Anika Larsen’s first number in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical has her character, composer Cynthia Weil, change the words to “Happy Days Are Here Again” to highlight her brilliant improvisational skills. Her “creative pitch”, as she calls it, has her introduce herself, “I came to show you my style, my name is Cynthia Weil” while she sings, “I’d like to say a thing or two about this song I sing for you, these are not the words you thought you knew”. In a musical filled with many showstopping moments, this number epitomizes the economy of Douglas McGrath’s book as he gives Weil a complete backstory using just a few lines; it’s also a rousing showcase for the actress who plays her to leave her mark on the show; for afterwards there is not a single scene in Beautiful, where you don’t crave to see, and hear, more of Larsen.
Her performance rightfully earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, among many other accolades, and examining her resume it’s clear that her biggest talent is to infuse larger-than-life energy into every ensemble she’s part of. From playing Lucy in Avenue Q, to the hilarious sister Mary Downy in Disaster! when it played at The Triad, Larsen’s scene-stealing qualities are undeniable, which is why it feels like the right moment for her to shine on her own with the release of her first solo album Sing You to Sleep, a compilation of carefully curated lullabies that range from famous compositions by John Denver and Bob Dylan, to delightfully quirky renditions of songs by Bruno Mars and George Gershwin.
I had the opportunity to speak with Ms. Larsen who eloquently explained her purpose with the album, “you have this challenge, you want to do it different just so there’s a reason you’re doing your version of it, so it feels like you’re contributing in some way instead of just saying everybody listen to me!”. Throughout our conversation she made evident that her love for performance is only rivaled by the deep respect she has for other artists, “you also don’t want to do it so different that it feels gratuitous or doesn’t serve the actual song”. The album’s rewards therefore come from the notion that because Ms. Larsen sings as if she’s being given the gift of these songs, her interpretations are so lovingly sung, that they inevitably become gifts for the listener as well.
We also spoke about her outreach organization and the importance of musical theater, her takes on two songs from classic animated films and her obsession with a certain Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
A few weeks ago my friends asked me to babysit and put their kids to bed that night, but when the time came for me to sing them a lullaby the only thing I could think of was “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”...
(Laughs)
….but it seems that lullabies were more varied in your home growing up.
Yeah, well, if you sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” over and over again, it gets slower and slower so that actually can work too, kind of like a drug. I’ve just spent so much time with children, babysitting and nannying have been my day jobs throughout the years, and then I have a lot of nieces and nephews, so I’m always around children. I think I would’ve gotten bored if “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” was my only option, so definitely over time I branched out from lullabies and started singing songs that I thought were beautiful, but also had lovely imagery that children would find pleasing as they went to sleep.
On your website your family is referred to as “the multicultural von Trapps” because you have brothers and sisters of many races and nationalities. Growing up did you perform any numbers from The Sound of Music?
We never actually performed any songs from The Sound of Music but every year at my parents’ Christmas party we all performed and we would do group numbers, duet and trios, and my mom would pair people strategically, the ones who were more shy or had no pitch would be paired with someone more confident. But I always got a big, fat solo and I couldn’t wait for my solo. Couldn’t wait to perform and step in front of all my brothers and sisters. Cause when you’re one of ten children people don’t even bother to learn your name, and I understand now looking back, but at the time it made me desperate for attention. So when I figured out how to get it I started singing and then never stopped.
So that must have been a huge part of why you became interested in musical theater.
Yes, totally. But it’s funny because being one of ten children I also have a compulsive need to be a team player and so I get very uncomfortable when I get what feels like too much attention. So I love being in a show like Beautiful where I’m largely featured, but also it’s such an ensemble show in which everyone gets their moment to shine and that feels much more right to me. So actually when [album executive producer] Dan Watt came up to me and asked if I wanted to record an album I said absolutely not. An album of just me, makes me so uncomfortable and absolutely queasy, so no thank you. A couple of weeks later I was singing lullabies to my nieces and nephews as I do, and I thought “wait a minute, an album of lullabies I can get behind, that I feel comfortable with”. Because it has a purpose and that makes me feel less self indulgent, and then I was able to bring on board Jessie Mueller who sings a duet with me, and my dear friend of many years Kenita Miller sings backups with me, my boyfriend Freddie plays the trumpet on three of the songs and all the band members have moments where they solo, which is exciting. David Cook did fantastic arrangements, his piano playing is glorious and he led the band so well. It really feels like even though it is an album of me, I did everything I could to make sure it sounded like an ensemble piece. The album came out just like I wanted it to, cause I don’t believe in dumbing down music for kids, my kids are gonna listen to Stevie Wonder, you play for them the music that you want them to love, and I don’t want them hearing stuff like The Wiggles, no offense against them, but I want to play sophisticated music for my children. I wanted the sound of my album to be more like a Norah Jones kind of thing and David Cook got that and ran with it.
