“What I love about Madame Giry and Norma Desmond is that they are women who see what they want to see and they go after it.” So says Karen Mason who should know. She’s played both parts in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals. She is currently on stage in Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera. The show continues at the Hollywood Pantages through this Sunday. Next week the musical begins a two-week engagement at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa.
I spoke to Ms. Mason after she completed a rehearsal for the show. In Love Never Dies Christine (Meghan Picerno) and Raoul (Sean Thompson) have a son, Gustave. One of the actors who plays the son is going off to high school and a new Gustave has to learn the blocking.
Mason made her Broadway debut in a show called Play Me a Country Song. The show closed on opening night in 1982. “It wasn’t a huge surprise when we closed,” she recalls of that experience. “I think the bigger surprise was how unorganized it was and how sad it was that so much money was put into something and it wasn’t as prepared as it should have been. During that time I auditioned for Torch Song Trilogy when it was moving from off-Broadway to Broadway and I had actually gotten the role of the torch singer. But Play Me a Country Song wouldn’t let me out of my contract. Luckily Harvey Fierstein [the author and star of Torch Song] used me for vacation “Lady Blues” when Susan Edwards couldn’t do it.”
Mason was in rehearsals for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway at the time The Phantom of the Opera was nearing the end of its first year. Of course she had to see that show. “Here’s the weird little caveat,” she says with a laugh. “I saw it when I got standing room. I never saw the chandelier coming down. I kind of missed a big portion of it. I’ve always been a song person. I love a three-and-a-half minute beautiful melody and song, so to have the continuity through the entire show was new and jarring for me and yet very satisfying. I thought it was magnificently beautiful.”
Like everyone else, it never occurred to her that the show would be running 30 years later. “When shows a long time ago stayed open a couple years they were considered wild successes. Now thirty years of consistent audiences, obviously there is something there that really speaks to a lot of different types of people. And not just one generation.”
Which lead, of course, to the sequel in which she appears, Love Never Dies. The show had a troubled start. It opened and closed rather quickly in England. It has never played Broadway. Only after an enterprising production in Australia was new life found and thus the tour was born.
“I’m happy that we have people who come to see the show who loved Phantom. The younger generation is the one that are the biggest fans of Love Never Dies. Every generation likes to discover something for themselves and I think Love Never Dies is going to be their discovery, their mythology and what they compare the next thing to.”
The character she plays is Madame Giry, the woman who in the first show suggested Christine for the lead in the opera once Carlotta walks out. In Love Never Dies, Giry is doing whatever she can to help her daughter, Meg, capture the Phantom’s attention and therefore the lead in his new work. She’s protective, stern, a bit harsh and the polar opposite of Karen Mason.
“Beneath the soul of every young girl who grew up in the 50s is a lot of sturm and rage,” Mason says. “Growing up as a young Catholic girl I had very strict and efficient nuns who taught me over the years. It’s easier than it should be for somebody as perky as I am to mimic that. Madame Giry is almost like a wounded animal. In her mind she is carving out this piece of the world for herself and for her daughter with the Phantom as her…well muse isn’t the right word, but maybe as the motivator. She’s taking advantage of his skill set. When that blows up in her face I don’t think she totally knows how to deal with that.”
Though she has played Mama Rose in Gypsy, Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard and now Madame Giry in Love Never Dies, she tweeted a suggestion to Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda asking for him to write her in the part of “the lost oldest daughter” in his juggernaut of a show. It’s a great joke, but it does reflect a certain reality she is facing.
“The thing about it looking a little bleak on Broadway for a woman my age and skill set is it may force me to really push for this show I’m really proud of and want to get produced. It’s a show about my relationship with my music director Brian Lasser. It is called Unfinished Business. It’s a one-person musical for me and somebody at the piano. I was a young woman who didn’t know how to get where she wants to get and she meets this guy who turns her life around. When he dies, how do you keep moving? It’s a beautiful statement about artists and humanity and I get to showcase Brian’s music. Because let’s face it, I will probably not find my way into a Go-Go’s musical.” [She’s referring to Head Over Heels which is currently playing at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco with an eye to Broadway.]
Whether she gets cast in new shows on Broadway or does Unfinished Business or both, Mason remains hopeful for the future. “I do have great optimism about the arts. Because when I first moved to New York in 1979, cabaret and theatre were dying. But we’re still here and we’re still growing and changing. As long as we have the option of having a Lin-Manuel Miranda come along and have a big blockbuster hit, I think there will always be space for these beautiful new voices who have different ways to say things. It’s always going to change. This new generation has shown themselves to be fighters. I think we’re going to be okay.”
And you know that Karen Mason will, too.
Production Photos by Joan Marcus