The CINDERELLA Files: Jodi Benson

She's probably best known as the quintessential Disney heroine - the ultimate princess figure in the hiearchy of Disney royalty - but this weekend Jodi Benson will get a promotion, of sorts, singing the role of Queen Constantina in a concert version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella in Nashville.

And if you find it hard to believe that she's playing a queen instead of the consummate princess in Cinderella, just imagine how her own eight-year-daughter DeLaney must have reacted when she heard the news.

"My little girl is eight years old and when she heard that I was doing Cinderella, she assumed I'd be playing Cinderella," Benson explains. "I told her I would be playing the queen, that someone else would be playing Cinderella, and she said, 'but Mommy, you are a princess and you have to be Cinderella.'"

"I tried to explain the logistics of the production and the various characters involved, but because she thinks of me as the 16-year-old Ariel, she has no trouble accepting me as Cinderella. I had to explain that while I can sound like Cinderella, the visual is going to kill the package...I don't look young enough to play Cinderella, unless that give me some extra special lighting and make-up," she laughs.

Perhaps best known to the general public for her performance as Ariel in Disney's The Little Mermaid (the animated blockbuster that is credited with reaffirming the Disney brand as the ultimate in film animation), Benson has delighted legions of fans over the years with her ageless vocal abilities, even while delighting Broadway audiences who know her as far more than the voice of Ariel. In fact, she was nominated for a Tony Award for her critically acclaimed performance as Polly in Ken Ludwig's Crazy for You, the updated version of Girl Crazy, the 1930s musical that features a score of iconic songs by George and Ira Gershwin.

"I loved playing Polly in Crazy for You," Benson recalls. "I loved everything about it, I loved our doorman, I loved our stage crew, I loved every member of our company - it was a huge, wonderful dream come true of mine to be able to perform great music, in beautiful costumes, to great choreography in a great big Broadway musical.

"And it was a great way to leave New York when my run ended...with every dream, everything I'd hoped for having come true. There was nothing that could top that experience, so I had to go to Los Angeles to prusue my career. Nothing could top my Broadway experience in Crazy for You."

That trip to the Great White Way, which came after her starmaking turn as the voice of The Little Mermaid's Ariel, came some years after she started her career right here in Nashville - as a cast member of the Opryland USA show I Hear America Singing. It was in Music City USA that she met her husband - Ray Benson - so her connection to the city is very real and heartfelt and she's happy to be back, helping Mary Beth and Steven Curtis Chapman bring attention to the work of their international charity, showHOPE.

This Friday night, Benson will join a star-studded cast of Broadway and Nashville theatre veterans (including Heather Headley, Alli Mauzey, Anthony Fedorov, Jake Speck, BeBe Winans, Nan Gurley, Carolyn German and Bonnie Keen) for a special presentation of Cinderella, to benefit showHOPE, the organization founded by the Chapmans to assist people seeking to adopt children all over the world, as well as establishing Maria's Big House of Hope, a six-story facility in Luoyang, China, built to provide surgeries and medical care to special needs orphans in that country.

Interestingly, one of Steven Curtis Chapman's best-known songs is also called "Cinderella" (from his 2008 project, This Moment), which was inspired by his two youngest daughters, Stevey Joy and Maria Sue (whose birthday is May 13), both of whom were adopted from China. With Maria's tragic death in May, 2008, the story of both the song and the musical of Cinderella makes the event, as well as the work of showHOPE, more important than ever.

Of course, Jodi Benson is a gifted actress with a beautiful voice that allows her to remain one of the entertainment industry's best-known - and hardest working - voice-over artists, continuing to work with the Disney empire, as well as being a successful contemporary Christian singer. It was through her connections with Nashville-based Sparrow Records that she first met the Chapmans some 20 years ago, so when she was skiing the slopes of Park City, Utah, earlier this year and her cell phone rang, she knew it was a call she had to take.

Steven Curtis Chapman was calling to ask her to take part in Cinderella: "I've known Steven and Mary Beth for years and I was aware of the work they were doing with showHOPE and when he called to offer me the role, I knew that I had to do it, no matter what it took. I had to be in Nashville for this concert."

Arriving in Nashville early Wednesday morning, to join the rest of the cast who've been rehearsing since Saturday, time will definitely be of the essence, Benson says: "We'll hit the ground running and work hard to make this show as special as it should be. And knowing that the little Chapman girls have always been such fans of Disney princesses, it makes the production even more special for me. How could I possibly have said no to this gracious invitation?"

Friday night's concert staging of Cinderella is the culmination of a long-held dream of director and designer Matt Logan to bring just such a production to his hometown of Nashville. Staged to bring attention to showHOPE's efforts worldwide, as well as to focus the entertainment world's spotlight on Nashville's tremendous pool of theatrical talent, Friday night's concert will be held at David Lipscomb University's Allen Arena, with the Grammy Award-winning Nashville Symphony Orchestra accompanying the starry cast.

"We're helping to bring awareness and attention to orphan care across the globe with this production," explains Logan, who doubles as director and production designer for Cinderella. "We wanted to do something unique and different."

And now with Nashville recovering from the catastrophic flooding of early May, Cinderella takes on added meaning and resonance, not just for audiences attending the concert, but for cast members as well. Certainly, the local actors taking part are doing so with a lot of love and concern in their hearts for their fellow Nashvillians, but the out-of-towners performing are also feeling more responsibility to make Cinderella even more compelling.

"I know that all the folks at showHOPE, the people responsible for bringing this project to life, were so torn about doing the right thing in light of the flooding," Benson says. "At first thought, there was debate about postponing, but I think they prayed about it and they realized that this concert could actually help...it could give families a couple of hours to take a break from everything happening around them."

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," she exclaims. "We have to do this no matter how hard we have to work to give this to the people of Nashville. And after seeing what the Chapmans have gone through in the past couple of years - losing their daughter and working to make adoptions easier for people all over the world - as a parent, you know you have to be a part of it."

Cinderella will be presented at David Lipscomb University's Allen Arena on Friday, May 14, at 7 p.m. Ticket prices range from $30 to $130 and are available at the Allen Arena box office, online at www.showhope.org or by calling (615) 966-7075.

 In the photo: Jodi and Ray Benson, with their daughter Delaney and son McKinley

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