Big Step for a ‘Little House’ Star

[Zoneboy]

BEFORE Melissa Gilbert could tackle the role of Caroline Ingalls, who was Ma to her Laura on the TV show “Little House on the Prairie,” she “had to get the music of Karen Grassle’s voice out of my head from all those years,” she said. Ms. Grassle was the actress who played Ma on the series, which originally ran from 1974 to 1983.

But Ms. Gilbert, 45, who is appearing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in the theatrical adaptation of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books on which the NBC series was based, put her own spin on the role, she said.

Ms. Grassle’s Ma was a sterner figure than hers, Ms. Gilbert said. Also, “Karen’s Ma always reminded me of Grace Kelly,” she said.

“My Ma’s a little more feisty, a little more earthy,” she said. “I’m a redhead. So is Ma in this show. So there’s some fire under those petticoats.”

“Little House on the Prairie: The Musical,” directed by Francesca Zambello, began its run at Paper Mill Sept. 10 and will be there through Oct. 10 before heading out on a 34-week, 25-city tour. Laura, Ms. Gilbert said in an interview during rehearsals, “is part of the fabric of my life and who I am.” Her acknowledged inability to escape the character, she said, “is a small sacrifice in the long run.”

Ms. Gilbert is taking her chances that “bonnetheads” — as many “Little House” diehards who congregate in person and on the Internet call themselves — will think no less of her for blurring the edges of her association with Laura.

“There are book fans, there are TV show fans, there are book-and-TV-show fans. And then there are fans of the remake miniseries” — a six-episode special that ABC presented in 2004, Ms. Gilbert said.

“Some of the TV show fans are not too thrilled with the miniseries, and there are other divisions along those lines — who’s a fan of what,” she said. “It’s very complex. I need a pie chart to figure it out.”

By and large, the fans are inclined to give her a break, Ms. Gilbert said. “People love and cherish the image of Laura, and I sort of created that on television, so they’re protective of me and very supportive. I don’t get a lot of flak,” she said, sitting at a picnic table at Paper Mill during her dinner break. “But the show hasn’t started yet. We’ll see what happens.”

Ms. Gilbert, who lives in Los Angeles but is staying in a rented apartment in Manhattan, said she was “scared to death” at the prospect of singing, though she had sung in a version of “Little House: The Musical” at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in the summer of 2008.

“Singing was my great fear forever, my whole life,” she said.

At first lending her voice to the production — whether in speech or in song — was not even a consideration, she said. “When they approached me, my initial reaction was ‘Prairie Guffman’? I laughed out loud and said, ‘You can’t make this a musical.’ ”

But the show’s book, by Rachel Sheinkin, who won a 2005 Tony Award for “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” proved a powerful temptation, as did the music of Rachel Portman, a 1997 Oscar winner for the score of “Emma.”

So Ms. Gilbert enlisted the help of a voice coach in Los Angeles and relied on an “inner voice” she wrote about in her recent book, “Prairie Tale: A Memoir” (Simon Spotlight Entertainment).

“There’s a little person in me who, when backed up against a wall and scared, says, ‘Watch this!’ I’ve been using her a lot,” she said.

In addition to singing-related nerves, Ms. Gilbert battled worried-mother nerves prior to opening night. The role of Willie Oleson, the bratty younger brother of wealthy Nellie Oleson, is being played by Michael Boxleitner, Ms. Gilbert’s 13-year-old son with her husband, the actor Bruce Boxleitner. The role is Michael’s theatrical debut.

“That’s another reason to be a wreck,” she said.

It’s also another reason to reflect on family, both on and off screen. Ms. Gilbert’s brother, Jonathan Gilbert, played Willie in the TV series.

“If this didn’t feel like a full-circle enough moment, then we have this to add into it,” she said.

And don’t rule out the possibility of the circle being retraced in the future.

“I would like to play Laura again 20 to 25 years from now as a one-woman show, when Laura was at that age when the books were published. Kind of a Will Rogers-type thing,” Ms. Gilbert said. “I think that would be fun.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/ny...20papernj.html

[catlover79]

Great article!! I, too, would love to see Melissa play Laura later in life. That would be awesome.