ST. PAUL, Minn. – Sandy Duncan is mad as hell, and she doesn’t care who knows it.

The perennially perky star of television and the stage comes to the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts this week headlining a tour of “The King and I.” Duncan has a special place in her heart for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical – the show marked her professional debut as a 12-year-old in Dallas.

But now, at 58, she’s less sanguine about the state of the Broadway musical. Once an industry run by producers with vision and heart, she says, Broadway has devolved into a business now run by “money men who don’t have an eye for the product.”

“It used to be that producers would make a profit, with the idea that they would put that money into a new show,” said Duncan, whose Broadway credits include “Peter Pan,” “My One and Only” and, most recently, “Chicago.” “Now, they want to make a killing, and so they’re flogging these shows into 10, 12, 14-year runs. It hurts the whole creative community.”

The result, she says, can be seen in the paucity of new titles both on Broadway and on the road. Her current tour of “The King and I,” she says, proves her point.

“Shows like this are being done to death,” she said, “because there’s no new product.”

While Broadway languishes, audiences in the hinterlands are getting cheated by productions that claim to be “Broadway musicals” but in fact are pale imitations, with diminished technical qualities and less-experienced, nonunion actors.

“The King and I” company is populated with members of Actors Equity, the union of professional actors and stage managers. But many other tours – including productions of “Miss Saigon,” “Oliver” and “Rent” – are not.

Duncan, along with other Equity activists, maintains that producers are pocketing the money saved by using less-expensive actors. For their part, producers cite the increased cost of putting large-scale shows on the road as their rationale for using non-Equity actors.

The issue of nonunion tours is a major point of contention between Equity and Broadway producers.

“A lot of what’s coming out of New York is dreck; they should be touring them in theme parks,” Duncan said. “And then on top of that, they do it on the cheap so they can make more money. It’s immoral, and it tricks the public.”

Duncan’s outspoken activism has created some potential waves in her career. After a fiery pro-union speech in the theater district last fall, she was approached by a theatrical producer who menacingly wondered aloud if she expected to continue to work on Broadway.

“You think I want to work in this town again?” she retorted. “They act like theater’s only viable in New York, and the truth is that it’s the least viable in New York.”

Now that her sons are grown and out of the house, Duncan has given herself more leeway to pursue theatrical opportunities outside New York. Two summers ago, she starred in a locally produced staging of “Anything Goes” at the Ordway. And this spring, she appeared in the one-woman show “The Belle of Amherst” in Virginia, a production she’s considering taking on the road.

“I’m picking roles now based on things I want to do,” she said. “I certainly don’t do things anymore that are repetitious or things that are similar to what I’ve already done. Some people like to work with what’s familiar to them, and you certainly don’t get as many headaches and nervous stomachs that way, but it just doesn’t keep me interested.”

After Duncan’s six-month gig as Anna in “The King and I” comes to an end in December, she plans to take some time off.

She and her husband sold their house in New York while she was in rehearsal and bought a place in Connecticut the same week. While she has been on the road, much of her personal life has been stashed in moving boxes.

“What am I doing after this?” she said. “I’m going to go home and get our lives sorted out.”

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(c) 2004, St. Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.).

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Sandy Duncan

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