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Stage Preview: Stage veterans enjoy playing 'Pajama Game'
Sunday, July 16, 2000 By Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Jim Carrey has nothing on Robert Cuccioli, who spent four years morphing and mutating from Jekyll to Hyde and back again.
On Broadway and on the road, he did it with a shake of the head, change in posture and voice and earned a Tony Award nomination for his efforts.
"Personally, it was a great thing to do. It tested my mettle as a human being, my commitment and my resolve, and my will to be out there and in the forefront of the show, to be the captain of the ship for all that time. It was quite a responsibility," Cuccioli says.
But it took a physical and emotional toll. "Doing a role like that, you really have no life, and I was ready to have some life," and some other roles, too.
Cuccioli is enjoying an eclectic collection of parts, including the one in "The Pajama Game" bringing him to the Benedum Center this week. He plays Sid, the new superintendent at the Sleeptite Pajama Factory, where he finds love and labor-management clashes with Babe (Beth Leavel), head of the union grievance committee.
"I've always loved the music to it, and a lot of the songs I didn't even know were from the show," Cuccioli says, in a common reaction. "It's really full of so many great numbers. I've always known the number 'Hey There,' it's just been something that's been in my repertoire for a long time. ...
A new gem for me is 'A New Town Is a Blue Town.' "
The show also spawned "Hernando's Hideaway," "Steam Heat" and a jaunty, brain-looping tune that represents the union's demand for a raise: "Seven-and-a-Half Cents." As the song concedes, it doesn't buy a heckuva lot but collect it every hour, 40 hours a week, and soon you'll be "living like a king." Hey, it was the '50s.
"Pajama Game" opened on Broadway in May 1954 with stars John Raitt, Janis Paige, Carol Haney and Eddie Foy Jr. and an unknown named Shirley MacLaine in the chorus. It was Bob Fosse's first major choreography gig. Raitt, Haney and Foy reprised their roles in the 1957 movie featuring Doris Day.
Before coming to Pittsburgh, Cuccioli had been busy doing his homework in New York -- reading the novel "71/2 Cents," studying the music and creating a back story on how Sid landed at Sleeptite.
How Cuccioli landed on Broadway and beyond is worthy of a story, too. "I had always performed in school, drama clubs, plays, musicals, glee clubs, things like that. It was just kind of an aside. It was something I found fun to do."
During his senior year as a finance major at St. John's University, Cuccioli appeared in "Godspell." A number of people asked, "Did you ever think of doing this as a career?"
But it wasn't until he was working at E.F. Hutton that he really began pursuing a career, using the entertainment trade papers as his guide. "I'd spend my lunch hours coming up to Midtown and going to auditions and whatever, and I finally got a job [in the chorus] at the Light Opera of Manhattan.
"I spent three years there; that was my training ground. It was just on-the-job training, pretty much. I did both for quite a while -- talk about Jekyll and Hyde." After an exhausting year and a half, Cuccioli switched to the theater full time. That was in the early '80s; it took him a dozen years to land his first Broadway job.
"I look back at it and say, man, was that me?" And, while he does read the business papers and magazines, he doesn't give investing advice. "It's a heavy-duty career thing; it's something you have to be on top of all the time," and he's a little busy these days.
Also busy is fellow Broadway veteran Leavel, married and the mother of boys ages 10 and 4. The 10-year-old broke his leg playing soccer and spent the family vacation in a cast; it should be gone by the time the boys and their dad come to Pittsburgh for a visit.
"I'm really looking forward to playing what I consider kind of an ingenue," Leavel says of Babe. "I'm usually the funny second-banana character." She, Cuccioli and actress Jane Lanier, who plays Gladys, once shared an acting class -- bonding them for life.
Although a musical about the Amalgamated Shirt & Pajama Workers of America seeking a 71/2-cent raise may seem a bit dated, Leavel suggests, "I think the love story could be set anywhere on the planet in any year in any factory. If you still have that love story and the conflict, it's timeless."
Leavel had never seen "Pajama Game" on stage or film, and her reaction upon reading it: "Oh my gosh, this is adorable." Like Cuccioli, she found the music just one hit after another.
A native of Raleigh, N.C., who terrified her parents by moving to New York's Hell's Kitchen, Leavel has lost the Southern lilt in her voice. And like her co-star, she has enjoyed her share of long runs; they mesh perfectly with her family, now living in Bergen County, N.J.
She originated the role of Tess in "Crazy for You," spent a year with "Showboat" and five years off and on as Anytime Annie in "42nd Street."
Before sliding into "Pajama Game," she sang about a dot.com company, appeared in "Damn Yankees" with Tony Randall in Houston and survived "The Civil War" at home and on the road. She was a prostitute in Act I and Mrs. Bixby, a mother who lost five sons to the war, in Act II.
"That was a real 'up song,' as you can only imagine. And that's the song I sang in this huge mourning black dress with a hoop skirt," that should have had a warning signal for backups, like a garbage truck. The critics were unkind to "Civil War," but Leavel said the story and voices were phenomenal.
"Pajama Game," on the other hand, has been a winner for nearly 50 years. "I'm looking forward to singing 'Hey There.' It's such a beautiful song, and I get to sing part of that."
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Where: Benedum Center, Downtown