Merrily From Center Stage
Solo Musical @ 54 Below
Into The Woods
freeFall Theatre
Sondheim On Sondheim
freeFall Theatre
Damn Yankees
Ordway Performing Arts
Word Painting:Soliloquies Around An Easel
Solo playwritten and performed
Merrily We Roll Along
Original Broadway cast 1981
LoveMusik
Broadway 2007
Linda Lovely Goes to Broadway
Solo play written and performed
Discourse Of A Maid
First solo play by Ann
Merrily From Center Stage
MERRILY FROM CENTER STAGE
A solo musical based on memories of Ann's award-winning Broadway debut as Mary Flynn in the 1981 Stephen Sondheim musical MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
directed by Hal Prince.
MERRILY FROM CENTER STAGE was first produced at Feinstein's/54 Below
"Merrily From Center Stage is a musical memoir about a very specific time in Ann Morrison's life - a time that didn't last very long but that had a lasting effect that she is still feeling today - and even though this all happened some four decades ago, Morrison's memory seems to be in crystal clear snap-trap working order. The details that the singing actress produces in the script of her show are stunningly outlined and breathtakingly arranged for immaculate storytelling effect. What she and Musical Director John Shirley (with an assist from Creative Consultant Blake Walton) have done is take all of those memories, deconstruct them, reconstruct them, and then layer in the original Merrily score, also de-and-re-constructed, to tell the tale of the time before Merrily, the casting of Merrily, and the rehearsal of Merrily - a process that sounds harrowing enough to drive any actor out of show business." --Stephen Mosher Broadway World
The Witch
INTO THE WOODS
2014, freeFall Theater, Saint Pete
"I first heard Ann Morrison as Mary Flynn in the Merrily We Roll Along original Broadway cast album over 30 years ago. Her witch in INTO THE WOODS is a stunning creation (and yes, I could hear moments of Mary seep through; it was like hearing the voice of an old friend from long ago). The witch is all things, part creepy creature, part broken-hearted mother. Morrison's Act 2 rendition of "Last Midnight" is the best I have ever heard. She sings the hell out of it. And in a single day, it has become one of my favorite Sondheim numbers, all thanks to Morrison's glorious interpretation." - Peter Nason, BWW
Driving Miss Daisy
American Stage, Saint Pete 2010
"Ann Morrison plays Daisy, and she's wonderful in the role. Morrison's Daisy is bad-tempered, suspicious, terrified, censorious, but also kind, caring, righteous and near-indomitable."
-Mark E. Leib, Creative Loafing
Norman Desmond
Sunset Boulevard
2011, Music Theatre of Wichita
"Broadway veteran Ann Morrison is brilliant as Norma Desmond, the silent film star who couldn’t transition to talkies and retreated to her mansion to watch her movies and relive past glories.
Morrison has a powerful, precise soprano that can lilt and lull you, but then pin you to your seat in a fit of belting rage. She is a grand presence you can’t get enough of. Morrison plays Norma as imperious but not intentionally mean. She is pathetic but sympathetic. She is sweetly ridiculous in her dramatic gestures, but you never question the character’s dignity. Morrison slips skillfully between dangerous passion and deadly madness, and holds us in her grasp wondering what she’ll do next."
- Bob Curtright, The Wichita Eagle
Meg
Damn Yankees
2015, St. Paul MN
"Ann Morrison as Meg is a mid-1950s housewife with both verve and tenderness. When the spot-light closes in on her at the end of the beautiful "Near to You," sung with yearning by Meg and her two Joes, the look on her face speaks of complete faith and love." - Arthur Dorman, Talkin' Broadway
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BIO
Ann Morrison is an award-winning actress, writer, teacher, and director for over 45 years. She began acting in summer stock as a teenager near Chicago and studied at HB Studios in New York before taking a gig at 19 with Korean big band leader Benny Kim, touring the midwest with his family as singer, MC and trombone player in The Benny Kim Show. She then apprenticed at the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theater Training in Florida where she was cast as the Girl in The Fantasticks, earned her Equity card with The Sound of Music, and appeared on Dinah Shore's daytime TV show Dinah! when Reynolds co-hosted and predicted on national TV that Ann would be appearing on Broadway within a year (it would be 2).
Back in New York as a professional, she was cast in a re-working of Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman's Swing. Renamed and reduced to 3 characters, Dream Time played at the Harold Clurman Theater Off Broadway. Ann did regional theater productions of Babes In Arms and Grease before being cast as Mabel Normand in a new musical Keystone at Geva Theatre in Rochester, NY. Director/choreographer Ron Field saw her in the production and suggested casting director Joanna Merlin see her for Mary Flynn, the only role still not filled in Merrily We Roll Along headed for Broadway. After meeting with legendary director Harold Prince, and singing for Stephen Sondheim on her 25th birthday, Ann was cast.
