INTERVIEW: Laura Bell Bundy reinterprets Trixie for ‘Honeymooners’ musical

The Honeymooners is one of the most memorable sitcoms in TV history. Jackie Gleason, Audrey Meadows, Art Carney and Joyce Randolph created a laugh-a-second spectacle that still holds up in 2017 and is required viewing during the annual New Year’s Day marathon.

Now the 1950s TV show has been adapted into a new musical with a book by Dusty Kay and Bill Nuss, music by Stephen Weiner and lyrics by Peter Mills. The show, directed by John Rando, is currently playing through Oct. 29 at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey. The cast includes Michael McGrath as Ralph Kramden, Leslie Kritzer as Alice Kramden, Michael Mastro as Ed Norton and Laura Bell Bundy as Trixie Norton.

“The Honeymooners is a classic American sitcom, and I think many other sitcoms and television shows we have today have been based on it,” Bundy said in a recent phone interview. “I mean, The Flintstones was based on it. If you look at Roseanne, there’s a lot of similarities there. The part of Kramer in Seinfeld is a lot like Ed Norton, so I think we learned a lot from that particular sketch of Honeymooners that then became a half-hour comedy sitcom for the rest of television history.”

Bundy said she was immediately attracted to the show because of the infectious style of broad comedy. However, she also fell in love with the Trixie role and its many possibilities.

“I had dinner with Joyce Randolph about a year and a half ago when I was working on a workshop, a lab that we did of the show,” said Bundy, who has appeared in Legally Blonde, Hairspray and Wicked. “We talked about the fact that there really wasn’t a lot for Trixie [in the original series]. … There really wasn’t a lot to Trixie besides being the wife of Ed and the friend of Alice, but in this particular show, in our incarnation, in the Broadway musical version, they have taken some of the things that they heard in the show about her history, like she was in burlesque before she met Ed Norton. And when he met her, she was wearing a single white rose. Those are all quotes from the show. So they’ve taken her history, and they’ve incorporated it into her character. And so they really made Trixie a lot more interesting in this musical version then she was in those 39 episodes.”

The musical is eyeing the Broadway marketplace right across the Hudson River, and no doubt the songs will help the show travel to New York. Bundy loves the jazz standards and styles from the 1940s and 1950s. Plus, she has a personal connection to the era.

“My grandfather was a singer, and he was a radio DJ in the ’50s,” she said. “He used to play Glenn Miller for me and all that, so whenever I hear this music, it really does tug at my heart. I love the songs that I get to sing, and I have fun. Our storyline has Trixie deciding that she wants to go sing again at a club, meaning she may dip her toe back in burlesque again. And how is she going to do that now that she’s married to Ed? And is Ed going to let her do that? And is that OK? But she had a little bit of a gift, and she’d like to go back to it. So I have some fun numbers at the club, so they’ve made Trixie a singer. She was always a singer; we just never saw her singing.”

Reinventing an iconic role can be a burden. Fans in the audience will no doubt have seen each of the original episodes, and that type of decades-long admiration can be a daunting obstacle for a modern-day interpreter. Bundy is up for the task.

“Yes, you want to honor the original character,” Bundy said. “The very first person that played Trixie was Elaine Stritch in the very first episode, and her portrayal of Trixie was much more Brooklyn, much more based in where they were from. And she had a Brooklyn accent, and then there were other incarnations after Joyce Randolph when Honeymooners went in color that were also a little bit different for Trixie. So I’m trying to incorporate all of them into the performance as well as finding what feels natural for this young woman. If there would be another television show incarnation of Honeymooners, how would I play Trixie? Well, she’s from Brooklyn, and she did burlesque. … I’m incorporating a little bit of the Brooklyn accent into the character because it feels a little bit more authentic to me for who Trixie is, so there’s this fine line between taking the character of Trixie, where she’s from and her backstory, of how I would approach a character that has never been done before, and then a little bit of honoring what Joyce Randolph did because Joyce left an iconic mark on the character. It’s tricky.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

The Honeymooners musical is playing through Oct. 29 at Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.