Five Questions for Leigh Scarritt

San Diego theatre veteran Leigh Scarritt is appearing with Lyric for the first time this season, as Aunt Alicia in Gigi. Leigh is a regular on San Diego stages including Starlight and the Old Globe. She’s an actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, director, writer, and composer, who also teaches voice and is a personal exercise trainer (whew). Leigh wrote, composed, and directed the play Angels Among Us at the Coronado Playhouse. She has appeared in television shows including Three's Company, Too Close for Comfort, General Hospital, and The Jerry Lewis Show. Her movie appearances include Used Cars with Kurt Russell and In Search of My Son with Richard Thomas. She took a break from rehearsals to answer our Five Questions.

When did you know you wanted to be in musical theatre? 

I think I did my first prossional show when I was maybe 4. I was Gretel in The Sound of Music. My grandfather was dying at the time and he came to see the show. It felt like a gift for him and it was such a gift for me that even though he was ill, he came to see it. I remember the power of his love from the audience and my love for him, and that anchored me in the power of love as it transferred over the pit lights.

Also, I was a very painfully shy kid. I always felt the most free and the most myself on stage.

Did you have a mentor? Who was it, and what did he or she do to encourage you?  

My mother’s a brilliant musician herself, and really planted in myself and my siblings the love for art in every different form, whether painting or sculpting or instrumental music, theatre… She birthed that and fostered it. Then there was a wonderful woman here in San Diego named Deanne Johnson, who picked my out of a lineup for a show at Lyric Dinner Theatre when I was 16 -- the lead in Babes in Arms. She saw something in me that she thought was worthwhile. It was my first lead role as an adult, and I got my Equity card from that. I must have done 20 shows for her in the next 20 years.

What’s the most unusual or useful advice you’ve ever received concerning your career? 

Don’t try to be someone you’re not, be exactly who you are, so you get hired for the right projects. Don’t try to chase your tail.

What do you think most people would be surprised to know about working in musical theatre?  

It ain’t all that glamorous backstage! Sometimes there’s only one toilet.

If you could have a different job, what would it be? 

I wouldn’t have a different job! My first job is being a parent, and I would completely content if that was all I had ever been. But any other profession -- no.

Jack’s Notes: Gigi

Observations on Lyric’s season from our Artistic Director, J. Sherwood Montgomery

Well, here we are about to open our thirty-second season, and the very fact that we are still here is more than a miracle. We are grateful to all in the community who continue to allow us to bring you music for everyone, at a high artistic level, at the lowest ticket price for this kind of entertainment in town. No other company gives you a full orchestra and chorus for every show in an attractive and intimate setting, with no seat farther than sixty feet from the stage, in an historic movie palace that is an ideal “house of dreams.” This season we are on a journey that we have never taken in this way before: four shows that are each a classic in their own right, that seen together, promise to give you thrilling music making and memorable theater.

We open with our first ever Lerner and Loewe show, Gigi, which represents the final collaboration of this great team of music theater masters. The stage version of their 1958 film was the final time they worked together. The show has California roots as it was presented by Edwin Lester, the fabled producer of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Civic Light Opera, which guaranteed eighteen sold-out weeks of tryout to any new show or national touring company that was lucky enough to get the gig. The stage production featured a cast of music theater marquee names, Alfred Drake in the Maurice Chevalier role of Honoré, Agnes Moorehead in her final role ever (she died of cancer during the run), Daniel Massey as Gaston, and Lila Kedrova as Mamita. This is the first time the show will have been mounted in San Diego in twenty years, and it will feature Laura Bueno as Gigi, J. Sherwood Montgomery (myself) as Honoré, Benjamin Robinson as Gaston, and two debuts of local stage personalities, Leigh Scarritt as Aunt Alicia, and Rita Cantos Cartwright as Mamita.

The film Gigi represented the last hurrah of the Freed unit at MGM and Vincente Minnelli pulled out all the stops in casting and sets and costumes to bring this French novel by Colette to vivid life. Maurice Chevalier himself gave the composer and lyricist the idea for one of his songs on the occasion of their first meeting. Lerner and Lowe met with Chevalier in Paris to sign the contract and talk about the film. They began by sharing some hot Hollywood scandal gossip and Chevalier smiled and said: “I'm glad I’m not young anymore.” Immediately a hit number was added to their canon of great songs, and we look forward to bringing this charming diversion to our stage for the first time in all its splendor and sophistication.

Gigi runs from September 24 to October 3. Tickets and season subscriptions are available online so please make a plan to join us today!