Laura Benanti says she is “blessed to be a chameleon.”
Her context is unexpected.
She is not referring to being an actress who’s played dozens of roles, many of them — Cinderella in “Into the Woods,” Amalia Balash in “She Loves Me,” Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady,” Liesl in “The Sound of Music,” which began the skein, or Louise, read Gypsy Rose Lee, in “Gypsy,” for which she received the 2008 Tony — among the most significant in musical theater. Or even the part that earned her the widest public recognition, Melania Trump, in years of skits on “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert.
She isn’t talking about singing or concerts or doing cabaret shows either.
Or playing any scripted character in a standard performance.
She’s talking about a lifelong ability to express her personal life in any way that suits her creative impulse of the moment.
“From the time I was a child, I made up songs on the spot, told stories that got laughs when I wasn’t trying to be funny, and wrote down my impressions of situations as well as things I was thinking and feeling,” Benanti says in a Zoom interview from a Halsted Avenue Airbnb in Chicago, where later that night she would demonstrate her original words, stories, ideas and songs, written with Todd Almond, in a one-woman show, “Nobody Cares,” which has made the rounds from Edinburgh to off-Broadway and arrives at New Brunswick’s George Street Playhouse for five performances from August 26 to 30.
“Nobody Cares” is pretty freewheeling. Benanti says the show can appeal to many audiences. Like a stand-up comic, she reads the room as she does the show. It is, she says, decidedly not for children.
“It’s R-rated, definitely geared for the 16+ crowd,” she says. “In Edinburgh, there were children in the audience, and I had to edit my script because there are some words I just can’t bring myself to say in front of kids.
“I’ll tell you this. Not saying those words made ‘Nobody Cares’ a much shorter show.”
Benanti says she cannot categorize “Nobody Cares.”
“It’s not a musical. It’s not a comedy. It’s not a stand-up act. Even though it has original songs, lots of jokes and lots of stories.
“It’s me relating episodes of my life, including career, childhood, motherhood, in my own way, the way I’ve always written things down, expressed thoughts and created impromptu songs.”
The songs in “Nobody Cares” are not impromptu, at least not as planned. Benanti wrote them with singer-songwriter Todd Almond, whom she’s known since they were children.
Benanti says the stories in “Nobody Cares” can be self-deprecating, even downright embarrassing, but are a decent review of things she’s thought, experienced and learned through life.
The title itself is a joke.
“When I started writing the show, mostly out of an impulse to write, I kept thinking nobody cares what I have to say. Nobody cares to share my narcissistic journey through life.
“Then I figured young women will care. Men will care. Menopausal women will certainly care.”
The irony and humor go on. After mentioning she enjoys seeing how different groups respond to her stories and songs, Benanti says, “I had some particular groups in mind when I began conceiving ‘Nobody Cares,’ namely people who pathologically work at pleasing people and people who are recovering from pathologically working to please people.
“I fit into both groups.”
Despite being a lifelong writer, Benanti did not sit down one day and decide to write a play.
“It was commissioned,” she says. “Audible, the company that owns the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, looks for original work that can begin there. Several artists have done shows there. Audible called me, and I said an immediate ‘yes.’ I began working on what I could do, then enlisted Todd (Almond) to work with me on the songs.
“Although I’ve been writing since I was a little girl, I never shared anything I’d written. I kept it all to myself.
“Songs are different. I made up songs my whole life, but I performed some of them at 54 Below and other clubs.”
Once again, Benanti cautions anyone against calling “Nobody Cares” a musical.
“It’s a story that includes funny songs.”
Finding out she was funny was an interesting discovery for Benanti.
“I didn’t aim to be funny, but I’d start telling a story, and people would laugh. Big laughs. I became known among people I knew as someone who could make people laugh.
“When I was performing and telling a story in which people laughed, sometimes unexpectedly or inappropriately, I began noting what I said when that happened.
“I began honing jokes more carefully. I continued to get laughs when I didn’t intend them, but I incorporated what I realized was getting a response into shows.
“Then there was Twitter. As a lark, I would write remarks or vignettes on Twitter — this was before it was ‘X’ — and people recognized me as funny.
“It was challenging, too. You had to tell the stories, zingers and all, in 140 characters.
“People began following me, and I realized I can do ‘this,’ I can make people laugh and come back for more.”
Benanti found fame she did not expect when she agreed to play Melania Trump on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
“It was supposed to be a one-off, a single appearance in a sketch and then good-bye.
“It didn’t work out that way. Melania figured into several sketches, eventually on purpose, and all of a sudden, more people know me, I’m talking about millions, than ever saw me on Broadway or from anything else I’d done on television.”
Benanti is proud of being in New Jersey and bringing “Nobody Cares” to the George Street Playhouse in her home state, one in which she still resides.
Although she comes from a show business family, her parents were not encouraging about her pursuing a career in the theater.
“They said, ‘No.’
“That didn’t mean I couldn’t perform at all,” Benanti says. “I knew I was going to be an actress since I was a child. I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to do.
“Going professional was out, but I could be in shows at Kinnelon High School in Morris County, and so I was. I played leads. My biggest question at the start of every school year was, ‘What show are we doing?’
“I began college at NYU, but was allowed to audition for a professional tour of ‘The Sound of Music.’ I was 17, but the people holding the auditions thought I looked too old to play any of the von Trapp kids, even Liesl. They liked my voice, so I was cast as one of the nuns. Eventually, I played Liesl.”
Benanti was in one musical I never got to see, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” because it closed so soon after opening. I had to ask her what went wrong because every time I listen to the original cast album, I marvel at the variety of David Yazbek’s score. Like all of Yazbek, it has that wonderful juxtaposition between high culture and bathos.
“What happened, Laura?”
“We opened too soon. We weren’t ready. There were so many threads in the story, they could not be knit together in time for the musical to make total sense.”
Benanti says she is gratified to be using so many different parts of herself in “Nobody Cares.” It is on a mini-tour of sorts, New Brunswick being one stop among several. Touring is new to Benanti. New Brunswick is at least just down the road from her New Jersey home. Baltimore, Los Angeles and Arlington, Va., are other stops Benanti will make this season.