Newsday
January 4, 2009
Fast Chat: Martha Plimpton stars in ‘Pal Joey’
When last we saw Martha Plimpton on Broadway, she was romancing a Russian revolutionary in “The Coast of Utopia.” Now, she’s making her musical theater debut as sexy chorus girl Gladys Bumps in Rodgers & Hart’s “Pal Joey.” Gladys is a hard-bitten dame with an ax to grind, and hips that follow – she delivers “Zip,” the burlesque send-up of Gypsy Rose Lee made famous a half-century ago by Elaine Stritch. Plimpton, a native New Yorker, sat down recently with Newsday’s Robert Kahn at Studio 54.
After the “Utopia” trilogy, we had you pegged as a dramatic actress. Now, a musical?
It’s newness on a grand scale, so it’s big and dramatic and scary, but that’s what I like. Some friends thought that I could sing, people I work with, like ["Utopia" director] Jack O’Brien. Jack was talking to Joe Mantello [who directs "Joey"] and said “You should think about Martha Plimpton for this.” I don’t know why Jack thought that – he’d never heard me sing.
But it was something that had been percolating?
When I was a kid I started in musical theater, avant-garde downtown stuff with Elizabeth Swados ["Runaways"]. … A few years ago, I met Lucy [Wainwright Roche]. I sang with her at one of her gigs and she asked me to do a song on her EP, so we did a cover of “Hungry Heart.” Then we decided to put together a whole evening based on performing with friends. We did it at the Zipper Factory in August.
So “Pal Joey” is your official coming out.
People will say that, but I’m not a calculator of the things I do. I don’t plan my career. Every time I’ve tried to strategize for success it’s led to nothing. And every time I’ve simply allowed my life to take its natural course, it’s led to a kind of success that is more valuable to me than the kind you get when you “work at it.”
When Richard Greenberg restructured the book for “Pal Joey,” he beefed up your character, adding “Zip” to the mix. Has Elaine Stritch seen you? What did she think?
Yeah, she has – but I don’t really want to say what we talked about.
Gladys wears some pretty racy costumes. How was that for you?
William Ivey Long wants an actor to go out there and feel their absolute best, and I feel like the sexiest bitch on Broadway. I just feel hot. I feel beautiful. I don’t feel exposed, because underneath the garments that have been constructed, I’m wearing an elaborate system of joists and pulleys designed to strengthen my assets … and minimize my defects.
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