BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Diana Vreeland loved RED! The legendary editor of Vogue really talked like that -- all italics and exclamation points.
Brenda Vaccaro is the Oscar- and Tony-nominated and Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actress who will play Ms. Vreeland in the regional premiere of the off-Broadway, one-woman smash Full Gallop at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati.
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IF YOU GO
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What: Full Gallop.
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 1.
Where: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine.
Tickets: $22, $17 students and seniors. 421-3555.
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Ms. Vaccaro scrunches her nose as she makes a confession. She's not crazy about red.
Tucked in a corner booth at Orchids in the Omni Netherland Hotel, sipping tea with lemon and honey in those quiet hours between lunch and dinner, her handsome, so-Gallic husband within arm's reach, Ms. Vaccaro held forth on a life in the theater, the part, her pals and good advice she's gotten along the way.
Ms. Vaccaro talks in italics and exclamation points, too, with extra exclamation points added with hands that wave and jab through the air, almost without pause. Hey, she says, I'm Italian; we talk with our hands. Off-stage, her foghorn voice carries her regional heritage: She was born in Brooklyn, reared in Texas.
If you're wondering what brings Brenda Vaccaro with her three decades of credentials -- movies from Midnight Cowboy to The Mirror Has Two Faces, Broadway from Cactus Flower to Jake's Women -- to a small professional theater in Over-the-Rhine, it's the work. And the conviction that ETC is a good small professional theater.
Ms. Vaccaro originally played Diana Vreeland last spring for the Los Angeles run of Full Gallop.
When she was asked to do it, "I read it and said "Of course. Gulp.' "
For an actor, a one-person show is like performing without a net. "I'm Italian," she says. "I like a big table, a lotta people, a lotta love, a lotta food." What she doesn't like being is "alone out there."
Learning the one-woman show, she says, was one of the greatest challenges she had ever taken on. If there are tricks to memorizing that much dialogue, "I don't know them," she says dryly.
The L.A. experience was scary and satisfying and the role was terrific.
When a role is good, she says, "and you've taken a little rest from it, you go back and think. You miss it, you want to do it again.
"There's more confidence, you have a hold of it in a different way." She laughs. There are roles you don't want to go back to, too. "I've had a few of those."
Her star turn in Cincinnati may just be connected to a piece of advice given her by actress - director pal Lee Grant years ago: "When the work is there, take it."
Looking back, Ms. Vaccaro says, she thinks maybe she turned down more than she should have. You never know where something will lead.
Another pal, Sally Struthers, will be making a whistle stop in town as rotten Miss Hannigan in the national tour of Annie coinciding with the run of Full Gallop.
Ms. Vaccaro is looking forward to getting together with her former co-star in a gender-bending The Odd Couple from a few years back.
Just before starting rehearsals for Full Gallop, Ms. Vaccaro finished a guest shot on the new CBS sitcomThe King of Queens, playing a romantic interest for yet another old pal, Jerry Stiller. The episode is scheduled to air in November.