Since you bring that up, I remember listening to Norah Jones’ album Come Away With Me over and over again and I found myself playing your album from start to end over and over as well…
Jeez, thank you! I appreciate that. “Come Away With Me” was a song I considered putting on the album, but it didn’t make the cut. We called this Sing You to Sleep and not something with the word “lullaby” in it because I didn’t want to rule out grown up listeners. I want this to be a lullaby album for all ages, cause everyone needs to be lulled, I know I sure do. We all need to be calmed and made feel good through music.
You sing “Baby Mine” from Dumbo and “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tail, which might be animated films, but are perhaps two of the saddest films I’ve ever seen…
(Laughs) That’s funny! I didn’t think of the songs as coming from the movies, that’s not how I chose them. It was because “Baby Mine” is just one of the prettiest songs ever, I think and it’s one of the few songs in the album that is really, truly a lullaby. And then “Somewhere Out There”, I actually had forgotten was from An American Tail until you just reminded me, the reason I chose it was because I play Cynthia Weil who wrote it with her husband Barry Mann, and I wanted to include a song they had written and this one felt perfect. I had a lot of fun with it because David Cook made it a bossa nova, which is also fun because they wrote the song “Blame It on the Bossa Nova”.
Can you talk about how people should play the album?
I wanted to make a lullaby album that would start faster and then go slower, which is the trick to make children sleep. Sometimes depending on how lazy a babysitter I was, I’d sing the same song over and over again, but sometimes I would change songs and sing slower as I went along and it really would work well. I liked the idea of meeting kids where they were energy wise and then slowing them down. If you play it in order that’s how it goes, if you shuffle it, who knows what happens!
I loved the arrangement on “Annie’s Song” because it reminds me of a piece Henry Mancini wrote for Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
That’s a pretty well known song by John Denver, and it’s usually always accompanied by him on guitar, so when David and I were talking about how to make it different, one of the things he did, which I think is extraordinary, which he did in another less known song called “Four-Leaf Clover” that my mom sang to us when we were kids, that song is in three, which is basically a waltz, so David changed it to four, which most people won’t know because they won’t know the song. But it just gave it a nicer groove, so he did the same with “Annie’s Song”, he put it in four which is unexpected, and it’s also just accompanied by a piano, which was also unexpected. It gives the song a whole different mood. Stuff like this isn’t something I have the musicianship to do, and it only happened because I was so lucky to have such a strong team.
I feel like we were denied the pleasure of more numbers between you and Jessie Mueller in Beautiful, which is why I like that you did a James Taylor song with her on your album, as if to keep going the Carole King connection.
The reason I know that song, “You Can Close Your Eyes”, is because I watched Carole King and James Taylor Live at the Troubadour when I was preparing to star in Beautiful and was taking in everything I could from Carole King and Cynthia Weil, and I had never heard this song before and was captivated by it. I immediately downloaded it on iTunes and played it non-stop for a few months and couldn’t stop singing it. I had toyed with the idea of finding a Carole King song to put on the album but this one felt more right, although she didn’t write it herself and only did it with James Taylor that one time, I felt like this could be my tribute to Carole and then especially to have Jessie come in and sing the Carole King lines made it extra special, because we have become such good friends during this show.
I’m aware of the work you do with your organization Jaradoa and the outreach mission behind it. What do you tell people about the power of musical theater, especially when many can be so dismissive of it?
