Might as Well Laugh About It Now (21 page)

It was Rachael, my youngest daughter at the time, who changed my mind. As we were getting ready to leave Nashville for another leg of the tour, she became violently ill. She was screaming in agony, but was too young to communicate what was wrong. My road manager put me and the other kids in the car and sped us to the Children’s Hospital emergency room. After hours of testing, it was discovered that Rachael had a kidney problem that could have eventually been fatal without treatment. I was exhausted, but relieved that it could be treated.

I called Karl from the hallway outside the ICU nursery. I asked him to please call the promoter of the next concert and explain that I had an emergency with my little girl and had to cancel. Five minutes later, Karl called me back, and with emotion choking his voice, he said, “Marie, they said they would sue you if you don’t make the concert.”

I was astounded that anyone would deliver an ultimatum to a mother with a child in a life-threatening situation. Only after the doctor assured me that they could stabilize my baby’s condition could I even process what needed to be done. Knowing that I was my family’s breadwinner and that I couldn’t afford to be sued, I left a trusted babysitter at the hospital and boarded the tour bus with my other children. We had to drive three hundred miles through the night to make it to the concert venue. It was the longest, most painful night of my life as a mother. I arrived both distraught and tired, but I fulfilled my obligation to perform. We then immediately drove through the night again, to get back to my baby girl in Nashville.

I knew that I never wanted to have to choose between a child who needed me and a concert performance ever again. It was all the motivation I needed to make a life and a career change.

Karl arranged a meeting with the elated and darling Bob Young. From the moment we began talking, I knew Bob was a man who respected that many performers have families who matter greatly to them. He made a guarantee to me that my family could always come first in the case of any emergency, and that an understudy would be ready to take over at a moment’s notice. He thought the perfect role for me to launch a Broadway career was as Maria in a new touring production of
The Sound of Music
. There would be children in the cast that my own children could play with, and a tutor on board for their educational needs. He even set the schedule to give me more than a month to rehearse before our first show went out on the road. I’m sure my hand was shaking as I signed the contract, but my heart knew it was the right choice.

Shortly after, I walked into my first rehearsal at a rehearsal studio right off of Broadway in New York. I not only felt out of my league, I knew I wasn’t even in the same sport anymore. My director was Jamie Hammerstein, the son of Oscar Hammerstein II, the man who wrote the lyrics to
The Sound of Music
and many other famous musicals. Talk about an intimidating debut in a Broadway show!! After meeting Jamie and the rest of the cast, I motioned for Karl to step into the hallway with me.

“Karl, this might be a mistake,” I said. “These are professional Broadway actors.”

Just as he’s always done, he calmed me down through his utter belief in me.

“I know you can do this,” he said. “You can’t be afraid of what you don’t know. What do you have to lose?”

It doesn’t matter how many successes a performer may have had in the past, there’s still some fear in trying an unfamiliar form of entertainment. Standing in that hall with Karl I could feel my confidence shutting down, but I knew if I backed out of the commitment, I’d regret it forever.

As the rehearsal pianist warmed me up, it was obvious that I was unprepared to switch gears from my country voice. I was pretty certain that Rodgers and Hammerstein never imagined the Austrian postulant, Maria, with a down-home twang as she scooped the notes through her songs. (“The Heeels Ahwre Ahhll laaaheeeve!”) I sounded more like a nun from the Smoky Mountains than the Austrian Alps. Did they have banjos in Salzburg convents in 1938?

At first, the cast members were somewhat reserved with me. They had to be wondering if I was just another celebrity trying her hand at a Broadway show. It only took a day or two to let them know that I was open to any and all suggestions for making my little nun . . . fly!

