Rondi Reed on Her 'Out-of-Body' Sunday: From August to Wicked
When Broadway.com heard that Rondi Reed managed to play Mattie Fae Aiken, the role that won her a Tony Award, in the closing performance of August: Osage County on June 28, followed by a special Actors’ Fund performance of Wicked as Madame Morrible, we just had to hear this only-on-Broadway story from the lady herself. On the afternoon of June 29, Reed was her usual ebullient self in describing her “out-of-body” experience doing two (very different) shows on the same day.
“At about 10:30 in the morning, I got a text message from Jane Grey, the stage manager at August: Osage County, that said, ‘Liz is out sick. Come play with us for the last day,’” Reed begins. Elizabeth Ashley, who had been playing Mattie Fae opposite Phylicia Rashad as matriarch Violet Weston, had been under the weather for several days and would be unable to do the final show of Tracy Letts’ three-and-a-half-hour epic family drama. A skeptical Reed called Wicked producer David Stone. “I said, ‘I’m so sorry to bother you on Sunday morning, I know this sounds crazy but…’ There was a pause, and David said, ‘I think that would be fine! Go do August, and then come do Wicked for the Actors' Fund."
With Stone’s blessing, Reed called Grey back and said, “I have to know that this is okay with Phylicia and the standby for the role. I have nothing but respect for Ms. Rashad, and I don’t want to have a novelty [casting] thing turn into something bad for the show.” Assured by the intrepid stage manager that the entire August team would welcome her back, Reed set out for the Music Box Theatre, threading her way through Gay Pride Day crowds and a street fair to run lines with a standby and transform herself into sassy Mattie Fae.
Once Reed’s name was posted outside the theater in the “At this performance, the role of Mattie Fae will be played by…” box, per Equity rules, “People began to flip out,” the actress says with a chuckle. “There was a lot of texting going on by the Wicked cast. I heard of four or five people who left their apartments and ran to get [August] tickets.”
Meeting Rashad for the first time before the show, Reed told the star, “I am so honored to share the stage with you, and I defer to you. Whatever you need me to do, please tell me. I’m here to support you and make this a great last show for you.” Adding to the excitement was the fact that Reed had never met Michael Milligan, the actor playing her ne’er-do-well son, Little Charles, and had only met Guy Boyd, who played long-suffering husband Charlie, once. “Thank god Amy Morton was back,” Reed says of the show’s Tony-nominated original star, who played Rashad’s eldest daughter, Barbara. “She turned to me before the big dinner scene and whispered, ‘Are you having fun?’ and I said, ‘Uh, yeah, a little bit!’ I just didn’t want to let that cast down.”
How would Reed describe Rashad’s performance as the evil Violet? “She was fierce! There’s no other word for it. There were a couple of places where she grabbed hold of me and it was like 10,000 volts. Wow! I’m sad she didn’t get to do it longer and that more people didn’t get to see it. That dinner table scene and the whole confrontation with Amy’s character was stunning, and that’s in the footsteps of Deanna [Dunagan, the role’s Tony-winning creator] and Estelle [Parsons], who were stunning in the role as well. But Phylicia made it her own and hit it out of the park.”
Reed felt no qualms about juggling August and Wicked in the same day, “because I’ve been doing these two productions back and forth for three years now,” she points out. “It’s been such a blessed event for me to travel between Oz and Oklahoma. They couldn’t be more different, but they’ve both served me so well.”
Of course, as Reed notes, last-minute replacements are par for the course in the world of New York theater. “This is what I love and adore about Broadway: Everyone is a consummate professional. In Wicked, I’ve seen something happen and they send the next girl on and it goes off like silk. That’s a tribute to the level of expertise in the way these shows are run by the cast and crew and management.” But Reed admits, her two-show day on June 28, 2009, “felt pretty special. Now that I’ve woken up and walked my dog, I’m thinking, ‘Wow, that really did happen!’”
