Kristin Chenoweth: From Broadway with Mum and Dad

Known to local theatre fans mainly though the Internet, this top Broadway diva is about to tour Australia with her Oklahoma parents – and she couldn’t be more excited. Frank Hatherley phones her in New York.

To Australian ‘musical theatre tragics’ Kristin Chenoweth is best known as the exotically named star of the original Broadway Wicked album. As Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, she sang the brilliantly funny ‘Popular’: just one listen and you were hers forever.

Thanks to YouTube, you could also see what the fuss was about. For beginners I recommend starting with the ‘Proshot’ version of ‘Popular’ to delight in her articulation, sense of fun and exquisite comic timing. Then go on to the handheld-from-the-audience recording of her July 2004 final performance of the scene, with Idina Menzel laughing along as Elphaba.

Then try one of the several available YouTube versions of her rendition of ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. Most astonishing is the one she recorded in 2004 with the Boston Pops Orchestra. It’s just her, in a little black dress, with a box of jewellery on a stand, but the delivery is stunning.

You might have spotted her on television where she’s appeared in the long-running series The West Wing (04-06) and Pushing Daisies (07-09), or in three much-loved episodes of Glee (09-11). But it’s as a singing/dancing theatre/concert star that we know her best.

So when Stage Whispers was the first to carry the news, via Facebook, Twitter and the website, that she was coming to Australia in June for five concerts the immediate reaction was remarkable. Thousands of readers responded. “It was the biggest reaction we’ve ever had to such an announcement,” says editor Neil Litchfield.

When I tell Chenoweth this in a telephone call to New York she literally shrieks with delight. “Yea, yea, that’s fantastic!” she yells. “That makes me so happy!

“The internet can be our friend and our foe. But I’m really grateful for it when I hear that people in Australia even know who I am or what I do because of the Internet.

“I am more excited for this than I’ve been for anything for a long time. I get fan mail from Australia and I have a lot of friends here in the States that have come from Australia, so I am frankly excited to come and just perform for the community that I love so much — which is the theatre folks.

“Plus I get to bring my parents over. It’s been their dream to go to Australia, too. It was their 50th wedding anniversary in January and when it looked like the tour was going to work out I gave them a card which said ‘2 tickets to Australia on me’! We’re coming in a little early and staying a little late so that I can enjoy myself.”

I ask about her unusual name. “It’s actually Welsh,” she says. “Yep, the Chenoweths came over from Wales many, many years ago. Last Spring I was excited to be going to perform in Wales and just take a look around and see where those Chenoweths came from because, I don’t know, I’m in the last half of my life surely [she’s 44] and I want to see everything I can see.

“But I had a little accident. I’m trying to make up my European dates, so hopefully I’ll get to Wales one day soon.” [Her ‘little accident’ occurred during filming of an episode of The Good Wife in July last year. A lighting rig fell and struck her in the face, leaving her with a skull fracture and rib and hip problems.]

“Actually, I’m adopted,” she continues. “I have a lot of Native American heritage but I’m also a Welsh Chenoweth – so I’m both.”

Her birth parents were Native Americans?

“Yes, we have the information through doctors and lawyers and such. If you look at me, if you REALLY look at me, you can see it – the high cheekbones, the olive skin, how I have spick straight hair.” She giggles. “Of course nobody would know that because I do everything I can to cover it up.”

She grew up in Broken Arrow, a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“It’s in what we call the Bible Belt - very, very conservative and Southern. It’s the state next to Texas so it’s very much in that vein – you know, cowboys and ranchers. I go back when I’m feeling homesick and I get on the farm and help my uncle and help my cousins, and remind myself where I’m from, because I think that’s important, especially in this industry. But I’m a New Yorker and I live in LA as well, so it would be hard for me to go back to Oklahoma and live.”

Some of her most recent US concerts can be tracked down on YouTube. Will her Australian tour be an extension of what she’s been doing lately?

“I can’t tell my secrets but I’m tailoring my material for Australia. It’s a little bit of opera, musical theatre, country and original music. I have a cast of three - singers, actors and dancers. There’ll be scenes and dancing, not just me standing there.

“I want people to feel sadness and happiness and laugh their butts off. I tell you, it’s a challenge for me to do it.”

I did notice, I carefully venture, that ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ and ‘Popular’ have not been in your recent repertoire. We ‘Chenoweth internet fans’ might well be miffed.

She laughs. “Well, ‘Glitter’ may or may not be on the docket – wink, wink! And I might have to do ‘Popular’ in a way Australian people have never seen.”

*

Kristin Chenoweth plays the Adelaide Cabaret Festival on 8-9 June, performing with the Adelaide Art Orchestra.  

She plays Melbourne on 12 June, Brisbane on 14 June and Sydney on 17 June, taking the Adelaide Art Orchestra rhythm section with her, adding local musicians in each state.

[Oh, and by the way, she recently told Channel Seven’s The Morning Show that she is “scheduled to get back to Broadway in about a year”.]

Our earlier coverage

Originally published in the May / June 2013 edition of Stage Whispers.