A FEW MINUTES WITH MAUREEN MCGOVERN

It’s the Broadway style she’s using most right now; after winning wonderful reviews for her performance in Broadway’s Little Women, which included her show-stopping rendition of “Days of Plenty,” Maureen McGovern is currently sharing her character of Marmee with audiences around the country in the 32-city national tour of the musical based on the Louisa May Alcott novel.

You can hear the true joy in her voice as she starts the conversation with “I’m enjoying it extremely! And I can’t believe that with tonight’s show (in Baltimore) we’ll be down to 11 cities left out of 32 on a year-long tour. Toward the end we play for a month at the Kennedy Center, then Milwaukee and Los Angeles, then we’ll wrap it up in Portland at the end of August.” The tour started in San Diego in August of 2005.

The Youngstown native has enjoyed the circuitous route the show has taken through Ohio, her favorite state. “We played Columbus last November, we’ll be in Cleveland in May, then we’ll play Cincinnati in late June and early July. I always have relatives or friends who pop up from all over Ohio when we’re nearby, and I love it!”

She also loves the warm reception the show is getting all over the country. “More often than not, productions in New York have to be ‘edgy’ to be successful. Well, edgy we ain't,” she laughs. “The show mirrors the beloved story that people have read for generations. This musical is the stuff of life, how we move on, and how we triumph,” she explains. “You leave the theater so inspired and fulfilled.”

In LITTLE WOMEN—THE BROADWAY MUSICAL, McGovern plays Marmee, mother of the four March sisters. Her husband is away in the Union Army during the Civil War, leaving her to raise her four highly “individualized” daughters on her own. “Marmee is the essence of motherhood, and she faces the universal dilemma of mothers trying to be everything to everybody. She pours out her fears, her frustrations and her love in the wistful ‘Here Alone’ that is the letter she writes to her far-away husband.”

Later, after the death of her daughter Beth, Marmee sings “Days of Plenty” to encourage daughter Jo. “It’s similar to ‘Morning After,” she explains, making a reference to the Academy Award winning anthem from the film The Poseidon Adventure. “It’s a powerful, hopeful, inspirational kind of song, a song of hope and reconciliation for Jo to try and go on with her life and be all she can be after the loss of her sister.”

“Music therapy in motion” is the way she describes the impact of “Days of Plenty.” She has heard from audience members who have thanked her for helping them through rough spots regarding the death of a son, a daughter, a spouse. One particular incident remains vividly clear: at an after-show discussion, a teacher with a group of seventh-graders told McGovern that one of her students had recently lost her brother. She didn’t know how she was going to go on. “The teacher said, ‘I watched the very moment Marmee sang “Days of Plenty” and saw it register in her face that you go on with your life in honor of the person that you’ve lost.’”

The sense of family that is both in the story and among the cast is something McGovern cherishes. “My Broadway family was incredible, and I loved them very much!” she exclaims. “But the road show group also bonded as a family immediately as well,” she continues. Although her four daughters were new to the show, two members of the touring company came along with McGovern from the Broadway run: Robert Stattel as grumpy Mr. Laurence and Andrew Varela as Professor Bhaer. “Having some familiar faces helped, of course, but we all bonded quickly!”

One particular outing helped to cement the already-good relationship among the girls playing the daughters and their “mother” Maureen McGovern. In January “I made a pilgrimage to Orchard House in Concord with my stage daughters, just the five of us,” she said. “The Alcott family moved almost 30 times, but that was where they lived the longest. And that’s where Little Women was written.”

“We wept all morning,” laughs McGovern. “Being in those rooms you could feel the walls talking. And not just talking: the Alcott sister May, who becomes Amy in the book, was a very prolific artist. She was allowed to draw on the walls of Orchard House and her paintings were there, too.

“I could see the house through my stage children’s eyes,” she continues, "and that week – and hopefully since – our performances have been even richer!”

We talked a little about McGovern’s Cleveland connections and once again that beautiful voice had a bit of a beautiful laugh. As it turns out, McGovern was actually “discovered” singing at a Ramada Inn outside Cleveland in 1972. Her newfound producer sent out tapes of her live performance, but she says “Every record company turned me down except 20th Century Records. They signed me sight unseen.”

One month later she recorded “The Morning After.” And take a wild guess where it was recorded: yep, right here in good ol’ Cleveland, right above the Agora, at Agency Recording.

“The writers wrote if for Barbra Streisand and I thank her profusely for turning it down,” she says of the award-winning song. She informs me that she is equally proud of a recent effort: she is among the singers represented on the CD “Songs From the Neighborhood: The Music of Mr. Rogers,” which won the 2006 Grammy for best musical album for children. “What I love about Fred Rogers’ music is its simplicity and just honest, life-affirming quality,” she adds.

I notice certain words and phrases running through our nearly 40-minute phone conversation: “life-affirming….music therapy…healing power of song.” Our conversation naturally turned to McGovern’s “Works of Heart” Foundation. It’s McGovern’s way of giving back to the worldwide community. It’s music that provides “powerful, musical milligrams of hope, with daily doses of inspiring music and affirmations to counteract fear, isolation and despair – and to provide healing comfort, stress release and inspiration for patients and caregivers. From pediatric cancer patients, to Alzheimer’s patients, to emotionally exhausted caregivers, to those suffering from grieving and loss, the application is endless and the need is great.”

She explains the power of music for everyone, and how it is even more powerful for the sick and/or the caregivers of the sick. “For the past several years I have been an Artist Spokesperson for the American Music Therapy Association, ‘singing the praises’ of professional music therapists and championing the therapeutic power of music to aid in the healing process. As an MDA National Board Member and also a 25-year volunteer for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, I have learned that hope is very contagious.”

One of her favorite people—in fact one she calls the Mother Teresa of Cleveland—is Deforia Lane, Director of Music Therapy for the Ireland Cancer Center, Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital and the Cleveland Hospital Association. McGovern has often gone on rounds with Lane and finds her a “phenomenal mentor and huge influence on me.”

Lane is quick to return the kudos to McGovern for her popular, healing, life-affirming CD: “It’s as though you have an abiding love and sanctity for each word and you refuse to just ‘sing’ it, but rather shape and create an exquisite landscape for each one, then setting it free to embrace the eyes and ears of those in its path.”

Maureen McGovern: “The Stradivarius Voice”... the Broadway star... the humanitarian... the care-giver... Marmee in LITTLE WOMEN—THE BROADWAY MUSICAL. She’s so many things to so many people that she’s currently living out of a suitcase, having sold her Hollywood home and letting her New York digs go just recently. She’s not concerned, though... she is so happy doing all that she does, and she looks forward to the next chapter of life this fall. We hope it will bring her to Cleveland even more.