Among Americans, Tony award-winner (“and four-time Tony award loser,” as she self-deprecates here) Laura Benanti is a well-loved Broadway doyenne. But prior to national treasure status (boosted by her popular Melania Trump skits in recent years), she was a blushing innocent, performing on the Great White Way aged 18, being propositioned by bigshot producers and breaking her neck in a revival of Into the Woods. A “pathological people pleaser,” she didn’t raise a fuss, and the injury was covered up.
This eyebrow-raising history contains quite enough to justify a 65-minute solo show about being, in Benanti’s words, a “recovering ingenue”. And when that’s what Nobody Cares is, it’s at its strongest. Delivered with musical director Todd Almond plus two-piece backing band, the show is cringingly funny about the younger Benanti’s conflict avoidance, as she lurches from one disastrous relationships to another and squirms out of a marriage proposal in the least appropriate way imaginable.
