still doesn't care that she did a terrible deed. Not long ago, she walked out of the laundry in the minimum security prison. They found her hours later walking down the road and they picked her up. The guards asked her, "Lynette, what are you doing?" And she said, "I'm just walking to Charlie."

You seem have a great deal of sympathy for these characters.
I was extremely conflicted when I got the script for Assassins. I really liked the free love, free-wheeling, flower-children era. Do I want to examine the flip side of that coin, which is the drug culture, and play a violent, murderous sociopath? Do I want to do that? My answer to myself was: It's Stephen Sondheim. It's Jerry Zaks. What are you, crazy? If they want you, go for it. When I heard the theme "Everybody's got the right to be happy," I realized that Stephen is saying that misguided people can go wrong because the concept of this country is so free. Free enough to touch the president. Free enough to be crazy sometimes. And I realized that if I got this role, it would be mine forever. When there was a 75th birthday celebration for Sondheim at Symphony Space a little while ago, I sang with Alexander Gemignani [Broadway's John Hinckley] and Becky Ann Baker [ Sara Jane Moore] and Michael Cerveris [John Wilkes Booth]—the old and new casts of the show.

Let's talk about some of the women you've played: First, Audrey in the tour of Little Shop of Horrors.
Poor Audrey. She's devoted to the dentist; meanwhile the one who loves her is sitting right beside her in the flower shop. She would never dream that Seymour would want her. She's happy to be his friend, never thinking that he would be her boyfriend. She feels she's not good enough.

Belle, the floozy in Ah, Wilderness! with Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst, on Broadway in 1988.
Well, that was a pretty brilliant production. Wow. After I auditioned for director Arvin Brown, Colleen came in for the callbacks. Thank God she was sitting in the back of the theater where I couldn't see her. I got the part, but I kept thinking: "I never went to college, I never studied acting formally, I come from working-class people, my background was singing with a rock band. And here I am doing O'Neill." Belle had a sweet exterior, but she was streetwise and a survivor. She is playing that barroom. I had never worked with a dramaturge before, but Arvin had the dramaturge give me literature about 1906, national health, streetwalkers. It was so helpful. And when I came in, the player piano in the bar played a song from the period; Arvin made sure that I got to warble.

Didn't you sing in On the Town? I must be imagining that, because Lucy doesn't have a song.
Yeah, [director] George Wolfe gave eight bars of the most beautiful ballad in the show to my character. Historically it's not a singing role. I didn't know that until years later. That was so sweet of him.

What about Georgie Bukatinsky, the role you created in The Full Monty?
Here's some theater trivia: At the early readings, there were just two couples and one character guy. The women had no songs, and the couples were just me and John Ellison Conlee, and Jason Danieley and Romain Frugé. I had auditioned for the role of Georgie, but they wanted me to play Vicki, the spendthrift. I was disappointed since I wanted to be the "Stand By Your Man" wife, and I thought about turning it down. Everyone said, "Well, if you don't want to go to San Diego in the dead of winter and you don't want to work with Tony Award-winning directors and playwrights…" [laughs] After rehearsals, [book writer] Terrence McNally and [director] Jack O'Brien asked me to read Georgie. They saw that I could be that feisty, sassy, funny character.

Your Full Monty character was a tough cookie.
Yes, she married Dave, her childhood sweetheart, and she and Dave and Jerry, the leading man, had been the three musketeers all their lives. Anyone can tell you that when a man has a best friend from grammar school, he adds another person to the relationship—his wife. She was hard on Dave because she saw him disappearing in front of her. She was thinking about raising a family. He got laid off work and she was thinking, "Wait, this is not what I thought it was going to be." She expected to be bowling and having fundraisers for the community and going out with the girls. Then life took this terrible turn. She used tough love on her husband to save the relationship.

So how did you wind up singing in the Shirts, a Brooklyn rock band, in the late 1970s?
I was singing at a jukebox in a bar on a Friday night. We all frequented the same bar in Bay Ridge, and when they heard me, the guys in the Shirts were like, "Damn, this girl can sing." They invited me over to the storefront studio they had and we worked on songs. I kept reading in the Village Voice about this new band, the Talking Heads, and seeing stories in Soho Weekly News about Patti Smith and her boyfriend, Tom Verlaine. They lived in a loft on Avenue A and they played in this place called CBGB. So we drove over the bridge to CBGBs and got a gig.

And you became a downtown legend, judging from the photos on the CBGB website.
Hilly [Kristal, the owner] was not accustomed to us—he was worried about our being too loud, if you can imagine that in the East Village. We told him, "We got a lot of equipment, we got a real singer, you can hear what she is singing, and she can carry a tune." [Laughs.] Youthful arrogance. Anyway, we were in those circles for a long time. Years later, my boyfriend for a while was the drummer for the Ramones. It was devastating to lose those guys so quickly, one after another.

Director Milos Forman discovered you when you were singing rock and cast you in his movie of Hair, right?
He saw the possibilities. He let me perform at CBGB when doing night shoots for Hair. Later, he took me, Beverly [D'Angelo] and Treat [Williams] to Capri but I had to go home because the Shirts had a tour booked. Anyway, my song was cut in the movie, but everyone thinks I sang "Frank Mills." Nope. Its funny, but when Seth Rudetsky called me two years ago to do a benefit performance of Hair, he asked me to do "Frank Mills" and "Easy to Be Hard." I asked him, "You want me for those songs? Can't you pluck some young chippie from Footloose or Rent?" [laughs] Those are the songs that all the divas fight over.

Have you enjoyed all episodic TV work you've done over the years?
I did a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit recently where I knew it wasn't going to be a glamour role, but when I saw myself on the show as this character lady, I thought, "Oh, dear." I didn't think I was vain, but I was totally like, "Oh, dear." I have no survival instincts—if it's right for the role, I'll do it. Next time I will have to plan ahead a little bit. But otherwise I love the TV work, and would love to get a steady gig on a good series. I was playing softball with Campbell Scott on the Broadway Show League, and he said he got a series [Six Degrees] because he couldn't just keep kicking around the theater forever. And I thought, "Campbell, hello? With your parents [George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst]?" But it's hard to be in the theater, to have a career, to grow into lead roles and not be the sidekick girl forever. Still, I have my champions who look out for me, and I am enjoying myself. I love working in the theater.

Do you think back to the rock-and-roll days often?
When CBGB closed, I thought it was sad, but it was time; it was the universe cutting the cord. It's a new era of creativity, and you never lose that. I have a band of my own now, and I write my own songs. What I really like best is working with my band, getting to be director, choreographer, collaborator. I have always been part of a creative enclave that becomes my friends and family. I don't see a line dividing the actor and the singer. Don't look back, just keep going forward.

See Annie Golden in Mimi le Duck at New World Stages.