Past Reviews

Regional Reviews: Seattle

Megan Hilty
In Seattle with Seattle Men's Chorus

Also see David's reviews of Young Frankenstein and The Tutor


Megan Hilty
Actor-singer Megan Hilty has spent a chunk of her career portraying Glinda in the colossal hit musical Wicked. After three seasons on NBC TV (two as Ivy in "Smash" and one as Liz in the recent Sean Hayes sitcom "Sean Saves the World"), the Bellevue, Washington, native is appearing as special guest in the upcoming Seattle Men's Chorus production Totally Wicked. "I'll be singing 'Stranger to the Rain,' which is hilarious because I'm from Seattle, and 'Popular' from Wicked, which they weren't going to have me do and I said, really guys? So it went in. Oh, and 'Beautiful City' from Godspell."

Hilty may have logged more performances than other actresses in Wicked, riding in Glinda's bubble for two years in New York, two in Los Angeles, and six months on the road, including the initial Seattle stop at the Paramount, in tandem with fellow Northwest gal Shoshana Bean as Elphaba.

"It was so wonderful that the company arranged it for us to be able to do it right here, where our friends and family are," she says. When asked if she has her eyes on the prize of playing the role in the inevitable and long awaited film version, she giggles "Well of course, that would be fantastic, but at this point I might be a little bit too old. Though I guess as long as the two girls are around the same age ... it could work. They're not in any hurry to make it, obviously, with the stage version still packing them in."

Reflecting on her two years as the calculating, driven Ivy Lynn on "Smash," she says "Some of the episodes in the first season I didn't even watch. It's very hard to watch myself, as there are always a million things you think you did wrong, and would like to do differently. It was lots of fun to film 'Let's Be Bad' and the baseball number 'The National Pastime,' those were epic!" What of the duet "Hang the Moon" with TV Mom Bernadette Peters? "They couldn't spend a lot of money on that one for some reason, so they transformed the stage that was the rehearsal hall and they got really creative, and made it so beautiful with all the lighting and stuff."

She recalls the filming of Marilyn's big solo parting shot, "Don't Forget Me": "It was fun to film too, until the very end of the night, all the people around me were joking around, and the camera's on me, and there was some drinking involved, and they were cracking each other up, and I'm like, thanks a lot guys!" She sums up the experience saying, "People can say what they want about "Smash" critically, but I think it was an important show, that did a lot of wonderful things for the theatrical community. I was deeply honored to be a part of it."

Just prior to "Smash," Hilty had a wonderful three-year journey creating and developing the role of Doralee from workshops through the Broadway run of 9 to 5. "It was so much fun to do. The costumes, the music was unbelievable, and I loved working with that cast."

In addition to getting to introduce Dolly Parton's first stage musical to the world, she adored singing the Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman songs tailored to her talents on "Smash," noting that "'Second Hand, White Baby Grand' was just magical, 'Moving the Line' was great, and I also count 'Never Give all the Heart' because Ivy sang it first on the pilot. It's hard to pick a favorite, because they were all just wonderful."

Hilty's own solo album "It Happens All the Time" evolved a lot in the creative process. "It was originally going to be all covers, of songs from my favorite movies. And then Sony kept sending us originals, and they worked, and it turned into a break-up themed album. It was a real departure for me. It would have been really easy for me to do an album of Broadway songs, which someday I will, but this gave me the opportunity to do something really different and really personal. It was hard, but I'm really proud of what we accomplished."

The role of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes won her acclaim at Encores! in New York, and for a time looked like it might move in for a Broadway run. "We talked about it, and it was going to happen, until 'Sean Saves the World' came about. It's hard to walk away from a guaranteed 13-week television commitment, even if that's all it is, which sadly it was. Not to mention getting to work with Sean Hayes. And I wanted to play someone really different from Ivy, too. It's amazing how people can't separate the actor from the character. People assume that I am going to be awful, mean, take their boyfriend and their job, and that is so not the case. So I kind of wanted to something wildly different, that I wasn't singing in. I don't want to be singing all the time."

Megan's current project is a new Warren Beatty film about Howard Hughes. "I play one of the actresses at the movie studio who is under contract, which in those days meant if you weren't in a film, they kept you busy with acting classes, voice, and dance. I also sing in the film." An experienced voiceover artist, she is looking forward to the May 9 release of Legends of Oz: Dorothy Returns where she voices the feisty China Girl amidst a slew of other familiar stars such as Lea Michele as Dorothy and Bernadette Peters' Glinda. "It's adorable!," she chortles with child-like glee, "My husband and I saw it a few months ago, and I cried several times. It's meant for a very young audience, but older folks can enjoy it too. And it's a musical with songs by Bryan Adams among others."

Hilty has worked alongside some monumental show-biz folk, so it seemed fair to ask her to conclude this piece with one word she would use to sum up her feelings about them. Katharine McPhee: "Buddy"; Bernadette Peters: "Idol"; Angelica Huston: "Majestic"; Christian Borle: "Limitless"; Stephen Schwartz: "Popular"; Marc Shaiman: "Genius"; and Dolly Parton: "Icon."

Megan Hilty will be at Seattle's McCaw Hall in Seattle Center, as the special guest of the Seattle Men's Chorus in their spring production Totally Wicked: Featuring the Music of Stephen Schwartz with performances March 29 at 8pm and March 30 at 2pm. For tickets and further information go to www.flyinghouse.org.


Photo: Courtesy of Seattle Men's Chorus

- David Edward Hughes