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[[title, centered]]
A THEATREGOER'S NOTEBOOK
[[subtitle, centered]]
by Rebecca Morehouse
[[image - black and white photograph of two actors in futuristic stage costume]]
[[the following text is positioned horizontally against the left side of the image]]
MARTHA SWOPE
[[the following caption is located directly below the photograph]]
[[italics]] Andrea McArdle (l.) in[[/italics]] Starlight Express

TOMORROW TODAY
She wasn't a dimpled Shirley Temple but she was our little girl, the most beguiling kid on the Broadway block, the first Little Orphan Annie--Andrea McArdle. Amazingly, she is 23 years old now, and happy to say, she has turned out well: pretty, chestnut-haired, cheerful, hard-working, well-mannered and bold, in the sense of unfrightened. 
What she does in [[italics]]Starlight Express[[/italics]] looks dangerously daunting, yet she says lightly, "It doesn't bother me. You have to have drive and determination, you have to go for it. And you have to learn how to fall." A sensible precaution, for she races on roller skates, whizzing over ramps at high speed with 26 daredevil others. They personify railroad trains in a heated trans-America race; they even dance and sing on skates. 
"From the moment I heard about the show, that it was done on roller skates and had rock music (by Andrew Lloyd Webber), I wanted to do it," she says. "I never wanted to do a show so much. You see, I'm an athlete, I was a gymnast before I went into show business. As a child I spent a lot of time on roller skates and skateboards. I work out all the time."
Nevertheless, she practiced. "After my first audition for the show, I went on the road in [[italics]]Jerry's Girls[[/italics]] with Carol Channing and Leslie Uggams, and I skated on stages, backstage and in parking lots. I got a ticket for skating at the Kennedy Center in Washington. I skated from the Eisenhower Theatre to the opera house, and the security men got me. Carol paid my fine."
She impersonates Ashley, the Smoking Car. "My costume is very sexy, you won't think of Annie. It's not an ingénue role, it's sophisticated. The men are well padded, the girls just have knee pads."
She played Annie two-and-a-half years in this country and London, singing "Tomorrow" more excitingly than anyone else ever has. "Four days after I left [[italics]]Annie[[/italics]] I went into [[italics]]Rainbow[[/italics]] (a film), playing Judy Garland as a little girl." In Los Angeles, she starred as Peter Pan. 
A prodigious multi-million-dollar production, requiring a $2.5 million makeover of the Gershwin Theatre, [[italics]]Starlight Express[[/italics]] opened with an advance sale close to $5 million. Andrea needn't worry about a short run or her weight: "I lost ten pounds in the first four weeks of rehearsal, and I was eating ten meals a day."

COMING HOME
John Randolph had a feeling so intense he marvels at it. Approaching the Broadhurst Theatre, before the opening of Neil Simon's [[italics]]Broadway Bound[[/italics]], "Suddenly I saw the marquee and felt a tremendous excitement. I've done 29 plays," he says, "and I never felt anything like it before. Then walking into Sardi's and getting a hand, well, that was a thrill."
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He remembers another night at Sardi's after the [[italics]]Come Back, Little Sheba[[/italics]] opening (he played the muscular milkman): "I walked in with Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer and there was a standing ovation. I'm not blase, I hate that attitude. Shirley was a great inspiration to me."
His portrayal of Ben (Linda Lavin's father) in [[italics]]Broadway Bound[[/italics]] drew a broadside of bravos. John Simon, the critic with the sharpest cleaver, wrote this: "If John Randolph has ever given an unsatisfactory performance, I am unaware of it. He makes the ordinary seem mysterious."
This warm, smiling man, an actor for 49 years, is passionately involved in his work. Good actors go all the way, he is sure. 
"I was in [[italics]]Sound of Music[[/italics]] two-and-a-half years, and Mary Martin never let down. Shirley Booth, Paul Kelly, the Lunts, all the people I've admired most as actors gave 100 percent all the time. I played the chief of police in [[italics]]The Visit[[/italics]] with the Lunts. I was Actors Studio, they were aristocratic. But their graciousness and hard work, and their devotion to the theatre, gave me a standard as an actor."
In recent TV drama he acted with Bette Davis, wounded by illness but awesome still. "You hardly recognize her until you see those blazing blue eyes, but she had a long part and she was letter perfect. Someone tried to help her down a step and she said, 'When I need your help, I'll ask for it.' She still smokes."
He speaks lovingly of his wife, the actress Sarah Cunningham. "We were married 44 years," he says. [[italics]]"Prizzi's Honor[[/italics]] (he played Jack Nicholson's father) had several Oscar nominations and we went to the Academy Awards; she looked gorgeous. While we were sitting there she felt sick." They left the auditorium but she dies in the building, of cardiac arrest.
So [[italics]]Broadway Bound[[/italics]] came at the right time for him. A long-time Las Angeles resident, born in the Bronx, he has kept a New York apartment for 25 years. "I love the vitality of the city," he says "and I love the theatre. I don't see any point in living if I can't go back to my roots."
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