This is a weekly feature on BroadwayLiving.com. It’s
just like the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. You
know how it goes…someone throws out an actor’s
name and you have to try to connect them to Kevin Bacon
in six steps or less.
I thought it might be fun to do
the same thing with the theater’s luminaries. I
will be trying to connect them to the longest running
show in Broadway
history, The Phantom of the Opera and its
very first “Phantom”, Michael Crawford.
Zoe Caldwell was born on this
day in 1933 in Melbourne, Australia. She first
appeared on stage at the age of nine when she played
Slightly Spoiled in a production
of Peter Pan. In her teens she worked
on radio soap operas and in 1958 received a scholarship
to work at the Stratford Memorial Theatre in Britain. In
1961 she immigrated to Canada and enjoyed great success
there before making her Broadway debut in 1965 in John
Whiting’s The Devil as a replacement
for a vacationing Anne Bancroft.
Ms. Caldwell has received four Tony Awards for in
work in Slapstick Tragedy (1966), The
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968), Medea (1982)
and Master Class (1995). Her directing
credits include An Almost Perfect Person (1977)
with Colleen Dewhurst and Off-Broadway’s Vita
and Virginia (1994) with Eileen Atkins and Vanessa
Redgrave.
Zoe was the wife of Broadway producer
Robert Whitehead until his death in 2002. She is also the mother
of producer Charles Whitehead and William “Sam”Whitehead.
In 2001 Ms. Caldwell released an
autobiography entitled “I
Will Be Cleopatra: An Actress’Journey”. The
218 page memoir focuses on her early life and career.
1) Zoe Caldwell starred as “Maria Callas”in Master
Class with Audra McDonald
2) Audra McDonald did Ragtime with Judy Kaye.
3) Judy Kaye was the original “Carlotta”in The
Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford.
“We artists wear our hearts on our sleeves.”
Maria
Callas in Master Class (1995)
So that’s the game. Join
me each week as I try to come up with new ways of
connecting Michael
Crawford to the entire theater community.
