Marshall gets double dose of nominations for a Tony

The director/choreographer grew up in Pittsburgh and saw many shows.
NEW YORK (AP) -- It's the most delirious musical-comedy moment of the season: a group of giddy Brazilian naval cadets, carrying leading lady Donna Murphy, conga their way across the stage of the Al Hirschfeld Theater.
The raucous, witty dance number blissfully ends the first act of the Tony-nominated revival of "Wonderful Town," the Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical.
"Wonderful Town" was first seen on Broadway in 1953, but its direction and choreography a half-century later are new, the work of Kathleen Marshall, one of two double Tony Award nominees this season. (The other is lighting designer Brian MacDevitt for his work on "Henry IV" and "Fiddler on the Roof.")
For the 41-year-old Marshall, recognition is at hand, although she has been a musical-theater baby for much of her life. She currently is represented on Broadway by not only "Wonderful Town," but also by "Little Shop of Horrors," for which she supplied authentic 1960s "Hullabaloo" gyrations.
"The show holds up," she says of "Wonderful Town," the musical about writer Ruth Sherwood and her sister, Eileen, two young women from Ohio who come to New York in 1935 to find fame, fortune and romance.
"You don't have to reinvent it, you don't have to deconstruct it, you don't have to contemporize it. When geniuses have been there, like Bernstein and Comden and Green, present it as best as you can -- then get out of the way and let the audience appreciate it."
Knows her stuff
Short, with blond hair and a shy smile, Marshall disarms with a pertness that's offset by a serious enthusiasm for her craft. She knows her stuff, especially since her relationship with "Encores! Great American Musicals in Concert" at City Center.
"Kathleen's years there really were a perfect fit," says her older brother and fellow choreographer, Rob, who's also the Academy Award-winning director of "Chicago."
"She really is an encyclopedia about the history of musicals. That knowledge has helped her. But she also has great respect for, and has learned from, so many others ahead of her -- from Agnes de Mille to Bob Fosse to Gower Champion to Michael Bennett."
Starting at "Encores" as a choreographer and later as a director and artistic director (she's now its director-in-residence), Marshall worked her way through such diverse shows as "Call Me Madam," "Du Barry Was a Lady," "Li'l Abner," "Babes in Arms," "Hair," "Carnival" and "Wonderful Town," which served as the springboard for the current Broadway production.
"'Wonderful Town' is tricky," she explains. "It takes place in the 1930s but was written in the 1950s and behaves like a big 1950s musical. With a revival, you have to deal with three time periods -- when it takes place, when it was written and today. You have to balance all of that."
Acting ability is necessary for "Wonderful Town," Marshall insists, because the dancers in the show have to portray a wide range of characters -- from the bohemian artists of Greenwich Village's Christopher Street to neighborhood kids to Irish police officers to the sexy denizens of that hep nightspot, the Village Vortex.
"I wanted dancers who were all individuals, in a sense, principal performers," she says. "'Wonderful Town' is not a show where you want a uniform chorus line."
Background
Individuality was important growing up in Pittsburgh, where Marshall's parents were educators -- her father a medieval literature professor, her mother a professor of education. Her parents exposed Marshall, Rob and sister Maura (Rob's twin) to everything -- from baseball to opera to the symphony to ballet and especially to musical theater and cast albums.
There were shows put on by the children in the Marshall living room and then appearances in elementary school presentations. Roles followed at Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, the big local summer stock company.
It was at Pittsburgh CLO where Marshall got her Equity card and where each summer she returned from college to dance in shows. "West Side Story" one week. "Once Upon a Mattress" or "Can-Can" the next. It was good training because you learned many different styles of dance and you had to learn fast, she says.
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