Forty years ago, a little 13-year-old girl with a big voice was plucked out of the chorus of moppets during rehearsals and given the title role of an optimistic orphan named Annie. Of course, that girl was Andrea McArdle, who hung onto that star-making part for almost three years, including Broadway and London.
She has been back on Broadway, as a featured replacement in such shows as Les Misérables and Beauty and the Beast, and at 52 — yes, little Andrea is just a decade away from collecting Social Security — she heads off to regional theaters to take on such mature roles as Dolly Levi, Mame Dennis, Gypsy’s Mama Rose and even the conniving Miss Hannigan in Annie. Leaping lizards!
“Yeah, if you can stick around long enough and you survive, then you get to do some classic roles,” notes McArdle. “That’s one thing I love about theater. After 40 and 50, on TV you can only play Grandmother. In the theater, a lot of interesting doors open for you.”
For the next three weeks, McArdle is the headliner in They’re Playing Our Song, the Marvin Hamisch-Carole Bayer Sager-Neil Simon musical from 1979, on now at Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre. There she plays a flaky lyricist based on Sager, who enters into a collaboration and romance with a neurotic composer patterned after Hamlisch, played by James Clow.
This is actually the second time McArdle is playing Sonia Walsk. The first was at the Bucks County (Pa.) Playhouse, 34 years ago. “I was actually 18 when I did it before. So, far too young, with not enough baggage. It was a million years ago, but I remember it,” she says with a throaty laugh. “I love the show because I saw it a lot when I was in New York after I stopped playing Annie and I was doing loads of variety things. Once you knew the ushers, you’d say, ‘Can I sneak in?’ and I’d go three or four nights a week and watch different parts of this show.”
Now, McArdle concedes, “I’m a little old to be playing Sonia. She’s supposed to be in her 20s. So, whatever.” There are references to the characters’ ages in the script, but McArdle says, “We changed it. Sorry, Neil.”
Even if you did not have an indelible image of McArdle as pre-teen Annie, she does not look her age – either from the Wick stage or up close. Does she feel 52?
“I don’t feel my age mentally and in my heart, but my body sometimes feels its age,” she allows. (In) the number ‘They’re Playing My Song,’ we don’t stop, and Sonia is all over the place.”
Among her favorite recent roles include returning to the show Annie to play her former nemesis, Miss Hannigan. “I wasn’t quite expecting that emotional rush the minute I heard the music. It’s so indelible in my soul. But it was weird for me the first time, and then I went out to L.A. and did it at the Carpenter Center there, a 2,200-seater. That time I really had a handle on it.
“The mistake they made the first time is they made me look too good,” she recalls. “So I said ‘Hag me up’ and then it was so much fun.”
Miss Hannigan was a decided change of pace for McArdle. “I’d played good girls all my life,” she says. She enjoyed playing Annie, but “By the time ‘Annie’ was over, I’d had my fill. I was like, ‘Yay, I don’t have to wear that wig and that red dress anymore and those stupid Mary Janes.” It’s hard to not get a little stale. When it stopped being natural, it was, ‘I think I’ve been here a little long now.’ ”
She relished her first chance to play a character with a few impurities. “I played Belle (in Beauty and the Beast) for two years on Broadway, until I was 40 years old. And then I got to play (Cabaret’s) Sally Bowles and then it was like, ‘Wow, I never want to play a good girl again.’ ”
Her current role is a bit of a kook and McArdle identifies with her. “Just knowing who it’s about and just imagining what goes in with two people like that who are extremely talented helps me to connect to it,” she explains. “I was married to an extremely talented guy, so I don’t have to think of Carole Bayer Sager. A lot of these things that happen to Sonia, I’ve lived them. I’ve had these conversations, y’know?
“It’s yin-yang. He’s neurotic with a fear of heights, a fastidious guy who needs everything in its place. And she just comes in and it’s mayhem – drama, drama, drama. There’s a lot of me that’s very much Sonia. Oh, yeah. I’m a flake.”
McArdle would love to be back on Broadway, to have another megahit in a new musical perhaps. It’s not that casting directors only think of her as an ingenue. It’s worse.
“They’re not thinking of me. Even though I go out and get great reviews, as Reno Sweeney and Dolly and Mame, I’m not going to get to do those roles (on Broadway) for another 10 years anyway,” she feels.
“That’s why I thank God for regional theater, where you can keep your chops up and get as much under your belt as you can. The other thing is I have to get on TV to get on Broadway again, I’m convinced. But it was theater that I loved. And ‘Annie’ was my first experience in theater, can you imagine? I guess I got spoiled from the beginning.”
THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SONG, Wick Theatre, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, Nov. 6. $75-$80.(561) 995-2333.