'Jackie' moves to Broadway: Margaret Colin successfully re-creates an icon
The wig and the little-girl voice. That's where the transformation begins, says Margaret Colin, to change the actress into Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- first lady, fashion leader, media icon and now, Broadway star.
The metamorphosis occurs nightly in "Jackie An American Life," a freewheeling comedy that gives Colin one of the biggest challenges of her career She is playing a woman permanently fixed in the collective consciousness of an entire country.
The play is in preview performances at Broadway's Belasco Theater; it opens Nov. 10.
Colin, best known for her roles as the president's secretary in the film "Independence Day" and intrepid detective Margo Hughes on the television soap "As the World Turns," doesn't really look much like Jackie at all.
"It's a 'dare us' kind of thing," she said the other day, in describing her attempt to re-create the readily recognizable woman.
"Jackie was 5-foot-7; I'm ... mmmmm ... taller -- it depends on who's asking," Colin says with a laugh. "And, OF COURSE, we're the same weight."
"Jackie An American Life" was born at the Hasty Pudding Theater in Cambridge five years ago. Written and directed by Gip Hoppe, the play was so successful it moved across the river to Boston for an extended run.
Eight actors portray 150 characters -- only Colin plays one person -- in telling the story of the woman who married John F. Kennedy, survived his assassination, and went on to wed Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
"I believe Jackie was quite the actress herself," Colin says. "She turned a lot on to accomplish what she wanted to a specific persona, to be an effective politician's wife. She established a demeanor that was appropriate, enormously polite and incredibly educated.
"Her education was really remarkable. She kept growing and using that. Then she would define her boundaries in terms of how much she would let people in."
Where did Colin go to capture the woman? Mountains of film and videotape, she says. Scores of newspaper articles, magazine pieces and books -- but not Kitty Kelly's pulpy examination -- of the woman also were invaluable.
Besides those wigs and Jackie's very specific make-up, there also were the clothes, Colin says, constricted, formfitting 1960s suits that don't allow for the looseness of '90s fashion. They helped bring the character in focus for her.
To learn her breathy, Marilyn Monroe-esque voice, Colin watched videotapes of the woman -- campaigning for her husband during Kennedy's run for the presidency in 1960 (speaking in both English and Spanish) and, of course, her celebrated tour of the White House broadcast on CBS.
"The voice was quite amazing -- creating a 'deer in the headlights' kind of thing," Colin says. "It projected a quiet demeanor and a sweetness. Jackie didn't have that '90s bark, so common today. But the softness of it makes it difficult to be heard in the theater."
Yet the woman behind the voice was totally different. In public, her duty was to be the politician's perfect wife, staying in the background and being so polite, Colin says.
"Yet Jackie could be assertive and controlling and manipulative in her own world, even if she didn't sound like she was -- at least when we heard her. It is the contradiction between the private woman and the public woman.
"No one stays in the foreground of the American people's mind as Jackie did for so long unless it was deliberate. Think how many people would love to be where she was."
Colin, the daughter of a New York police officer, grew up on Long Island. Her Irish-American family certainly had an interest in John Kennedy, particularly because he was Catholic, she says.
She herself never saw Jackie in person. She also never saw "Jackie" in any of its Boston incarnations.
"After reading the script, I thought it was a little wacky for my taste," she says with a laugh. "It is theater-conceit intensive. It breaks the unities -- time and space continually change. There are loads of props, including 35-foot puppets. And it also breaks the fourth wall with characters addressing the audience.
"Still, I was intrigued. In a weird way, it was like my role in 'Independence Day,' where I got to do quite a lot. And in this play I certainly do, too."
Photo by The Associated Press
Actress Margaret Colin portrays Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in "Jackie An American Life," opening Nov. 10 on Broadway.