Two-time Emmy Award-winner, stage and screen actress Sally Struthers, scheduled to perform a four-week Gateway run in “The Full Monty,” spoke recently to theAdvance,with executive artistic director Paul Allan, between rehearsals.
Struthers is candid and funny. Known for engaging with Gateway staff regularly, having coffee and discussing work and life, she greeted Baxter, company manager Christopher Smith’s Boston terrier and Gateway’s informal mascot, as he nosed in Allan’s office to greet her.
Were there similarities between her character Jeanette Burmeister, the sassy, wise-cracking piano player who pushes six unemployed Buffalo steelworkers desperate for work to support themselves and their families to perform?
“Yes, I’m wise-cracking and I’m old enough to say what I think,” she answered. “I did take piano lessons when I was young, but got out of it. Jeanette’s married. I married once and that was enough.”
But wait. “Jeanette’s kind of done with her career,” said Allan. “Sally isn’t.”
Struthers has starred in at least 80 Broadway and regional theater productions, then five at Gateway, she said. Many have been at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine. And a recent show, “An Old-Fashioned Family Murder” by Joe DiPietro, was performed last fall at New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse.
(This lady works. Her prestigious list of film and television roles includes Gloria, of the hit show “All In the Family”; a recurring role in the CBS show “Still Standing”; Netflix’s acclaimed “Gilmore Girls”; and 2024’s “A Man on the Inside.”)
“Jeanette is an optimist,” Struthers said.“She tries to teach the men when they’re trying to copy a hot dance. (Think Chippendales. Sort of.) They’re all stripped down in their underwear and have to get used to it, and I have to be unfazed as Jeanette.”
Struthers pointed out a current-day similarity. “People have lost their jobs and have to pay their bills,” she said. “It’s interesting how these six guys come to be and you’re with them. Three are married and three are not. You get to meet their wives and there’s a child in there. There’s enough pathos and heart in this show.”
The breakout numbers include the end of Act One. “The men get together to learn their choreography in a funny number,” Allan said.
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