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Marin Mazzie, a sought-after musical theater actress whose Broadway career earned her three Tony nominations in six years, died Thursday at home in Manhattan. She was 57 years old.
Her husband, actor Jason Danieley, said the cause was ovarian cancer, an illness she had often talked about since she had been diagnosed in 2015.
Ms. Mazzie's impressive career on Broadway spanned three decades, beginning with her debut as a successor in the original production of "Big River" in 1985. Her role was Clara in "Passion," the musical from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine in 1994., for which she was nominated for a Tony as best actress in a musical. (The show itself has been named Best Musical.)
Her next two appearances on Broadway have earned her Tony nominations, both for best actress in a musical. One, in 1998, was for her performance as a stifled mother in "Ragtime". The other, in 2000, was for a role in some respects opposite to Mother: the woman leading the 1999 revival "Kiss Me, Kate, Shakespeare's musical" The Taming of the Shrew ".
Ben Brantley, In a New York Times commendation, Ms. Mazzie's versatility in handling her musical numbers was particularly noteworthy.
"His overly entertaining way of exercising this tremendous exercise of animosity," I hate men, "which here includes a live simulation of childbirth, is moving forward, assuredly," he wrote. "But that does not slip. And when Mrs. Mazzie has to move to a lyrical sincerity, for "So in Love" and "I'm ashamed that women are so simple," her soprano sparkles like polished money. "
Ms. Mazzie continued to perform after her cancer diagnosis, appearing recently on Broadway in 2016 in "The King and I" replacing Kelli O'Hara as Anna.
She has also performed on concert stages and in cabarets all over the country. She and her husband (who now appears on Broadway in "Pretty Woman") often played together, creating two hands of the American songbook. They had to unveil a new one, "Heart to Heart," at the Feinstein / 54 Below nightclub in Manhattan in mid-June, but they had to cancel it because of Ms. Mazzie's health.
Marin Joy Mazzie (pronounced MARE-in MAY-zee) was born on October 9, 1960 in Rockford, Illinois. His father, John, ran a television station and his mother, Donna, was passionate about musical theater. a passion reflected in their record collection.
"I just got stuck on casting albums," Ms. Mazzie told The Associated Press in 1998. "I would play the records in my room and play all the characters."
She started taking singing lessons at the age of 12. Her family then moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she attended Western Michigan University, graduating in 1982 with a minor in music and a major in theater. In 2003, she and another university graduate, actress Barbara Marineau, teamed up for a pair of concerts, the proceeds of which were used to create a musical theater scholarship that is now awarded in their honor. name.
From 1980 to 1982, Mrs. Mazzie was also a "Barnie" working at Barn, a famous summer theater in Kalamazoo. It was a fast training ground that rode a new show every two weeks, with the actors performing repeating the following. She got her actor equity card and she came back several times later as a guest artist.
With the card and the university degree, Ms. Mazzie moved to New York, as a result of a somewhat underrated dream.
"I've always wanted to move to New York and be on Broadway even before I really came here," Ms. Mazzie said years later. "I did not know what one of those two things meant, but that's what I wanted."
She quickly landed a theater-dinner job in Westchester County, in the "Barnum" choir. In 1984, she was shot in a tour version of "Doonesbury", the musical of Garry Trudeau. on Broadway in 1983. This landed him in California, where, at the Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, Mr. Sondheim was reworking another musical that had failed on Broadway, with the direction of Mr. Lapine .
"I met Marin for the first time at the age of 24 and I came to audition for a production of" Merrily We Roll Along "at La Jolla Playhouse," said Mr. Lapine Thursday. "She seemed very young and very simple. She sang "Not a day goes by" with so much strength and beauty that Sondheim and I hired her to play Beth.
"Years later, she came to audition Clara in" Passion ". We were stunned when she entered the room. Suddenly, Marin had become this sexy and beautiful woman. She sang the first song in the series and, again, we hired her on the spot.
Mrs. Mazzie considered her role in "Merrily" as a turning point.
"It was a big break for me in my career," she told BroadwayWorld.com. "To be taught to sing" Not a day goes by "Stephen Sondheim himself? It's something I will never forget.
Back in New York, the connection paid off as Mrs. Mazzie became a replacement in "Into the Woods", the success of Sondheim-Lapine. She then received a lead role in "Passion" alongside Donna Murphy and Jere Shea.
"Passion" began with Ms. Mazzie and Mr. Shea naked in bed singing a duet, a scene that caused some viewers to wonder where the body microphones and the battery transmitters were. (Response, according to a Times Theater column: the microphones were in the wigs, as was Ms. Mazzie's pack, and Mr. Shea's pack was in a pillow.)
Ms. Mazzie's other Broadway credits included the ephemeral game "Enron" (2010) and the musical Woody Allen "Bullets Over Broadway" (2014). One of her most rewarding experiences on Broadway came in 2010, when she and her husband took over from Alice Ripley and Brian of Arcy James as a couple struggling with his manic depression in "Next to Normal ", which opened the year before.
Ms. Mazzie has also worked extensively at Off Broadway and in regional theaters. (She met her future husband while they were both in a 1996 production of Charles L. Mee Jr. "Trojan Women: A Love Story" on the Lower East Side.
In 2008, she sang with the New York Philharmonic in her production of "Camelot" at Avery Fisher Hall.
"Mrs. Mazzie's vocals were bright," wrote Anthony Tommasini in his Times magazine, "and she makes a beautiful Guenevere, her performance grew stronger as the story became darker, and the Queen victorious. who loves her husband very much, finds himself desperately attracted to the noble Lancelot.
She was inducted into the Hall of Fame Theater last year.
Besides her husband, whom she married in 1997, Mrs. Mazzie leaves behind her mother and a brother, Mark.
In May 2015, Miss Mazzie was presenting "Encores!" From the musical "Zorba!" At the New York City Center. The day she opened was the day she was diagnosed with cancer. She continued anyway.
"As I sung with irony," Life is what you do while you wait to die. Life is like time goes by » she told The Times that year, quoting a word from the series.
In "The King and Me" in 2016, Mrs. Mazzie played the teacher who comes to Siam to teach the King's children. She viewed appearance as a chance to increase awareness of ovarian cancer and cancer-related genetic testing.
"I hope I can help someone," she told Playbill. "It was really important and it links Anna too. How she goes to this place to help people and educate them.
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