Pick of the Litter

PHILADELPHIA — Don’t expect to see Betty Buckley giving one of what she calls her “Norma-obsessed performances” in “Andrew Lloyd Webber--Music of the Night,” the touring production opening Wednesday at the Pantages Theatre. Yes, she played Norma Desmond, the diva of all divas, for nearly two years, first in London and then on Broadway. And yes, she will sing the signature “Sunset Boulevard” solos “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye” in this revue of songs by Broadway’s hit-meister, in which she is the star in an ensemble of 12. But the show, as she will eagerly tell you, is “about Lloyd Webber and his collaborators, not me.”

“In Cincinnati, I sang ‘With One Look’ with all the burners burning,” she recalls, “like I did in ‘Sunset,’ except instead of wearing the diamond bracelets and burnoose and turban, I’m in this ethereal beige gown, with my hair down. The audience didn’t know what hit them. I mean, the look on their faces. . . . “

Finding the right balance for presenting songs--many of which she’s sung in character on the Broadway or London stage--in the context of a theatrical concert has been the challenge for Buckley since she debuted in “Music of the Night” in Boston last November. And she was still struggling with the problem here in Philadelphia, where the show stopped just before Los Angeles.

“It’s been very difficult learning to modulate the material,” she says, over a late-night supper at the Four Seasons Hotel after a performance. “It’s a question of balancing what works in a concert format and the desire to unleash these characters to do what they can do for people. Like tonight, singing ‘Memory.’ Having lived in Grizabella for a year and a half and having sung her in my own concerts for 16 years, I had a desire to share with the audience a flavor, a moment, of what it was I created in that show. As an actress for hire, it’s incumbent on me to bring my soul’s knowing to the situation. But how far can I go?”

Not that the strikingly attractive star is likely to just stand there looking ravishing in William Ivey Long’s drop-dead creations. After all, calling Buckley an actress for hire is like referring to Picasso as just a painter. At 49, after a career of fits and starts in films (“Tender Mercies”), television (“Eight Is Enough”) and theater (“Cats”), the Texas-born performer and one-time beauty contestant has finally come into her own.

She was rapturously received on both sides of the Atlantic for her Norma Desmond as well as her triumphant Carnegie Hall solo debut last summer. By her own admission, she’s finally emerged from being the underground favorite of musical theater buffs to what she calls “a growing and dawning stature as a person whose name has started to make sense to people.”

Indeed, that’s partly why Canadian producer Garth Drabinsky cajoled her to join this production, first directed by Scott Ellis in 1993 for an ensemble initially headed by Colm Wilkinson (“Les Miserables,” “Phantom of the Opera”) and seen briefly at the Ahmanson Theatre last April with Kevin Gray (known from Ahmanson productions of “Miss Saigon” and “Show Boat”). Drabinsky was so hellbent on getting Buckley into the show that he agreed to the added expense of her star-like entourage of five, including a personal trainer and masseur, as well as providing for her pet retinue of three Shih Tzus and a parrot.

“I just think Betty’s one of the great charismatic interpreters of song,” Drabinsky says. “She understands what those lyrics are all about, and you want someone who can express Andrew’s passions and emotions with clarity and the integrity of the lyrics protected.”

Mix into that Buckley’s “soul knowing” and there is the prospect at least of a powerfully theatrical evening, even with songs she is trying on for the first time, as in an “Evita” medley and “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from “Jesus Christ Superstar.” For if, at the top of the show, it is Betty Lynn Buckley, and not Norma Desmond, who is welcoming the audience with a rendition of “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” Buckley is still a star who remains viscerally connected to the characters she has played. Even as she sits talking in a nearly deserted hotel restaurant, she has a haunting quality--her ceramic beauty is emotionally marked by the dues she has paid since she lit out at age 15, radioactive with the ambition to be, as she puts it, “a Broadway musical leading lady.”

‘I personally have a lot of things to share on that stage, a whole life experience,” she says a bit wearily. “I’m not a kid, I have strong feelings about life and the world, a point of view that I invest in whatever I’m singing.”

Says director Ellis: “A lot of people could get up and sing these songs, but very few could act them as well as Betty. She’s theatrical in the best sense of the word, and her choices are bigger than most, but because she’s so emotionally connected, she’s able to go further than most singers. These characters are larger than life, but Betty has the skill and tools to hook into their fullness, their darkness and their anger.”

For someone who has a plaque in her bathroom at home that states, “Music is love in search of words,” Buckley has in records and concerts set herself up as a guide on that journey. Not surprisingly, it has led her to be an interpreter of the music of Stephen Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. While her anxious, romantic persona is particularly suited for the neurotic inner musings of Sondheim’s anthems--Buckley’s performance of “Children Will Listen” from “Into the Woods” was a highlight of a Carnegie Hall tribute to the composer--she says that what draws her to Lloyd Webber is the “simple, pure soaring passion” of his music.

“There are very universally human themes in his music which can be lifted to the spiritual,” says the actress, who is involved with Eastern philosophy and travels with pictures of her meditation teachers.

Yet, the spirituality of Lloyd Webber’s music is often put at the service of characters of vaulting ambition and narcissistic desire--a combination Buckley inherently understands as a diva who has single-mindedly pursued her career and who has loved well, if not wisely.

This same nexus of body and soul has charged almost everything she has done in her life and career, and it is a complicated interaction that serves her art. One can believe her when she says that one of her metiers as a self-described singing actress and storyteller is her ability to play “psychological paradox.” Indeed, she appears to have lived it.

