T S HO E ST OR E

from Portland Monthly Magazine MAY 2023

The Miracle of Acorns

why she works so well?

She does cross generations. She says, I’m young and vibrant and able to communicate. I’ve based her on an Armenian woman I knew who was a scholar at UCLA. A good soul, but domineering. Believing she had all the answers. Intergenerational. Whatever generation she’s talking to, she travels toward, connects with.

Shares confdences with. Yes! She’s used as a bridge.

I’m sorry for your loss of your brother Peter last summer [https://www.pressherald.com/2022/07/24/obituaryjohn-peter-martin/].

ank you.

I knew and liked him. We went to Ledgemere Country Day School in Cape Elizabeth at the same time, both of us profled as troublemakers. But after re-education at Ledgmere, we walked the walk, wore the jodhpurs. I went to Ledgemere! I wore jodhpurs!

Andrea Martin, Anna Kendrick, Liv Tyler, Judd Nelson, Linda Lavin. The Portland 5? That’s a workable ensemble cast. What would you guys call the movie?

It’s a Wonderful Life Chris Fitzgerald is a really close friend of mine, too.

I guess we Portlanders imagine you all meeting semiannu- ally and sharing notes about us at the Beverly Wilshire or the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. Our ears are burning. What would the notes say?

We’d all say we owe so much to Maine.

In a recent article we spoke with Penny Fuller. She was the star of my rst paid gig as an actress—South Paci c at Kennebunkport Play- house! I was 13.

I was a sh out of water, doing children’s theater in Portland, Maine. I didn’t know in my heart what a professional theater actress was until I met Penny Fuller. I remember the green room, sitting there with all the actors and trying to pretend I was their age. So I acted like, yeah, I just t in with this group. Little Armenian girl playing a little Polynesian girl. My rst green room. is little provincial girl. Doing that show in Maine in Kennebunkport. I was hooked. I worked on Ram Island and did a summer there. My love for theater really began in Maine. Over the years I’ve tried to nd out where the other actors ended up. But Penny wouldn’t remember me.

She remembers you and says hi! The reason we were talking to her is, she went to a cast party for South

Pacifc at an octagonal glass house in Cape Porpoise that looked like a set design for The Sandpiper (just torn down in favor of a 21st-century replacement). When I asked her how she got her frst big break, she said she had an impromptu audition at a restaurant where she was introduced to a Broadway producer.

“Sing me something,” he said.

“You mean right now?” Penny asked.

“Right now.” So she picked “Everything Happens to Me” to show her comic edge.

So, Andrea, what would you have sung? I can do nothing from memory. Zero. I’ve done many musicals, won a couple of Tonys, but oh, God, I don’t know, the minute the show’s over, it’s out of my head. I guess I could do “No Time at All,” from Pippin. Maybe. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=e_EXns53hQw

I’ve left out Maine actors Phyllis Thaxter and Gary Merrill. Any contact with them?

I met Gary Merrill when I was a really young girl and we were in a bar and he had a kilt on.

Uh-oh. I remember the 1980s. In fact I met your mom. Sibyl (I was given permission to call her that) and her friend Merle Nelson [actor Judd Nelson’s mother] came to a launch party we had for PortlandMagazine. They were both charming and full of incredible energy. How much of your mom and her way of speaking flters into your characters?

I played my mom in a one-person show I wrote.

My mom was something else. I’m not as gregarious and social as my mom. All my boyfriends loved her. She loved life, died way too young. She’s embedded in all my memories. Here’s my mom:

We’re sitting at the dinner table in Maine, visiting with my mom, and Marty was there with his married sister. Mom stood up: “I want to make a toast to Nora. I love her. I’ve loved her from the beginning. We have got to nd her a man!”

In the 1970s and 1980s, you came home to a Portland ruled, in part, by your dad, frst by partnering with Gus Barber, then by being a very senior executive with Hannaford, and fnally founding John Martin’s Merry Manor. Which sounds like the name of a business in a comedy skit, but was a big part of the local hospitality landscape. So was it possible to decompress when you came back here, or was it just more bizarre reality theater?

I love coming back. e last time I stayed at Higgins Beach. I’m coming there this fall for anksgiving. I love that time of year; we hope to make anksgiving at Higgins Beach an annual thing.

Is there a question I’ve forgotten that your old friend Jeannie Vallely, the editor at GQ, would have asked

Oh, Jeannie! I wish we still lived across the street from you at 189 Whitney Avenue!

I ran into Jeannie in New York when I was doing A Christmas Carol, just before COVID.

Here’s something Jeannie wouldn’t ask you. Are you a dog person or a cat person?

I’m even a rat person. I had a mouse when my two little boys were young.

Interesting. This explains your on-screen chemistry with the demons on Evil. Sister Andrea takes no guff from them. They’re so fascinated with her, she renders them speechless. Is there anything beyond geography that “The 5” of you have in common? Is it a dark sense of humor?

Portland doesn’t have a dark sense of humor. e common thread, I like to think, is integrity and a love for where we come from. When I was presented with the Tony for Pippin, the presenter was the up-and-coming Anna Kendrick. You can see it in the online clips from the ceremony as I run onstage. As she hands me the award, I’m whispering something into her ear. Know what I’m saying? We’re both from Portland! n