Charlotte Booker’s ‘Alive!’
Charlotte Booker discusses her show Elsa Lanchester: She’s Alive!, which celebrates the great character actress who played the title role in The Bride of Frankenstein and runs Wednesdays and Thursdays this month at the Venus Cabaret in Chicago. Charlotte is joined both onstage and in this conversation by her husband and accompanist Mark Nutter, and shares some of the secrets and similarities between her and her subject, including youthful flings with onstage nudity; the glory of being the first female monster; how Elsa was raised to be a free spirit by artist-Bohemians and became the former It Girl of London; playing Katie Nanna in Mary Poppins and Miss Marbles in Murder by Death; being drawn to fellow redheads; the challenges of having an “absinthe father;” the perils of being institutionalized for “over-education;” and the posthumous joy of being a Goth icon. (Length 20:32)
Podcast: Download (Duration: 20:32 — 23.6MB)