Buckley grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, the eldest of five children born to a conservative South Dakota-born engineer and a housewife who encouraged her ambitions. She was the black sheep, along with her brother Norman Buckley, now a film editor, of what she describes as a “dysfunctional family.” She took refuge in the fantasy of becoming a big Broadway star, and after proving her lung power in a Miss Texas pageant, she moved to New York and promptly made her debut in 1969 in the Broadway musical “1776,” one of only two women in a cast that included William Daniels, Paul Hecht, Ken Howard and Howard Da Silva. The men, more notable as actors than musical performers, took the neophyte under their collective wing and set her on a path developing her acting ability as much as her belting musical style.

A series of theater roles followed, including “Pippin” and “Promises, Promises” in London, until Brian De Palma cast her as the gym teacher in the 1976 movie “Carrie.” Years later, she would play the demented mother in the ill-fated musical version, in the process transforming herself and the musical into an underground cult favorite. Before that, however, she would be featured in a couple more films and establish herself as a television star in “Eight Is Enough,” which ran for four years. Then, she was cast as Grizabella in the Broadway production of “Cats,” beginning an association with Lloyd Webber that would continue with her replacing Bernadette Peters in “Song and Dance” and, of course, Glenn Close in “Sunset.”

Buckley won the Tony Award for “Cats” in 1983, and her rendition of “Memory” remains something of a signature. When Barbra Streisand’s version comes over the hotel’s sound system, Buckley is asked whether she is intimidated when she comes to a song that has been previously covered by other artists. “I feel pressure,” she responds. “Both Elaine Paige and Streisand had recorded ‘Memory’ before I sang it and I admire both of them so much that I tried to be inspired by what they had done. My sound is my sound, but it still has to be in the pocket of being that good or I wouldn’t be satisfied with myself. So I was very dissatisfied by myself until further along in the process, when I finally accepted that my version had merit.”

Buckley is similarly diplomatic and modest when asked about the Norma Wars, the successive skirmishes that Lloyd Webber had with some of the divas he cast in “Sunset Boulevard.” He reneged on a promise made to Patti LuPone to open the Broadway production by casting Glenn Close instead, and then fired Faye Dunaway after hiring her to replace Close in Los Angeles. Then just before Buckley took over Norma in New York, the media were filled with reports that Lloyd Webber’s company had inflated the grosses for “Sunset” when an understudy filled in for a vacationing Close in an attempt to minimize Close’s contribution to the show’s success. The stakes suddenly shot higher for Buckley as everyone waited to see whether the grosses would take a nose dive.

“It was a big drag,” she says with some chagrin. “On some level we all respect each other, and suddenly we’re pitted in this competition and circus atmosphere, and it’s such a joke. It was just extremely distracting. I think part of the problem is simply that Norma Desmond is just such a huge archetype in our collective consciousness that people go through all kinds of stuff about the lady playing Norma and project all that stuff on you. It was very anxiety-provoking, I had migraines for the first time in my life, but I got through it OK.”

Buckley, in fact, wended her way through the controversies with remarkable tact--a far cry from the brash young woman who had challenged television executives while in “Eight Is Enough.” She says she paid a penalty at that time, when rumors began circulating that she was “difficult.” Of course, it didn’t help matters that she was also having substance abuse problems then. But she quit drugs and alcohol altogether in 1979 and says she hasn’t had a drink since.

“My problems weren’t drugs,” she says. “I was just a rebellious, outspoken, very serious actress, and I did not want to be sold out to stereotypical notions of what they thought an all-American woman was supposed to be like. My original sin in Hollywood is that I dared to challenge male authority. I’ve since learned to temper my strength and mellow my voice so it can be heard. Thank God I could sing.”

When director Ellis is asked if he had heard Buckley was difficult to work with, he says: “Oh, sure. But I would work with her again at the drop of a hat. She has ideas and opinions as any good actress would and that’s often misinterpreted in the business. Strength sometimes scares people but I think her strength is terrific. And she delivers.”

The bedroom of Buckley’s hotel suite is a girlish jumble of makeup bottles spread across counters and clothing-draped furniture. The cold and lonely impersonality of the spacious living room is broken up by the yaps of her three dogs welcoming back their mistress. Married briefly in her 20s, she is not now romantically involved. As a foremost interpreter of love songs, she is asked if she imagines a past or fantasy lover in her mind’s eye when she sings them.

“I use my own experiences, yeah,” she says, looking a bit vulnerable as she leans back on the sofa and kicks off her pumps. “I’d prefer living in a healthy, passionate, vital relationship, and I’ve had that from time to time, but it’s not something that’s lasted in my life. I don’t think I’ve selected terribly wisely, having to do with a long journey with self-esteem. It’s not an unusual story, I’m afraid. The passion one feels with a significant other is something I’d like to have again because it’s such a blast. But I’ve also found that there is a state of being called love that resides in each person. And my life is so incredibly full of love that I can sing about love at any moment. It’s not something in the past or in the future, but something immediate, deep and primal.”

Even at 1:30 a.m., in this spacious hotel suite, Buckley seems obsessively focused on how best to provide the audiences of “Music of the Night” with the catharsis she believes only music can provide. For her, it’s almost a religious mission. “People come into this black box--the theater--and if you do your job right, then they have that experience, even when you are telling them the darkest, saddest story,” she says.

“If you can bring them that ecstasy, that joy, help them heal their own hearts, then what more could you ask of life?”

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* “Andrew Lloyd Webber--The Music of the Night, Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd. Opens Wednesday, 8 p.m. Regular schedule: Tuesdays to Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Jan. 19. $22-$48. (213) 365-3500.