The most happy actress: Patti Cohenour left Broadway behind for a life — and a garden — in Gig Harbor
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Why is Patti Cohenour logging a two-hour daily commute between Gig Harbor and Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre, instead of basking in the bright lights of Broadway?
The answer: two gardens.
One is "The Secret Garden," the show that introduced her exceptional gifts to many Seattle theatergoers in 1999 — and led to her current starring role in the 5th Avenue version of "The Most Happy Fella," opening Thursday.
The other is the lush garden this award-winning veteran of Broadway's "Phantom of the Opera" and "The Sound of Music" always longed for — even when her New York career was zooming.
That's the garden she carries photos of in her purse, showing off snapshots of her prize roses with beaming pride.
"It's funny, because I turned down a role in 'The Secret Garden' on Broadway," declared petite, vivacious Cohenour, on a recent rehearsal break. "I said I wanted to be able to have a real garden, instead of just singing about one."
In pursuit of that dream, Cohenour moved to the Puget Sound area with her photographer husband, Tom, who has family here. In 1991, they found a big house near Gig Harbor — "a real mess, but one we thought we could fix up."
To help pay for it, Cohenour signed on to star in an 18-month Canadian tour of "Phantom of the Opera," in the lead female role of Christine — whom she also played on Broadway as Sarah Brightman's alternate.
"I'd do a few weeks on tour," she recalls with amusement, "then race home and do some dry-walling on the house for a week."
Happily, Cohenour is finding theatrical employment closer to home these days. A delicate-featured, very youthful woman of 49, she pulled off playing an ingenue half that age in Intiman Theatre's 2001 version of "The Servant of Two Masters."
She has also appeared at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, in the revue "Oh, Coward!" And at the 5th Avenue, Cohenour was a poignantly lovely, dulcet-voiced ghost in "The Secret Garden," and returned to depict the feisty Abigail Adams in last year's "1776."
Local directors seem delighted by Cohenour's participation in the Seattle theater scene.
"Patti's a local living treasure, a real treat," says Intiman artistic head Bartlett Sher, who directed "Servant of Two Masters."
"What's most amazing about working with her is Patti's incredible courage. She flung herself into that ingenue role with great bravery, and took it all the way."
"Patti is an extraordinary talent," chimes in 5th Avenue honcho David Armstrong. 'There's a reason Patti's been in so many Broadway shows, and in such demand. She has a beautiful, operatic voice, and such emotional power and immediacy on stage."
Armstrong actually chose "The Most Happy Fella" for this season specifically "because it had a perfect part for (Patti)."
That is the bittersweet role of Rosabella, a lonely San Francisco waitress who gets caught in a love triangle when an older Napa Valley vintner, Tony (opera veteran Julian Patrick), woos her from afar by pretending to be a handsome young ranch foreman (Cheyenne Jackson).
Long before she was a leading lady, growing up in her family's rural home outside Albuquerque, Cohenour nursed two passions. Music was one of them. "My parents sang, did operas together," she recalls. "And they had their own radio program, 'Sweetheart Time,' where they sang songs from all those old Jeanette McDonald-Nelson Eddy operettas."
Praised early for her own untrained but crystal-clear lyric soprano voice, Cohenour dreamed of being an actress. But she also loved "the solitude and peace of the wide-open spaces of New Mexico — the deer, the big sky."
For a long time, show biz won out. After college, Cohenour worked as a backup singer, then hit New York and booked big roles in such Broadway hits as "Big River" (an adaptation of "Huckleberry Finn"), and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" (for which she earned a Tony Award nomination). Cohenour also alternated with her good friend, pop star Linda Ronstadt, as the tragic Mimi in an English-language version of Puccini's "La Bohème."
More recently Cohenour was cast, very much against type, as the Mother Superior in a popular 1998 Broadway revival of "The Sound of Music." Every night, she brought the house down singing "Climb Ev'ry Mountain."
But there have been valleys in her career, along with the peaks. In the early '80s, Cohenour starred in the Harold Prince musical "A Doll's Life," which bombed out after five performances on Broadway. While on her tour in "Phantom," she fractured her back, and a misdiagnosis delayed her recovery. And Cohenour lost her mother in 1995, "which really derailed me for a while."
"I"ve been hurt by this business on so many levels," she admits. "After my mom's death, I really got down to an ember. I didn't have the fire anymore."
Working on the Seattle theater scene with local directors and actors she respects ("I can't believe the talent in this city!") helped reignite her.
She's now engrossed in "Most Happy Fella," singing the charming songs in Frank Loesser's 1957 show, working happily alongside Patrick, Jackson, Lisa Estridge-Gray and others.
Yet no matter how late rehearsals or shows go, Cohenour always makes the long drive back to Gig Harbor. She would happily return to Broadway for a spell, "if the right project comes along."
But when at home in Western Washington, her dog and cat, and her Gig Harbor garden, take priority.
"The other actors can't believe I go home every night. But that's my quiet, my Zen," she says. "That's what makes everything else possible."
Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com.
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