THEATER: Play Mates

 

Wrapping their arms around each other as they exchange a brief glance, Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley exit the stage of the Booth Theatre amid an enthusiastic standing ovation. It is the gesture of two actors who’ve put in physically and emotionally grueling performances as Diana and Dan Goodman, the couple at the center of the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning musical, Next to Normal. But there’s more to it than that. These actors are a married couple, thrilled to be starring in their first Broadway show together (though they’re both old hands at Broadway).

 

Mazzie plays a woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder, haunted by a tragedy from the past and struggling to connect with her family in the present. Danieley plays her husband, who’s become an expert at managing crises; ever hopeful things will get better, and out of touch with harsh realities. The show follows them through rock-music numbers about psychopharmacology, electroshock therapy, and love.

 

At the stage door the real-life couple emerges with hardly any show-biz aura. Mazzie, a lioness blond with sparkling eyes that hint at both her strength and humor, has scrubbed her face clean of stage makeup, and Danieley, a tall man with a smile that can put anyone at ease, holds an umbrella over fans when it starts to drizzle. An audience member waiting for an autograph remarks how nice it is to see Mazzie smile (“A lot of the time I’m wiping snot from my nose,” Mazzie confesses of her tearful character). The fans tonight, some from as far away as Israel, India, and Vermont, tell the actors how much they relate to the show. It could be a mental illness in their family, or losing a parent, or difficulties in their marriage. Yvonne Toomer of Vancouver says she’s already seen the show three times with the original cast members, whom Mazzie and Danieley replaced in July. This performance, though, was her favorite. “You’re so connected. There was this energy on stage I’ve never felt before,” Toomer says.

 

The couple takes their personal interaction with the audience as seriously as their work on stage. “As an actor on this show, you feel you have a purpose other than entertaining,” Danieley says later that night over dinner at Sardi’s. “It’s almost, for me, more satisfying than having an audience laugh and clap.”

 

“It’s gratifying,” Mazzie adds, “to tell a story that you feel is important and that every night most of the audience walks away from with some knowledge or feeling.”

 

Dinner is steamed vegetables and tofu for her, a grilled chicken club and fries for him. “That white bread is hilarious. He doesn’t usually eat like that,” Mazzie exclaims. As for what it’s like to be in a play together, they appreciate that they don’t have to tell each other about their day. “We’ve already lived it together,” Danieley says. Soon they are home on the Upper West Side, taking their adorable miniature schnauzer Oscar for a walk in Riverside Park.

Tuesday nights are different. After the show, the couple gets in their car, with Oscar in tow, and drives to their home in Hillsdale, New York. By twelve-thirty in the morning, they’re in the outdoor hot tub, tiki torches lit and the Beatles playing through the speakers around the deck. They get to bed around three o’clock. “You’re wired after the show. It takes a while to wind down,” Danieley says.

 

The journey to the Berkshires signals the Next to Normal couple’s “next to normal” day off. Most Broadway shows are dark on Monday; theirs is dark on Wednesday. Hillsdale is the perfect retreat.
Drawn to the area when Mazzie performed at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, with the Boston Pops Orchestra several times, the couple bought their house two years ago. Since then they’ve completed a long list of renovations, from installing hardwood floors and painting the rooms in historic colors to refurbishing the windows and adding a mahogany wraparound drink rail to the new hot tub. They hung their Broadway posters in the same room with the elliptical machine. A guest bedroom is decorated with some of the elegant straw hats from Mazzie’s wardrobe in Ragtime (one of three shows for which she received Tony nominations).

 

They take the greatest pride in their family heirlooms: Danieley’s grandmother Ruth’s piano in the living room, his grandfather Harry’s washtub bass in the basement, Mazzie’s grandmother Edna’s quilts. Danieley drove these items here himself, loading up a U-Haul truck first in Omaha, Nebraska, then in St. Louis (his hometown).

 

Both actors grew up with music. Danieley recalls singing, at age four, the contemporary gospel song “One Day at a Time” at the church where his father was a preacher. “My mother walked me through what the story was about,” Danieley says. “That was the great lesson for me down the road, that every word really means something. You’re not just singing, there’s a reason why you’re singing.”

 

Mazzie also started singing at a young age—gravitating to the show tunes in her parent’s record collection. She particularly liked Judy Garland and Barbara Cook. “I’d just sing along,” she says.
Their careers got rolling quickly in New York. At twenty-three, Danieley landed a prominent role in Floyd Collins, an off-Broadway musical with an Americana sound and story, about a trapped amateur cave explorer. Then he starred in a revival of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta Candide. Director Harold Prince said at the time, “Jason has an extraordinary future ahead of him.” Ten years later, Danieley starred with David Hyde Pierce in the musical comedy Curtains. New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley described him as “the most exquisite tenor on Broadway.”

