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[0:05] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's the round table with me, Robert. Welcome to the round table, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon. You're listening to some Broadway World over here on the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeartSpotify, wherever you listen to artists talking about art. Our next guest is no stranger to a stage or Broadway or theater or across. Look, she's done television movies. Candy has been she works. Candy's out here working. And Candy is in like serious, scary shows that I'd be too scared to ever be in, like Thornton Wilder's. Do you candy is well Candy Buckley, everybody is here at the show. I was ready to jump right in. Let's jump in.

[0:43] Candy Buckley: I went to acting school, and when we got to classical pieces, I was terrified to tackle things that you want to tackle because I thought, I'm not an actor like this. I can't do these kinds of shows. Do you get scared? Are you invigorated? Are you how do you feel to do a piece like The Emporium by Thornton Wilder's?

[1:05] Candy Buckley: Well, I do admit that this one was scary. It really was, because it was unfinished. And he tried twice to get it to Broadway, had the funding. He had Montgomery Clift set to play the everyman character, and he didn't finish it. And decades ago, I had done Sabina in Skin of Our Teeth, and she was pretty scary. And this play for me starts out sort of like Sabina, where I'm addressing the audience and everything. But you know, that's the kind of theater I believe in. My mentor was Adrian Hall, and he always said, you're in one room, and you enter the stage the way an athlete enters an arena, and the sexiest thing you can do is brush up against the audience. And it's not for your fellow actor, it's for me, meaning the audience. So I mean, whites of their eyes, they're out there. And I sort of love that. And the set, the design is fantastic by Walt Spangler, and it just fits perfectly into Classic Stage. It's just like a weird magical fit.

[2:26] Robert Bannon: That is what I was going to say is that I love that this is a classical stage where everyone go get a ticket and go see it. The performances have started. Yes. Going on. It is a New York premiere of this show. It has an incredible cast of people that are in this show. So how did the show come to you? Did you get a pitch? Did you audition? Did they send you an offer? What happened?

[2:50] Candy Buckley: Well, actually, a year ago, a little more than a year ago, I auditioned for this director, Rob Melrose, who is the artistic director of the Alley Theater in Texas. And I have a long history in Texas, but no history of Houston. Houston was unknown terrain to me. And he was doing The Importance of Being Earnest. And he was auditioning me to play Lady Bracknell, which is oftentimes regrettably played by a man. So it was an opportunity I really jumped at. So I auditioned for him for that, was cast, but that was not starting until February. And then in the meantime, he offered me this. And this is a crazy piece because I'm playing many characters. And I've done plays before, you know, where I've played many characters.

In fact, I always say about being a rep actor is you have to play everything. But when you come to New York, you play your niche, you know, you play your strong suit and you play it hard. But this was, you know, playing the whole gamut, but I couldn't really tell what the gamut was. I couldn't really tell what these characters were. And in the meantime, I was doing Lady Bracknell, which is so precise and so loud and so like it's like stand-up comedy, but in verse almost, you know. So I couldn't take my eye off the prize. So I really felt like I had to do some big catch-up here. But it is really fun to play, really fun to play.

[4:31] Candy Buckley: I love it. You only have until June 7th. So if you're watching this right now, you better get it together. Go to classicstage.org. The link is below. You know what I love about it, Candy, is that they make weekend performances are $60, weekday performances are 45. You can't see this caliber theater and this cast in New York City for $45. You can this is a show that you are, they make sure at Classic Stage to make sure that it's affordable for people to come. And a lot of times art people feel like art, good art is out priced. They can't afford to go, but you can go to this.

[5:04] Candy Buckley: Yeah, they even have a performance that includes one performance coming up. I think it's a Sunday matinee, and it includes child care. I mean, come on. I saw they have child care for you. Yeah, you don't have you don't even have to get the babysitter, people. You can come see the show.

[5:21] Candy Buckley: So for you, you're originally from New Mexico.

[5:24] Candy Buckley: I was born in New Mexico, but my dad was an Air Force fighter pilot. So I lived everywhere. I live unfortunately I lived in New Mexico very briefly, but I've returned there many times. I love it. I was born there before New Mexico was a big deal. Now it's a destination, but yeah.

[5:44] Robert Bannon: So for you, you're a military baby, you've traveled around. Yes. What made you go in? How did you discover the love of acting?

[5:51] Candy Buckley: Always playing pretend. To my mother's embarrassment. She said, you know, we'd have an appointment and she'd leave me in the waiting room and she'd come out and I'd be talking to myself. And honestly, I feel like I'm in my childhood play space in this play. And Rob Melrose is the best-natured person on earth, the director. And he, in these two, in these joint efforts I've had with him, I have felt so free. And I feel very, very free on that stage. And I have to act such extreme characters, and they're so different from each other. And I feel like I'm on my back porch in California, which was my favorite station, playing pretend.

