Richard Skipper Celebrates Joanna Gleason: Out of The Eclipse 5/28/2022

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It was in Michael Stewart and Cy Coleman’s musical I Love My Wife (1977) – a satire on wife-swapping – that Gleason made her Broadway debut, playing Monica, for which she won a Theatre World Award. She returned to Broadway in a 1985 revival of Peter Nichols’s play Joe Egg. Along with Marlo Thomas and Olympia Dukakis, Gleason was a member of the opening-night cast of Andrew Bergman’s comedy Social Security (1986), for which Gleason won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. Although she had already gained attention and honors for her stage work, her performance as the Baker’s Wife in Stephen Sondheim’s wry fairy-tale musical Into the Woods (1987) made her a Broadway leading lady. The musical itself won Tonys® for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score, and Gleason earned a Tony® for Best Actress in a Musical. Her singing is preserved on the original Broadway cast recording. In the Thin Man-inspired musical Nick and Nora (1991) by Arthur Laurents, Charles Strouse, and Richard Maltby Jr., Gleason played the leading lady, and in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005). A familiar presence in movies and on television, Gleason appeared in two of Woody Allen’s films – as Tony Roberts’s embarrassed wife in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and as Allen’s spouse in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). In Boogie Nights, she played Mark Wahlberg’s abusive mother. On television, she was a regular on the CBS sitcom Love & War as the restaurant waitress Nadine Berkus. Other series in which Gleason appeared regularly are Hello, Larry; Temporarily Yours; Oh Baby; and Bette. She is married to the actor Chris Sarandon.