Alice Ripley Returns to Ptown to Make 'Really Good Music' with John McDaniel

If you visited a laundromat in the Queens neighborhood where Alice Ripley lives, you wouldn't expect to see the Tony-winning actress taking her bedding out of the dryer. But Ripley isn't your ordinary Broadway star. She does her own laundry. She fronts a rock band. And that Tony, which she won for her epic performance in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical "Next to Normal," is nowhere to be seen. It is in storage. Hardly a profile expected of a Broadway actress whose belt is compared to those of Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, and Idina Menzel.

Ripley's Broadway career dates from the 1990s, when she got her first break from director Des McAnuff, who cast her in his first production of "The Who's Tommy" in 1993. Next came Betty Shaeffer in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Sunset Boulevard," but her breakout role came in 1997 in the cult musical "Side Show," in which she played Violet Hilton, a conjoined twin who, with her sister Daisy (Emily Skinner), went on to worldwide fame, appearing in vaudeville and movies. When it opened, Ben Brantley in the New York Times called Ms. Ripley and Ms. Skinner "astonishing," and wondered aloud what the Tony committee would do with these two performances. As it turned out, they received a dual nomination – the first time in the Award's history.

Ripley did win a Tony in 2009 for her widely acclaimed portrayal of Diana Goodman, a bipolar suburban housewife struggling with the loss of her infant son, in "Next to Normal." Again, Brantley described her performance with one word: "astounding." In an unusual move, Ripley toured with the show, hearkening back to stars shared their performance with fans outside of New York. Since then, she has appeared in Broadway musical adaptation of "American Psycho" (2016) and regional productions of three Sondheim musicals: "Company," "Sweeney Todd," and "Into the Woods," as well as the Bible-thumping mother in "Carrie." And her connection with "Sunset Boulevard" continued when she made a memorable Norma Desmond in a regional theater production at the North Shore Music Theatre in 2019.

In 2022 she returned to the role of Diana in an unusual, immersive production of "Next to Normal" in Barcelona, which cut the show to an hour in length and dispensed of set and props, instead using 360-degree projections. Under the hand of British director Simon Pittman, this deconstruction all but placed the audience into the Goodman household. "We actors are told never to give our backs to the audience," Ripley told the Times during rehearsals, "and here all of those rules are gone."

Recently, Ripley has been touring a cabaret show with Emmy- and Grammy-winning producer, composer, conductor, and pianist, John McDaniel. Many fondly remember him as the bandleader and unofficial sidekick for the entire run of the "Rosie O'Donnell Show." He is currently producing John McDaniel's Broadway Series' 2024 Summer Series, and he and Ripley will be performing their cabaret show on July 19 and 20 at the Post Office Cabaret.

EDGE had the chance to chat with Ms. Ripley as she prepares for her return visit to Provincetown.

EDGE: Two nights in Ptown. A lot can happen. What can we expect to see?

Alice Ripley: I'm so excited. I'm really looking forward to it. I always say it's the happiest place on earth. I've never seen so many people really happy just doing nothing but walking around eating, enjoying each other and everything about it. Everybody is so free to be who they are, who they want to be. Nobody is trying to cramp your style. There really is no place else like it. It takes a long time to get there, but every time I go there I say it's the happiest place on earth. And I'm happy to be coming back there.

EDGE: Do you do something different for the Ptown audience?

Alice Ripley: No, the audience does something different for me. I offer the same thing every day, we don't tailor it to a specific audience. With cabaret you look right in their faces; you get something different from each person. You get a connection unlike anything you're going to find in a proscenium. I think cabaret is a great fit for the arts lovers, people with a great sense of humor, who don't mind staying out late, laughing too loudly, crying over a song. It's perfect for people who are willing and happy to stay emotionally present; people who love something different. That's the audience in Ptown. Each show, you get something different, and it's not us. It's the incredible audience that's always willing to come along.

EDGE: Why cabaret?

Alice Ripley: Cabaret is an art form that, for an actor, may be one of the final frontiers. As an actor, you're always playing a role. It may sound like a bit of a cliché, but you have to find out who you are. There's a way of doing everything. Someone is directing you to do this or do that. With cabaret, you have to be an interesting personality on your own, and actors aren't really known for this. You've got to keep that in mind when you're in cabaret. You are the reason people come and watch you sing these songs. You want it to sound beautiful and perfect, but you've got to be interesting. It's kind of new for me to be Alice on stage, but I like it. I try to be somewhat irreverent: Let's get them laughing during the patter, and crying during the song.

EDGE: Cabaret is having quite a resurgence lately. Why do you think that is?

Alice Ripley: It's pretty exciting. I think part of the enthusiasm is that we were all worried about how long it would take for live performances to come back. We are all now used to live performance that's been recorded on a video. There is nothing like live music that can be made in the moment. It feels like a fun party. It takes experience and dedication to the honing of the craft. Look at such artists as Marilyn Maye and (the late) Barbara Cook. You still have to work at it. And you have to hustle. Be ready to go now. You always have your bags packed, your gowns ready. Something always goes wrong, but it's exciting. It's never perfect. That's the life of a live performer.

EDGE: How did you choose the material for this show?

