Martha Plimpton In Newsday
Fast Chat: Martha Plimpton stars in ‘Pal Joey’
January 4, 2009
When last we saw Martha Plimpton on Broadway, she was romancing a Russian revolutionary in “The Coast of Utopia.” Now, she’s making her musical theater debut as sexy chorus girl Gladys Bumps in Rodgers & Hart’s “Pal Joey.” Gladys is a hard-bitten dame with an ax to grind, and hips that follow - she delivers “Zip,” the burlesque send-up of Gypsy Rose Lee made famous a half-century ago by Elaine Stritch. Plimpton, a native New Yorker, sat down recently with Newsday’s Robert Kahn at Studio 54.
After the “Utopia” trilogy, we had you pegged as a dramatic actress. Now, a musical?
It’s newness on a grand scale, so it’s big and dramatic and scary, but that’s what I like. Some friends thought that I could sing, people I work with, like ["Utopia" director] Jack O’Brien. Jack was talking to Joe Mantello [who directs "Joey"] and said “You should think about Martha Plimpton for this.” I don’t know why Jack thought that - he’d never heard me sing.
But it was something that had been percolating?
When I was a kid I started in musical theater, avant-garde downtown stuff with Elizabeth Swados ["Runaways"]. … A few years ago, I met Lucy [Wainwright Roche]. I sang with her at one of her gigs and she asked me to do a song on her EP, so we did a cover of “Hungry Heart.” Then we decided to put together a whole evening based on performing with friends. We did it at the Zipper Factory in August.
So “Pal Joey” is your official coming out.
People will say that, but I’m not a calculator of the things I do. I don’t plan my career. Every time I’ve tried to strategize for success it’s led to nothing. And every time I’ve simply allowed my life to take its natural course, it’s led to a kind of success that is more valuable to me than the kind you get when you “work at it.”
When Richard Greenberg restructured the book for “Pal Joey,” he beefed up your character, adding “Zip” to the mix. Has Elaine Stritch seen you? What did she think?
Yeah, she has - but I don’t really want to say what we talked about.
Gladys wears some pretty racy costumes. How was that for you?
William Ivey Long wants an actor to go out there and feel their absolute best, and I feel like the sexiest bitch on Broadway. I just feel hot. I feel beautiful. I don’t feel exposed, because underneath the garments that have been constructed, I’m wearing an elaborate system of joists and pulleys designed to strengthen my assets … and minimize my defects.
Your parents, Keith Carradine and Shelley Plimpton, met during the original run of “Hair.” Did you see “Hair” when it was at the Delacorte last year?
[Nodding] That music is so much a part of my DNA. It’s all I heard for the first three years of my life, every single night. So in a way it was hard, because I’m having flashbacks while I’m watching it. I obviously didn’t experience “Hair” the way cognizant adults did, but it forms the basis for a lot of my early musical taste.
Your dad’s in town now, working at the SoHo Playhouse. What’s something you do together?
Me and my dad? Oh you know, we go boozing and whoring. We spend a lot of time at Private Eyes. …
I see there are things you just like to keep private.
Oh, you know, we go to dinner or we don’t. I get to see his show and he gets to see mine. [Carradine's play "Mindgame" closed last Sunday.] We got to spend Thanksgiving together, and we don’t normally spend holidays together, because he’s in L.A. We’re both working very hard. I’m a person who really loves to socialize, but on this, it’s very different. Doing a musical, I’m finding, requires a level of athleticism that I haven’t been called upon to access before. So I just don’t go out as much.
This month, you’re filming a pilot for Showtime with an old friend, Matthew Perry. What can you tell us about “The End of Steve”?
Matthew’s co-written a hilarious script about a morning show host in Rochester who is making - how do they describe it? - “a reluctant attempt at redemption.” I play his producer, and I feel like the character was tailor-made for me.
