With the high turnover at the judges’ table on American Idol, it’s probable the show will eventually be casting about for a replacement for new judge Jennifer Lopez. May we suggest...Denise Summerford, now appearing in the off-Broadway musical In Transit? Given that more Idol alums seem to end up on stage than the pop charts, “they should come to somebody from musical theater,” Summerford says. Plus, she already has experience taking over a job from Lopez. It happened in the early ’90s, when Summerford was cast in a European tour of a revue called Golden Musicals of Broadway. On an earlier leg of the tour, her track had been filled by a young dancer from the Bronx, Jennifer Lopez.
Here’s another link between Summerford and J. Lo: pop music. Summerford hasn’t had pop hits like Lopez, but almost all the musicals she’s done professionally—including her four on Broadway, Grease, Rocky Horror, Saturday Night Fever and Taboo—have a pop/rock score. Her last show in NYC prior to In Transit was Shout!, a jukebox musical of 1960s hits by British female singers like Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark and Lulu.
“I think the oldest musical I’ve done is Company,” says Summerford, who played Marta on a 1999 tour. “I love the old musicals, but I’m not drawn to them as an artist. My whole energy is more contemporary, more edgy. I don’t have a very typical musical-theater look. I can’t really play the blond ingenue, I’m not your typical character woman. I’m kind of in between, like a quirky ingenue, so my type doesn’t lend itself to the older musicals, and my voice lends itself better to pop music.”
In Transit, which opens tonight at Primary Stages on East 59th St., is an a cappella musical that was originally performed by its writers, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan and Sara Wordsworth, in their a cappella singing group. It was featured in the 2003 New York Fringe Festival under the title Along the Way. Summerford has been involved with the show since the summer of 2008, when it was workshopped at both the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut and off-Broadway’s York Theatre. This is her first full production since, well, a production of another kind: the birth of her daughter, Addianna. Summerford’s last show before she had a baby was Shout! The Mod Musical, which ran off-Broadway during the second half of 2006. Since becoming a mother, she’s worked mostly on short-term projects like readings and concerts.
In In Transit, the characters are connected by their encounters on the subway, and while it’s an ensemble piece, Summerford’s Jane could be considered the central character. She’s an aspiring actress who’s stuck temping at a Wall Street firm—which, coincidentally, Summerford really did for about a year and a half after she first moved to New York (though she has kind memories of her time at Goldman Sachs: “These head honcho guys were so interested in what I really did, always asking ‘How’d your audition go?’”).
Because In Transit is a cappella, all seven cast members sing—i.e., provide the accompaniment an orchestra would have—almost every number where they’re not singing lead. Of doing a musical without traditional music, Summerford says, “The vocal demands are crazy, because in a normal musical theater piece you have some downtime, you have the orchestra playing incidental music or the underscoring. But that’s us—we do that all. It takes stamina and incredible focus.
“I’ve sung backup for many different artists and was also a session singer, so I’ve had a lot of experience in harmony work and I have a very good ear,” she adds, “but a cappella is a whole other beast. It’s one thing to have a great voice, it’s another thing know how to blend, read music, tune yourself to other singers. It’s very, very difficult.”
