The Humble Princess Of Broadway

摘要

When Natasha Richardson debuted in "Cabaret" on Broadway in 1998, she was a nervous wreck. She had sung onstage only once before. Even scarier: she was all too aware that Liza Minnelli owned Sally Bowles just as surely as Liza's mom owned "Over the Rainbow." "If I stop to think about people comparing me to Liza, I get in a terrible state," she told me at the time. "One day in rehearsals someone said, 'She's got to be a little more something.' I be-came completely frazzled." I wasn't sure which was more astounding: that she was panicky, or that she admitted it. Of course, shehad nothing to worry about. Unlike Liza, who tried to smother Sally's wounded soul under her big voice, you could feel the pain dripping off Richardson's eyelashes. She melted New York's collective hard heart, and won a Tony Award in the process. The thing is, I always wondered how much she was acting.