Broadway star Audra McDonald is heading to Australia

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This was published 8 years ago

Broadway star Audra McDonald is heading to Australia

By Lawrence Money


Punctual to the second, Audra McDonald's phone call comes through at the appointed 9.10am Melbourne time as she is driven to her home in a wooded suburb an hour out of New York City.

"I've been at rehearsal for Shuffle Along, a Broadway musical revival opening this spring," she says.

Audra McDonald remains modest, despite having received six Tony Awards and an Emmy Award.

Audra McDonald remains modest, despite having received six Tony Awards and an Emmy Award. Credit: Autumn de Wilde

She is amused at my suggestion that a paparazzi or two might be visible through the rear window. "It can be harder to find privacy these days," she concedes. "I can't imagine living the life of people who have infinitely more celebrity than me."

According to the very modest McDonald, she is nowhere near that supernova level, but her record six Tony Awards, rave reviews and a recent Emmy to add to her collection might persuade you otherwise. The great Stephen Sondheim is on record as saying McDonald's voice is "one of the glories of the American theatre".

Audra McDonald performs with Anthony Crivello in the musical <i>Marie Christine</i> in 1999.

Audra McDonald performs with Anthony Crivello in the musical Marie Christine in 1999.Credit: New York Times

Australia is about to sample that glory for the first time. McDonald is holding a concert at Melbourne's Hamer Hall late this month and she is champing at the bit to get here. "I'm excited to sing for an Australian audience," she says. "Tony Sheldon the Aussie performer lives in our building. I'm going to be picking his brains about what I should do while I'm down there. We're performing later at the Sydney Opera House."

Sheldon, son of Toni Lamond and nephew of Helen Reddy, made his name on Broadway performing in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. McDonald broke the Broadway ice with the 1994 revival of Carousel, but it was not an auspicious start.

"I fainted two bars into the audition," she says. "I had a lot of nerves. I'd just got off a flight, the Rodgers and Hammerstein family were there too. My body just decided it would go unconscious." Happily, she bounced back like a true trouper, won the role as Carrie Pipperidge and subsequently gained her first Tony.

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Surprisingly, this versatile performer, who has done everything from concerts and opera to roles on television drama, says she was a painfully shy child, who was also challenged by hyperactivity. In fact, it was the theatre that saved her.

"My parents had gone to a dinner show and there was a cabaret beforehand performed by youngsters. They looked at each other and said: `This might be right for Audra, something that might channel all that energy.' I worked for that company for the next eight years."

One of her childhood adventures was breaking into her own house by smashing a window. "I was being driven somewhere and suddenly remembered I had left a pot of water boiling on the stove," she says. "My parents were not thrilled, but I told them I had saved the house from burning down."

Audra is an unusual name. "I have never gotten the true story where my parents got it from," she says. They wanted a name beginning with A to match that of her mother, Anna. Maybe it was a character in the TV show Big Valley, which her parents watched.

The McDonald surname, somewhat at odds for an African-American family, goes a long way back. "Most of us go back to the slave days, so I guess we must have been owned by a Scottish slave-owner. That's probably where our history is."

Her mother, Anna, is a big supporter of her famous daughter, but sadly, her father, Stanley, a high school music teacher, died when his helicopter stalled and crashed in 2007. "It was the most devastating thing that has happened to me," McDonald says. "I miss him every day. I was on stage when it happened."

The cause of the crash was never documented. Stanley and Anna had divorced some years earlier, and Stanley had remarried.

Sixteen years ago McDonald was interviewed by the American 60 Minutes program and, as an emerging performer, she spoke of the need to build up her vocal stamina. Today, with so many demands on her singing voice, stamina remains a crucial factor. "It is an ongoing challenge," she says. "It's not like you are playing a trumpet that you can put down. You still have to use your instrument in everyday life. I'm still having to talk when I get home or give interviews like this, which means vocal energy expended, so it's a constant battle about how to protect my voice and keep it technically sound."

Genetically, McDonald's musical skills have had a bit of assistance. As well as her father's role as a music teacher, her grandmothers taught the piano and she had aunts who sang in church choirs. "There was music constantly around the house," she says. She used to hang pictures of Broadway shows on her bedroom wall as a child, and she and her sister would sometimes perform shows using her walk-in wardrobe as a backstage and the doors as curtains.

McDonald also married into music. Her first husband was bass player Peter Donovan, with whom she had daughter Zoe (named after her good friend, Australian actress Zoe Caldwell). The couple divorced after nine years, but McDonald does not blame the infamous stresses of show business.

"I'm sure accountants' marriages break up, but you just don't hear about it. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen with the same frequency. My ex-husband and I are good friends and we are raising our daughter together."

McDonald is now married to performer Will Swenson​, who has two children from an earlier relationship, and the couple have no plans to have children together. "We are fine with the three we have," she says.

McDonald has described the theatre world as an oasis for her emotions. "We've had theatre as long as we've had civilisation," she says. "I think it is part of the human condition to have a place for catharsis. When these crazy, emotional things happen on stage, you get the release for the actors as well as the audience. It can be big and full and feel real, but there's safety in the fact that it is the theatre."

Audra McDonald is at the Arts Centre Melbourne on October 31 and the Sydney Opera House from November 5-7.

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