THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9605310062
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: 108 lines
VEANNE COX, a graduate of Granby High School and a veteran of Norfolk Little Theater, is very much in the running in tonight's Tony Awards race, to be telecast nationally at 9 p.m. on CBS.
She's nominated in the ``best featured actress in a musical'' category for her show-stopping singing of ``I'm Not Getting Married Today'' in the revival of ``Company.''
``People say I have natural comic timing,'' Cox said with a laugh during a phone interview from her New York apartment earlier this week. ``It is natural. I'm just naturally a funny person, but it's taken years and years of hard work to develop it. The work never stops.''
Cox, 33, has the exuberant, outgoing style of a Lucille Ball, but with a clipped timing straight out of Broadway.
Her competition in the Tony race is formidable. She personally thinks Ann Duquesnay from ``Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk'' may win. ``She's out there knocking 'em out every night,'' Cox said. The other nominees are Idina Menzel from the phenomenally successful ``Rent'' and Joohee Choi for ``The King and I.''
``The odds were against me being nominated,'' the Norfolk veteran said. ``My show is not new, and it's not running now. But I like to come from behind.''
The life of a Tony nominee is glamorous for the month before the award presentation. Designer Donna Karan has contributed a stunning pearl gray gown for her to wear.
Cox is currently starring in the Off-Broadway comedy ``The Food Chain,'' which is about the comic possibilities of overweight.
Model-thin, she's anything but overweight herself. ``I don't work out. I just live in New York,'' she laughed. ``That means lots of walking. There's one simple secret to living in New York - comfortable shoes.''
Veanne Cox came to Norfolk to study dance with the late Gene Hammett after the company with which she had been studying folded in Richmond. With the Tidewater Ballet Academy (now Virginia Ballet Theater) she danced ``Raymonda.'' At Norfolk Little Theater, she appeared as Toinette in Moliere's ``The Imaginary Invalid.''
Hammett, the legendary local dance teacher who pushed dozens of local dancers into professional careers, said in 1987, ``We never knew what Veanne would do next. She was just a little kooky in all the ways that benefit an entertainer. But it became clear that she wasn't the type that would go into classical ballet. She was perhaps too versatile for her own good. She was a fine jazz dancer, a superb tap dancer and an excellent classical dancer but she was too personable to be confined to the discipline of classical dance. I'm not surprised that she's on Broadway and is apparently headed for an amazing career as a comedienne.''
In a benefit performance before the lieutenant governor in Richmond, for example, she stepped out of the line and started executing kicks atop a table on stage. ``It wasn't a part of the choreography,'' Hammett said at the time, ``but it certainly stole the show.''
Cox fulfilled his forecast. In 1987, she starred in the $4.5 million Broadway musical ``Smile,'' with music by Marvin Hamlisch (``A Chorus Line''). The spoof of beauty pageants was disliked by the New York critics, and had a short run. But Cox got some good reviews and went on to star in the Off-Broadway hit musical ``Flora, the Red Menace.''
She then went to Los Angeles for three years - the time she now calls her ``lost years.''
``While I was in Los Angeles, I did TV commercials, the kind of things that really pay the rent for years ahead, so that you can do theater. I did a guest shot on `Seinfeld.' It was about two days of work and it paid more than the entire six-month run of `Company.'
``On the stage, I do eight performances a week, for a fraction of the money, but it's worth it to me. The feeling of getting out there every night and performing for an audience is something that no amount of mere money could buy.''
There's talk of a TV sitcom to be developed particularly for her. ``I think it's going to happen. There's a lot of talk,'' she said. ``My three years in Los Angeles may yet pay off. I'm on everyone's list as someone for whom they're looking for a series. Right now, I'm very happy just to stay in New York and be on the stage.''
Still single, she says the rush of a stage career doesn't easily mix with marriage. She's attending the Tonys with a ``beau'' but she laughingly adds that ``I already told him that if I won, I wasn't going to kiss him. If I win, that's my moment in the spotlight.''
She once made the tabloids as Warren Beatty's date. (He's a Richmonder, too). She met him when she ushered him to his seat at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Beatty and his wife, actress Annette Bening, came to see her in ``Company.'' ``They came backstage and were very generous with time,'' she said. ``After all, people still say that the leading man in `Company' was based on Warren.''
In September, she'll open in New York in a new play, ``The Batting Cage'' by Joan Ackerman. She describes it as a ``bittersweet comedy with a to-die-for role. I'm on stage for the entire play.''
The odds were against her Tony nomination, even though she turned in a show-stopping performance. (There was so much applause at the performance I attended that the show actually WAS stopped. People often talk about show-stoppers, but seldom do they actually see one.)
``Company'' was selling out at the Roundabout Theater and was set to move to a larger Broadway house until the illness of the leading man, Boyd Gaines, nixed the deal. The producers didn't want to move the show using the understudy, so they closed the show on Dec. 3.
The odds, yet again, are against the voters remembering the show they saw last December.
But Veanne Cox, who must have been there the night they invented champagne, isn't lacking in cheer. ``Who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky,'' she bubbles. ``In any case, it's going to be a great evening.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CAROL ROSEGG
Veanne Cox, a graduate of Granby High School, is nominated for her
show-stopping performance in the Broadway revival of ``Company.''
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