Happy Birthday to three-time Tony nominee Mary Testa, born June 4, 1955, in Philadelphia. Raised in Rhode Island, she studied acting at Univ. of Rhode Island, where she landed her first singing role in William Finn’s Scrambled Eggs. The summer before her senior year, she worked three jobs to earn enough money to move to New York, and she left school to begin her career. Finn asked her to be in his new musical Jocks, which he staged in his apartment. Testa was also in Finn’s next apartment musical, In Trousers, which Playwrights Horizons premiered in 1979, marking Testa’s Off-Broadway debut.
The following year, she was in the Playwrights Horizons revival of Company and made her Broadway debut in Barnum. She returned to Broadway in the short-lived musical Marilyn (1983), then as Liza Minnelli’s standby in The Rink (1984). Testa’s Off-Broadway work included the musicals Life Is Not a Doris Day Movie (1982), The Knife (1987), Lucky Stiff (1988), and One Two Three Four Five (1988). Below is Testa with Seth Rudetksy, singing “Colored Lights” from The Rink and “Thank God I’m Old” from Barnum, and with pianist Jack Beetle, singing “Nice” from Lucky Stiff.
Between The Rink and the 1996 Broadway revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Testa kept busy Off-Broadway, including the musicals Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (1992) and Scapin (1993). Other highlights of the decade include On the Town (1997), which brought Testa an Obie and her first Tony nomination, as well as Finn’s A New Brain (1998), Michael John LaChiusa’s Marie Christine (1999), and the Encores! presentation of Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 (1999). Below is Testa singing “That Dirty Old Man” from Forum and “Change” from A New Brain (at 3:05).
Testa earned her second Tony nod for the 2001 revival of 42nd Street. Her other Broadway work included the revival of Chicago (2005), Xanadu (2007), which earned her a Drama Desk nod, and the 2009 revival of Guys and Dolls. Her Off-Broadway work included LaChiusa’s First Lady Suite (2004), the play String of Pearls (2004), and LaChiusa’s See What I Want to See (2005), which each brought her Drama Desk nods. Below is Testa with Jackie Hoffman in “Evil Woman” from Xanadu and with Tituss Burgess in “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” from Guys and Dolls (at 3:25).
Testa began the next decade with work in the Off-Broadway musicals I’ll Be Damned (2010), Queen of the Mist (2011), which brought her a Lortel nomination and a special Drama Desk Award, and Disaster! (2013). She also appeared in the musical web series Submissions Only (2011) and as Mme. Morrible in the Broadway musical Wicked (2014). Below is Testa with the cast of Queen of the Mist and with Jonathan Freeman singing “Dry from the Rain” in Submissions Only.
Testa’s recent work includes: the feature film Big Stone Gap (2014); the award-winning indie short The Mother (2015); LaChiusa’s First Daughter Suite (2015), which brought her Drama Desk and Lortel nominations; the 2019 revival of Oklahoma!, which brought her Tony, Drama Desk, and Grammy nominations; and the TikTok musical Ratatouille (2020). Below is Testa singing “The Lonesome Pine” from Big Stone Gap and “In the Deep Bosom of the Ocean Buried” from First Daughter Suite.