BWW INTERVIEWS: Anna Chlumsky - All About 'SO HELP ME GOD'

Child stars tend to fade away rapidly once they hit adulthood, but a lucky few find a way to survive-and even thrive. After striking gold as the titular heroine of Hollywood hit My Girl and its sequel, Anna Chlumsky left show business for a time, only to find a niche in off-Broadway's firmament. She played a zombie version of Viola in the twisted comedy Twelfth Night of the Living Dead, appeared in Unconditional with LAByrinth Theater Company, and played several dramatic roles in The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero. This month, she will take on a more classic role, starring in Mint Theater Company's So Help Me God, a 1929 play by Maurine Dallas Watkins, who wrote the original play version of Chicago.

"I was raised on old movies, old screwball comedies, and it was so refreshing to read this," 
Chlumsky says. "It's full of that kind of classic American vaudevillian humor, where you get those payoffs-something's set up and you get the payoff and that's the joke, and that's gorgeous, and it's not done as well these days as it was back then." Still, she says, the play feels timeless, if not completely modern. "A lot of the things the characters say totally resonate today as much as they resonated back then. And something that I love about historical reading or period movies is that you can go back as far as the Greeks, and human beings are still going through the same kinds of things that [they went through then]. And that totally applies in this play. Sometimes, the text just surprises the heck out of me with how truthful and candid it can be, and how applicable it can be to today."

In the play, Kristen Johnston plays a "dramatic diva" who must fend off a challenge from her ambitious understudy (Chlumsky). Fans of classic films will notice some similarities to a certain iconic Bette Davis movie, but Watkins's play was written 20 years before All About Eve. "When I first read it, I kind of assumed that this was the influence for everything that came after, because it is so similar," Chlumsky says. "It's not just the same stuff at all, but those themes are echoed in things that have come since. However, working on the play, I learned it never really made it to a really wide audience." Instead, the play toured on what was known as "the subway circuit," with performances in Jackson Heights and Flatbush. While Watkins' play may not have directly inspired All About Eve, Chlumsky notes that people who work in the theatre can come across these types of personalities. "And if Maurine did, then why not the All About Eve folks?" she asks. "I guess they just keep on showing their heads in our industry, in some weird way."

As a former film star, Chlumsky has welcomed the transition to stage in recent years. "It's a breath of fresh air, it's completely new for me to do, but it's kind of always lived in my blood," she says. "My great-grandfather was in vaudeville, and I was raised on a lot of the old traditions, so it's kind of perfect. Oh, and I'm always happy to play roles that I haven't tackled before, in a way that I know that I'm growing; something that feels different from what I've done before. So this absolutely fits that test."

 Having shifted performing arenas, Chlumsky feels that her skills can work with all kinds of media. "I tend to think that I can apply what I do as an actor to theatre, film, and TV, and just kind of tweak it this way or that way." Still, she acknowledges that returning to the business after several years away was a shift. "Just to go back to exactly what I love to do-it's like a whole weight is taken off your shoulders, and you get to indulge your whims and do this every day," she says. "That was a major shift for me, but I would say, going for movies and theatre, there are obvious differences in your approach to a job, but I never get so habitual in one or the other. I've been able to kind of keep a balance. So it's never really jarring going from theatre to film or the opposite. Every job is really its own new thing."

For now, she is enjoying the opportunity to stretch her boundaries farther, and to try a new kind of experience. "I've been dying to do some of this 1920s-1930s sass talk for some years now," she says excitedly. "So I'm very excited to be able to do it."

Photo Credit: Peter James Zielinski