Mary Martello: What those princesses taught me

by Chris Lombardi

Last week, I saw Happily Ever After , a one-woman musical in Philadelphia that glimpses the possible futures of many beloved fairy tale characters.

Soon afterward, we sat down with Mary Martello, the powerhouse actor, comedienne and singer behind the project. We talked about her 50-year career on the stage; her own reinvention from ingenue to comic genius; about “the secret” of menopause, and how envisioning Snow White in menopause taught her what “happily ever after”really means.

You started performing at age seven in Lansing, Michigan. Did you always know you’d be funny? Well, it’s truer to say that I started singing at seven. Someone heard me singing with friends, just out on the street, and they told my parents "She’s good! You might want to encourage her!" So my mother found a singing teacher, and soon I had bit parts in all kinds of little shows here and there. I was even on early TV in Lansing — I would get scared and run off, but my mom just helped me get right back on. A child star! Were your parents stage parents? No, I wasn’t under the pressure kids can be under now. My parents just wanted me to be happy. Which back then automatically meant getting married — which you did, while developing your career at the famous Boarshead Theater in Lansing. But you’ve been in Princeton now for many years. I moved with my husband at the time – first to Richmond, Virginia, which was quite a culture shock! Then Princeton. I was performing in shows all that time — all the while having and raising four children. They got used to Mommy’s plays. My youngest just turned seventeen. When you moved to Princeton, the first thing you did was try to make it in New York. But you learned that producers didn’t want to help unless that was all you wanted to do.

Especially with kids. New York’s an actor’s dream. But I had no union card, and no leeway to work for nothing while I waited to get one. I did some good work in Gilbert & Sullivan plays with Light Opera of Manhattan, but it wasn’t going to be easy. And the commute was really hard. Then Nigel Jackson offered me a job at the McCarter Theatre Company in Princeton.

You and I have talked a little about Philadelphia, where artists are just as serious but no one thinks they’ll be world-famous. It felt like an artistic home for you, you said.

In Philly this is a life calling for these people. No one’s getting rich, but everyone’s committed to doing excellent work. And because it’s not Broadway, maybe, the community of artists there are more willing to take risks, to let you take risks.

Did you always know you were funny?

Not at first. Like many young actresses, I took myself way too seriously. I didn’t know I was funny till I was in my forties. As a friend explained to me, laughing, "Oh you were too busy being pretty."

To read the rest, including Martello’s transformation from actor to writer, click here.