The new Broadway Finian's Rainbow has a story that goes from heart-breaking to heart-warming.
When Terri White, as Dottie, Rainbow Valley's strong-willed and seemingly only woman of a certain age, delivers "Necessity" and turns it into a late Act-One showstopper, she knows of what she sings. The daughter of black vaudevillians, she's been singing and dancing since age eight. She enjoyed early success making her Broadway debut in Barnum opposite Jim Dale and Glenn Close.
"Terri was a bubbling ball of fun during the rehearsals and run of Barnum," states Dale. "She played Joice Heth, 'the oldest woman in the World,' to perfection. She brought down the house very early in the show singing, 'Thank God I'm Old!' Barnum would have been humbugged without her. She was a joy of a performer!"
She followed the Cy Coleman/Michael Stewart musical by stepping into Ain't Misbehavin' and a later role in the short-lived, Welcome to the Club.
She worked regionally, such as in a production of Nunsense, and appeared with Liza Minnelli at Radio City Music Hall.
Working for tips, she sang regularly at piano bars, such as Rose's Turn and the long-gone 88s in Greenwich Village. When piano bars went out of fashion, gigs were hard to find. "I couldn't pay my rent and was evicted. For several months, I crashed in friends' pads."
She was too embarrassed to apply for help from city agencies or outreach orgs such as the Actors Fund. Few in the acting community knew of Ms. White's situation. Shows close and actors move on. At one low point, she was sleeping on a Washington Square Park bench. Singing at whatever club that would hire her, she took advantage of their restrooms to wash up. Somehow, she managed the money for a basic cell phone and went to audition after audition.
"There was nothing," she states. "I felt washed up." In a stroke of karma, in 2008 police officer David Taylor recognized Ms. White. Hearing her story, he arranged for her to have a rent-free basement apartment in New Jersey. When she got invited to sing at a Florida supper club, it was a new beginning. That trip led to more than a new beginning. She met jewelry designer Donna Barnett and romance ensued.
When she heard about auditions for Encores!' Finian's Rainbow, she let it be known she had performed in a production when she was a child. She was gifted with airfare and hopped a plane to New York, auditioned for Carlyle, wowed him, and was cast. Now 61, she says, "What a blessing this has been. I've found my pot of gold. I pinch myself every day to make sure it's not a dream."
