Audra McDonald's busy season

Audra McDonald may want to take a breath.

For the past few months she's been immersed in the new version of "Porgy and Bess" that director Diane Paulus is readying for Broadway in the winter.

Next upon leaving the show at the end of week (it is in Cambridge at the American Repertory Theater, where Paulus is artistic director), she embarks on a concert tour that will take her to 17 cities on both coasts, beginning this Saturday (October 1) in Philadelphia, then Sunday (October 2) at Boston's Symphony Hall.

Then after completing the tour, it is back to New York for the final lap of "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" (as it has been named) for December previews and an opening in January.

When asked about this schedule recently, McDonald let out a small laugh, punctuated with a stretched-out: "Yeeeaaah."

Awards & accolades

In recent years a busy schedule is routine for the actress/singer. In addition to her concert/stage appearances, she's been commuting from New York to LA for her ongoing role on ABC's medical series "Private Practice." This gig pretty much kept McDonald off the New York stage where her career has been nothing less than sensational.

Even before her 30th birthday she had won three Tony Awards for supporting roles (two for musicals - "Carousel" and "Ragtime," and one for drama - "Master Class.") She won her second supporting actress/drama Tony for "Raisin in the Sun," placing her in a rarified league of Broadway actresses (including Gwen Verdon and Mary Martin) who have won four Tony Awards. And Ms. McDonald did this before the age of 35.

Still she has yet to win for Best Actress, though she's been twice nominated. From the buzz about her performance as Bess, she'll be a likely contender next June. Her reviews have been ecstatic. Boston Globe's Don Aucoin called her "a Bess for the ages." Variety's Frank Rizzo wrote that "McDonald gives a stunning perf as Bess, and demonstrates the balance between the character's two worlds -- as well as the show's."

Even the New York Times - in something of an unprecedented move - sent their main theater critic Ben Brantley up to review the show's Cambridge opening. While largely dismissive of the production, he raved about McDonald: "She never sings these particular lyrics. But Audra McDonald has every right to say, "Bess, you is my woman now," wrote Brantley. "...Ms. McDonald is Bess (or to use the hyperbolic speech of movie ads, 'Audra McDonald Is Bess'), and she can claim rights to full possession of her role, the kind of ownership that transforms a classic character forever."

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Watch Audra McDonald sing "Over the Rainbow":

Her concert tour

McDonald is also one of the few Broadway stars with a successful recording career with four solo CDs to date; and concert appearances are amongst the most anticipated on any venue's schedule. Her upcoming schedule takes her to Philly, Boston, Princeton and DC before it heads west to Vancouver, Fresno (her hometown) and LA. She comes back East to New York, followed by dates in Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Pennsylvania.

What can her fans expect from her on this tour?

"It's going to be a lot of the songs I love and songs I have not sung before," she explained from Cambridge. "They'll be songs by Adam Guettel ("A Light in the Piazza"). They'll be Cole Porter. They'll be Gershwin. They'll be Sondheim." (She chuckles a bit at the mention of his name - more on this later.) "They'll be Bock and Harnick. They'll be a lot of new material. I'm doing some Kander and Ebb. And I have not done a lot of their songs before."

What has distinguished her concert appearances is how she mixes songs from the composers of Broadway past with those by the new musical theater guard. In addition to Guettel, she has included songs by Ricky Ian Gordon, Jason Robert Brown and Michael John LaChiusa (who wrote the underrated musical "Marie Christine" for Audra in 2000.). For her most recent CD, "Build a Bridge," she focused on the new generation of pop songwriters, including John Mayer, Rufus Wainwright and Nellie McKay (whose hilarious song "I Wanna Get Married" was a highlight on the CD and her most recent tour.)

"I'm not going to be singing any of Nellie McKay's songs on this tour, but I always reserve the right to change my mind. She's an amazing songwriter. I knew when I first hear that song that I wanted to sing it, but I know in two seconds the first time I hear a song if I want to do it. I think, 'Wait I want to do that!' There will be new material in the show and I'll be playing the piano for one number."

What will be different from venue to venue will be her accompaniment: "Some places they'll be more an entire orchestra, some places it will be with my combo, and some places it will be just me and my musical director (Ted Swerling)."

The Sondheim thing

While planning her concerts is taking up some of her time, her effort at present is playing Bess at the American Repertory Theater through Friday. It's a daring production, largely because director Diane Paulus and her collaborators - librettist Suzan-Lori Parks and musical arranger Diedre Murray - have rethought the Gershwin opera as musical theater piece, jettisoning some numbers, eliminating recitatives and rethinking the characters and plot.

When it was announced last Spring, this version (authorized by the Gershwin estate) raised eyebrows; and the collaborators, including McDonald, expected some sort of reaction. Still no one was ready for the firestorm that occurred after the New York Times published a preview piece that made Paulus, Parks and McDonald appear arrogant in their proposed changes to what's generally considered the greatest American opera.

Days after the Sunday Times story, the paper published a letter by no less than Stephen Sondheim (who has always admired the Gershwin opera and the work by Gershwin's major collaborator - librettist and lyricist Dubose Heyward) that savaged the production unseen. While Sondheim's screed focused more on Paulus and Parks, McDonald wasn't spared. When she said that Bess is "often more of a plot device than a full-blooded character," Steve responded: "Often? Meaning sometimes she's full-blooded and other times not? She's always full-blooded when she's acted full-bloodedly, as she was by, among others, Clamma Dale and Leontyne Price."

