Teri Ralston -- a star comes home

Tom Titus

Teri Ralston is home again, in Laguna Beach, but the celebrated

musical theater star hasn’t left the Broadway stage for good, just

until the next big role comes along.

The veteran singer/actress/director has amassed a long and

impressive list of credits on Broadway, in L.A. theater and on

television since she played the teenage Luisa in a Laguna Playhouse

production of “The Fantasticks” back in 1965 -- including three

featured roles as a member of an original Broadway cast.

These days, Ralston is in residence at the Laguna home she’s owned

for 15 years -- that is, on those rare occasions when she’s not

teaching a class in musical theater at South Coast Repertory or UC

Irvine, or directing (as she’s currently doing) a production of “Side

Show” at the Academy for the Performing Arts in Santa Ana.

“I feel like I’ve finally come home,” said the ebullient actress,

who also has a house in Los Angeles, but is most comfortable in

Laguna.

Small wonder. Born in Colorado, she moved to the Art Colony at the

age of 12 and soon fell under the influence of favorite teacher Joan

Lee Woenhiller, who plucked young Teri from one of her classes and

entered the then-inexperienced student in an Orange County theater

competition in a scene from the play “Hello, Out There.”

Ralston won a best actress award for that effort -- the first of a

plethora of honors which would fall her way -- and her career choice

was cemented.

As a college student, she returned to Laguna for her “Fantasticks”

role, in a production that also featured Mike Farrell (“M*A*S*H,”

“Providence”) as El Gallo.

Ralston has come a long way since that summer production of “The

Fantasticks” in Laguna. Bernadette Peters may be the definitive

Stephen Sondheim musical actress, but Ralston must be right behind

her.

She performed in the original productions of Sondheim’s “Company”

and “A Little Night Music” -- which she left, incidentally, to star

in “Annie Get Your Gun” at the Irvine Bowl -- as well as the

lesser-known musical “The Baker’s Wife.”

She has directed and performed in a tribute to the composer, “Side

by Side by Sondheim” with Peggy Lee. She’s also played Sally in two

productions of “Follies,” as well as Mama Rose in “Gypsy” -- all

Sondheim creations.

As a director, Ralston has helmed Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” at

USC, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” in Alaska and

“A Little Night Music” in Thousand Oaks.

She joined the reunion of the original “Company” cast at the Long

Beach Civic Light Opera and New York’s Lincoln Center.

And that’s just the Sondheim section of her credits. The Laguna

actress/director has headlined in productions of “I’m Getting My Act

Together and Taking It on the Road” and “Jacques Brel is Alive and

Well and Living in Paris” -- her first show in New York.

She starred as “Mame” at the South Bay Civic Light Opera and has

directed “Man of La Mancha,” “My One and Only,” “Me and My Girl” and

“No, No, Nanette.”

She’s not exclusively a musical actress, either. Ralston has been

featured in a number of straight plays, including SCR’s original

production of Craig Lucas’ “Prelude to a Kiss,” Neil Simon’s “Jake’s

Women” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” and “The Octette Bridge Club.”

TV audiences have seen Ralston on “Frasier,” “Dharma and Greg,”

“Wings,” “Murder She Wrote,” “One Day at a Time,” “Married with

Children” and the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

Her awards, including a “woman of the year” accolade in this

column, would fill several volumes, but one she’s most appreciative

of came just this past April when the Arts Orange County proclaimed

her the outstanding individual artist of 2001 in the performing arts.

“I really love being back in Laguna,” she says, noting that she’s

been renting her L.A. digs to such personages as Chita Rivera. “I had

set out to find a way of staying in Laguna. I guess you really can go

home again.”

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.