Michele Ragusa’s star rising on Broadway
Mix of patience, humor lands ‘Frankenstein’ role
North Buffalo native Michele Ragusa has portrayed a lot of characters since she first took the stage at Holy Angels Academy — she toured as Maria in “West Side Story” and was Evelyn Nesbit in “Ragtime” and Caroline in “Titanic” on Broadway.
And as she’s gotten more experienced, the pretty, petite woman with the pure coloratura soprano has been able to display another of her talents — she can be very funny.
When she played Mona in “A Class Act,” Ragusa said, “My director said he was so shocked because he had never met a soprano who was actually funny.”
Ragusa is going to smash that stereotype with her work in the juicy role of Elizabeth Benning in the Mel Brooks Broadway show, “Young Frankenstein.” In early August, Ragusa took over the role that had been played by Megan Mullally, best known as Karen Walker on the TV show “Will & Grace.”
Elizabeth, who makes several showstopping entrances, starts as a chilly lady concerned with appearances who unexpectedly falls for her fiance’s reanimated monster. Madeline Kahn played the role in the movie.
Speaking by phone from her New Jersey home, the effervescent Ragusa said she’s “had my eye on this role right from the beginning.” But when it was originally cast before the play opened in November 2007, she heard through the Broadway grapevine that the play’s producers wanted a celebrity for the role. “I wanted to be seen for this initially, so badly,” she said. “But believe it or not, after 19 years of being in this city and working, I could not get an audition.”
When she heard that Mullally had gotten the role, Ragusa said she thought ahead to the day when Mullally might want to leave to pursue other interests, “because so many people have said to me, ‘You remind me of Megan Mullally!’ ”
Ragusa kept working, most recently in New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse production of “Kiss Me Kate.” In the spring, she and her husband Thomas Richter, who met when they were doing “Guys and Dolls” in Dallas, assembled a flier with photos of Ragusa and some updated reviews from that role.
“I think it just happened to land on the casting director’s desk at the perfect moment,” said Ragusa. But she still had a few challenges — the audition was in “basically a day and a half, and I had two songs to learn that I didn’t know.”
With the help of a quick iTunes download and her conductor from “Kiss Me Kate,” Ragusa prepared for the audition — which turned out to be before “oh, about 20 people, with Mel Brooks in the center seat at the table.”
She started with “Deep Love,” the tune a starry-eyed Elizabeth sings after her romantic encounter with the monster. The song opens with the famous spoken line slyly lisped by Madeline Kahn in the movie: “Penny for your thoughts!”
“I said the line, and the entire table started screaming with laughter,” said Ragusa. “There’s nothing better than that! I kept going and the conductor was playing the piano and laughing, we finished and they applauded — it was really, really something. I found out later that Mel Brooks just flipped out, ‘Where has she been?’ It was one of those great perfect things.” Needless to say, she got the job.
Ragusa had barely become comfortable in the role when she was sidelined by a freak accident — a collision with a coffee table in the middle of the night left her with a broken toe on her right foot. After a week of rest, she returned to the stage and has made every show since then.
“There was a change of shoes, obviously,” she said, “and certain changes of choreography where I had to turn on my right foot. That Tuesday night, when I returned, I thought, ‘I’m never going to make it through the weekend,’ but I did — I kept icing it, and I’m doing pretty good, though I’m still not back in my 3-inch heels.”
But even in scaled-down heels, Ragusa is loving every minute in the Broadway spotlight, a place she’s been shooting for since Holy Angels. After high school, she enrolled at Erie Community College to study business, thinking she could never have “a real life” as an actor.
At ECC, she auditioned for a part in a production of “Godspell,” directed by English teacher Jack Saviola, with the assistance of musical director Jimmy Sapienza. Ragusa now credits both Saviola and Sapienza for recognizing her talent and encouraging her to pursue acting as a career.
“Once in a while, somebody comes along who looks like they belong on stage, and that was Michele,” said Saviola, who is now retired from ECC.
“During rehearsals, she was the only person ever that I never had to say, ‘You’re facing downstage, turn this way, do this, do that.’ It was instinctive with Michele.
Saviola pulled Ragusa aside and recommended she apply to Niagara University’s rigorous and highly respected theater program under the direction of Brother Augustine Towey. Saviola called Towey and recommended his star actor.
When Ragusa met Towey and stepped into the small campus theater, she said, “I just knew this is where I had to be. I thought, ‘I’m home.’ I think I had three classes left to get my [ECC] degree, and I left! I basically went [to Niagara] and got my BFA [Bachelor of Fine Arts degree] and it was one of the best decisions I ever made!”
Although the economy is in a rough patch, Ragusa says, “Ticket sales are doing very well. When the kids go back to school, all of the shows experience a little dip. But no need to panic, everybody says we’re fine. Group sales are big — people love ‘Young Frankenstein’ because they know it.”
And people who see the show are impressed by the effects, she said. “I’m not going to spoil it for anybody from Buffalo who comes and sees it, but there are things [you see] and you think, ‘What am I looking at?’ Mel Brooks spared no expense with this project.”
It’s quite a change from her work in smaller venues, including her most recent work in Buffalo, the one-woman show “Bad Dates” at Studio Arena in 2006.
“You do Broadway, and it’s no expense spared, and you have hand-painted costumes and it’s just insanity with money, and then when you’re out of town and working in theaters that have a limited budget, it’s really about being creative and artistic,” said Ragusa. “There are jewels and gems to both experiences.”
