Tovah Feldshuh - Lilyville: Mother, Daughter, and Other Roles Ive Played

T HE PHONE RINGS. T HE CALLER ID SAYS B ARRY W EISSLER, and I say to myself, Broadway producer Barry Weissler? Ill pick it up!

Tovah, wed like you to do Pippin for us on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. Can you come down to play on the trapeze? We want to see if trapeze is part of your world.

Trapeze, part of my world? I muse.

So I bike down to the Music Box Theatre at Forty-Fifth and Broadway. I enter the stage door, and that is my audition, mind youplaying on the trapeze. They hoist me at least thirty feet in the air: no net, no mat, and no insurance. And I am hanging from the rafters, and Barry yells up to me, TOVAH, Tovah, tovah! ARE YOU SCARED, Scared, scared? I take a deep breath and suddenly I realize Im not and say, NO, No, no! ARE YOU, You, you?! Without singing a note or dancing a step, I won the role of Grandma Berthe in Pippin, because I could swing on a trapeze.

My mother, Lily, came to every show I ever did. Well, almost. One day she called and said, Tovah, Im not coming to see you in the Virginia Monologues, I cant say the word! But three women in black dresses in front of three music stands talking about their chach-burgersforget it! So, if youre pretty and theres movement and theres color, give me a call.

So I gave her a call to take her to Pippin. Pippin has unbelievable color and movement, and I looked darn good in that bustier with fishnet stockings. All the trapeze work had taken me down to 112 pounds, which is what I weighed in seventh grade. With joy, I took my mother, with her beloved aide Joyce, to the Wednesday matinee of our Tony Awardwinning revival. Grandma Berthe sings the hit tune No Time at All, which I performed while doing a full-out trapeze act. This number brought down the house. Look, you put an old bird singing upside down on a trapeze and it engenders hope in everyone. So I go to my mother after the show, and I say, Mommy, mommy, mommy. Suddenly, Im three years old, grasping for mothers milk. Mommy, how did I do?

Her voice took on the familiar tone of a strident coronet. Tovah, that you should still have to earn a living like this, and on a trapeze yet!

That was my mother. She didnt give an inch. Looking back at when I portrayed Prime Minister Golda Meir in Goldas Balconywhich became the longest-running one-woman play in Broadway history and won me my fourth Tony nominationmy mothers comment was: Tovah, I rate your parts by how you look. Dolly Levi was a ten. Golda Meir? Zero!

Once, still aiming to please, I took my mother to the Actors Fund of Americas benefit performance of Hair. It too had color, movement, and leading actor Will Swenson, who, in the finale of Act One, left the stage and straddled an audience members armrests. He chose my mothers armrests. That boy was standing over my mother like the arch of St. Louisin his loincloth! My mother, in her little Saint John knit, she looked up, she looked down, she looked up. As the house lights came up, I timidly asked, Momma, how did you like Act One?