"I imagine Gershwin purists will have their arrows in their bows, ready to shoot," said McDonald in the interview. "But the opera will always exist to be performed. What we wanted to do was a new conception that tries to deal with the holes and issues in the story that would be very, very obvious to a musical-theater audience."

Was she surprised by the swiftness and severity of Sondheim's comments?

"Sure. Especially before we had actually done a performance of it - I was surprised about that. But you know in the end if people are passionate about theater and truly passionate about art, and this particular piece of art, it's a good thing. People talking about theater and having a discussion and debate about it - that's a good thing. I know what I feel about the opera. I know what I believe.

"And I have a huge love for this work. I always have. If it didn't come across in the New York Times article, that's what it is. But I know in my heart how I feel about the opera, about how I've always felt about the opera and how I've always felt about the people who have played in the opera. That was one of my obsessions with it growing up. And I'm glad to be doing it."

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Watch Audra McDonald sing "The Glamorous Life" from Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music":

Obsessed with Bess

In fact that love of the opera was one of the prime reasons she took the role.

"I grew to a bit of obsession with it when I was at Julliard -- the recording with Simon Rattle conducting-Trevor Nunn-directed version of it. During my years at Julliard, I listened to it non-stop. So when Diane called me and said that she had been approached by the Gershwin and Heyward estates and asked her if she was interested in doing a version of 'Porgy and Bess' for Broadway, I said I was, but I was busy with 'Private Practice' at the time. But we kept talking and, eventually, it came to be."

What has been most gratifying is the overwhelming response of the audience - an immediate standing ovation and numerous curtain calls at every performance. "It's so gratifying to get the response we've been getting every night. And it encourages us to continue to work and dedicate 100-percent to it. For the cast and crew - and everybody - it's been a labor of love. Everyone believes in it and have worked their asses off."

That includes changes. In the attempt to make these archetypical characters more rounded, plot points from the original have been altered. At one point (during previews) even the ending - sacrosanct for purists - had been altered. (Bess remains in Catfish Row and is confronted by Porgy about her leaving.) By opening night it returned to the original, but other moments, such as when Bess throws away the cocaine (or "happy dust" as its referred to) that Sportin' Life gives her. Such changes, McDonald says, are part of the process that will be ongoing right through the end of the year.

"We are still what we call an out of town tryout, so there have been many different versions. They'll be more. It's still evolving. Up to 3 or 4 days ago, I've been throwing out the happy dust, and for the last five performances, I've been holding onto the happy dust. That the nature of beast - we're exploring."

Taxing demands

What has clicked is her chemistry with Norm Lewis, who plays Porgy. In a rave review in the New Yorker, Hilton Als put it this way. "Her Porgy (the beautiful Norm Lewis) and Bess are not archetypal "black lovers"; they are a man and a woman, human beings who are not defined by their race. It was their humanity-their desire to be seen and their fear of being stripped bare by another-that left me breathless when Lewis and McDonald sang the duet "Bess, You Is My Woman Now," while trembling and glancing sideways at each other."

How do they pull off this intimacy in such a short period of time?

"Norm and I have known each other for over 20 years and have been friends for a very long time. Though we haven't worked together all that much, we've always have had a deep affection and love for each other. So it's a dream come true - we get to be together on stage. Falling in love with him every night is a dream. I go on this journey with him every night, it's a dream come true. Because there is such trust and love there, it is easy to be on this journey. You can go into these deep feelings and emotions, or these dramatic situations. The horrible things that happen to these two people, and the beautiful things that happen to these people - if you do this with someone you don't trust, it makes your job a lot harder. But because Norm and I have such trust, it's been easier."

Still the vocal demands are taxing, and not just the singing. "There is a lot of yelling and screaming," McDonald says. "The emotional connection to it - huge emotions, that and coupled with the fact it's a big, fat thing we are doing - that's what I call it. So it is a challenge. Ethel Merman once said that when you are doing a show, you live like a nun during the day. And that's true. I don't eat very much. Thank God I live in the era of texting and emails. I have it pretty darn quiet during the day."

Now the dust over Sondheim's comments have settled, as have the rumors that the production was not coming to New York, McDonald can step back and reflect on the piece. "The wonderful thing about a 'Porgy and Bess' - it's so iconic, so incredible and so beautiful - that (the new version) doesn't take away at all from what already exists. There are so many different versions of 'Porgy and Bess' that have been done and will continue to be done, ours just adds to the collection."

She can also take satisfaction that Sondheim tempered his criticism of what she had said about the show with this comment about her as an artist: "Certainly I can think of no better Porgy than Norm Lewis nor a better Bess than Audra McDonald, whose voice is one of the glories of the American theater." Of that, everyone is in agreement.

Audra McDonald appears in concert 10/1/2011, Kimmel Center, Philadelphia PA; 10/2/2011, Symphony Hall, Boston, MA; 10/4/2011, Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington DC; 10/6/2011, McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ; 10/11/2011, Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver BC, Canada; 10/14/20, Warnors Theatre, Fresno, CA; 10/15/2011, Ren�e and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa CA; 10/22/2011, Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, New York, NY; 10/29/2011, The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College, Purchase NY; 11/4/2011, Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, MI; 11/5/2011, Hayes Hall, Philharmonic Center for the Arts, Naples FL; 11/8/2011, Phillips Center, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville FL; 11/10/2011, Gaillard Municipal Auditorium, Charleston, SC; 11/11/2011, Peace Center, Greenville SC; 11/12/2011, Spivey Hall, Clayton State University, Morrow GA; 11/13/2011, Alys Stephens Center, Birmingham, AL; 11/29/2011, Eisenhower Auditorium, Penn State, University Park PA.