By Linda Chin
It is a rare actor who, when telling a story through song, can take you to dizzying heights and dark depressing nights in under four minutes. With her riveting rendition of “I Miss the Mountains” (Next to Normal) at Boston Public Radio’s Live Music Friday series on June 14th, the astonishing Alice Ripley took me up, down, and back fifteen years to Broadway’s Booth Theatre, where I saw her pitch-perfect, Tony Award-winning portrayal of Diana Goodman, a suburban housewife and mother with bipolar disorder. Ripley also sang a sensational “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Miserables (she played Fantine in the 1998 Broadway run). Theatre producer, composer, arranger, pianist, Grammy and Emmy winner, and force of nature John McDaniel is accompanist for both numbers.
On air with co-hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, the live GBH studio audience sitting in the Newsfeed Café, and thousands of at-work, at-home, and work-at-home listeners, the pair discussed their respective careers and shared vignettes about cruises and working together on Ripley’s new cabaret show, and this summer’s launch of the “John McDaniel Broadway Series” in Provincetown.
As for the co-hosts’ question about why Ripley agreed to be part of the series, she responded without hesitation, “Because he asked. John is one of my favorite partners to work with.”
Presented by P-town’s Post Office Café and Cabaret and Tin Pan Alley, the series kicks off with Tony winner Betty Buckley (June 23), and includes an impressive lineup of stars – Kate Baldwin, Darren Criss, Nicholas Rodriguez, and Liz Callaway – who no doubt share Ripley’s appreciation and respect for McDaniel. Ripley appears in the Series on July 19 and 20.
Ripley herself is one of the most artistically generous performers I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. (As mentioned, I saw her originate – and IMO forever own – the role of Diana in Next to Normal and play Nora Desmond in NSMT’s Sunset Boulevard in 2019, but I hadn’t met her until a few days ago.
After her performance on the segment, she chatted freely and posed for photos with some fans in the audience. The friendly GBH crowd included folks young and old, perhaps Live Music Friday regulars, who didn’t know that they were in the presence of Broadway royalty (but who will now take a road trip to Ptown). The pair Ripley and McDaniel made a big impression on were two cast members, Ricardo “Ricky” Holguin and Sherée Marcelle, who are playing the roles of the Doctor and Diana, respectively, from the production of Next to Normal currently running at Cambridge’s Central Square Theatre.
For tickets and information about John McDaniel’s Broadway Series, go to https://postofficecafecabaret.thundertix.com/