[6:48] Robert Bannon: Yeah, I love, I love this, everybody. I love this show. I love the chances you get to see this, and it's a New York premiere, so you gotta get a ticket. Your career is fascinating because your career is varied. Like, because there are a lot of people who can do Shakespeare or do classical works and do theater theater theater and do Vanya and be like, I'm a classical actor. Then there are people who are like, I'm due musical theater, I'm gonna do cabaret, I'm gonna do Thoroughly Modern Millie, I'm gonna go to Broadway and I'm gonna live that life. You've managed to do both.

[7:21] Candy Buckley: Yeah. Um that's the fun. I love that. I I love I'm I'm an actor who sings, and and but the musicals are they're hard work. And you know, when I was in Cabaret for two years and eight months, which was a joy of my life at Studio 54, I played for Line Cost in that production. And you know, Sally Bowles were always on prednisone. It is hard, especially if it's two performances on Saturday, two performances on Sunday. You know, vocally, what they go through is just unbelievable, miked or not. In fact, in this show, I was like, Oh my god, I'm getting into vocal trouble here. What's happening? And we're not mic'd. And I finally realized I have to do a fight, and I was torquing my body in such a way that I couldn't support my voice, and now I've untorked and problem solved. So I mean, it's unbelievable those kinds of schedules, you know.

[8:29] Candy Buckley: So that's that classic classical theater is in some way easy because it's so set and so delivered and so tried and true. Some of these new plays are the real challenge because you're like, it's not on the page. You know, we gotta do our work here.

[8:49] Candy Buckley: Do the homework and dig in and find it. Yeah, you know, what when you were talking about voice and and vocal stuff and and train, I was thinking about training and I was thinking about work and you the work that you've done not being mic'd and doing a show you know voice and body and and taking speech and all of these things that people do as actors is important because when you go up there this is a full workout at the end of uh at the end of the show how do you stay healthy and and take care of yourself to do this every night well I think you know our body is our temple our body is our instrument and it's no joke and um I was talking to one of the actors in the play you know having to do a lot of things and entertain people and go out and I'm like no can do used to think I could do no can do I gotta get home pretty reasonably I have to somehow sleep and I have to like do nothing and not not talk much during the I mean it's it's and you know people want to come and can you do this and can you go to dinner and it's like it's a j it's my it's my work and it's my work that really really matters to me.

[10:04] Candy Buckley: I always talk about what realization I had during the pandemic, and that was that I really thought I would never stand backstage in the dark again. I thought it was over; I thought theater was over, and I thought I would die because that's it for me. And movies are great, and TV is great, but theater, you're the boss. You're out there. You're calling it every night, and it's a wonderful relationship to have with fellow cast, which are for that time period, your family, and audience, you know. It's intimate. There's nothing like it.

[10:48] Robert Bannon: It's funny because I was gonna ask you, you know, you have this television and film career, and you've worked with some of the biggest people and some of the biggest television shows, and a lot of credits of film and TV, but there is something that's electric about being on stage in front of that. I know millions of people can watch you in a movie, and it can really touch people's lives who cannot get to New York and see a show.

[11:11] Candy Buckley: No kidding. But for the people in that theater and the actors on that stage, there's nothing like live theater.

[11:17] Robert Bannon: Well, it must be true because all the movie stars are doing the other now.

[11:22] Candy Buckley: Oh my god. They all want to be on Broadway, be a movie star. That's the one. I just saw the cast for the upcoming Other Desert Cities, and I was like, for real? For real? For real.

[11:34] Robert Bannon: Oh, superstars across the board.

[11:36] Candy Buckley: Superstars. So do you stay up to—are you when you're not working, are you someone who goes to theater? Are you somebody who's reading works? Are you in the creative side and the business side of it like that?

[11:49] Candy Buckley: I do go to theater, and I do read plays, and I'm always interested in seeing anything that has any sort of part that might be in my orbit at some point, you know, in particular. But yeah, I am getting ready to do a day on a new movie that Jason Bateman is directing.

[12:14] Robert Bannon: See, you're gonna see—can't she's here, she ain't going nowhere, she's working, she's a bad work.

[12:21] Candy Buckley: So, why do I want to—when I say see a show that was not finished, that is from a different time period that I may see his name and say, I don't know if I'm gonna get something out of this. It's 2026. This was 50 years ago. Why do I need to see this now?

[12:40] Candy Buckley: Longer ago than that. There's something timeless about Thornton Wilder's. I remember seeing the final dress rehearsal at Williamstown of Our Town, and it was going along, I was like, la la la, yes, Our Town. And then in that last act, I had a meltdown. I had a meltdown to the point where I was disruptive because he has a way like Walt Whitman. In fact, I was Googling the other day, I was like, what is it about Walt Whitman? And of course, Thornton Wilder's lectured on Walt Whitman. It's that timeless kind of deep pervasive huh, and he's talking about us, and he's talking about choices in your life, and being a parent and being a person and having a career and all those kind of decisions that are we making good choices or not?

