The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
‘WAITRESS’ TRAINING
Oberlin Conservatory product David Hughey back in the area for start of musical’s tour
Now for the heavy lifting. ¶ The cast, crew and creative forces are in Cleveland to finish prepping the new national tour of the Broadway musical “Waitress,” launching with a run Oct. 17 through Nov. 5 at the Connor Palace at Playhouse Square. ¶ “It’s going to be pretty grueling,” says David Hughey, a swing/ understudy in the show who’d arrived in Northeast Ohio the night before. “We’re going to have what they call ‘10 out of 12s.’ So we’ll be called for 12 hours a day, and we’ll rehearse for 10 of those. ¶ “It’s (the tech period), so light cues have to be set and sound cues have to be set and costume and wardrobe and all those things,” he adds. “We’ve been rehearsing in a room in New York City, so now it’s time to take it to the stage.”
Hughey is no stranger to Northeast Ohio, although he grew up in Pittsburgh. Displaying a gift for singing at an early age and wanting to work in the performingarts industry, he attended Rogers Middle School for the Creative and Performing Arts and then the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School.
“After that, all my teachers were like, ‘You’ve got a voice — you should apply to music schools and conservatories … which brought me to Oberlin.”
He attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music for five years, taking some time off during that span and graduating in 2003.
“My memories of Oberlin are some of the best memories I have in my life,” he says. “Those
are the standing relationships I still have. Out of every phase of my life, it was my friends that I met at Oberlin that I’m still close friends with.”
The conservatory, he says, really opened the world of classical music to him and, ultimately, led to him getting on an opera track. That is one of those demanding pursuits where natural-born talent and hard work intersect.
“You absolutely need both,” Hughey says. “In opera, it’s the really serious cultivation of your voice. Raw talent is one thing, but you’re in an artform with such a specific idiom — you have to work really hard to appropriate that. If you don’t speak those languages naturally, if you don’t have that sort of classical style of singing — it’s a lot of hard work.”
During and after his schooling, he performed in various opera productions, including several of “Porgy and Bess,” written by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Eventually, he joined a Broadway production, which melded the worlds of opera and musical theater. He stayed on for a tour developed from the Broadway show.
“That sort of changed everything for me,” he says of “Porgy and Bess.” “I loved the Broadway culture and life and the process of putting up a show and all of that, and now I’m just along for the ride.”
And now on that ride is “Waitress,” based on the 2007 film of the same name starring Keri Russell and written by the late Adrienne Shelly. (You may recall Shelly was murdered in 2006 and posthumously appeared in a supporting role in the film.)
The musical boasts music and lyrics by wellknown singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles (“(I’m Not Gonna Write You A) Love Song”) and a book by Jessie Nelson (“Corina, Corina,” “Love the Coopers”). The show was nominated for four 2017 Tony Awards, including best musical.
Its central figure is Jenna (Desi Oakley), a waitress and topnotch pie maker at Joe’s Diner and stuck in a loveless marriage. A baking contest and the town’s doctor may be the keys to a better future for her.
“I mean, it’s great on Broadway, but as we travel through America, I think this story is so relatable to Middle America,” Hughey says. “The (characters) are from Middle America. The story is more intimate — it’s tangible. It’s not a Broadway spectacle. It’s not ‘42nd Street’ or something that’s really grand.
“It takes place in a diner,” he continues. “These are all characters you know in real life.”
It explores marriage, infidelity and humanity in ways that should feel familiar to many folks, he says.
“And I think Sara Bareilles was able to cultivate that with her music. She makes it relatable in a way you really start to root for the characters, for Jenna and for Becky (Charity Angel Dawson) and for Dawn (Lenne Klingaman) because none of them are in ideal situations,” he says. “The way you write music can really affect that and how you feel about what’s going on.”
Along with being written by two women, it was directed by a third, the acclaimed Diane Paulus. This is Hughey’s third time working with the director, and he sings her praises.
“She has such an eye for detail,” he says. “She often says, ‘God is in the details.’ And it is in these details that really good storytelling is told. There has to be a reason for everything you do.
“I remember when we did ‘Porgy and Bess,’ every ensemble member had to create a backstory for themselves so that no one was on stage without a story,” he continues. “And even though they were never featured, those detailed things they did on stage were greater threads in this larger tapestry that gave you this picture, this detailed wonderful storytelling picture. That’s what I get from Diane — detail, detail, detail.”
Hughey is a swing in the production — sort a reserve player — who is understudying the roles of Joe and Cal. He says he’s in a bit of an unusual situation: the actor portraying Joe, Larry Marshall, was still involved with a Broadway production at the time of this interview, even though it was almost go time for “Waitress.”
“I’ve been filling in for him in rehearsal a lot,” he says. “I think even in tech I may go on as Joe a couple of times.
“It’s great for an understudy to get this much time with a role, because if I ever have to go on as Joe, I’ll be really, really prepared for that.”
In his experience, no one running a show is concerned with getting swings regular nights on stage during a tour, but, after the wear and tear that comes as a production goes along, swings get regular work, due to illness, injury, tired voice, etc.
“It’s an interesting thing because there’s no pressure, no pressure, no pressure — and in a second all the pressure can be on you because you don’t know when someone’s going to fall out or get sick or quit or whatever.”