New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Lady of the Lake, laughing
Jackson, ‘Spamalot’ to make merry Thursday through Sunday at Shubert
If you’ve seen the cheeky musical “Spamalot,” you know what actress Leslie Jackson is talking about when she says that even for the cast, “it’s so much fun.”
Jackson, who plays the Lady of the Lake in the show, chatted by phone the other day from Fort Myers, Fla., during a weeklong run there. “I’ve never done a show that’s so much just straight comedy . ... Even if you’re in a bad mood, like, we all would do the show and we’re all just laughing; it’s just really great to have that joy with your castmates.”
After a one-night stop at The Garde in New London, the Tony Award-winning show arrives at historic Shubert Theatre for a five-performance run Thursday through Sunday, Feb. 24. The show spread its wacky joy last year in a run at The Bushnell in Hartford.
Jackson, who was Marie/ Fairy Godmother in the
satisfying touring version of “Cinderella” when it played New Haven in 2016 and Foxwoods in 2018, said she had seen the film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” but had never seen “Spamalot” before joining the show in October.
We suggest that the Lady of the Lake is a bit like her Marie/Fairy Godmother character.
“I guess ... I’ve never heard them equivocated,” she laughs. “I guess, in a way. The Lady of the Lake is this mysterious, magical being who helps guide Arthur on his quest to find the Holy Grail.”
The Lady gets to be magical, a diva, a vamp and more.
“She’s a woman of many hats,” laughs Jackson. “It’s a fun role to do because it’s really challenging. There’s a lot of different types of singing and characters she kind of puts on. You’ve got super-classical, operatic ... and then you’ve got Vegas night-show singer and then she kind of has her gospel/ soprano diva moment during ‘Grail’ and then later she’s just a Broadway sultress complaining in ‘Diva’s Lament’ in Act II.”
Comedy, said Jackson, can be a bit intimidating.
“It’s kind of a fine line between delivering something genuinely and very tongue-in-cheek ... and then trying to push something, and then it’s not quite as funny because you’re working too hard for the laugh,” she said. “That’s why it’s great working with people who’ve done the show before because they understand those nuances, and it’s great to see them work and see how to approach this show.”
Monty Python’s iconic TV show is 50 years old this year, we noted. Does this mean it’s an older audience demo for the stage show?
“I think there’s a good range,” Jackson said. “There are definitely a lot of people that come to the show that are Monty Python fans . ... And then we have people that are not very familiar with it at all ... but they’re just coming to see a really good, fun show and still enjoy it, too.”
Jackson has roots in New Orleans, Houston and (college) at Northwestern University in Illinois, and asked if she comes from a musical family, she chuckles, “Both my parents are engineers . ... I got into singing when I was little, in our church choir and our little school choir . ... In middle school, I started taking voice lessons and then in high school I started getting into music theater. And I decided when I got to college I was going to do opera and geology, and then I swapped out geology for music theater.”
Quite a swap: Millionyear rock formations for instant returns in a stage chorus line. The cast and results make it worth it, Jackson said.
“It’s so much fun to bring this joy and laughter to other people,” she said. “It’s really nice to be an escape (for audiences).”