Her Broadway debut in Merrily We Roll Along garnered her the 1982 Theatre World Award, and she did her first OBC LP recording for RCA. She did an SRO concert at The New Ballroom and a month later married Blake Walton.
In 1983, she joined the original cast of Forbidden Broadway Off-Broadway, playing Mary Martin, Carol Channing, Julie Andrews, and Patti Lupone, appeared on the TV show MERV, and recreated her Keystone performance as Mabel Normand when it was filmed for NJ Public TV. A year later she starred on London's West End originating the title role in the new musical Peg (based on “Peg O’ My Heart”). Peg was recorded by TER.
She was pregnant when returning to New York and after giving birth to her beautiful Huckleberry, she recorded Richard Rodgers' last musical I Remember Mama with George Hearn and Sally Ann Howes. Then she originated the role of Lizzie in the musical Goblin Market, Off Broadway, for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Musical and a Best Plays Citation for Best Actress.
She starred in the West Coast premiere of Anyone Can Whistle in L.A. and in an East Coast tour of the revised Peg, now titled Peg O' My Heart, the musical. Nationally, she has starred in Sondheim on Sondheim, Moving On, Into the Woods, Peter Pan, Guys & Dolls, Cabaret, Oliver! Sunset Boulevard, On A Clear Day, Anything Goes, Can Can, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Good News!, Embarrassments, On The Verge, Noel & Gertie, Shadowlands, Ruthless!, I Do, I Do! Little Shop Of Horrors, Chess, Blithe Spirit, Of Thee I Sing, Driving Miss Daisy, plus many many more.
After a 2002 Merrily We Roll Along Reunion Concert at Laguardia High School in NY, and a Sondheim celebration, Children and Art at the New Amsterdam Theater, Harold Prince brought her back to Broadway in 2007 for LoveMusik.
The quintessential solo artist, Ann won a 2012 United Solo Best Actress Award for her solo play Linda Lovely Goes to Broadway in the United Solo Festival in NYC and appeared there again with her solo playWord Painting: Soliloquies Around an Easel. Ann has performed as a cabaret artist in major venues across the country and in London, most often returning to her favorite haunt 54 Below in NYC, where she has performed as a guest artist in several different series and in her own shows, Now You Know: Annie, and Lenny and Steve, My Furniture Set, and most recentlyAnn Morrison: Merrily From Center Stage, for which she was honored with the 2023 Bistro Award for Best Solo Musical. Merrily From Center Stage will be filmed in L.A as a special in 2024.
Directing credits include both her solo playTrevor's Fire starring Blake Walton and his solo play Leading Men at the United Solo Festival; large musicals The Secret Garden, Merrily We Roll Along, On A Clear Day, Smoke On the Mountain as well as many plays and revues. She is the Co-founder and Artistic Director of Sarasolo Productions, which celebrates solo theatre artists.
Her original cast recordings and studio recordings include Merrily We Roll Along (GRAMMY Nom.), Peg, Goblin Market, Good News, I Remember Mama, Lady Be Good (1993 Gramophone Award), The Busby Berkeley Album, Sing Before Breakfast, and The Road to Ruin. She is the recipient of several HANDY, SAMMY, and SARASOTA MAGAZINE Awards as well as the JOHN RINGLING TOWERS AWARD, and in 2020 The Florida Theatre Conference recognized her for Outstanding Contribution to Florida Professional Theatre. Ann plays herself in the 2017 documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened.
Ann is the very proud mother of singer/composer/actor/music producer Huck Walton.
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Morrison .
GALLERY
Hirshfeld
Merrily We Roll Along
1981 Broadway
Encores!
Merrily We Roll Along
Original Broadway cast meet Encores Merrily
APLA Benefit
With Pam Meyers
Los Angeles
54 Below
With John Shirley
My Furniture Set
2023 Bistro Award
for Outstanding Solo Musical
Merrily From Center Stage
Sondheim Unplugged @54 Below 11/26/23
with Jim Walton
Host Robert Maitner
Merrily From Center Stage
with John Shirley at Piano
Award winning solo musical
AWARDS
1982
THEATRE WORLD AWARD
for MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
1986
DRAMA DESK AWARD
OUTSTANDING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Nomination
for GOBLIN MARKET
1989 DRAMA-LOGUE Award
BEST ENSEMBLE
for BLAME IT ON THE MOVIES II
Best Ensemble
JOHN RINGLING TOWERS AWARD
for LINDA LOVELY GOES TO BROADWAY
2023 Bistro Award
Outstanding Solo Musical
for "Merrily From Center Stage"
2012 United Solo
BEST ACTRESS Award
for LINDA LOVELY GOES TO BROADWAY
Contact Ann
amorrison.sarasolo@gmail.com
© 2019