Living the life eclectic
Theatre, TV, film and more keeps Betty Buckley thriving
Betty Buckley is coming to town and attention must be paid.
One of the great electric personalities of musical theatre will appear, live and in person, in concert at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts on May 9.
Buckley created both Martha Jefferson in 1776 and the title role in
The Mystery of Edwin Drood; played Grizabella in the Broadway production of Cats, was the definitive Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard and the most heartbreaking interpreter (in Elegies) of the songs of William Finn.
She’s never brought any of these triumphs to Toronto, unfortunately. There was one heartbreaking “almost” a decade ago, but that will fall into this story later, because Buckley isn’t about regrets. She’s a brisk yet warm woman. Kind of like a windy day on the 14-hectare ranch she inhabits just to the west of Fort Worth, Texas. There’s a bit of turbulence, sure, but there’s also time to sit back and smell the desert flowers.
“When I was a young actor, I realized that the way to keep active and creative in show business was to be as busy in as many different things as possible,” is how she started a recent conversation.
And she’s stuck to her guns on that
topic. Besides all the landmark musicals she’s been connected with, Buckley has also had an impressive film and TV career, in work that’s often dazzlingly eclectic.
She stepped into the late 1970s sitcom Eight Is Enough after the original star, Diana Hyland, died, and played the role for the next four seasons. “I was New York and they were all Los Angeles. I was the stepmother off screen, as well as on,” is how she recalls it.
Twenty years later, she joined the cast of the prison drama Oz for two seasons and cherishes the memory. “I got to be one of the very few women going to work every day with the hunkiest young actors in Hollywood. What’s not to like?”
Most recently, she’s been a regular on the ABC Family series Pretty Lit
tle Liars, as Regina Marin, the grandmother of leading character Hanna. “I’m outrageous and glam and outspoken. Of course I love playing it!”
In between the musicals and the TV series, she’s also made her mark in movies like Tender Mercies, Woody Allen’s Another Woman and Roman Polanski’s Frantic.
As if all that isn’t enough, the 65year-old Buckley also raises horses on her ranch and has been an acting teacher for 40 years. “I teach medi-
tation as the means for focusing your mind and a universal spiritual experience for helping to make your choices as an actor.” She brings a lot to the party. The best part is, she’s been around for so long she’s seen some of her old successes (and failures) come back to Broadway in recent seasons. For example, Pippin, which had its first Broadway revival last week, is especially dear to her because she took over the lead female role of Catherine after Jill Clayburgh left, and played it happily for several years. “I was directed by Bob Fosse. That’s something every actor would be proud to say. He taught you how every move could mean so much. And I rehearsed a lot of the time with the understudy, Dean Pitchford, who also came to be special to me.” Pitchford went from acting to a songwriting career, providing numbers for the films of Fame and Foot
loose. And then he wrote a Broadway musical, which lingered for many years as the mother of all flops until a recent revival cleaned up its reputation. The show was Carrie. Interestingly enough, Buckley appeared in the original 1976 Brian De Palma movie as the sympathetic gym teacher who befriends the troubled title character. But by the time it reached Broadway in 1988, Buckley was better suited to the role of Carrie’s reli-
gious fanatic mother, Margaret. Although the final product was deemed a disaster by critics and audiences alike, Buckley still defends much of it. “It’s a brilliant show with passionate and beautiful music and Linzi Hateley (Carrie) and I brought a real passion to our sequences in it. The rest? Terry Hands was one of those Englishmen who was going to show us how to do musicals. He didn’t.”
“I got to be one of the very few women going to work every day with the hunkiest young actors in Hollywood. What’s not to like?”
BETTY BUCKLEY
She was thrilled to attend the recent revival, directed by Canadian, Stafford Arima, and said, “Some things about it were really good and I’m glad it was revived successfully enough to take the curse of failure off it.” That leaves one show left to discuss, the “might have been” Buckley has trouble laying to rest, the show Toronto almost saw: Gypsy. With Buckley as Rose, the stage mother to end all stage mothers. It opened at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey in 1998 to excellent reviews and wildly enthusiastic audiences.
The Mirvish organization had a sudden gap in its schedule and wanted to bring it to Toronto.
But first, Arthur Laurents, author of the book, and Stephen Sondheim, lyricist of the songs, had to give it their stamp of approval.
For Buckley, it was more than just a show.
It was a work that she had emotionally invested herself in fully, even working with a therapist to understand the complexities of the character.
The performance Laurents and Sondheim attended went very well. “I remember saying to the team, ‘Nailed it! If they don’t like that, there’s nothing we can do.’”
Sondheim was smiling and polite, but Laurents twisted the knife: “Obviously you’re a virtuoso, but you don’t know how to play Rose.”
Many years later, you can still hear pain in Buckley’s voice. “I kept my poise, but it took me many weeks to overcome my disappointment . . . if I ever did. We were supposed to come to Toronto. I thought it was ridiculous to put all those people out of work.
“It was a sobering experience for me,” she adds.
“Laurents was one of my idols. But I realized that a man can be a genius as an artist, but as a guy he’s just like everyone else. I’ve had a more sober eye and a more sober approach to show business ever since. I feel respect, reverence even. But no awe. Never again.”