Harper shares her love of Day
Ali Harper is taking her tribute act to the 50s star all the way to the US, writes Dani McDonald.
"I just wanted to write a show that celebrated her as a Hollywood actress that we all know and love, but also as a woman who survived so much and is still here today."
Ali Harper
Ali Harper’s dream is to take her latest show and perform it before her lifelong hero: Doris Day. The writer and actor behind the theatre production The Best of Doris Day might have to do with Wellington’s Circa Theatre for now, but she’s happy to be back in her old stomping ground – the city where her career was born.
Today is the grand opening for a show that has toured New Zealand for the last year and a half in small steps.
The capital is the final stop before she takes the show to New York for the first time to perform at the prestigious United Solo Festival – an annual international solo artist festival held on Theatre Row on 42nd Street.
Harper performed there in 2015 with her award-winning show Bombshells. It was so well received they invited her back for the 2018 festival.
For now, she’s setting up the lighting and sound for this week’s finale production. The sun shines through the Circa windows as we speak.
‘‘As I say, I’ve brought the Doris Day sunshine,’’ Harper declares. ‘‘It travels with me everywhere.’’
For three years Harper studied Day’s life, watching every film, listening to every song and finding ‘‘some real gems’’.
Harper found a lot more to the actress than just the girl next-door image – there was a ‘‘full-on’’ life with heartache. She shares some details – not all, that’s saved for the show – such as Day’s four husbands and her son’s career that led him to cross paths with killer Charles Manson.
Manson apparently turned up at the house searching for Day’s son Terry Melcher, who had already vacated the Cielo Drive property at his mother’s request.
‘‘I just wanted to write a show that celebrated her as a Hollywood actress that we all know and love, but also as a woman who survived so much and is still here today,’’ Harper says.
Research on the actress included standing outside Day’s house and taking a selfie.
Harper had just finished her show in New York and decided to stop off in San Francisco and take the rental car on a two-hour drive to the seaside town of Carmel, near Santa Cruz.
After locating Day’s home, Harper parked up and peeked over the fence (she admits it’s somewhat stalkerish). ’’When you write a show about a real woman, you really have to live and breathe her and it does sound like I’m a bit mad,’’ she says.
When a car pulled up and a security guard asked what she was doing, she told him she was researching native bush and taking photos to take back home.
‘‘And I mentioned the Kapiti Coast,’’ she said.
Harper doesn’t let much get in her way – which is why there could be a high chance of a special performance with Day.
Earlier this year she managed to sing a few lines to the star who was celebrating her 95th birthday. Harper was part of a group visiting Day when Harper piped up during a quiet moment.
Her heart was booming through her chest.
‘‘And I just went right on in, I said, ‘Hello Doris, my name is Ali Harper and I’ve come all the way from New Zealand and I just want to tell you how much I love you, and I thought maybe I could stand outside your house and sing to you, and maybe you’d invite me in for a cup of tea,’’’ she recalled before singing some lines from Secret Love.
The crowd loved it and so did the birthday girl. So do Kiwis, Harper says. One 70-year-old man came up to Harper after a show and told her that Day got him through puberty. Other fans kept letters from Day, one even requested to be buried with them.
The audience response has surprised her. ‘‘People are wanting to tell me their personal stories,’’ Harper says.
Unfortunately, Day is too frail to come to a show, ‘‘but my dream is to take it to Carmel’’.
‘‘Let’s just watch this space. The thing with me and the way I work as an entrepreneurial actress in this country surviving in the arts: I keep going because I visualise it, I write it down and I make it happen,’’ she says.
❚ A Doris Day Special runs from September 16 to October 14, Circa Theatre, Wellington.