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On Tuesday night at Lebanon Opera House, Warren portrays what she describes as “a no-name, fabulous blues singer,” in the fourth national tour of the Tony Award-nominated musical exploring Joplin’s meteoric rise and fall in the late 1960s.
“When Janis did her shows, she did this stream-of-consciousness thing,” Warren said over the phone recently from her home base of Los Angeles. “She would talk about her influences, singers like Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Bessie Smith and Etta James. She always acknowledged her debt to those African-American women. Her career was basically only three years. Within that time, she channeled these other strong performers. She grabbed onto that vibe and found her own voice — always giving props to those women.”
Tony Award-winner Mary Bridget Davies reprises the role of Joplin on the current tour.
“She plays her in a way that’s not imitating Janis,” Warren added. “She’s capturing her essence.”
The musical ran for 141 shows on Broadway in 2013-2014, with another actress playing the anonymous black blues singer. A little more than a year later, Warren said, Janis writer-director Randy Johnson “out of the blue offered me the role for the first national tour. I said at the time, ‘This is a fabulous gift to me.’ ”
“It’s been a Ph.D. in the blues, a constant education every night.”
Warren began her undergraduate education at Dartmouth in 1973, majoring in psychology and “with no plans to be an actor.” Then during Warren’s freshman year, Dartmouth director of theater Rod Alexander staged Purlie, a musical adapted from Ossie Davis’ 1961 play, and cast Warren as Lutiebelle, the female lead Melba Moore had played on Broadway.
“I thought it was very brave of them to do that musical,” Warren recalled. “There weren’t a lot of African-Americans on campus then, and certainly not a lot of women, African-American or otherwise.”
In the process, Alexander emboldened Warren to think, and to dream of making a life in the performing arts.
“He said, ‘you really should consider this as a career,’” Warren recalled. “I started taking theater courses, and I learned everything there was about it. I was onstage, backstage, learning about casting, light design, set design. For that I’ll always be grateful.”
Forearmed with that knowledge, with a bachelor’s degree and with a voice that belied her petite stature, the Texas-born Warren moved to New York City. The first few years, she alternately waited tables and fine-tuned a nightclub act. Her first break came in 1982, when she played and sang the character Christine in the original Broadway production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors.
A little more than two years later, she was cast as Alice’s daughter in Big River, William Hauptman’s adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Warren’s voice and stage presence so impressed Roger Miller that he wrote the songHow Blessed We Are into his score for the musical, just for her.
While Big River went on to win several Tony Awards, Warren would not appear on Broadway again until 1999’s Marie Christine at Lincoln Center. In between, she dove into a wide range of roles off-Broadway, in television (starting with an ABC Afternoon Special in 1986 and including guest roles in the likes of Touched by An Angel and Scrubs) and movies, including 1995’s The Crossing Guard with Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston.
“It’s a difficult profession,” she acknowledged. “I had to have side jobs early on to make ends meet.”
The pendulum started swinging back Warren’s way after she moved from New York to Los Angeles about a decade ago. In 2010 and 2011, she won acclaim for her cabaret act as British diva Shirley Bassey, and steady work followed, particularly in regional theater. This year, she played six characters in the Fox network broadcast of Rent: Live, and as the blues singer in a live-streamed performance of A Night with Janis Joplin from Los Angeles, at the end of the 2018 tour.
“I have been lucky in the past few years, now, to live off being a professional actor, a journeyman,” Warren said. “I’m still here. I’m still going.”
The touring production of A Night with Janis Joplin comes to Lebanon Opera House on Tuesday night at 7:30. For tickets ($64.50 to $149) and more information, visit lebanonoperahouse.org or call 603-448-0400.
Pomfret-native cellist Eric Wright returns to the Upper Valley for two concerts with the folk-fusion quartet The Fretless: Thursday night at 5:30 at Feast & Field Market in Barnard, and Friday night at 7:30 at Chandler Music Hall in Randolph. For tickets ($10 to $35) to the Chandler show, visit chandler-arts.org or call 802-728-6464.
Old Church Theater kicks off its production of Nightfall with Edgar Allan Poe on Friday night at 7:30, at the company’s temporary venue, 176 Waits River Road in Bradford, Vt. Subsequent performances of this stream-of-consciousness adaptation of four of the 19th-century writer’s torturous short stories are scheduled for Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, and for the weekend of Sept. 20 to 22. For tickets and more information, visit oldchurchtheater.org or call 802-222-3322 or email boxoffice@oldchurchtheater.com.
■The Acacia Chamber Music trio of pianist Matthew Odell, flutist Leslie Stroud and clarinetist Meghan Davis performs at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon on Saturday night at 7. The program includes works of Michel Merlet, Eric Ewazen, Maurice Emmanuel, Melinda Wagner, Clara Schumann and Camillo Schumann. Admission by donation.
