Stealing, One Scene at a Time

Two things girls rarely learned at a certain progressive school on Manhattan’s upper East Side:

   One was typing.

   A Dalton girl was expected to change the world. Someone else could do the typing.

   The other was reading music.

   But Emily Soell still grew up knowing every note and word to every musical on Broadway by dropping cascades of 78s on the record player spindle over and over again.

   A handful of decades later she picked up her role as a Pickalittle Lady in TriArts’ “The Music Manâ€� last year the same way, by listening to recordings.

  And ditto for  this year, as Soell rehearses Rosie, a major player in “The Wedding Singer,â€� TriArts’ season opener.

   But the story is not how Soell is learning the role, but how she got it.

   Remember how 16-year-old Lana Turner skipped typing class at Hollywood High for a Coke one afternoon and was discovered at the Top Hat Cafe’s soda fountain (not Schwab’s) by a reporter, thus, somehow, becoming an MGM star?

   Or how Marilyn Monroe, spray painting armaments in 1942, was noticed by an Army photographer and zoomed from pinup to movie queen in the wink of an eye?

     Now here’s Emily Soell, a retired advertising executive (who clawed her way to the top, she says), a small, tidy woman of a certain age who probably remembers Truman beating Dewey and did, by all acounts, one hell of a hula at a recent TriArts benefit a couple of  weeks ago. There were raves. There were pledges. There was a job offer.

   As luck would have it, and it usually does, the professional actor playing Rosie got a job on Broadway, leaving “The Wedding Singerâ€� with a hole in the cast. But when TriArts’ executive director Alice Bemand caught Soell doing her hula, she figured a star was born. Or a new Rosie, anyway.

   Now Soell learned a little something about herself at TriArts the year before. “I found in myself an extreme scene stealer,â€� she says. She had one line as a Pickalittle Lady in “The Music Man.â€� Yet she yearned for more, it seems. One performer kept not showing up and Soell suggested to the director that he give the phantom actor’s five lines to her.

   The director did not go for it. Instead, he held an audition for the role.

   “I was the best. I knew I was the best. So I got the part,â€� Soell told me.

   But theater is tough. She was bowled over by the effort. Rehearsals cut into dinner party time. Travel time. Going to the theater time.

   “It’s astonishing. I was in every scene, practically, working from 11 a.m. to 9 or 10 at night. Ridiculous dinner breaks. When’s cocktail time? I wanted to know.

   “I felt I lost the whole summer. Still, I had a very good time.â€�

  And though she swore to everyone she would never take another role, when Rosie, a character with a couple of big numbers, and some showy lines opened up (a role of a grandmother usually played by a young actor because of a dance number), Soell could not resist. She taped a scene for director John Simpkins in New York.

   “Perfect,â€� he said. “Book her.â€�

   And that’s how a retired advertising whiz with a knack for getting her way, got her way. Even though she did not know it, at first.

   “The Wedding Singerâ€� runs at TriArts’ Sharon Playhouse June 24 - July 11. For tickets, call 860-364-7469.