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really promising future – that’s kind of where I found Paulette. I felt like she was someone who had a lot of promise and was really funky and maybe wanted to be in the music business or was a hot groupie or something like that and she just fell on hard times with the wrong guy and everything went south from there.”
The character of Paulette is very different than Orfeh herself, a fact that the actress enjoys.
“She has a heart of gold, is very giving, is just this gregarious creature,” she continues. “She’s very open with her emotions, very out there, no filters as far as emotional highs and lows. As a human being, I’m very even keeled. I really have fun with it.”
One of the aspects of Paulette’s character that is enhanced from the film’s character is her dream of Ireland. Although she has never been to the country, she idealizes it and fantasizes of traveling there and falling in love with a redheaded Irish man. She shares this with Elle while convincing her to not maintain her natural hair color instead of dying it brown to appear more serious.
“She sees it as a way to Elle this story about her life and saying, ‘I can help you out of this. You can’t dye your hair brown. Let me tell you why.’ And then she goes off on this tangent,” says Orfeh of the scene. “It’s really a way to engage Elle and to not let her do something rash. It’s just the way Paulette operates. It’s just a little out there.”
The song, which was crafted at one of the last conceptions of the show’s readings, was performed for the first time by Orfeh, who describes the dream as taking Paulette out of her rut and loneliness and dreaming of something better in her life.
The Irish theme is revisited near the end of the show, when Paulette learns that her hunky UPS crush is Irish and named Kyle B. O’Boyle. This realization takes place during a parade dance number in the second act, which segue ways into an Irish dance number that the entire company participates in. The cast was doubtful about the effect of the Irish dancing, according to Karl, but their opinions soon changed.
“At rehearsals with the producers and in the rehearsal room, we were dancing this Irish dance that comes out of nowhere, and no one was really laughing and it wasn’t really landing,” he says. “And finally we got to the preview in front of an audience. They had scheduled the next day that they were going to cut the Irish dancing. They were not going to have it in this show. We finally get out there and I’m like, ‘You know what? We’re just going to sell this. Orfeh, let’s sell this Irish dancing. The audience is either going to get it and love it, or they’re going to hate it.’ And the audience went ballistic.”
Orfeh and Any ...
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