Once they realized that my goal was to really become a legitimate stage performer, they showered me with kindness. Some of the kindest words were suggestions of how to get help (not mental help . . . although taking on a Broadway leading role, I could have used some), which came from the ladies playing my fellow nuns. They directed me to Barbara Smith Davis, a cast member who was also an inspired vocal coach. Working extensively with her for hours before and after each rehearsal, I learned to retrain my voice for the stage. She taught me the proper technique for supporting big Broadway songs night after night without a microphone. How funny, I thought, that I would never have been able to record country or even pop music if I had first been professionally trained. You can take a raw voice and train it with technique, but it’s nearly impossible to take a technically trained voice and revert it to that raw quality necessary for modern music. (It’s a testament to Barbara’s talent and range as a coach that she’s recently helped me make another transition, from Broadway to my most current passion, singing opera. What can I say? Osmonds love a good challenge.)

In addition to the voice work, there was the process of figuring out my personal Maria look. The producers thought it might be a good idea for me to wear a blond wig.

Their argument was that people expected the character of Maria to look like Julie Andrews in the movie version. My eyes are deep chocolate brown and my skin tone goes with my eyes, so wearing a blond wig I looked about as natural as Smurfette.

I did try the wig out for our preview performances, but during the intermission, the theatergoers in the lobby were asking, “Who’s the blond understudy for Marie Osmond?”

With my newly trained voice, I not only didn’t sound like me, I didn’t look like me, either. After one week the blond wig was eighty-sixed . . . and so was my Captain von Trapp. My first “Captain” was an actor from a popular science fiction movie. He was a sweetheart of a guy, a good actor, but not a singer. He couldn’t hold the key. As the music is written, he was to always sing the melody and Maria was to harmonize with him. As soon as I began to sing the harmony, he would lose the melody and sing harmony with me. I would then quickly switch music parts so the audience would hear the correct me lodics of the song when, seconds later, he would change parts again to join me in singing the melody. I couldn’t follow his lead, because he couldn’t sing the lead. By the time we previewed in Boston, his ship had docked for good. I’m pretty sure he was relieved.

My long-running Captain, Neal Benari, was a true Broadway pro. He has played many major musical roles, from Sweeney Todd in
Sweeney Todd
to Tevye in
Fiddler on the Roof.
He was unassuming, humble, had a great sense of humor, and was so much fun to perform with, especially if things went wrong on stage. In live theater, it’s more realistic to say
when
things go wrong because it can be counted on to happen. Neal and I had the same “the show must go on” attitude. He barely missed a performance, and in the two years we toured I only had to use an understudy twice. We went on every night, even if we felt like the edge of death. Of course, there were some nights we both wanted to die . . . of embarrassment.

Following the scene in which Captain von Trapp asks Maria to join him at the party that evening, we would leave the stage and dash to “quick change” booths just out of view of the audience. I only had sixty seconds to go from wearing Maria’s “work” dress to evening attire. Neal had to be even quicker, making his entrance before me wearing a full tux with tails, greeting the party guests. One night I was scurrying to finish dressing, when a stage manager, in a panic, threw open my curtain.

“Hey!” I said, lifting my robe up in front of me quickly. “Did you ever hear of knocking?”

He looked perplexed and sweaty.

“Right. Sorry,” he said, turning his face away, and then back again, and then away once more.

I started to laugh. “It’s okay! It’s kind of tough to knock on a curtain.”

“Marie! Please. You’ve got to save Neal!” he said. His face was flushed with worry or embarrassment. I didn’t know which one.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, coming out of the booth, pulling on my dress. Neal was so stage savvy, it would take a lot to make him lose his concentration. The only thing I could think of was that someone had accidentally poked him in the eye doing the costume change. But as I peeked around the edge of the side curtain I could see that it wasn’t a poke in the eye. It was a shirttail peeking out of his fly!

Poor Neal. In his hurry to quick-change into his tux he had not checked his zipper. His shirttail was sticking straight out like a flag of surrender.

The audience was gracious enough not to laugh out loud, but there was audible snickering as more and more people noticed what Neal hadn’t.

It was time for my entrance and the stage manager grabbed my hand.

“Fix this!” he implored. “He’s oblivious!”

The problem was that there was no way I could possibly signal to him until I was close enough. That wasn’t until we danced together.