[13:49] Candy Buckley: And you know, it's funny, he's funny. I mean, he is funny. When I think of Wilder, you think of Our Town, and if you're a theater person, or you're an actor, or you've gone from community theater to Broadway and around the world, you've probably seen Our Town, read Our Town, and it's timeless, and that's what you think of him. But there are other works that get to be made like this.

[14:13] Robert Bannon: Yeah, yeah.

[14:15] Candy Buckley: And they stay relevant and live forever. I mean, Our Town is as relevant now as it was when it first came out. And so is this show. The backstory to this about this sitting in Yale and him finding this and excavating it really and getting it on its feet. What a daunting fantastic. What was the rehearsal process like for you?

[14:36] Candy Buckley: Well, the script was set. I mean, he sent us the script, then he sent us a rewrite, and that was it. There weren't really big changes that were made. It was just our discovering what in the world we are. Because the one character is who he is, and the ingenue is kind of who she is. But the rest of us are sort of in flux. And we had a lot of figuring out to do. You know, I talked to a friend the other day, Marty Moran, who's a great actor and writer, who had done a play I saw a decade ago called O Earth about Thornton Wilder's. And he said he had actually heard Ruth Gordon speak decades ago about Thornton Wilder's. And she got up and everybody went crazy. And she said, yes, yes, yes, I know you all think I'm very cute, and thank you very much, but I'm here to talk about Thornton Wilder's.

And she said he was dark, and you know, a drinker. And these plays always bring in suicide somehow, and he's heavy. It's really heavy. And he was gay, but not attached to anyone, and although his best friend was Gertrude Stein. So he's complex. Mysterious. Complex, mysterious makes good theater and good art. I mean, that's—and these shows are gonna make you think and make you have a conversation.

[16:11] Robert Bannon: How do you describe what is the story? Like, how do I—I don't know the story. It's a New York premiere. So what is it?

[16:17] Candy Buckley: The story is about an orphan and what paths he takes throughout his life and what temptations he passes by and what he falls for. So I play a woman who works in a department store, who's sort of a character. I play a woman who runs an orphanage, who's sort of a nut. I run a farm; I play a farm woman in Minnesota. I play an agent who's very haughty. I play an Italian based on Anna Magnani, a woman who runs a boarding house, and I play an insane daughter of the opposing department store company. So it's a nutty, almost SNL in some way, sort of journey, and the audience participates, and I thought, oh no way is that gonna happen in New York. And right off the bat, I describe something and I say, hey, would you mind sort of grousing and grumbling when I say that? And they immediately grouse and grumble. Immediately, nobody quibbles with me. It's unbelievable.

[17:39] Candy Buckley: So they're participating the whole night, and they vote on something we put to them at the end of Act One. And the vote really matters, and it determines which way the second act goes.

[17:51] Robert Bannon: Oh, this is so—it's they're in it.

[17:53] Candy Buckley: They're in it to win, the audience. You're gonna—there's not gonna be a boring moment for you all. You're gonna be involved and in this. And when you hear the characters that she plays, that she gets to jump from these different characters and keep you entertained, this is a Tour de Force performance that you only have a couple—like a week, a little more than a week. You're gonna be sad. You're gonna—how do you let them go when you're done?

[18:14] Candy Buckley: Well, I'm moving on to another play, and that's caught my attention. I need to be learning those lines. So it'll be sad, but gotta start studying.

[18:24] Robert Bannon: Yeah. But you know, my acting partner in this is really the dresser because she and I have many rendezvous, and we're changing wigs, and I'm changing behind the set, I'm changing up on a balcony. It's live theater. I fell down the stairs the other night, and the first week I ripped my arm on a screw. It's rough out there, but that it's fun.

[18:50] Candy Buckley: Be careful out there.

[18:52] Robert Bannon: Yeah, no kidding. Live theater is not for the weak, everybody. It's not rolling around the stairs and bleeding for you all, bleeding for this audience. Come on, audience.

[19:04] Candy Buckley: Thank you so much for spending time with us while you're doing a show, getting ready for a show, getting ready for a movie, being overly booked and busy, which I love, and I hope forever you are just out here working. Thank you for the career, thank you for the stage work, the screen work, all of the work that you have done has been so powerful and moving to everybody who gets to see it. And we're so lucky that we get to see you do what you do and inspire us.

[19:31] Candy Buckley: Everybody, go to classicstage.org. The show is up and out, and you can go see it right now. Thornton Wilder's's The Emporium is running until June 7th. Thank you so much for being here.

[19:42] Candy Buckley: Thank you.