When you play a prostitute (Betty) in a popular Showtime television series (“Masters of Sex”), you should probably expect a few stares when you visit Walt Disney World with your husband. Annaleigh Ashford is presently, but likely not eventually, what you might call a demi-celebrity. She’s a full-blown star on and around Broadway, but in Orlando, Fla., she’s a face that many people think they should know but not entirely why they should know it nor from where they do.
“People kept telling me that I looked familiar,” Ashford said over lunch at the New York theater district eatery Joe Allen. “I’d just smile and say, ‘Maybe we’re kindred spirits.’ But then there was this bartender at the Polynesian Resort.”
Ashford winds up for an impression of a Disney employee who just recognized her favorite hooker: “Oh. My. God. You’re Betty!”
Indeed she is. And she was Lauren in the original cast of “Kinky Boots,” the smash Broadway musical that tried out in Chicago. Lauren was the closest character in the show to the composer, Cyndi Lauper, and Ashford clearly the closest personality.
“Cyndi was amazing,” Ashford said, waxing lyrical on the composer’s prowess but also the pressure Ashford felt of doing her songs. “I mean, she called me Annabelle for the longest time, but I think she liked me eventually.”
Prior to “Kinky Boots” and “Masters of Sex,” two breakout shows for Ashford, the actress starred in the Chicago production of “Wicked,” playing Glinda for about 10 months at the Oriental Theatre, during 2008-09. In fact, Ashford was in the final Chicago cast of that dedicated production of “Wicked,” playing the show during its emotional closing performance, when Midwestern “Wicked” superfans were most out in force.
“That last show was so emotional,” she recalled. “It was the first time ‘Wicked’ had ever closed anywhere. It had never had an ending before.”
“Wicked” is still going strong on Broadway, and, although one of its two touring companies is exiting, the second continues to tour and will likely return to Chicago. Though sans Ashford.
Ashford is hoping that some of those “Wicked” fans will remember her when she comes back to Chicago next weekend, for one night only March 21, performing her new cabaret show. The show, which Ashford is calling “Lost in the Stars” and billed as a “glossy and glittery evening,” was created for the New York venue 54 Below but will play in Chicago at the Broadway Playhouse. Accompanied by a five-piece band, it’s a collaboration with songwriter and music director Will Van Dyke. Later in the year, between the shooting schedule for “Masters of Sex,” she’s also playing San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Ashford says her taste in music is eclectic, ranging from Donna Summer to Kurt Weill and Alanis Morissette to classic Broadway a la Patti LuPone. She says that she plans to include more material from the likes of “Kinky Boots” and “Wicked” (probably “For Good” and “Popular”) in Chicago. When a Broadway star is gigging at the theater insider-heavy 54 Below, it generally is not done to feature too much material from the shows down the street, deemed overexposed for a certain crowd. But in Chicago, where people know Ashford from “Wicked” and “Kinky Boots,” that’s a whole different matter. Time for some Lauper and the blond girl.
Ashford’s husband of 20 months, actor Joe Tapper, hails from Gurnee, so Ashford has spent much quality time in Chicago’s far north suburbs. That came in useful, she ways, when figuring out the back story of the “Masters of Sex” character of Betty, a prostitute living in St. Louis.
“I thought to myself, what if she had come down to St. Louis from Gurnee or Kenosha?” Ashford said. “Basically, I decided just to do my mother-in-law’s voice.”
Ashford grins. She can do her mother-in-law and a very fine Lauper impression. And, for the record, her Glinda was, of the very many, one of the best.
“Annaleigh Ashford – Lost in the Stars” is 8 p.m. March 21 at the Broadway Playhouse, 175 E. Chestnut St.; 800-775-2000 and broadwayinchicago.com
Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib