Maria Friedman, the star of the new Andrew
Lloyd Webber musical, "The Woman in White," stood at the center of the stage of the Marquis Theater on Thursday night,
accepting a sustained standing ovation for her
performance as the show's plucky Victorian heroine.
Sara
Krulwich/The New York Times Maria Friedman in "The Woman in White."
SHOW DETAILS The Woman in White
While
the applause was no doubt for her performance, the fact that she was onstage at all was more remarkable. Just 10 days
before, breast cancer had been diagnosed in Ms. Friedman, 45. Since then she had undergone surgery to remove a malignant
lump the size of a marble from her left breast.
"I found the lump on a Monday, and two hours later I had a mammogram,"
Ms. Friedman said. "And three days later, I was in surgery."
And a week after that, with an $8.5 million musical just
days away from its opening night, Ms. Friedman - bruised, bandaged and with a doctor in the wings - sang and danced
for almost three hours in a preview performance, nearly bringing much of her cast and crew to tears.
"I was
just proud to be onstage with her," said Michael Ball, who plays the show's villainous Count Fosco. "It's just proper
old-school theatrical heart."
Perhaps no one was more moved than Sonia Friedman, the actress's sister, who is
a producer of the show and thus in the unenviable position of deciding whether to delay the opening - set for Thursday
- or see her ailing sister perform so soon after surgery.
"To open a show on Broadway is bad enough," she said. "But
then to have this?"
For her part, however, Maria Friedman, an accomplished British actress who is making her first
appearance on Broadway, said it was never a question of whether to go on.
"We have a deadline, a committed company,
a lot of people's livelihoods riding on this show," she said. "And I felt I dropped the baton at the last hurdle."
Sonia
Friedman and Bob Boyett, another producer, were with Ms. Friedman on Oct. 31 when doctors took a biopsy and diagnosed
Stage 1 breast cancer. The actress had found the lump that morning, and both producers considered delaying or even canceling performances
to allow their leading lady to recuperate.
But by early this week, Maria Friedman had signaled that she would
not only be back onstage soon - she rehearsed on Tuesday afternoon - but that she would also make opening night.
"What
kept me going is that Maria is not going to let this thing get in the way of her Broadway debut," said Sonia Friedman.
"She'd be damned before she'd let that happen."
Similarly, Maria Friedman said she drew strength from her sister's
determination to get the musical, which had its premiere in London last year, to Broadway.
"I wouldn't do it, except for I've watched
Sonia work round the clock for a year to get this show here," Ms. Friedman said. "I'm not going for hero status. I'm doing
what I can do, with enormous support."
That the offstage drama involved sisters was all the more apt considering
that "The Woman in White," based on the 1860 Gothic novel by Wilkie Collins, tells the story of two sisters fighting
for their lives in Victorian England. Ms. Friedman plays Marian Halcombe, the show's heroine, who is onstage in almost
every scene, with lengthy vocal solos in each act. Her role requires ample dancing, running and even fighting, as Marian
does battle with a group of street thieves and, in one case, Count Fosco, a lustful Italian doctor.
Ms. Friedman,
who created the role in London, had performed just five previews in New
York before her surgery, which left her dark, painful bruises on her chest, a still raw incision
and extremely tender ribs. "It's like a large elephant sat on me," she said.
For Thursday night's performance,
Ms. Friedman had a bandage tightly wound around her upper torso, a medical dressing that she said made it hard to breathe during
the show's first act. So, at intermission, the dressing was reapplied by Dr. Abraham Pollack, the radiologist who first
detected the tumor and who monitored Ms. Friedman's condition during the show.
"I'm not an avid attendee of the
theater; I usually fall asleep," he said. "But I didn't fall asleep in this one."
Ms. Friedman and the show will
face critics next week; the musical received mixed notices when it opened in London.
Mr. Boyett said that news of Ms. Friedman's illness had not affected ticket sales, for good or ill, and that the decision
to publicize her disease was hers. "She felt that if it leaked out, people would see it as a negative for the show,"
he said. He said the musical had no insurance if Ms. Friedman's illness were ever to cause performances to be canceled.
(Lisa Brescia, Ms. Friedman's understudy, played the previews that she missed.)
Of course, the theater, where "break
a leg" is a good-luck cheer, has a long tradition of bucking personal malady for the good of the show. And while critics
will no doubt know of Ms. Friedman's condition, there is no indication that they will pull their punches.
Barry
Weissler, a Broadway producer whose lead actress, Christina Applegate, broke a bone in her foot just weeks before opening
in "Sweet Charity" in May, to mixed reviews, said critics were no easier on his production because of offstage turmoil.
"It certainly didn't help me," he said. "I don't know how they'll treat a thing like this. I only hope they treat her professionally
and with sympathy for what she's going through."
Ms. Friedman said her goal was simply to "get to the finishing
post."
"We can reassess after that," she added.
But as is often the case with cancer, it is uncertain exactly
where that finishing post is. Next week, Ms. Friedman will receive word on whether chemotherapy is necessary. Dr. Pollack
said yesterday that the success rate for treating the type of cancer Ms. Friedman has is excellent, and that her particular
tumor seems not to be highly aggressive.
Regardless of whether chemotherapy is necessary, Ms. Friedman will
begin radiation treatments next month, a seven-week cycle that will certainly tax her energy, but she said she planned
to perform throughout. "And if I have to do chemo, I already said they can stick a wig on my head," she said.
In
off hours, she has been kept busy by her two children, Alfie, 3, and Toby, 10, who are living in New
York during the run of the show, and spending time with her boyfriend. Ms. Friedman said she would
stop performing if her health suffered at any point. Until then, however, just like the show she is in, she just wants
to "get to the next week, and then the week after, and then the week after that."
"Right now, I'm cancer-free,"
she said. "I don't have cancer; they cut it out. Until I do again, why waste my time?"
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