Actors, like everybody else, come in a variety of temperaments. But the dirty little secret about some actors is that they only come alive when performing. In person they can be as dull as dishwater.
It doesn’t matter, of course — especially if they’re good at what they do. But when you come across an actor who is 360 degrees worth of dazzling — in front of an audience or not — it is worth noting. Stephanie J. Block, the warm and lively 32-year-old who stars in the first national tour of “Wicked” currently at the Oriental Theatre, is one of those actors.
Each night, slathered in the iconic green makeup, she becomes Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West. (In mid-June, “Saturday Night Live” alum Ana Gasteyer will assume the role with a new cast for the sit-down run.)
Though the musical itself — a Judy Blume-tinged prequel to L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” stories — has received mixed reviews, there is nothing mixed about Block’s memorable performance, with its power vocals and teenage outcast vulnerability.
You root for her Elphaba. And in person, you root for Block, who is unabashedly tapped into her geeky side. She is darn funny, too — and pretty enough to carry it off with an offhanded ease that feels neither studied nor self-conscious.
But it hasn’t been easy. For every kid who relates to Elphaba’s plight — mocked and misunderstood by her catty classmates, including bubbly rival Glinda the Good, played here by a winning Kendra Kassebaum — it may be comforting to know that Block has first-hand knowledge of these feelings.
The Orange County, Calif., native says she was something of a loner. “Big time! I was very awkward as a child. Until I found theater, I could not find my place; I could not find true friendship; there were no boyfriends in sight for me.”
Her experiences, she says, mirror Elphaba’s. “When you take on a part, you do learn much more about yourself. You can become introspective and go, `Oh, that totally connects with what happened with me.’ There are moments in the show that are very real for me.
“When I sing `I’m Not That Girl,’ I mean, it couldn’t touch more to home for me,” she says. “Even though I am a grown woman now, I look in the mirror and I’m still 12 — still awkward and trying to find my place.”
She did have one ace up her sleeve. “I always knew singing was my ticket,” she says. “I started singing in church when I was 7 and the congregation got really excited and there was lots of applause and attention. They called me the little Ethel Merman. I had no idea who Ethel Merman was.”
Strong voice or not, her self-esteem was still a little shaky. It didn’t help that her sister, older by two years, embodied the idealized California look.
“Gorgeous, huge blue eyes, fair skin, lighter hair, different, you know, body type,” says Block. “She got all the German, and I got all the Italian from our parents and I just thought, `That is the epitome of beautiful.'”
Sound a bit like someone in “Wicked”?
“She had all the boyfriends, she was a social butterfly — she was Glinda! So there really is a parallel to my life and the play that we put on every night.”
Huge investment
Block’s connection to the show runs deep and she has been involved with the musical since its earliest days in development.
“It was completely crazy!” she says, laughing. “[Composer] Stephen Schwartz and [book writer] Winnie Holzman were creating the piece . . . and one night [Schwartz] went to dinner, so the story goes, and he kind of laid out what he was working on and my name was recommended a couple times over.
“I came home the very next day,” she continues, “to an answering machine message from Stephen Schwartz saying, `Perhaps you know my work, I wrote “Pippin” and “Godspell,”‘ all the while my jaw just keeps dropping and I’m like, `What is happening on my voice-mail message!’ We literally met the next day and that was how it started. We worked together on it for a little over two years, so yeah, there was a huge emotional investment.”
But when it came time to stage the show in its pre-Broadway tryout in San Francisco, Block was passed over for the role. Idina Menzel was cast instead. Menzel, who is married to the actor Taye Diggs, originated the role of Maureen in the Broadway production of “Rent.”
“It was really hard,” Block says. “But they were also very honest with me. They said, `This is a $14 million musical and we need a gal with Broadway credits to her name, and I hadn’t any at that time. . . . And, you know, it’s very difficult for your ego to swallow that. But they offered me the cover, and sure enough as we were rehearsing to go to San Francisco, that’s when I got `The Boy From Oz.’ So in retrospect . . . it was divine order.”
Block originated the role of a young Liza Minnelli in the Hugh Jackman Broadway vehicle about the singer Peter Allen, “Boy From Oz,” for much of last year. And now she has come full circle, playing the role that captured her heart five years ago.
Price of success
It has not been without its share of hardship. There are several aerial affects in “Wicked” Block performs while “belting my face off!” as she puts it. That’s no easy matter when your face is roughly 20 feet above the stage floor.
At the close of Act 1, when an angry Elphaba first learns how to levitate and becomes a witch, we see her rise off the stage as she sings “Defying Gravity.” To achieve the illusion, Block secures herself in what amounts to a stripped-down version of a cherry picker designed especially for the Broadway and touring productions.
She stands on a small platform and backs into a beltlike device that snaps around her waist, draped in black fabric to mimic the look of a skirt. A visitor climbs aboard and confirms the apparatus’ thrilling, if nerve-jangling, experience.
“You know what the scariest part is?” she asks, demonstrating the stunt before a recent matinee performance. “When we do a tech rehearsal and you’re standing there for a long time, whether that be 10, 15, 20 minutes, you start to feel almost vertigo, like you’re gonna go forward or fall through.
“But when you’re performing,” she says, “it’s an amazing feeling to know you’re that far off the ground. The lights are going, the orchestra’s going, the smoke is going and your entire cast is beneath you singing up to you. It’s really empowering.”
These demands are not without risk. Menzel, who won the 2004 Tony for her performance, was injured the day before her final performance because of a faulty trap door during Elphaba’s melting/death scene.
Block, too, had a heart-pounding moment in March during the tour’s Toronto stop.
“It was a flying effect new to the show that they wanted to put in during the second act — brand new to the tour . . . and it was with a harness,” she explains. “And it was just an unfortunate incident. My right cable came out . . . and left my body hanging. And then unfortunately the computer kept overriding the manual input to bring me back down and it kept bringing me higher and higher. There was no one to blame for it — it was just a freak accident.”
But the resulting injuries — some soft tissue damage and muscle spasms in her lower back and neck — put her out of commission for two weeks. She still does physical therapy, but is back in fighting form.
“I’m really on the mend,” Block says, sounding genuinely happy and pain-free. “Most of it is your spirit and your soul, and I need to be on stage to heal.”
