You might first associate Ana Gasteyer with her hysterical characters from Saturday Night Live, but did you know that her Broadway resume is even more impressive. This season, she stars in her sixth Broadway show, Schmigadoon!
“People come thinking frankly, ‘Oh, I’m gonna see this thing that was a TV show.’ And I think they walk away thinking ‘Oh my gosh!’ It’s such a true love letter to the form, to musical theatre, but it’s also incredibly funny,” she told BroadwayWorld’s Richard Ridge. “There are smart jokes, and somewhat edgy jokes throughout! It’s all the fun parts of a classic musical with a little bit of hip at the same time.”
Ana plays Mildred Layton, the bossy, moral spine of the town. “It’s exhausting! It’s actually as hard as Elphaba, because first of all, I’m a villain, so I’m screaming nonstop. Second of all, patter is incredibly hard! Navigating that vocally has been surprisingly challenging, just figuring out how to breath, where to breath, how to belt, how to hit these legit notes at the end. There’s a lot of subtlety to the way that I have to traverse that.”
Watch in this video as she chats more about the nuances of playing the Mildred and looks back on some of her favorite past roles.
