INTERVIEW: Rita Rudner on her exciting, daunting return to NY theater

Photo: Rita Rudner stars in Two’s a Crowd, a musical she wrote with Martin Bergman. Photo courtesy of Carol Rosegg / Provided by Karen Greco PR with permission.

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Rita Rudner is one of the most successful comedians of all time, someone who held Las Vegas in the palm of her hand and has fine-tuned a stand-up act that is simultaneously hilarious and thoughtful. Now she’s taking a slight right turn with her career and returning to where it all began: the New York theater scene.

Rudner is currently starring in Two’s a Crowd, a new musical she wrote with her husband, Martin Bergman. The show runs through Aug. 25 at 59E59 Theaters in Midtown Manhattan, and it comes to the off-Broadway venue courtesy of Impro Theatre and Ritmar Productions, Inc.

“It’s very exciting, and it’s very daunting,” Rudner said in a recent phone interview. “I watched the Tony’s last night, and I’m adding some jump splits. We have no jump splits. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, and also I have to do some turning and some kicking. Oh my gosh, I have a lot to do.”

Rudner is never too far from a joke, and that’s probably because she has built an impressive career as a joke teller. She has toured her act around the world, and she was a mainstay on the Vegas Strip for more than a decade. In fact, on her off days from Two’s a Crowd, she’ll be heading out for some more laughs (July 22 at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, New Jersey, and Aug. 5 at the Argyle Theatre in Babylon, New York).

Two’s a Crowd

Two’s a Crowd tells the story of Wendy (Rudner) and Tom (Robert Yacko) who are forced to share a Vegas hotel room thanks to a computer error. In a a city built on risk and redemption, they need to see whether opposites actually do attract. The musical, which began as a play, has been in development for a number of years.

“We thought of it a while ago,” Rudner said. “We had a reading in Las Vegas, and it was kind of a mini play. It wasn’t really long enough, but it went over well. And then we put it aside because I was working so long in Las Vegas, and I was doing shows every night. I couldn’t be in the show because I was otherwise engaged. I don’t know. I wrote another book. I did another special. I did Ask Rita and all that, so then we bought this beach house. And there’s a theater near our beach house in Laguna.”

Bergman suggested that Rudner perform in the show at the Laguna Playhouse, near their new home. By that time Jason Feddy had added some music and lyrics, and Two’s a Crowd came to life … and the audiences loved it. So did Val Day, artistic director of 59E59, who was in the crowd for that Laguna run.

“It’s about two people who are experiencing extreme emotional difficulties in their lives, and they have to share a hotel room for a weekend in Las Vegas because the hotel is fully booked,” Rudner said. “It kind of starts out as an Odd Couple sitcom, but it develops into a lot more than that.”

The 59E59 run of shows is a bit of a homecoming for Rudner, who moved to New York City at the age of 15 to dance on Broadway. Her love of performance dates back even further to the age of 4.

“My parents were from New York, and my mom started me in dance when I was 4,” she remembers. “I just loved it, and that’s when I said, ‘Mom I want to be a dancer.’ … I said, ‘I want to go to New York,’ and I started auditioning for things in New York. And I started getting shows as a dancer, so I did six Broadway shows from when I was 17 to 27. Now I look at all these dancers, and they’re so good. I think, could I ever do that? What happened? Who was that? But I guess I did well because I kept working, and all I did was take dancing from morning until night — ballet, tap, jazz, acrobatic, you name it. I would just go to classes and audition. You can’t think about something; you have to just do it.”

Rudner was cast in the original Broadway productions of Follies and Mack and Mabel, and then Annie changed her life forever. The role in the show was fun and creatively satisfying, but it was her new side venture that shook up her life and career.

“It happened in my last Broadway show, in Annie,” she said. “It was 1980 when I was Lily St. Regis in Annie on Broadway, and I said, ‘You know, there aren’t too many female comedians, and there are too many people who want to be on Broadway. So I’ll just go where there isn’t as much competition since I won’t have to be that good.’ Is that bad? It was an empty field. I always say if you’re going to be in the orchestra play the bassoon because too many people play the piano, so I decided to try it. And then I found out I loved it. I had a latent talent for it, and I still love it. I love when I think of a joke, and I love when I can figure out a new way to say a joke.”

Two’s a Crowd relies on Rudner’s stand-up career. Within the show, she incorporates some of her jokes and frequently breaks the fourth wall, much like a stand-up act. She admitted that the experience of off-Broadway, much like her early days on Broadway, is a daunting, but welcome, challenge.

“Everything is scary,” she said. “If you’re not doing something that scares you a little bit, then you’re not progressing. Even when I do my stand-ups, if I don’t do one or two new thoughts that go out on a limb, even if the audience has a good time, I feel like I failed myself. So don’t do stupid things like skiing, but you just have to go and do a little bit of something where you’re talented.”

The Vegas Years

There’s no doubt that Vegas is a big part of Rudner’s career and the content of Two’s a Crowd. The city embraced her comedy and made her at home on billboards and theaters around town. As her website states, she had the longest running solo comedy show in Las Vegas history.

“Every time we went to Vegas, it was fun, and I did well,” Rudner said about her decision to relocate. “I was the oldest person in Hollywood when I was going to be 50, but in Vegas, I was the youngest person. It was Wayne Newton and Siegfried & Roy and Tom Jones, so I said, ‘You know what, I’m the youngest person. I should do something.’ Isn’t that silly? I was a spring chicken in Vegas, and I was an old hag in Hollywood. So we decided to try it. It was a big decision when the president of New York-New York [hotel and casino] offered to build my own theater because that would mean we really had to move there. Before we were going back and forth, and we said, ‘You know, ride the horse in the direction it’s going.’ And my horse kept going to Las Vegas, and everyone was nice to me. And I was having fun, and we wanted to adopt a baby. And I didn’t want to travel anymore, and it kind of worked out at the same time. We sold our house in Beverly Hills, and we sold everything. We sold our dishes, our silverware, our furniture, our towels, and we just started over.”

That Vegas stint began in 2000 at the MGM Grand and also included residencies at New York-New York, Harrah’s and The Venetian. Throughout this time, she had a front-row seat to see how the the city was morphing, and those changes impacted the creation of Two’s a Crowd.

“It changes all the time,” Rudner said of Vegas. “It’s just the weirdest thing. When I went there, it was kind of the Baby Boomer affordable vacation spot, and then they had a theme park in the back of the MGM with the families. And then they started ripping everything down, and then the celebrity chefs moved in. And it started to be the restaurant town and then all the shops. It used to be they didn’t want any stores because if you went into stores you wouldn’t gamble your money; you’d spend your money, but then it became a shopping mecca. The latest incarnation is for the nightclubs, which is the big thing. They can charge so much for liquor in those nightclubs, and they make a fortune. They’ve gone for a younger generation and more bachelorette parties.”

She added: “It’s a whole different thing, so that’s again why we wrote the play. Martin and I, we said, ‘Who goes to the theater? Older people. What isn’t there in the theater? A play for older people, for people over 40.’ Everything that’s coming into Broadway is either very, very socially conscious — which is great, and we need that in our theater — or movies that are being turned into musicals, or music catalogs that are being turned into stage shows. And there weren’t any plays that really addressed people who were having problems later in life. What starts out as a light comedy in our play ends up trying to solve real problems for real people.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Two’s a Crowd, written by Rita Rudner and Martin Bergman, and starring Rudner, continues through Aug. 25 at 59E59 Theaters in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.