Journal Arts Writer
Lisa Yuen, soap heiress Christine Colgate in Theatre By The Sea’s production of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” two years ago, is back in Matunuck to open the season as know-it-all Marcy Park in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” And she couldn’t be happier.
“Somehow it feels very New York here,” said Yuen, who was in the original Broadway cast of “Spelling Bee.” “They do everything possible to get it right.”
Park, who is based in Boston these days (she married the golf pro at a Brookline country club), left a tour of “The King and I” to join the cast of “Spelling Bee” before it landed on Broadway. The show, a two-time Tony winner that opens in previews Wednesday, started out as a comedy improv called “C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E” that was performed by a New York comedy troupe called The Farm.
Cast member Sarah Saltzman, weekend nanny for playwright Wendy Wasserstein, brought her boss to the show. Wasserstein thought it should be a musical and brought in composer Bill Finn, who wrote the music and lyrics. Finn, in turn drafted one of his students from NYU, Rachel Sheinkin, a Brown grad, who wrote the book.
Yuen remembers texting her husband after she saw the show, saying “This show is genius.” Joining the show meant that she was getting about one-fourth the salary she earned touring “King and I,” but she “had an opportunity to work with great people.”
Yuen said she was shocked when told the show was headed for Broadway shortly after it opened. “I started to cry,” she said.
On Broadway, Yuen was the swing, or stand by for all the girls in the bee, a tall order since they were all so different. But she said she went on a “ton” for Marcy, the over-achieving Asian.
Now she gets to reprise the part in Matunuck. Has her treatment of the character changed?
“I’ve had four years to mature,” said Yuen. “I think my performance is more layered, more complex. You want the audience to like you, and Marcy is so robotic. You have to find a reason to root for her. She’s an over-achieving Asian stereotype. I wanted to bring a human touch to her.”
Yuen said that people who don’t know the show think anyone can do it. But it’s a lot more complicated than it looks. It’s easy to be funny, she said, and miss the message of “discovering who you are.”
James Lapine, the show’s director on Broadway, would always say “don’t break character,” said Yuen. He told the cast that they’re not just there to make the audience laugh, but to make them feel love for the characters.
Yuen, who grew up outside San Francisco and got into acting as an elective at UCLA, where she was a communications major, landed a part in the 2000 tour of “Miss Saigon” right out of college. Nine months after graduating, she was a professional actress living in New York and appearing on Broadway.
“I was lucky,” she said. “I was in the right place at the right time.”
Yuen said her heart will always be on Broadway, but that she has had some rewarding film and TV work. She had a small part as a tourist in the Oliver Stone film “World Trade Center.” The script called for a Japanese tourist, so Yuen dressed the part and assumed a Japanese accent. But at the call back, she met Stone who said her name didn’t sound Japanese. It’s Chinese, said Yuen, who when she showed up for shooting found that Stone had changed the script to a Chinese tourist.
“I panicked,” said Yuen. “I had to totally change gears and do a Chinese accent. And my Japanese one is better.”
Yuen also turned up in a one-time role as a police officer in the new ABC drama “Body of Proof,” about a neurosurgeon turned crime-solving medical examiner played by Dana Delany. Yuen is a slight woman, and she wasn’t sure she had the presence to be a cop. It seemed the director agreed. When she showed up on the set in uniform, he took one look at her and said, “We’re promoting you to detective.”
The first season of “Body of Proof” was filmed in Rhode Island. The show has now moved to Los Angeles.
Yuen also appeared in 23 episodes as a nanny in the long-running TV soap “All My Children,” before the show also moved to Los Angeles and announced that it is ceasing production in September.
“It was the perfect job for me,” said Yuen, who made a stop at the Providence Performing Arts Center on her “King and I” tour. “My apartment was on 57th and 9th, and the ABC studios are on 57th and 11th.”
Yuen is also the choreographer for the Matunuck run of “Spelling Bee,” an interactive musical that pits nerdy spelling champs against one another and brave members of the audience. She said that she and the show’s director, Amiee Turner, are on the same page when it comes to the dance steps. They should reveal the character, she said, and not be too fancy. “It’s not ‘A Chorus Line,’ ” said Yuen.
Yuen, who’s directing a student production of “Footloose” in Boston this summer, said she was surprised when picked to play Christine for “Scoundrels,” because she doesn’t look the part of a WASP from Ohio.
“I was surprised the theater would go for non-traditional casting,” said Yuen. “I didn’t think they would do it.”
Yuen, who keeps an apartment in New York, credits Joyce Hall, her voice teacher in New York, with overhauling her sound. When she’s teaching, she said she tells kids she was on Broadway in “Miss Saigon” and they say, “What’s that?” Then she tells them that her voice teacher is also the teacher of Lea Michele in the hit TV show, “Glee.” “They’re very impressed,” she said.
“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” runs June 1-19 at Theatre By
The Sea, 364 Card’s Pond Rd., Matunuck. Preview tickets $35; all other performances are $39-$54. Call (401) 782-8587, or log on towww.theatrebythesea.com.
cgray@projo.com
source : projo