 

At twenty-five, Mazzie had her first role on Broadway in Big River. She was then an Into the Woods understudy for Cinderella, Rapunzel, and the Witch. “One week I do remember is the week that I played all three,” Mazzie recalls. Eventually she assumed the role of Rapunzel. Her breakout role—and her first Tony nomination—came in 1994, when she played Clara in Stephen Sondheim’s Passion. The New York Times described her as “glittery and golden, an alluring presence in swishing silks.”

 

Danieley first laid eyes on Mazzie when he saw her in Passion. She made quite the impression. “She was naked in the first act!” he says. Mazzie first saw Danieley in Floyd Collins. “He was so amazing, but I thought he was this young, hot whippersnapper,” Mazzie laughs. “No, don’t use that word,” she adds.

 

They finally met in 1996, working on the avant-garde theater piece The Trojan Women: A Love Story. Mazzie was cast as Helen of Troy and Dido, opposite Danieley’s Aeneas. They consider their first date the night they ordered sushi and read lines together at her house. At a rehearsal soon after, Mazzie kissed Danieley, and the director, Tina Landau, called a five-minute break. “We knew right away,” Mazzie says.

 

It’s now Wednesday afternoon and the couple is sipping Pimm’s on their deck with their friend Scott Burkell, an actor and lyricist. The Pimm’s recipe recalls their time on London’s West End, reprising Broadway roles: Mazzie had the lead in Kiss Me Kate and Danieley was in The Full Monty.

Their wedding was at a restaurant in New York called La Belle Epoque. “I had a beautiful dress,” Mazzie says. “I had it made in Toronto because I was doing Ragtime there.”

 

“So it was a Canadian dress,” Burkell says playfully.

 

“It was plaid,” Mazzie retorts.

 
“And flannel,” Burkell says. 

“Instead of a veil I wore a hat with earflaps.” 

Actually, the dress was a long-sleeved floor-length gown made of peau de soie “the color of coffee with a lot of milk in it,” Mazzie says. Dress aside, it’s clear the couple and their friend have a gift for comic banter. Mazzie shone in Monty Python’s Spamalot as Lady of the Lake, and Danieley is known to tease cast members.

 

“He’s really good at the fake poke, where he pokes you and makes you look the wrong way,” says his onstage daughter in Next to Normal, actress Meghann Fahy. But he can also be sweet. “He comes around the theater once a week with a big bucket of candy,” Fahy says. “It’s just a moment for him to check in with everybody and say hi.”

 

Actor Christopher Innvar has worked with both husband and wife, first with Danieley in Floyd Collins and then with Mazzie in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He recalls goofing off with Danieley right before the show would start. “I think because our characters needed to experience the good—in two minutes I’d be stuck in a cave.” Playing Stanley opposite Mazzie’s Blanche was another matter. “There were a couple of times when I shifted a chair so hard she bounced off the floor but she stayed right in it. She’s bawdy and brave and she’s not afraid to make a fool of herself.” Their director, Barrington Stage co-founder Julianne Boyd, was impressed that Mazzie wanted to take on a non-musical role. “Her talent is gigantic, and she has a limitless emotional pit to draw on.”

 

The couple keeps up a concert career, performing with symphonic orchestras across the country and staging intimate evenings as a pair. They both performed at a Broadway tribute to Stephen Sondheim on his eightieth birthday, which will be broadcast on PBS’s “Great Performances” on November 24. On their album of love songs, Opposite You, they sing of honeysuckle, stormy weather, and an “Aba Daba Honeymoon.” They’re currently working on orchestrations for their new concert and recording project. And Danieley has his band, the Frontier Heroes, which performs show tunes and standards in a back-porch Americana style. 

 

At lunchtime, Mazzie assembles mozzarella and tomatoes with basil, drizzles of olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Danieley prepares tilapia with a lemon pepper rub, which he grills and serves with a tapenade of tomatoes from the garden, kalamata olives, and red onion. “The Food Channel by osmosis,” he says. They love to cook together, and are part of a dinner club where a group of friends share a meal, with each couple preparing a different course.

 

As they eat, the conversation turns to the pleasures of the Berkshires. They enjoy dinners at the Old Mill in Egremont and hiking at Bash Bish Falls in Mount Washington, Massachusetts. They shop at Guido’s in Great Barrington; Mazzie is wearing earrings from Passiflora in Hillsdale. They’ve seen James Taylor and Rufus Wainwright at the Mahaiwe, and have taken her mom to The Clark. “It’s
bizarre, but we’ve been to more concerts since we bought our house in the Berkshires than we’ve ever been to in New York.”

 

Danieley brings out grilled peaches seasoned with cinnamon and nutmeg and homemade vanilla ice cream, a gift from their gardener. “We love the small-townness here,” Mazzie says. A hummingbird visits one of their hanging plants and they stop to marvel. “This place forces you to relax.”  [NOV/DEC 2010]

 

 

Amanda Gordon is somewhere “next to normal,” as long as she has her laptop and a story to write.

 

 

 

THE GOODS

Next to Normal
Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St.
New York, N.Y.

(Mazzie and Danieley are scheduled to appear in the show through January.)

www.marinandjason.com

www.marinmazzie.com

www.jasondanieley.com