ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS THE SHOCK OF THE GOOD Broadway’s sweetheart sneaks spirituality into a sitcom. BY JOHN LAHR n a late blustery January afternoon more innocent era of entertainment. She Olast year, with the wind whipping is Nellie Forbush in “South Pacific”— snow flurries into their bowed faces, a “as corny as Kansas in August” (though cluster of some thirty theatricals hur- she’s from Oklahoma) and as “bromidic ried into Sardi’s to witness the unveiling and bright as a moon-happy night.” But of the latest celebrity caricatures to be Rodgers and Hammerstein created that hung on the restaurant’s cluttered red character in 1949, when America still walls. Of all the totems of Broadway clung to the fantasy of its own purity. success—billing above the title, percent- Chenoweth has come of age in the era of age of the gross, dressing room on the the corporate musical, and her persona first floor—a place on the wall at Sardi’s has proved a problem. Though she has a is perhaps the most emotive and the two-and-a-half-octave range and can sing most symbolic, linking the initiate to a an E above high C—the vocal equivalent nearly century-long chain of great en- of a five-hundred-yard golf drive—she is tertainers and to the glorious annals of too outspoken for the likes of Disney’s show-biz joy. In recent years, owing to a fun machines. “If they want the plain steady decline in the number of quality vanilla ingénue, it ain’t me,” she says. At shows and sensational entertainers, Sardi’s the same time, she’s too wholesome for has taken to adding the faces of produc- the desiccated souls that Stephen Sond- ers to its tableau of prowess—a real blip heim’s boulevard nihilism has made the in the vital signs of Broadway talent. On musical vogue. Each of her major Broad- this occasion, however, the president of way shows has helped her career: she Sardi’s, Max Klimavicius, was passing a won a Theatre World Award in 1997 for Richard Baratz caricature into the hands her part in “Steel Pier,” although it was of a star, the then thirty-one-year-old drastically cut; she won a Tony in 1999 actress Kristin Chenoweth. for her performance as Sally Brown in The drawing captured the diminu- “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”— tive Chenoweth’s apple-pie exterior— a part written specifically to shoehorn the sweep of her shoulder-length blond her into an otherwise mediocre show; hair, her wide forehead, almond-shaped and later that year she got raves for her cerulean-blue eyes, high cheekbones, and starring role in “Epic Proportions,” a strong chin—but it showed little of her woefully amateur send-up of a Holly- high-voltage interior, the warmth of wood Biblical epic. But none of these which has won her a battalion of New roles managed to bring her effectively York theatregoing admirers. In an earlier from the periphery to the center of the time, when Broadway was a leader in story. In other words, Chenoweth on popular culture and not a follower, Chen- Broadway is a star with no place to glow. oweth’s singing voice, her high-pitched Chenoweth attended Broken Arrow speech (which sounds as if she had just High School, in a comfortable middle- inhaled helium), her comic timing, and class suburb of Tulsa.Her family’s house her aura of downright decency would had a wooden fence and a swimming have made her one of America’s sweet- pool, and she drove—badly—a yellow hearts. Instead, she’s a local thrill, un- Ford Mustang. In a section of her 1986 known to the hinterland. Chenoweth yearbook in which the class members calls herself a “throwback,” and, in a imagined their futures—perhaps a doc- sense, she’s right. She’s a God-fearing tor, perhaps a millionaire—Chenoweth Baptist whose buoyancy is underpinned is portrayed as “the famous singer she by the Bible’s good news. Both her opti- hopes to be.”“I always said, ‘I want to do mism and her talent are indicative of a Broadway,’”she says.“I didn’t even know 44 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4, 2001 TNY—06/04/01—PAGE 44 Kristin Chenoweth with John Markus, a writer who thinks he has created the perfect role for her. Photograph by Martin Schoeller. what Broadway was, but I knew I’d be them I was there for fun. They said, captured it so perfectly—my personality! there.” After completing a master’s de- ‘Who’s your agent?’ I said, ‘My dad, Especially my hair”—a laugh bubbled gree in opera performance at Oklahoma I guess. I mean, I don’t have one.’” up—“and my roots!”But, as she held the City University in 1993, and earning the Chenoweth adds,“I decided to go for it. caricature up to her face like a mask and title of “most promising newcomer” at a The Academy of Vocal Arts really let me posed for the cameras, she couldn’t help Metropolitan Opera audition that same have it: ‘Don’t ever try to get back here thinking that, despite her Tony, she was year, Chenoweth won a scholarship to again. You’re making the biggest mis- being elevated to Broadway’s wall of continue her studies at the Academy of take of your life.’” fame without ever having had a hit show. Vocal Arts, in Philadelphia. On her way Five and a half years later, in a fitted there, she stopped in New York and de- brown pony-hair suit and a pale-blue eaning against the bar across the cided to audition for “Animal Crackers,” blouse showing plenty of décolletage, Lroom was John Markus, a goateed a Marx Brothers musical—“just to see Chenoweth scrutinized her likeness at forty-four-year-old TV writer, who was how I would do.”“I sang. I read a scene. Sardi’s, then beamed at Klimavicius and about two weeks away from complet- I learned a dance,” she says. “They said the zealous admirers around her. “It’s ing the pilot script for a sitcom starring SABA they wanted to offer me the part. I told wonderful! Thank you,” she said. “You Chenoweth, and who was wondering, as THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4, 2001 45 TNY—06/04/01—PAGE 45—LIVE OPI ART—R 9981—140SC—CRITICAL CUT TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT ENTIRE PRESS RUN!!! he watched her bask in the affection of her, one that encompassed both her short. But he couldn’t come up with any- her fans, whether he was doing the right strong morals and her extravagant sense thing on the scale of his early success. thing. The news of Chenoweth’s defec- of humor—a role in which she could Having worked so hard to define the tion to the West Coast had already fil- travel. “I made you a Cadillac,” he an- comic identity of Bill Cosby, Markus tered out into the theatre world, and nounced when he handed her the first was now unable to define himself.“I had Broadway folk were eying Markus as if he draft of the script. no reference points for the day,” he says. were a carpetbagger and warning him to Markus had begun his career in com- “I was faced with me. I’m just not as “take care of our girl.” Markus knew the edy as a teen-ager, in the early seventies, much fun as a hit TV show.” He spent subtext of those warnings. He was about by sending jokes about life in a small five days a week in psychoanalysis— to drop Chenoweth into the middle of town in Ohio to the syndicated New what he calls “the sport of kings.” He the Hollywood sump, and his mood was York columnist Earl Wilson; at nine- took tutorials in the American novel. distinctly bittersweet: “I was taking her teen, he flew to New York and waited He studied guitar with the jazz master from the world that was celebrating her. eight hours for Bob Hope to walk Bucky Pizzarelli. He spent more time I was telling myself I’d be doing her some through a hotel lobby so that he could with his wife, the painter Ardith Truhan, good. She could come back after the se- hand him a few pages of his jokes— whom he’d married in 1997, after a ries to better parts and bigger audiences.” which Hope bought for five hundred sixteen-year courtship. He also began to That was the gamble—and it was a dollars. By the time he was thirty, buy property—using his “Cosby” pro- big one. Many current theatrical tal- Markus had worked himself up to the ceeds to acquire eight hundred and fifty ents—Nathan Lane and Faith Prince position of head writer on “The Cosby acres in upstate New York, a kingdom among them—have tried and failed to Show.” He wrote or co-wrote sixty- larger than Central Park, on which he make the transition from Broadway to seven of the show’s episodes, and by the built a computerized house where every- TV.Too often, the material had nothing time he left, six years later, his gift for thing from the window blinds to the to do with the actor. The majority of re- writing successful character comedy had mattresses is adjustable at the touch of cent successful sitcoms have been built earned him both a reputation as a wun- a button.