Three Wagon Wheel performers came from Florida State University to perform at the Warsaw theater, but when “I Love A Piano” concludes its 10-day run, they’ll all be going separate ways. Dan Smith will return to college. Hillary Smith will move to New York. And Stephen Anthony will be a lead actor in the national tour of “Catch Me If You Can”. Monday afternoon, the three actors sat down for an interview in one of the dressing rooms to talk about “I Love A Piano”, the 2012 season and their plans for the future. “I Love A Piano” is a musical revue of the music of Irving Berlin. In the show, Dan plays Jim, Hillary plays Eileen and Anthony plays George. The character of Jim is a little shy, according to Dan. “We all do so much,” said Anthony. “It’s a revue.” "It goes through the decades. So we're playing the same character but going from 1910 to 1950,” Dan said. “So our whole kind of perspective changes throughout the course of the play.” “It’s sort of like each time we come in, we’re doing a different song that has a different set up. So it’s not like you’re always seeing the journey of George from start to finish. But I think there’s kind of, we all kind of end up doing similar stuff through the show,” interjected Anthony. “Like, let’s say my character always tries to be very suave and very charming. Then fails sometimes and comes off sort of egotistical, in a very comical way for laughs.” The three actors agreed that the roles they play for the Berlin revue are more character traits than characters. In one era, Dan said the characters play hobos. Then they’re in the Army. Actress Kira Lace Hawkins, Anthony said, comes in for one scene and she’s “suddenly Russian.” “It’s hard to like say, we have character names but it changes depending on what we’re doing,” Dan said. The show goes through the time periods and expresses the music of those time periods, he added. “Showing how Irving Berlin’s music changed during each time period,” Hillary said. “During the Depression, he wrote all this, he wrote, in fact, 'Blue Skies' during the Depression, which is saying, ‘Blue Skies’ is all about, you know, even if it’s storming or even if times are really hard, I’ll be happy because I got my girl, got my love. You know what I mean? So he really had to respond to each of the different things happening,” Anthony explained. “The show does a really good job of showing that.” Whatever the characters are going through in “I Love A Piano” relates to the Irving Berlin song being sung as well as the time period in which the song was written in, Hillary confirmed. As for individual favorite Berlin songs or time periods, she said that was tough. “I don’t know,” she said. “I like, weirdly enough, I like singing ‘I’ve Got My Love to Keep me Warm’ during the Depression scene. That’s a really great part. I actually love the end of Act I, the whole Army sequence going from when the boys have found they’ve been enlisted into the Army. I think that part is just a really cool way to end Act I. I like all the songs, too.” “And it’s really kind of moving,” noted Anthony. “We forget because we’re so young. We forget that this is a time capsule of things that really happened. People actually went through some really serious times during the war.” “People in the audience will really relate to a lot,” Hillary said. “I think the show just starts out so fun. We’ve got like this 10-minute dance sequence when we do the ’20s, where we’re like in this speakeasy, and hiding our liquor. And it’s just like fun, fun, fun, dance, dance, dance and suddenly the the war hits,” Anthony commented. “Hillary’s got this beautiful moment where her love is away, he’s overseas. Suddenly it gets just really beautiful and she has this touching moment and that just comes out of nowhere from all the fun. It’s really great.” As for his own favorite, Anthony said his favorite time is the 1940s because it’s the Golden Age of the movies. During that period, there’s “Stepping Out With My Baby”, “Putting on the Ritz” and “I Am Heaven” to name a few songs. Dan said he really liked the 1920s. “That’s like a really intense part of the show with all that dancing,” he continued. “But I think I just love that style, so I would say the ’20s, and I do like the ’40s, that style, a lot, ‘Stepping Out’, all that music is a lot of fun.” In some articles online, writers talk about how Irving Berlin wasn’t just a part of American music, he is American music. “I think the show will really help tell that story,” Hillary said. “The show starts out in 1910 when he first started writing music in Tin Pan Alley, and his songs were starting to be played ... and it goes all the way to the ’50s where he wrote musicals such as ‘Annie, Get Your Gun’. You travel through the history of America with his music and I think that’s the message of the show.” Anthony said that while every composer has his heyday, Irving Berlin is bigger than that. “Like Hillary said, the show shows that he responded to everything that happened throughout every decade. He wasn’t just, ‘Oh, I can’t write a song about this so I’ll take a break.’ His songs really do tell the story of America,” Anthony continued. “That’s why it stuck with people, because he was writing stuff that affected everyone’s lives at that time, so I think they took everything he wrote to heart,” Dan said. “No matter what he’s writing about, he’s always got like this back edge of light-hearted comedy. He always has this optimistic spin on things,” Anthony noted. “He’s always very funny. His music is very funny, looking back at it. Very funny lyrics especially for the time. He was very crass some times. Some of the things he wrote probably would have been considered vulgar for the time. But he’s always very optimistic, very optimistic and playful.” Hillary said a lot of people would be surprised at the many different songs they know but may not know they are Berlin’s, songs like “God Bless America” or “White Christmas”. “Those are songs we’ve all been introduced to at a young age that you just didn’t realize Irving Berlin wrote,” she said. “So, in that sense, we’ve all been introduced to Irving Berlin without knowing it.” For the Berlin revue at the Wagon Wheel now through Aug. 25, there’s a reason “piano” is in the title of the musical. Hillary explained, “The piano is kind of the lead of the show, in the sense that the piano gets the last bow. It’s the through line. It’s the symbol of Irving Berlin basically. It’s the through line of his music going through the decades and is being placed in all these different settings. And you see how the piano gets to the speakeasy or the junkyard. The plot kind of helps that along. (Artistic Director) Scott (Michaels) did a really good job of adding some other things so the piano really does have a through line.” Looking back, the trio said the 2012 summer season was a lot of hard work, but also a lot of fun. “It’s hard going from 9 a.m. to 4, then doing a show at night,” Anthony said. “It’s hard but we’ve been really lucky. This cast has been some of the most fun people that I’ve ever, ever gotten to work with. I keep saying I haven’t had this much fun since summer camp in middle school because it’s been a blast.” “I definitely think all of our hard work has paid off,” Hillary said. “It’s been a really good season, just a great contrast of shows. A lot of fun parts. To say I’ve done six shows in one summer is pretty cool. A lot of hard work.”The hard work doesn’t end with “I Love A Piano” however. Anthony is going on the national tour of “Catch Me If You Can”. It’s a musical based on the real life of con man Frank Abagnale Jr. The title comes from the movie of the same name starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. Anthony gets to play the role in the musical that DiCaprio played in the film version. “I get to go to some really, really amazing cities for a year and sing really amazing music,” Anthony said. “It’s by the guys who wrote ‘Hairspray,’ which you’ll remember we did last year. So really fun music.” He can’t wait to get started. He’ll get two weeks off when he finishes at the Wagon Wheel, then rehearsals start in New York City. He'll get to spend two weeks in Los Angeles, two weeks in Chicago, two weeks in West Palm Beach and a week in Las Vegas. The show also makes a stop at the Honeywell Center in Wabash. “It’s going to be a dream,” Anthony concluded. “It’s going to be so nice.” Hillary is moving to New York in September, and she’s excited about that. From Indianapolis, she will be doing a show at Beef & Boards in October and November, then will return to New York to auditon for more jobs. Dan will be going back to school in Florida. He has two years of school left. For this complete interview, check out the free video section on the Times-Union website at www.timesuniononline.com
