She performed the animated singing voice of “Anastasia” (1997), including the Oscar-nominated song “Journey to the Past.”
On Saturday night, Liz Callaway visits the Kennedy Center to perform her Stephen Sondheim tribute “To Steve With Love,” which is nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the Grammy Awards next month.
“It is just an absolute thrill to have my first Grammy nomination, especially for a Sondheim album. I’m just so proud and stunned and excited,” Callaway told WTOP. “It’s a very personal tribute to ‘Steve,’ as I graduated to calling him. … I’ve been so looking forward to doing it in D.C. because I know D.C. is a real town of Sondheim lovers, so I’m excited to be doing my show Saturday night at the Kennedy Center. … People just love and respect his music.”
Which songs might we hear during the Sondheim tribute?
“I’m actually doing 16 songs and some of them actually are medleys, so there’s actually a lot of different songs,” Callaway said. “Probably the most famous song of Sondheim is ‘Send in the Clowns’ [from ‘A Little Night Music’], which of course I’ll be doing. I’ll be doing a number of songs from ‘Merrily We Roll Along,’ which was my first Broadway show, and songs from ‘Company’ and ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ and ‘Passion.'”
Born in Chicago in 1961, Callaway’s family moved to New York City in 1968 for her father’s job at CBS Radio. There, her life was changed when she saw her first ever Sondheim musical “Company” on Broadway in 1970.
“The first Broadway show [I ever saw] was ‘Company,'” Callaway said. “My parents saw the show first and the loved it. They brought home the cast album and I just went crazy for it, then they took my sister and I to see the show and it just stayed with me. There was something about his music. I think I was 8 or 9 when I saw it and ‘Company’ is definitely not a show for 9-year-olds, but it spoke to this 9-year-old.”
A decade later, she made her Broadway debut in “Merrily We Roll Along” (1981), which featured the same composer (Sondheim), writer (George Furth) and director (Hal Prince) in the same exact theater venue (Alvin Theatre) as the life-changing production of “Company” that she saw years earlier. The cast included a young Jason Alexander (“Seinfeld,” “Pretty Woman”) and Giancarlo Esposito (“Do the Right Thing,” “Breaking Bad”).
“I was originally hired as a swing, but then I was in the chorus,” Callaway said. “I had two solo lines, which you can hear on the cast album — I will recreate my two solo lines on Saturday, but I also understudied the female lead. I never went on, but during rehearsals she got sick and I sang her songs for her during some of her rehearsals. I think that’s how Sondheim heard me because he invited me to be a part of some really wonderful concerts.”
Soon after, she played the role of Young Sally in the 1985 Lincoln Center concert production of “Follies,” which was filmed as a documentary with an all-star lineup of Mandy Patinkin, Barbara Cook, George Hearn, Lee Remick, Carol Burnett, Elaine Stritch, Adolph Green and Betty Comden — all accompanied by the New York Philharmonic.
“We did a live recording of it,” Callaway said. “That’s why they did this ‘Follies’ in concert, it was to create a cast album. It won a Grammy Award! I had no idea. This was 1985 and there was no internet, so you just didn’t necessarily find out about things, but it was amazing. I was Young Sally to Barbara Cook’s Sally and the last time I performed in D.C. doing a solo concert was at the Kennedy Center as part of the Barbara Cook Concert Series.”
She also appeared with Sondheim on the iconic TV talk show “Inside the Actors Studio” (1994).
“That was another terrifying experience,” Callaway said. “It was me and Jimmy Walton, who played the lead in ‘Merrily’ on Broadway. We sat like five or six feet from [Sondheim] and as he was being interviewed by James Lipton, we would sing examples of his songs that he would be talking about. We would be singing and there he was right there, so it was a little intimidating, but you can still see it on YouTube.”
Beyond Sondheim, she and her sister Ann Hampton Callaway wrote and sang the TV theme song for the beloved sitcom “The Nanny” (1993-1999) starring Fran Drescher, now the president of SAG-AFTRA.
“She sings lead on it and I sing backup vocals on it: ‘Watch out, C.C.!'” Callaway said. “I remember Ann said, ‘Hey, I’m doing this demo for Fran Drescher,’ having no idea that ‘The Nanny’ would run for years. It’s, to me, one of the great TV theme songs — and when Ann and I do shows and concerts together, we often sing the theme song from ‘The Nanny’ and everyone knows it and they sing along. It’s amazing.”
She also originated the role of Ellen in Broadway’s “Miss Saigon” (1991), sharing the stage with Lea Salonga, who was the singing voice of Jasmine in “Aladdin” (1992), while Callaway provided the singing voice of Jasmine in the “Aladdin” sequels “The Return of Jafar” (1994) and “Aladdin and the King of Thieves” (1996).
Callaway was also a dancing napkin ring in “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), Odette in “The Swan Princess” (1994) and Adult Kiara in “The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride” (1998). She’s best known for Don Bluth’s “Anastasia” (1997) as the singing voice of Anya/Anastasia with spoken dialogue by Meg Ryan, Kirsten Dunst and Lacey Chabert.
“I love the animated movie work I’ve done,” Callaway said. “I just did a tribute to Stephen Flaherty, the composer of ‘Anastasia,’ at Carnegie Hall. I got to sing the Oscar-nominated song ‘Journey to the Past’ from ‘Anastasia.’ That’s one of my favorite jobs I ever had. … I actually met Meg Ryan for the first time at the premiere. … I did get to sing in the movie with Angela Lansbury, who played the grandmother. I had done a Sondheim concert with her in 1983.”
Today, Disney owns the rights to Bluth’s library, including “Anastasia,” after buying 20th Century Fox.
“For years, people thought Anastasia was a Disney princess, but she wasn’t, and now she is,” Callaway said. “At Disney World, there’s beautiful merch now, ‘Anastasia’ merch at Disney World. I need to go to Disney World!”
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