From ‘Annie’ to ‘Granny’

Aileen Quinn returns to Bucks County, Pa., for a musical comedy at Bristol Riverside Theatre.

By: Daniel Shearer

Photo Courtesy of Bristol Riverside Theatre

Aileen Quinn (left) and Laurie Gamache star in Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Grandmother at Bristol Riverside Theatre.

   In many ways, the latest production at Bristol Riverside Theatre is a homecoming for Aileen Quinn.
   The Yardley, Pa., native found fame in the early ’80s as the perky, irresistibly cute, red-haired star of the film version of Annie, with Albert Finney and Carol Burnett, beating out more than 8,000 potential orphans for the part.
   Ms. Quinn’s film contract tied her to a handful of Annie sequels that never materialized, but that didn’t prevent Bristol Riverside from casting her in A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine several years later. By that time, Ms. Quinn had moved to Summit, with her parents, Andrew and Helenann Quinn, and was attending high school.
   Now all grown up, with off-Broadway roles and a recent national tour of Saturday Night Fever to her credit, Ms. Quinn has returned to BRT in Bristol, Pa., for another play, Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Grandmother, on stage through Dec. 21.

Photo Courtesy of Bristol Riverside Theatre

Ms. Gamache, Celia Tackaberry and Kathryn Kendall.

   Based on the best-selling book of the same name by Lois Wyse, the musical comedy centers on three women in their mid- to late-40s who are each forging their own identities as grandmothers. Ms. Quinn plays the granddaughter of each of the women as they ponder what to have the new arrival call them — nana, nu nu, grandmere or plain old grandma, among others — and whether or not spandex is appropriate attire for grandmothers. At lunch, a waiter assumes the women would be interested in club soda, Perrier or Diet Coke with lemon, so one of them orders a Jack Daniels on the rocks, just for kicks.
   As the youngster progresses though childhood, the show follows one grandma as she nervously teaches the child to Rollerblade, and visits another as she cleans out her closet after the death of her husband, deciding during a duet with Ms. Quinn whether she should throw out the leather outfit from her rebellious James Dean period, or toss the minis and boots she’s unlikely to wear again.

