30
winter
|
spring
Cady and Jeannie were members
of the high-kicking San Marcos
High Marquettes. We enjoyed a
soulful reunion with Cady at the
apartment over drinks and food
from the Grand Central Station
Market. As the night unfolded, we
swapped rich Santa Barbara stories,
memories, and laughter.
Having a Santa Barbara kid
go on to win a Tony is pretty
dang exciting. Cady was warm,
generous, and transparently
candid about her experiences
and colleagues from
Nathan Lane
and
Matthew Broderick
to
Bob Fosse
. A role in
La Cage Aux Folles
brought her to Broadway,
followed by being cast by Fosse for his last production,
Big Deal
. Her
admiration for his artistry and the respect with which he treated his
dancers radiated as she relived the unparalleled experience of that
production. Sadly, it closed after only two months on Broadway.
“I really believe it was some of his finest work, but it was not
acknowledged by the critics,” lamented Cady. Bob Fosse died shortly
after the production closed. She learned of his death reading the
cover of a paper being read by a passenger sitting across from her on
a subway train. She said she “just began to shake and crumbled with
emotion,” when she read the news.
THE PRODUCERS
C
ady’s story of the development of the stage version of
The
Producers
could have lasted days, but we got the highlights. “We
knew we had something when we did table readings for producers and
they were in hysterics,” she recalls. “The show really did not change
from readings to the tryout in Chicago and subsequent arrival on
Broadway. The buzz was so big in New York before we even arrived;
there were huge lines for tickets. The New York production sold out
rapidly. We were all living in a bubble. We were like a family. We
partied and had a blast. I felt like I was one of The Beatles. When
Nathan, Matthew, and I would go out for dinner, they had to place
someone at our table to keep the fans from descending on us.”
Then, after only a couple months of performances, came Tony
night. Cady wore a low-cut black dress and about a million dollars’
worth of Harry Winston diamonds. “When they called my name,
everything shifted into slow motion,” Cady tells us. “It was my
ultimate dream come true. All the great training I got in Santa Barbara
paid off.” She still has the legs and arched feet any dancer would envy,
but now Cady pursues top-of-the-line acting and singing roles, and
hopes to add another Tony to her collection.
She can currently be seen in the Netflix comedy series
Master of
None
with Aziz Ansari, and appeared in November at 54 Below in the
musical revue
Our Guy, Cy
with Judy Kay and Randy Graff.
Cady Huffman
(left)
starred in
Oliver!
at San
Marcos High School before Broadway nabbed her
– ON THE ARTS
“When they called my name [during the Tony Awards], everything
shifted into slow motion. It was my ultimate dream come true. All the
great training I got in Santa Barbara paid off.”
–
Tony Winner Cady Huffman