Alice Ripley: Well, I call it the Alice Ripley and John McDaniel Show. How's that for original? [Laughs] We make really good music together, so we're hoping for a great party. I will always include "I Miss the Mountains" from "Next to Normal" and "Who Will Love Me As I Am?" from "Side Show." I was in the original cast of both shows. I sang and recorded them. I include two Stephen Sondheim songs that I have not performed before. There are some Broadway songs, of course, and some old chestnuts that I love, like "Meadowlark" (the Stephen Schwartz showstopper from "The Baker's Wife"), which I was singing early on. It has special meaning to me. We chose songs that tell a story, and arrange the music so that it takes you on a journey. We have a sense of humor and a creative approach to life; to not be stodgy or stuck in any way. We have fun, and people always have fun watching people who are having fun.

EDGE: How did this show come to be?

Alice Ripley: John and I met years ago, and we recorded a song called "Please Let Me Say Hello." We've been in and out of each other's paths ever since. He called me about a year ago to see if I'd like to come up to the O'Neill Center to play a set. Of course, I said yes. Everybody wants to work at the O'Neill. Everybody wants to work with John. Everybody wants to have a job, at least if you're me. Vocally, my voice feels younger than it has in a long time. Going through mid-life was a little bit rough for me, but I feel like I'm on the other side of it. I feel like I love to sing again, which is really nice, and part of what makes it sound good. So I said I would love to.

He's strung together this nice little tour we've been doing all year. I'm so happy we get to do this together. We have so much in common, and love being together having fun. We're going to be in Vegas in the fall. I would love to have a residency in a place like Vegas, where you get to play every night or even every week. Let's keep the magic going.

EDGE: You're a Tony Award-winning actor. Where do you keep it?

Alice Ripley: For a while, I kept it in a beautiful, mirrored cabinet, then on my dresser. I recently moved, and it's in storage. I do kind of miss it. It's nice to know it's safe. It's tucked away. I had it out for years. I think one day, when we reunite, it'll be nice to see it. It's a nice reminder of what I've done. I do think I earned it the old-fashioned way. I just kind of worked really hard to work my way up. I began to get the roles that people noticed.

EDGE: Like Diana?

Alice Ripley: In "Next to Normal" the workload was vocal, physical, and emotional. Diana took me to a realm of not really having time to be anybody but her. She was so demanding. Every hour of my day was measured by the show. I've grown now, and become so much better at letting things go, moving forward. You can go and play a role like Betty Schaefer in "Sunset Boulevard" and you know what you're going to get. With Diana, you open a Pandora's Box of a role you don't know what you're going to get from it. When you work on a tightrope, live with a character who's is going to surprise you in so many ways, it's challenging; she has a tail like a cat that can come back and hit you. It was like nothing else I've ever done, probably because it's dealing with mental health, unexpressed grief that was inherited through generations, just kind of [being] broken.

I played her at a time in my life when my parents were dying, my marriage was ending, and I had some physical challenges of my own. My job is to rise above and to triumph. I have very few things in common with her, less than with almost any other character I've played. But I had a very intimate relationship with her. She was bi-polar, tried to kill herself, had manic episodes; me, no. I don't know what this is like, even if I did it eight times a week. I played her again in Barcelona a couple of years ago. She hasn't changed at all. I know her inside and out. I've grown incredibly. I feel really lucky that "I Miss the Mountains" is my song.

EDGE: You also received a Tony nomination for "Side Show."

Alice Ripley: "Sideshow" was different. It was about self-love. It was about theater people feeling marginalized, yet putting on something so beautiful. Their mental health was never in question. It was their physical condition that wreaked havoc on them.

EDGE: What was it like playing a conjoined twin?

Alice Ripley: It was all an illusion, of course, and that was the hardest part of it, though creating the illusion was the most fun. Our job was to create identical twins. (In the show her sister was played by Emily Skinner.) We weren't connected in any way. We used each other's bodies and gravity. We did a lot of side-by-side tricks and leaned against each other. It truly was an illusion. The rehearsals were really difficult. We had to trust each other; there was no time to wait and see if someone was going to agree with you. It was remarkable to go into something and trust someone who trusted me equally as much. She [Emily Skinner] met me there. We workshopped it for about a year before we went into production. I think we pulled it off. Lately, people have been calling me Emily. When you set the bar high and achieve it, it feels great. We were co-nominated for the Tony. We shared the same slot. It has never happened before or since.

EDGE: Actors have a lot of downtime between shows. What do you do to keep your motivation up?

Alice Ripley: Something like this [cabaret]. What I always wanted to be was an actor in classic plays, like Judi Dench or maybe Mary Louise Parker. I ended up in musicals. It's a tall order, and the toughest thing I've ever done musically. It's good to do other things like my band, songwriting, painting. As an actor, it helps to do things well that might also be profit centers. People walk dogs, teach acting on the side, maybe have a little business where they make things. A lot of us have bands.

EDGE: You have a band?

Alice Ripley: [Laughs] Well, right now it's just me, but I did have a band, and we did put out some records. It's been fun. I'd like to get back to writing music and recording it. Cabaret definitely is a way of creatively expressing yourself. I'm in a good place now, and excitedly looking forward to the next quadrant of my life.

John McDaniel's Broadway Series: Alice Ripley in Concert! Friday, July 19, 2024 and Saturday, July 20, 2024. Doors: 6pm Showtime: 6:30pm. For more information, follow this link.