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Klea's Got Rhythm
October 6, 2002
By Christy Karras
The Salt Lake Tribune
Little girls in Utah who dream of making
it as stage actors or singers might look for inspiration to
Klea Blackhurst, a Salt Lake City native starring in an extraordinarily
successful one-woman show in New York.
But for Blackhurst, success was more
a matter of perspiration that inspiration. She earned her
spot by sheer tenacity — and a willingness to work as
an office temp on the side while she pursued an acting career.
"I've done everything in the world
but wait tables. But that's because it's harder to find a
waitressing job in New York that to get an acting job,"
she jokes.
On Friday, Blackhurst returns triumphant
to her hometown on tour with her tribute to Broadway singer
Ethel Merman, "Everything the Traffic Will Allow: the
Songs and Sass of Ethel Merman."
Blackhurst's mother was a performer in
Salt Lake, so she grew up around theater. Her desire to make
a living as an actor was more that a whim. After graduating
from the University of Utah, she packed up and moved to New
York. She told herself she would try for five years, and if
it didn't pan out, she would go home.
"After five years, I was working
[as a performer]," she said. Money from acting wasn't
steady, though, and she had to take a number of lowly jobs
to help support herself. But "when it came time to do
my taxes, I got to put 'actress' in the box that asks your
profession."
From the beginning, Blackhurst's goals
were pinpoint specific: Get in a show. Get her name in a Playbill.
She did that, then wanted something more. She wanted her name
on the back of an original recording. Then she wanted her
mane in bigger type.
Her first role, more than six months
after she arrived in New York, was in a "dreadful"
summer-stock production called "Natalie Needs a Nightie,"
Blackhurst said. Her big break was in the Off Broadway show
"Oil City Symphony" at Circle in the Square Downtown.
She later worked with the show's authors and originated the
role of Rennabelle in "Radio Gals," set in rural
Arkansas in 1927, which premiered in Arkansas and toured the
country.
But after 15 years, reaching such well
defined goals didn't satisfy Blackhurst, especially when it
meant playing a limited number and scope of roles and always
having to answer to somebody else.
"It didn't look like what you thought
it would look like," she said. But, "rather than
be defeated by those things, I regrouped and said, what am
I going to do next?"
The answer: "I just went away and
wrote a show and gave myself the part."
Ethel Merman was a quintessential Broadway
belter whose voice and personality helped shape musical theater
as we know it; her career, beginning in the 1930's, spanned
four decades. The idea of doing a tribute to Merman, "the
loudest woman in the history of musical theater," "just
sort of presented itself," Blackhurst said. "I just
thought it was so remarkable how many standards were written
for and introduced by her."
At this point, the youthful red-haired
Blackhurst stops talking to sing a few notes of some of America's
best-known tunes — "Life Is Just A Bowl of Cherries"
and "I Got Rhythm."
There was obviously no lack of material.
"Just focusing on songs Ethel Merman introduced on the
Broadway stage, there was still enough for five shows of the
length of the one I do," Blackhurst said.
Blackhurst's combination of singing,
acting and comic timing made her the perfect woman for the
show. There was also the fact that like Merman, Blackhurst
can be, well, loud.
"I'm a natural belter. That's my
thing," Blackhurst said. "I had to take classes
to learn how to sing a soft song softly. It just seemed like
a natural fit for me."
Not that it was easy.
Most people who hadn't seen the show,
which debuted last year, thought Blackhurst's baby was folly.
Her musical director told her she was crazy for attempting
to do a Merman revue; that the larger-than-life Merman couldn't
be imitated, she couldn't be channeled, that Blackhurst would
find herself "in the Merman box." Blackhurst pressed
on.
"I didn't want to imitate at all;
that's not my thing. It's about paying tribute to this amazing
performer," she said. "I'm not copying anybody;
it's me."
Somehow, it worked. She got rave reviews
from critics. People Blackhurst didn't even know were showing
up in audiences. And then she achieved the Holy Grail of theater:
an effusive write-up in The New York Times, which called
her "an improbably terrific young performer" and
told its readers that she had managed to pull off the impossible
job of bringing Merman to life without trying to resurrect
her from the dead. "That changed everything," Blackhurst
said.
Suddenly people were curious about this
show based on one of musical theater's icons.
"They came to see it because they
were coming to see what I was messing around with. Others
didn't want to come because they didn't like Ethel Merman,"
Blackhurst said. Somehow, "it doesn't matter whether
they loved Ethel Merman, hated her, couldn't pick her out
of a police lineup," Blackhurst said. "When it all
got thrown against a wall, it seems like what stuck was Klea
Blackhurst."
Now, Blackhurst is on a national tour
with the show. She has a CD coming out, just in time for Friday's
show at Kingsbury Hall. She appeared on Rosie O'Donnell's
daytime talk show. She has been invited to sing other roles
in other places, many of them having nothing to do with Ethel
Merman but everything to do with the Merman revue. "For
some reason, this show and me in it was the right combination
to get people to recognize me as a performer. You get to tell
people, this is who I am, and watch people respond to that
and say, that's great!"
Blackhurst hopes that along with the
typically older crowd that might run out to see a Merman tribute,
young people will come see her show. She emphasizes that it's
not stuffy. "It's an irreverence but a respect. I have
20-year-old kids who come and love my show. They're giving
it a chance. It's all there for a younger audience to come
and enjoy. It's just hard to get them to come out,"
Her advice for aspiring performers?
"Read, read, read, and know what
came before you. It's incredibly important for you to think
about what came before you," she says. She talks about
perseverance and always trying your hardest, about the million
auditions and the one that finally got her the big part.
"Trust me, nobody's going to talk
you into it. Nobody but you is going to miss it if you don't
do this with your career. If you're anxious about it, don't
go. But if you really, really wanna do it, then I say, go
try it."
And one other thing: "Learn to type."
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