Mary Page Nance (Photo courtesy Cadence)
After transitioning from Richmond’s Broad Street to New York’s Broadway, Mary Page Nance is back, appearing in a classic holiday musical produced by the Cadence theater company.
The show, featuring a sterling cast, is “Annie,” and Nance takes on a role that she’s coveted “from birth,” she says with a laugh. She portrays Miss Hannigan, the mean, alcoholic keeper of orphaned children. A collaboration with the ATLAS Partnership, the production runs for 14 performances between Dec. 12-21 at the Dominion Energy Center’s Libby S. Gottwald Playhouse.
The Richmond native is down from New York, where she’s most recently taken the stage in the Neil Diamond biographical musical “A Beautiful Noise,” and prior to that, “Lempicka,” “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812,” and “Finding Neverland.”
A longtime guiding star of Nance’s, Carol Burnett, played Hannigan in the 1982 film adaptation of the “Annie” musical. She quips that as a kid she must have watched the VHS tape of the movie “1 million times.” “I wondered who she was, or why she was so brilliant,” Nance says. “I couldn’t understand the performative elements, but I was struck by the character, her physicality, how funny she was. That’s sort of it. I think the character has permission to be ridiculous. I love being ridiculous!”
That appreciation for absurdity may help explain why, in her recently completed two-year enrollment at the Terry Knickerbocker Studio performing arts conservatory — grounded in the Sanford Meisner acting technique — she enrolled in the Clown track. Though she graduated from SUNY Purchase College, Nance felt she needed to break more barriers in her approach to acting, and thus, “I earned my nose, as they say.” Clowning renewed her as a performer. “I want to have fun onstage,” Nance explains. “The clown has really lit up this desire to be deeply playful and stupid onstage and committed to the role, because the role itself is complicated.”
Miss Hannigan is an angry drunk and cruel to the children, who push back with their own shenanigans. Playing that for laughs is the challenge for Nance. “Drunk work onstage is difficult — and finding the source of her rage,” Nance says. “Why does she drink? What has driven her to taking money from the government and surrounding herself with orphans she doesn’t like?”
Alongside Nance is, “dare I say, an iconic cast,” she says. The roster includes Ali Thibodeau, aka the singer-songwriter Deau Eyes. Both of their careers began on Richmond stages, performing together in Virginia Repertory Theatre’s production of “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” Then they relocated to New York. Nance recalls, “We were young, scrappy artists, hauling ourselves to auditions and [taking] lots of late-night subway rides.” In “Annie,” Thibodeau plays Lily St. Regis, the scheming girlfriend of Miss Hannigan’s younger brother.
The cast is rounded out by Gordon Bass as Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, Eric Williams as Drake, Anthony Cosby Jr. as Rooster Hannigan, J. Ron Fleming as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Maura Sinnenberg as Grace Farrell. The title character is portrayed by young actors Audrey Esplin and Mallory Stark. The ensemble is comprised of adult, teen and youth talents. The production is directed by Rebecca Wahls, with musical direction by Stephen Rudlin (Nance’s former voice teacher) and choreography by Deandra Clark.
As Cadence bills “Annie,” the musical serves to “remind us that even in the hardest of times, hope shines through” and the sun’ll come out tomorrow.
Cadence’s “Annie,” starring Mary Page Nance, runs Dec. 12-21 at the Libby S. Gottwald Playhouse. Tickets are $52.