■ The ArtisTree Music Theater Festival wraps its production of Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins this weekend, then shifts gears next week with a staging of Tintypes: A Musical Celebration of America at the Grange Theatre in South Pomfret. The Tony-nominated revue looks back at turn-of-the-century United States through the popular music of the era. Admission is $25 to $30 for next Thursday night’s preview, and $28 to $35 for performances between Sept. 21 and Oct. 5. Visit artistreevt.org or call 802-457-3500.
■The Lyme Town Rock Band, The Whipple Hillbillies, James Graham & Co., Mr. Chapin & Friends and Shed serenade the Lyme School’s LymeFest fundraiser on Sunday afternoon from 3 to 7, at the Lyme Center Academy building. Admission is $10, benefiting Lyme School’s artist-in-residence program.
Happy Hour, choreographer Monica Bill Barnes’ gender-bending satire of toxic masculinity in the office, opening next Thursday evening at 5:30 and 8:30 at Dartmouth College’s Moore Theater. Additional performances Sept. 20 and 21. Admission $35.
Pianist Annemieke McLane and flutist Anne Janson, sonatas of Prokofiev and Poulenc and romances of Schumann, Friday night at 7 at United Church of Strafford. Admission by donation to fund renovation of the church’s steeple.
■Saxophonist Fred Haas, organist Norm Yanofsky and guitarist Bill Rosen, jazz, Sunday afternoon from 1 to 4 at Gallery on the Green in Woodstock village.
■ Jonny Lang, blues, Sunday night at 7:30 at Lebanon Opera House. Admission $49.50 to $69.50.
■Libby Kirkpatrick and Bill Lauf Jr., roots-folk, Tuesday night at Seven Stars Arts Center in Sharon. Weathersfield singer-songwriter Jenna Rice opens at 7. Admission $15.
Over Under, soul, jazz and rock, Thursday night at 7 at Windsor Station; Citizen Pine, roots rock, Saturday night at 9:30; Chris Kleeman, blues, Tuesday night at 6.
■ Royalton singer-songwriter Alison “AliT” Turner, Friday night at 7 at Inn at Weathersfield in Perkinsville, and Saturday night at 6 at Trout River Brewing in Springfield, Vt.
■Oxford & Clark, Americana, Friday night at 7:30 at The Skinny Pancake in Hanover.
■Automatic Slim, classic rock, Friday night at 8 at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners.
■Adam McMahon Trio, rock and blues, Friday night at 9 at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon; Lantz & Stone, folksy rock, Saturday night at 9.
■Singer-songwriter Rich Thomas, Friday night at 9 at Salt hill Pub in Hanover; Arthur James, blues, Saturday night at 9.
■ Turner Round, rock, Friday night at 9 at Salt hill Pub in West Lebanon; Alec Currier, rock, Saturday afternoon at 4.
■Chris Powers, rock, Friday night at 9 at Salt hill Pub in Newport; Tirade, Rock, Saturday night at 9.
■ Jes Raymond and Jakob Breitbach, roots/Americana, Sunday night at 5 at Harpoon Brewery in Windsor.
■Singer-songwriter Jim Yeager, Monday night at 7 at Woodstock Inn’s Richardson Tavern, and Wednesday evening at 5 at the inn’s lobby.
■Jazz pianist Sonny Saul, Wednesday night at 6:30 at On the River Inn in Woodstock.
Fiddler Jakob Breitbach hosts bi-monthly jazz jam on Thursday night from 6 to 8 at Hotel Coolidge’s Cafe Renee in White River Junction; and weekly acoustic jam session of bluegrass, Americana and old-timey music, Tuesday nights at 7 at Filling Station Bar and Grill in White River Junction.
■Woodstock singer-songwriter Jim Yeager, open-mic sessions Thursday night at 7 at ArtisTree Community Arts Center, and on Tuesday night at 6 at The Public House Pub in Quechee.
■Alec Currier’s open-mic at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon, Thursday nights at 8.
Sunapee Coffeehouse’s monthly open-mic, Friday night at 7 at Methodist Church in Sunapee Harbor. Admission by donation.
■Joseph Stallsmith’s hootenanny of Americana, folk and bluegrass, Monday nights at 6 at Salt hill Pub in Hanover.
■Tom Masterson’s open mic, Tuesday nights at 7 at Colatina Exit.
■ Jes Raymond’s bi-monthly String Band Karaoke session of roots music, Wednesday night at 8 at The Skinny Pancake in Hanover.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304. Send entertainment listings to highlights@vnews.com.