Souvenir puts in a lot of work to sing so terribly
Souvenir runs at the Bartell May 6-21.
Welcome to Cheap Seats, where every Thursday we’ll talk to folks behind the scenes of the stage events opening around town in order to give you a flavor of the productions that won’t be found in any of the promo materials.
Souvenir: A Fantasia On The Life Of Florence Foster Jenkins, Bartell Theatre, May 6-21
Promo pull quote: “The story of real-life Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York socialite and tone-deaf diva who thought she was a great soprano. Unfortunately her great love of music was not matched by her own abilities.”
What it’s really about: Madison Theatre Guild’s Souvenir tells the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, a woman who became semi-famous in the 1930s and ’40s for having a terrible voice, and eventually performed at Carnegie Hall. Souvenir is largely about Jenkins’ self-deception, and the relationship she shared with her pianist, Cosme McMoon, who tells her tale in a nightclub in the ’60s.
While it’s easy to peg Jenkins as a proto-William Hung, she wasn’t really interested in fame for fame’s sake. “No one really knows what she was thinking, but the consensus is that she really couldn’t hear how bad she was,” director Betty Diamond says. “William Hung goes on American Idol because he wants to be famous, but in this play, you don’t get that feeling from Florence Foster Jenkins. For most of her career, she was doing small performances, maybe once a year, and kept tight control over who could come to see her. And she barred the press. In some ways, it’s the opposite of William Hung. Fame isn’t her driving motivation. She thought she could sing.”
Fun fact: Singing terribly, it turns out, takes some serious training. Lead actress Terry Kiss Frank, who has worked with Madison Opera and other local companies, had to go to a voice coach to avoid harming her vocal chords. “Singing badly, if it’s not done well, can really damage your voice,” Diamond says. “She had to be really careful of how she was going to produce the sound so it really wouldn’t wreck her voice.”
Why you should try it: Because this production of Souvenir is the expansion of the original, and popular, run of Souvenir in Madison, as it ran in 2009 in repertory with another play. “It never really got a full run [then], but during that run, the audience continued to grow. It was like [the story of] Florence Foster Jenkins. The audience got bigger and bigger,” Diamond says. “And people were coming back two or three times.”
