Saturday, September 28, 2019

JOANNA GLEASON MUCH MORE THAN “A BAKER’S WIFE”






At the age of eleven, Joanna Gleason already enjoyed a rich fantasy life, imagining herself a singer with a 1940’s big band, with a gardenia in her hair and clad in a fabulous satin gown.  She had already determined by age nine, in elementary school, that the theater was her destiny so these dreams seemed not only possible but quite realistic.  One would think that as the daughter of game show host Monty and Marilyn Hall, growing up in Toronto, Canada, her home life would have predisposed her to show business, but she declares her parents never exposed her to that life.  There were family dinners, piano lessons, going to see school plays and down to earth values. Her parents played Broadway albums and opera and took the family to museums.  Joanna learned early on, “I could have a future in the least show business family around.”

After her father co-created “Let’s Make a Deal” and hosted the game show for thirty years, he was “recognized everywhere and being the charming man he was, he loved it.”  Joanna, on the other hand, initially shrank from it.  Like all her siblings, she was proud of her parents’ extensive charity work raising a million dollars over the years and the speeches dad made, especially after moving the family to Beverly Hills for fifty five years.

Joanna Gleason is an accomplished actress, singer, acting teacher, writer and director, having established herself in television, film and theater. In times of stress, she remembers asking her father, “Oy, what is happening?”  His answer was a comforting, “Honey, we’ve seen worse. It’s a bump.  Everything is cyclical.  Keep changing.”  Joanna still listens to that advise as evidenced by new latest project, an intimate one woman show that is a love letter to her parents and
their seventy year romance, “Out of the Eclipse.” The show will enjoy its Connecticut debut at the Quick Center at Fairfield University on Friday, November 8 at 
7 p.m., followed by a private dinner with the star at 8:30 p.m. This musical evening debuted this spring at Feinstein’s/54 Below dinner club in New York City to sold out crowds, thanks to the encouragement of the venue’s producer Jennifer Tepper.

“Out of the Eclipse” was Gleason’s therapeutic and cathartic response to her parents’ deaths within weeks of each other, at 96 and 90, and the solar eclipse of 2017 that occurred in the middle.  The show takes the audience on its own individual journey of loss as it reveals Gleason’s personal dark time of care giving in their last days and how she brought herself back into the light.  With her arranger and music director Jeffrey Klitz, backed by the tight three part harmony of the Moontones and a band that consists of guitar, banjo, autoharp, cello, percussion and piano.  For tickets ($75, 65, Quick members $55, University students $5), call the Quick Center box office at 203-254-4010 or go online to quickcenter.com or @fairfieldquick.  The dinner is $150 and includes a ticket to the performance.

Calling the show “funny and tender,” when she lost her bearings “I put my faith in other people.”  Like the song she sang in her Tony Award winning performance as the Baker’s Wife in Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” she recognizes that “life is made of moments.” Looking back at the tremendous love and affection for her folks, she, with the help of most extraordinary collaborator Jeffrey Klitz, carefully selected songs and stories that illustrated their loving relationship.  She freely admits, “We mutually inspire each other.” Some songs are well known like the Rodgers and Hart standard “With a Song in My Heart” and the Cole Porter tune “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To” and her parents’ personal love song “Where or When” as well as some more obscure, like the 1800’s Yiddish lullaby “Oyfn Prpestshik.”

During the evening, Joanna Gleason will share funny stories about how she landed the career changing role of the Baker’s Wife, how her role in Broadway’s “Nick and Nora” was short lived on stage but resulted in a twenty nine year long marriage to her co-star Nick, now husband actor Chris Saradon and how wonderful being a grandmother and called ”Yia Yia” has “opened chambers of my heart I didn’t know I had.” On February 9, 2020, her show will open at Los Angeles’ Renberg Theater where she hopes “school mates and friends will come.”

As if all these successes weren’t enough, Ms. Gleason is exploring writing and directing a feature film set to be made in Connecticut in December.  Having practiced on a short film first, she is now ready to tackle ”Possom,” a tender and moving tale of the last few days of her mom’s life, stating “I had to connect before I could let go.”
 With a career that has spanned such shows as “Boogie Nights,” “The Good Wife,” “Hamlet,” “The West Wing,” “I Love My Wife,” ”Murphy Brown,” “It’s Only a Play” and dozens more, Joanna Gleason admits that “life is surprisingly wonderful.” Living on a beautiful and rambling farm house in Connecticut where she and her “dashing” husband Chris Saradon grow sunflowers, tomatoes, potatoes, beans, beets, radishes and herbs,greeting her newest grandchild, a boy Daniel from her son Aaron and his wife Stacy and opening new directions in the theater world, stating that “life is surprisingly wonderful” just might be an understatement.

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