Photo Courtesy of Bristol Riverside Theatre

   Bristol Riverside Producing Director Susan Atkinson cast Laurie Gamache as one of the grandmothers, with Kathryn Kendall and Celia Tackaberry rounding out the trio. Ms. Atkinson also will direct the show.
   "There is a lot of humor it in, so it’s not that kind of preachy, love-your-grandma stuff," says Ms. Gamache, a New Yorker who is perhaps best known for her role as Cassie in the final Broadway cast of A Chorus Line. "In my duet with Aileen, the music is in quite a few different styles, because I change clothes and eras as I put on different clothes."
   Allentown, Pa., resident Vincent Trovato makes his Bristol debut as the show’s music director.
   "It’s structured in a way that the three grandmothers are at the core of the wheel," Mr. Trovato says, "and the spokes that come out of that wheel are people who are involved with them, their husbands, their children, the grandchildren.
   "There’s a lot of harmonies. There’s a trio that the grandmothers do that has a sort of jazz-waltz kind of feel, there’s a march at the end of the first act, a blues number, and a Latin scene that the grandfather does. There is some typically Broadway sounding music in it, and there are some very lovely ballads."
   Leading from the piano, Mr. Trovato will direct the show from the pit, performing with bassist Bob Gargiullo, a resident of East Windsor, and drummer Lawrence Jacobs, a Bristol, Pa., resident.
   "In very generic terms, the show reminds me of a revue structure more than anything else, but I think it is it’s own beast," says Mr. Trovato, who heard about the opening while working earlier this year at Gateway Playhouse on Long Island. "It’s content dictating form, coming up with something pretty original, and not necessarily reminiscent of anything that’s come before it."
   The show’s three grandmothers each have their own style. Ms. Gamache portrays a corporate grandma who has overseen several mergers throughout her career.
   "I do a couple of scenes with (Ms. Gamache’s) character," Ms. Quinn says. "She’s the corporate one, who all of a sudden thinks she has to bake and become all grandmothery. Another one is more suburban, kind of a Scarsdale sort of wife, who has a husband with a good job, and the other type kind of represents the average woman’s experience, the typical grandma."
   Ms. Quinn’s stage career has been anything but typical. Her mother, balancing a teaching career with acting, would pick Aileen up from school and take her to rehearsals.
   "I just remember thinking, ‘Wow, she’s so different when she’s on stage,’" Ms. Quinn says. "’And she looks like she’s having so much fun. Maybe I should try that.’"
   The younger Ms. Quinn, in fact, landed her first role after accompanying her mother to a community theater audition for Annie Get Your Gun; she played "the little girl," but has since forgotten which group gave her the part. She was only 7 years old, after all.
   "It was around this area," she says. "That’s how it all started, and it wasn’t until I was 8 that I started going into New York."
   Soon, Ms. Quinn moved to Broadway, where she served as the swing orphan in Annie.
   "I actually understudied about five or six orphans," she says, "and sometimes two of them would be out at the same time, and I would have to somehow get into both girls’ costumes and learn both of the lines and both of the choreographies so I could be in all the right positions for the other orphans to do their moves. So yeah, it got really interesting there. I went on for two girls a lot."
   Right around that time, Ms. Quinn had her first movie part in the 1981 film Paternity with Burt Reynolds. While doing Annie on Broadway, she also filmed six national commercials, which helped her catch the eye of movie producers who had auditioned thousands of youngsters for the lead role in their big-budget musical.
   "They’re huge odds," says Ms. Quinn, speaking of the Annie auditions. "It still puts me in complete shock to this day. Throughout that whole audition process, I never thought I was gonna get it. It was about eight auditions altogether, over a year period, narrowing it down.
   "They kept giving me the odds as we went along. It was, ‘Well, now we’re down to 500… now we’re down to nine girls.’ After a while I started thinking, ‘Stop telling me.’"
   Five years after Annie hit the big screen, Ms. Quinn had the starring role opposite Helen Hunt in Cannon Films’ feature-length fairy tale, The Frog Prince. Unfortunately, the company was already in dire financial straits.
   "I caught Cannon right at the end, before they collapsed in the ’80s," Ms. Quinn says. "I had been under contract for so long to make other ‘Annie’ movies that never happened. So by the time I was 16 or 17, and my contract was officially up and I could do other things, then it was kind of past the point. It was kind of like, ‘Who are you again?’
   "So I decided to get a really good education, especially with my mom being teacher. I’m really glad I did, actually."
   Ms. Quinn studied language and political science, graduating from Drew University. She worked as a translator, teaching Spanish to corporate bigwigs, and eventually landed a job interview at the United Nations. That same week, however, Ms. Quinn also had an audition for a national tour of Fiddler on the Roof.
   "I was supposed to have a U.N. interview and go into translation," she says. "I got ‘Chava’ in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and went on the road instead. That was the end of the U.N. for me, and the translation and the teaching. Then it all just started to snowball again."
   The late ’90s found Ms. Quinn in two off-Broadway shows, Yiddle with a Fiddle and Dreamstuff. She also spent time in Peter Pan on Broadway, moving to Los Angeles and back again. She lives within commuting distance of Manhattan.
   "There’s a lot of possibilities now," she says. "Nothing that I can comment on, because I’m in the running for a lot of things, hopefully more in the direction of TV in the near future. That’s what I’ve been focusing on, now that I’ve been doing so much theater in the past five years, all these tours. I’ve been doing a lot of theater, so I’d like to see if I can get something on TV."
   In the meantime, Ms. Quinn has been busy with several weeks of rehearsals at Bristol Riverside.
   "It’s a great play," she says, "and it’s got two sides. It’s very funny, but then there’s actually some meaningful parts. I think it really makes you appreciate what each of the grandmas are going through. And then you get me, having all these pregnancies, and giving birth and having a screaming baby for the first time. I think it’s something that everybody can relate to."
Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Grandmother plays at Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol, Pa., through Dec. 21. Performances: Wed. 2, 8 p.m., Thurs.-Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 3, 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. Tickets cost $37-$44, students $15. For information, call (215) 785-0100. On the Web: www.brtstage.org