Interview: Being Free, Available and Thinking True: A Conversation with Lauren Mufson

If you were among the lucky theatre lovers who scored a ticket to the Broadway blockbuster hit, Mamma Mia! in 2005, you might have had the pleasure the pleasure of experiencing Lauren Mufson make her Broadway debut in the leading role of Donna Sheridan. Now more than ten years later, the actress returns to the beloved ABBA musical in a highly anticipated new production at Maine State Music Theatre that opens August 10. The musical theatre and cabaret artist, teacher and voice coach, and mother of two is delighted not only to revisit one of her favorite parts, but to make her Maine stage debut in one of the first ever regional productions of the show.

"It is such a pure joy!" she declares enthusiastically. Mamma Mia! is fun; it's upbeat. A great deal of that has to do with the music, but there is also the story which is very relatable. There is somebody to whom everyone can relate. There are mothers and daughters, best female friends and male buddies, dads with different lifestyles. There are lots of single moms these days," Mufson continues, "and there are the family relationships, as well as the nostalgia for the ABBA era that speaks to an audience. And wait until you see the costumes! They are so hilarious, so absolutely right that they help us all go back decades to recapture our youth. When you see this show, you find all the memories right there - accessible - and you feel this fondness for the 70s, which were so over the top, tacky and outrageous in many ways, but nonetheless fun, positive, uplifting."

Mufson credits a great deal of the enduring appeal of Mamma Mia! to the ABBA songs, with "their backup vocals and very layered sound that makes the audience want to sing along automatically. There are catchy 'Dancing Queen' and 'Mamma Mia.' Then the music does get heavier in Act II with songs like 'Slipping Through My Fingers,' when Donna contemplates Sophie's transition from girlhood to marriage which is one of the most special moments for me. Or "Winner Takes All" which for the actress playing Donna, this is like 'Rose's Turn' from Gypsy. It's a very big, very intense moment."

She also thinks this particular new production directed and choreographed by Mark Martino is going to wow the audiences with its "amazing choreography. Mark is adding quite a bit of the Greek idea, more than what they did originally, and I think it adds a fabulous sense of place and suggests soul and earthiness that work well. We have this fantastic young ensemble who are full of energy and are full on embracing the dancing. There are acrobatics, some very funny moments and surprises, and big splashy numbers. It is going to be sensational!"

All this positive energy contributes to the audience reaction Mamma Mia! always seems to engender. Mufson says the cult-like frenzy has always been part of the show's experience. "I have never seen anything like it in my life. When we were on tour with the show, we 'd be in what we thought were some very conservative cities, and the audience would start by sitting attentively and quietly, but by the end with all the dancing and singing, they'd be on their feet joining in. Ladies would whip out their boas; the crowds would go wild. It was a happening!"

Mufson is referring to the three years she spent on the national tour of the ABBA musical prior to her Broadway debut. She spent the first year as the Donna Sheridan understudy and then took over the lead for two years. She recalls how the summons to Broadway came: "I was in Seattle, and they called me to say that the Broadway actress was ill and would probably be out for several months. They flew me to New York, and I had a day to get acquainted with a new theatre, new sets, all new cast. It was pretty exciting, but pretty terrifying, too."

Mufson played the role for three months and then let it lie dormant until now. "To revisit the show after ten years is a liberating experience. I am coming back to it at a different time in my life. I now have two daughters of my own - girls six and eight years old - and being a parent changes everything. I could imagine what being a mom was like back then, but actually having the experience gives the part a whole different meaning, especially for all the mother-daughter moments in Mamma Mia!." Mufson also finds that by working with a different director in a production built from the ground up allows her great freedom. "When I did the tour or the Broadway show, I came into things that were already established, and I had to hit certain marks every night. This time I have the sense of 'let's find something new.'"

And that impulse to discovery and to dramatic surprise has been with Lauren Mufson from an early age. Her mother, Marsha Rivers, had been a musical theatre performer on Broadway and had a big success in Gypsy alongside Ethel Merman before her marriage to a doctor from Clifton, NJ, where she went on to raise a family and together with her husband, who played piano, instill in Lauren a love of performing. Mufson remembers singing at the piano with her father at home and doing all kinds of community theatre. The moment which turned this interest into a passion was, in itself, a rather unique one for an eleven-year-old.

As Mufson tells it: "I had my eye on this big, gutsy role in a rock Passion play done at Easter in our community. It was that of a woman who stands up in the audience and belts out this huge song. So I chose for my audition Janis Ian's melancholy "At Seventeen." Remembering that my Mom had told me Ethel Merman never used a microphone, I just got up there and belted it out and blew them away. That was what convinced me and my parents that I should study voice seriously, and so I began to take lessons with Martin Bate, a well-known voice teacher at Montclair University [then Montclair State College]" From there, Mufson enrolled at Vassar College as an English Literature major. "I consciously chose not to be a theatre major," she says. "I wanted to get a great humanities education in those four years."

After graduation Mufson made a career based in New York City, as a stage, television, and cabaret artist, and used her considerable vocal power and artistry to perform a great many concerts as well. She appeared off-Broadway at Altered Stages, Urban Stages, Lincoln Center, the Manhattan Theatre Club and originated a number of roles in prominent workshop productions at places like BAM's Next Wave Festival, Circle Rep Lab, and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, as well as in the world premieres of the Hal Prince-directed Kiss of the Spider Woman and Jason Robert Brown's The Predators' Ball. Regionally, she undertook some of the powerhouse leading lady roles of musical theatre such as Aldonza [Man of La Mancha], Nancy [Oliver], and Sheila [Hair]. Recently, she completed a run of another new musical, Bandstand, at New Jersey's PaperMill Playhouse, which hopes to come to Broadway in 2016-2017. She speaks enthusiastically of the show's theme: "The story deals with some WWII veterans who come home to Cleveland very damaged, and they form a band and are healed by the power of music. It has all original music that evokes the era, and it is directed by Andy Blankenbuehler, who is phenomenal. The dancing is quite something!" she exclaims.

Throughout her career Mufson has enjoyed performing one-woman cabaret shows. "I've played virtually every piano bar there is in the city," she smiles. "What I like about it is that it is spontaneous, very interactive, and very improvisational. It is happening in the moment, and I find that so much fun. But," she adds prudently, "now that I am a bit older and a mother, I have to limit how many of these late night engagements I do."

And so in the time that she is not devoting to the stage, Mufson enjoys teaching voice from a studio in her New Jersey home. "I especially enjoy working with teenagers," she says. "I, myself, wasn't an especially enjoyable teenager, but somehow I find it enjoyable to work with them. It's exciting to me to see their raw potential. They don't come to you with a lot of tricks. So I focus on helping them to access their own natural voice and to produce a healthy sound. I see in my students a great deal of myself at that age. I hope I am able to give them the support to grow into who they really are."

Asked how her teaching not only benefits her students but surely impacts her as an artist, Mufson ponders for a minute and then replies, " My philosophy in teaching voice is for my students not to try to sound like anyone else, but rather to help them make their unique sound the best they possibly can. And that reminds me of what I need to focus on as an artist in my own work. I am not challenged to hit certain marks. Rather I have to be free and available and always to think true."

A special recipe, indeed, and one which makes Lauren Mufson the original she is!

Photos courtesy Maine State Music Theatre, production pohoto Roger S. Duncan, Photographer

Mamma Mia! runs at MSMT's Pickard Theater from August 10-27, 2016. www.msmt.org n207-725-8769