Jamie Hammerstein was very particular about being authentic to the time period in which the play was set. The costumes and the hairstyles reflected the era, and the choreography mirrored the dancing of that day.

The Laendler is a beloved Austrian folk dance. One very specific aspect of it, which we made certain to maintain, is that once two dance partners lock hands, they never let go until the dance is finished.

I wanted to say something to Neal but he grabbed both my hands for our dance much sooner than he usually did and the music started up. We spun several times before I could get out the words “Your fly’s down.”

Of course, he couldn’t drop my hands, especially to adjust his pants, so we danced on. The lighting crew adjusted by narrowing the spotlight, hoping to take the attention off the shirttail and focus it only on our faces, but it didn’t really help the situation. Maria’s face is supposed to be flushed with shy attraction during this dance, but it was actually Captain von Trapp who was bright red from flirting with humiliation!

It wasn’t until the von Trapp children took the stage to sing “So Long, Farewell” that Neal was actually able to bring closure to the situation.

However, it did give a whole different twist to some of the lyrics of that song: “An absurd little bird is popping out to say cuckoo.”

After the show Neal and I had a good laugh as I fell in love with the unpredictability of live theater.

Oh, well. Jamie Hammerstein told me early on in rehearsal that his father had never intended for Maria to come off as seriously as Julie Andrews had played her in the movie. After all, the lyrics the other nuns sing about Maria describe her as a “flibbertigibbet, a will-o’- the wisp, a clown.”

I decided that my Maria should be a little unexpected. I felt that her passion for life is what got her into trouble. The actress who played Mother Superior and I choreographed many fun moments where Maria fell to her knees to repent. Of course, I’m not laughing so much about it now that I have a permanent floating chip in one knee from five pratfalls a night for two years!! When I met one of the real von Trapp daughters, she told me that her stepmother did everything in a big way. She was actually very tomboyish, athletic, and had a lot of spirit. I bet
she
was smart enough to wear kneepads.

To open the show, I decided to lie flat on the floor of the stage with my feet propped up against a tree. It took the audience a moment to find where the “singing voice” was coming from, but it was unexpected and fun. The crowds seemed to love having Maria suddenly appear from nowhere.

On the opening night of the actual run, I took my place on the floor right before the curtain went up. It was the same stage on which Mary Martin had debuted as Maria in the original 1959 production. My heart was pounding in anticipation. I started to sing the intro to the song and then I drew in a deep breath to really belt out the refrain. Somehow an incredibly large piece of dust, or perhaps an old fake snowflake from a past Christmas show, drifted down from the lighting grid and was sucked right into my esophagus. I tried to swallow and only miss a few notes, but it stuck like a postage stamp right on my gag reflex. I started to cough uncontrollably. I quickly sat up, hoping I could clear my throat out, but nothing worked. The orchestra replayed the refrain again and then again.

By now, I was really coughing uncontrollably and my eyes were watering so much that tears streamed down my face. As I stood up, a couple of cast members extended their hands to help me offstage. The audience sat in stunned silence. The orchestra halted.

My understudy was there in a flash, pulling her apron on as she ran out to take my place onstage. I couldn’t believe it was happening. The hills might be alive, but I was about to choke to death.

I ran into the offstage bathroom and, not being able to breathe, I threw up. Then, as quickly as it had all come on, it was over. I was fine. I wiped my eyes, straightened my habit, and signaled to the stage manager.

“I’m fine. Please. Let’s restart the show. There can’t be an understudy for opening night.”

He agreed and the curtain came back down.

The poor understudy Maria never even got to sing a note, but I don’t think she minded. She was pretty overwhelmed at the thought of doing the show to a sold-out crowd who had paid to see Marie Osmond as Maria.

Throughout that performance every cast member gave me an extra dose of support, their smiles and enthusiasm encouraging me to forget about the opening debacle. The energy onstage was phenomenal and the audience caught the fever and rose to their feet at the curtain call.

I was thankful the next day that the newspaper notices were really positive, and not even one theater reviewer made a pun like “Marie Osmond Chokes as Nun.”