That’s an interesting question. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people had an experience where they have gone see one very bad musical production and then it scars them for life and they don’t give it another shot. Just like with everything, there are good productions and bad ones, as well as good shows and bad shows, so to discount the whole genre seems a bit foolish to me. I do understand because as time goes by I have become more critical of musical theater and I have far less patience when I feel like it’s not being done well, because I know how good it can be when it is done well. We go to theater to know we’re not alone, we go to hear other people’s stories and connect with them. All of theater, TV and film do that, yes, but why musical theater as opposed to other forms of hearing stories that you can connect with? It’s because only through musical theater do we then take that extra leap into the heightened world of music, where people start to sing their feelings in a way that is...I mean when Tony in West Side Story can’t say the word “Maria” without singing it, because he’s so in love with her, everybody knows what that feels like, and it isn’t ridiculous that he would suddenly be singing. It only makes sense that he could sing his love for this woman, and there’s times when only music can fully express our emotions. Opera is not just story structured, opera is about the music more than it is about the story, and in musicals you get to the point where someone is feeling something so strong that they can only express it through music, and when that happens, and it is done well, and it is sung beautifully, it is transcendent in a way that no other artform is. So for people who would dismiss it, I would say you just haven’t seen the right musical theater.
I know you’ve said you prefer to feel like part of an ensemble, but I’m sorry to tell you that you’re always a scene-stealer. Going through your resume I realized before Beautiful I’d seen you in Unbroken Circle and although I don’t remember much about the play, I remember thinking you were brilliant.
Thank you very much. That is the only straight play I have ever been hired to do, since I’ve become a union member seventeen years ago, you know you get pigeonholed as a musical theater person and it’s very hard for people to see you another way, so it meant a lot to me that I got to play this role, and as you know, it was a dark show, completely the opposite of a pop/rock fun musical. It was scary, because you don’t get to rely on your old tricks, they don’t work for you, but I believed in the role and the play, and James Wesley and Seth Rudetsky who were behind it, and it was an extraordinary experience. I’d like to do more plays!
Your rendition of “Al Otro Lado del Rio” from The Motorcycle Diaries is magnificent, how did you come into choosing that song?
I wanted to sing a song in another language, I thought that would be nice, and kids like that, people like that. Growing up in such a multicultural family I just do love fusion and embracing other cultures, so I thought it would be really nice and I was racking my brain to see what song to do. I’ve always found that song haunting, I remember the Oscars when Jorge Drexler won the Best Song Oscar, and they hadn’t let him sing it on the awards, instead they had Carlos Santana and Antonio Banderas sing it because they are who they are. And so when he won, all he did for his speech was sing part of the song a capella and I thought it was so cool. I downloaded the song and really liked the melody, so I wanted it to be on the album but I realized I only understood a third of the words, so I had to go find the translation just to make sure it wasn’t about something awful (laughs) and the song is basically about people who’ve been through pain and tears and see hope on the other side of the river, and that’s an idea we all can get behind.
Speaking of Che, has anyone ever asked you to play Evita cause I think you would be perfect.
I love you! (Laughs) It has been what, since 1980 when it came out, and I saw a TV commercial for it, and I memorized the commercial and I was singing it over and over. And because it was a commercial it went from like the middle of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” into one of Mandy Patinkin’s songs, so it was like a teeny medley of Evita and it was the only way I knew it. But I sang from “Rainbow High” to “High Flying Adored” and I guess it didn’t really make sense, but I memorized that and I kept singing those 30 seconds like it was my job! Ever since then I have really wanted to play Evita and I have never gotten close, but I appreciate you saying that because it always has been one of my dream roles. Although I have to say now that I’m a little older, the idea of doing all of that belting eight times a week does seem exhausting, cause I really couldn’t have a life outside the show, I wouldn’t be able to have a glass of wine, I wouldn’t be able to go out, so there’s that part of it. Do I really want to go into the sacrifice? But you know, maybe a short run, a regional theater short run somewhere I would be delighted. And I haven’t given up hope, I think at some point it should happen. There’s also a part of me that would be thinking how I’m as Nordic as they come, and she’s Argentinean, so honestly if the world was fair I shouldn’t be playing Evita. It would feel like that sort of uncomfortable casting that happens sometimes, just because she dyed her hair blonde doesn’t mean Nordic people should play her, so if I never do I think I’ll come to terms with it because I’ve been so lucky in my career so far.
Anika Larsen's Sing You to Sleep will be available in stores and on iTunes on December 9. You can also see Anika Larsen in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.
