En route to Broadway?

Tom Titus

For most of the cast of the Laguna Playhouse’s production of

“Harvey,” Laguna Beach is a starting point for what is positioned to

become a Broadway revival. For Jill Van Velzer, it’s a chance to come

home and make contact with old friends.

Van Velzer -- who reaps gales of laughter when she transforms

instantly from the wallflower persona her Myrtle Mae character

inhabits to a stunning, flame-haired beauty -- spent her last two

years of high school in Lake Forest, where she still has family. For

those who knew her when, the next month presents a chance to see

their friend perform in the revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning

comedy before the New York audience does.

As an Air Force brat, Van Velzer got to see a good bit of the

country before her parents put down stakes in Orange County. And

before graduating from El Toro High School, she discovered musical

theater and played Tzeitel in “Fiddler on the Roof” and Millie, the

leading role, in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” -- which won her a

MACY award.

From El Toro, it was off to Pepperdine University as a theater

major and music minor. When she starred as the witch in Pepperdine’s

“Into the Woods,” the guest director’s agent, Buzz Halliday, was in

the audience and quickly added another client to his stable.

Musical theater, in fact, has been Van Velzer’s stock in trade --

her role in “Harvey” is her first nonmusical assignment as a

professional. Over her few years in the business (she’s only 26), she

has starred in “The King and I,” “Camelot,” “The Music Man,”

“Brigadoon,” “The Sound of Music,” “She Loves Me” (earning a best

actress award), “Grease” and “Oklahoma,” just to name a few. But

she’s also played Lady Macbeth in “Macbeth” and Mrs. Venable in

“Suddenly, Last Summer,” for which neither her vocal nor comic

talents were required.

It was during a tour of “The King and I,” which wound up in

Brazil, that she earned the chance to grab her Actors Equity card,

playing Guenevere in a San Diego-area production of “Camelot.” Of

late, however, she’s been planning her wedding -- she and actor

Robert Standley were supposed to tie the knot in August, before

“Harvey” came along.

“A friend said, ‘what if you get cast in a show that’s going out

of town before then?’” she recalled, noting that she’d tossed off

that idea with a “fat chance” shrug. Then her agent called to notify

her that she was one of 1,500 submissions for “Harvey” that was

picked up by the producers, and her presence was desired at

auditions.

“I wasn’t nervous, because I didn’t think I had much of a chance,”

Van Velzer said. “I didn’t even read for Myrtle Mae; I thought Nurse

Kelly was more my style. But then I was called back for Myrtle Mae,

and bang, I got cast. So, we had to put the wedding plans on hold.”

Van Velzer soon found herself sharing the stage with three other

Vans -- Dick, Joyce and James Van Patten -- along with headliner

Charles Durning in the role of Elwood P. Dowd. She and James Van

Patten (Dick’s son) share a comic romantic subplot as the niece of

the invisible rabbit fancier and the muscular sanitarium attendant.

“The cast is a lovely group of people,” she declares. “They

couldn’t be nicer.” Since she’d heard tales of road companies that

didn’t always get along, the “Harvey” experience has been a relief.

Whether or not the show actually will touch down on the Great

White Way -- with its current cast intact -- still remains up in the

air, which means Van Velzer’s matrimonial plans also are in a holding

pattern.

“We just have to stay loose,” she shrugs. “In this business,

uncertainty becomes its own routine.”

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.