VICTORIA CLARK
Actress-singer Victoria Clark, who won her Tony Award for her beautifully moving and thrillingly sung performance in Lincoln Center Theater's production of The Light in the Piazza, is re-teaming with her Piazza conductor Ted Sperling (also a Piazza Tony winner, for Best Orchestrations with Adam Guettel and Bruce Coughlin) for The Vicki and Ted Show, which will play Feinstein's at Loews Regency Oct. 20-24. The concerts celebrate the 30th anniversary of Clark and Sperling's friendship, which began at Yale University and continued to Broadway with leading roles in the Tony-winning musical Titanic (Clark was second class passenger Alice Beane with Sperling as second class passenger, orchestra leader Wallace Hartley). Prior to their Feinstein's bow, we thought it would be fun to pose a similar set of questions independently to both Clark and Sperling; their answers follow:

When and how did you and Ted/Vicki meet?
Vicki: We met after a performance of Pirates of Penzance at Yale. I was a freshman. He was still a senior in high school. I know this because Ted keeps telling me. I don't remember. I remember meeting him Christmas caroling on the steps of a house in New Haven December 1929. I mean 1979!! Yikes! Hard to believe I met him when he was nearly my own son's age. Shocking!

Ted: We first met backstage after a performance of the Yale Gilbert and Sullivan Society's production of The Pirates of Penzance, in which Vicki was playing Mabel and my cousin Nina was playing Ruth. I don't think I made much of an impression. We then met again on the steps of the music library at Yale the following year when I was a freshman, and my memory is that Vicki sort of brushed me off as a fan! Then we really met a few months later, singing Christmas carols on the streets of New Haven with the Battell Chapel Choir, the only professional choir at Yale. We were singing the same part (I specialized in countertenor at the time), and quickly became fast friends.

	Victoria Clark and Ted Sperling
	photo by Laura Marie Duncan

What's your favorite memory of working with Ted/Vicki?
Vicki: I have so many — it is really hard to pick just one. Any time I am singing onstage and see Ted conducting in the pit, I feel better. I have a good feeling in my gut — I know I am home. He has that effect on lots of people, not just me, but I would like to just put it out there and say, hey, I knew him when, and he has always made me feel better when he is in the rehearsal room or in the orchestra pit or onstage next to us. Sometimes, it is scary, he knows me so well, he already knows where I am going to breathe, and working on this show, we are finding when we sing together, we can anticipate all kinds of things like breaths, phrasing, etc. We are sort of mind-melded! Vulcan ancestry I guess.

What do you think makes Ted such a great musical director-accompanist/Vicki such a great performer?
Vicki: Ted loves actors! Ted is an actor at heart, as well as a leader, and musician. You will find him quietly sitting in rehearsal, knitting, or listening, and lending his valuable insightful input, and then he is an absolute genius orchestrator and conductor. But you will also find him laughing harder than anyone at something funny. He works hard, he plays hard. He has tremendous respect for what actors do, and what we go through.

Ted: Her talent is immense, she is extremely smart, and her natural gifts are very special, but it is really her extraordinary work ethic and dedication to her craft that make Vicki the great artist she is... I don't know anyone else who does as much research and soul-searching in preparing a role as Vicki does.

What's your favorite song in the new show?
Vicki: It's a surprise!!!

Ted: I think it's actually the oldest song, the one we first sang together at Yale: "Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil." It's one of Irving Berlin's signature "double melody" songs, where two completely different tunes work perfectly on top of each other.

If you could go back in time and work with any other Broadway artist, who would it be?
Vicki: Mary Martin, Moss Hart, George Kaufman, Eva La Gallienne...I could go on and on...

Ted: Wow. So many choices. I'm fascinated by Ethel Merman, and would love to have been a part of the original Gypsy. I have had the great fortune to work on a few projects with Stephen Sondheim, and he kindly shared some choice Merman stories with me.

What don't people know about Ted/Vicki that they should?
Vicki: He is a major foodie. The way to that man's heart is through his tummy!

Ted: She makes incredible banana bread. Continued...