No Sound of Music Tonight, Laura Benanti Brings Nobody Cares to the Wallis

Laura Benanti made her name as a Broadway ingenue. This weekend in Beverly Hills she is mostly after laughs. Her one-woman show Nobody Cares opened Thursday night at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and plays the Bram Goldsmith Theater through a Sunday matinee.

The evening is built from stories and original songs about motherhood, people-pleasing, ambition and the absurdities of getting older. It began as an Audible Original, then came through the Edinburgh Fringe and two sold-out Off-Broadway engagements and was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Annie Tippe directs, and Todd Almond, who co-wrote the five original songs with Benanti, joins her on stage as music director.

Anyone expecting a night of show tunes should adjust. “This is not Broadway songs or Broadway music in any way,” Benanti told Variety this week. The Wallis recommends the show for ages 14 and up.

The audience that knows her from The Sound of Music, Nine, My Fair Lady, She Loves Me and Into the Woods is meeting a different side of her, and she says it was there all along. “I’m sort of like a clown that was in an ingenue leading lady’s body,” she told Variety. She hopes the show will help her land comedy work in Los Angeles. “My absolute dream is to be on a television comedy and just get to go to work and laugh all the time, and continue to write more of these shows and tour them,” she said.

The show has already been filmed in London, and Benanti told Variety she hopes to find a distributor for it. For now it lives on stage. After Beverly Hills, she takes it to South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa from October 8 to 11. Velvet also covered The Hoop Skirt Goes West, Alaska Brings Oh, Mary! to the Ahmanson.

Tonight’s performance and Saturday’s evening show begin at 7:30 p.m., with matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The Wallis is at 9390 North Santa Monica Boulevard.