Sarah Cornell is a sweet young actress from Oakville, Ont., who scored the part of a Swedish sexpot in The Producers on Broadway before she realized she was required to stand on stage while a man stuck his face between her breasts eight shows a week. Sure it's risqué, in an old-vaudeville sort of way, but at least it beat the time back in theatre school at Sheridan College when she was offered a part in a Las Vegas topless revue. And her parents had no problem with her swanning about the stage showing off her legs as The Producers' leading lady. Hell, it was Broadway.
In August, Cornell became the first woman to take over from Cady Huffman, who had originated the role of Ulla in the spring of 2001 and gone on to win a Tony.
All of this attention on her physical assets is a little unusual for Cornell. At 6-foot-1 in flats, she possesses one of those curvy bodies that could be termed Amazonian, if Amazonians were a species of honey blondes. "Every show I've ever been in has had the face-in-the-boobs gag, but I guess that's just where everyone's head comes to," she says with resignation.
She knows how to move that body on-stage, but after the curtain comes down Cornell emanates the sort of gawky tentativeness that is often the province of tall women. At 23, her friends still suggest setting her up with basketball players because they're tall, as if that's all that mattered in a relationship.
"I haven't had a very big dating career. I haven't had a really solid relationship ever," admits Cornell, nibbling on an aging bagel at the Boathouse Café in Manhattan's Central Park. Well that's okay: Ulla the sexpot isn't necessarily one for relationships either. She just wants sex, which she has every day at 11 a.m. like Swiss clockwork, except that she's Swedish, which is close enough.
Ulla's motto is: "If nature blesses you from top to bottom, show that top and bottom twice." She offers this piece of advice in a va-va-voom solo number When You Got It, Flaunt It, a gymnastically naughty routine that was perfectly fun delivered by Huffman but which, under Cornell's command, actually procures a long ovation.
"I'm the complete opposite of Ulla, like, I'm very conservative," Cornell says, a schoolgirl giggle tumbling out. "Music theatre is not the business to meet men in, and if they are straight men, they kind of act like a kid in a candy store, so I'm not about that either," she laughs.
"I'm -- I'm not really a good-time girl like Ulla, anyway."
And while Broadway has been kind to her, it hasn't been kind to her that way. Eight shows a week doesn't leave a lot of energy for extracurricular activities, though Cornell volunteers that she's managed to get to a few museums and restaurants in her brief downtime.
Before arriving for rehearsals in July, Cornell had never even been to New York, had never seen a Broadway show before taking her seat in the St. James Theatre for a performance to see what she'd have to do in the role. Now, after a whirlwind three months, she'll fly home today to begin rehearsals for the Toronto production of the show, which opens in December.
Cornell's story begins last year, during another gig, when she was rolling on the high seas near Hawaii, coincidentally singing Ulla's Flaunt It on a cruise ship. She stepped off the ship in November and spent the next few months back at her parents' home in Oakville, trying not to go squirrelly from thinking about the odds of making it as an actor. Her only outlet was regular aerobics classes at a local recreation centre, taught by some elderly women, which she says made the place, to quote Jerry Seinfeld, "look more like a fitness museum than an actual gym."
So maybe it's because she knew Flaunt It backwards and forwards (and top to bottom, if you know what we mean), but Cornell aced her first Producers audition in February, then went back another three times over the next couple of months before finally getting the news that she'd landed the Toronto show. Susan Stroman, who directed Broadway and is also shepherding Toronto, knew Huffman was scheduled to leave the show, so about a month later Cornell got the offer for Broadway.
At this point in its run, the Broadway production is a well-oiled machine of interchangeable parts. As with many long-running shows, actors drop in and out to go on holiday, take small film or television roles, or simply move on to other shows. On the one hand, that can be very comforting for a performer, who can step in to a role and know the rest of the machine will keep chugging along. On the other hand, it makes it a little tough to mould the part to your own personality.
Spending time with Cornell suggests that her humour is much younger and sharper than Mel Brooks's broad and hammy style, but on-stage she's a splendid Ulla, fusing the hip-swaying bombshell to a childish vulnerability that her predecessor didn't possess.
Her characterization has come a long way. When Cornell initially auditioned, she saw Ulla as anxious, a bundle of idiosyncrasies, which seems not dissimilar to her endearingly clumsy manner. (At one point she lifted a water bottle to her lips, only to almost choke on the straw that was poking out of the bottle. "Oops!" she yelped.) The casting people told her to relax and not do so much. They said: "Just be beautiful." They told her she'd have a lot of freedom in the role, that they didn't want her to imitate Huffman.
But as the brief period of rehearsals progressed, she found herself gravitating a lot toward Huffman's interpretation. "I think they did want me to be Cady without knowing it," Cornell nods. "I think it's weird. They should just let people bring their own stuff to it. But when the blocking is the same, the choreography is the same, there's not a whole lot of freedom to do your own spin on a character."
The problem with trying to duplicate the original, as the producers of The Producers discovered, is that changing the cast naturally ushers in a different dynamic. When Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick departed after a year, The Producers went through a bumpy period, particularly since the show had developed a brand largely built on the backs of the two stars. The first actor to replace Lane was deemed too intense and not friendly enough for the audiences who longed for a mugger like Lane, so he was fired.
Cornell had a much easier time of it, but there is one big difference between her and her predecessor: Huffman did a back flip over an office desk during Flaunt It. Cornell executed the move well during her audition, but once she moved to Broadway something wasn't right: Her extraordinary height meant the desk was too low for her flip, and Stroman cut the move. Cornell recalls, "She told me, 'It's more impressive for you just to stand there, because you're so tall.' "
Cornell, a perfectionist, still wants to nail the flip. She's got a secret plan to push for its inclusion in the Toronto show. Though maybe it's not so secret any more. Oops.