Laura Benanti’s autobiographical show is far from the first live performance that Audible has produced at the Minetta Lane Theater in order to turn it into an audiobook; the company has been releasing “Audible Originals” recorded in front of a live audience at that theater in Greenwich Village since 2018. But Benanti is surely the first to mock Audible for doing so, as she does from the very start of the audiobook, when she introduces herself
“My name is Laura Benanti….”
“Nobody cares,” a chorus of voices interrupts her, repeatedly.
“Yes they do,” Benanti argues. “Audible clearly thinks enough people care; they are recording the show and putting it on their platform…”
“Have you looked at their catalog?” the chorus responds in unison. “You are gonna get buried alive in there. It’s not a sustainable business model.”
The voices explain that they are Benanti’s “inner demons” that only she can hear. “Just like only you can hear this show. Get it? Cause no one else is listening.”
I listened. How could I miss anything starring Laura Benanti, even just in my ear?
Benanti has been shining as a singer and actress on Broadway since the age of 18, winning a Tony for “Gypsy” before the age of 30 (one of her five Tony nominations), and since then proving ever-more luminous, especially in “She Loves Me” and “My Fair Lady.” Her talent as musical theater performer is matched by her gifts for comedy, which are evident to anybody who has seen her spot-on comic impersonation of Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Live on stage, “Nobody Cares” surely came across as a cross between stand-up comedy and a cabaret act, with Benanti singing five original songs that she co-wrote with Todd Almond (who, along with the members of his band, voice Benanti’s inner demons.) But the audiobook feels less like entertainment than straightforward memoir, as Benanti talks of her performing career, her dating life, and her experiences as a mother.
Her recollections are shot through with a wildly self-deprecating humor. Yes, she says, she is “a fully accredited Broadway star,” but quickly adds: “We use the term ‘star’ loosely in the theater. Sort of how people in Hollywood use the term ‘good friend.’”
But it’s soon clear that this self-deprecation, paired with a bracing candor, has an edge to it, and a point. “Nobody Cares” is really Benanti’s story of how her insecurities led her to be exploited, and how she has slowly fought back. Her life is now a “people-pleasing-recovery program.”
“The thing I have feared most my entire life (other than the idea that I’ll never be famous enough to be remembered in an awards show ‘In Memoriam’) is that I’ve hurt someone’s feelings or that I’ve disappointed or upset them.”
That led her to do a prat fall in her first Broadway show, although it was dangerous and she had no training for it. (“I did it anyway because I didn’t want anyone to be mad at me. Or think I was weak. Or a diva.”) And that is how she broke her neck at age 18. “People pleasing literally broke me .”
The need to please also led her to date any man who asked her out. “I responded to a man’s desire for me like I was being drafted. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t wanna go, but I was gonna fulfill my obligation to my country.”
The result? “I’ve been married now for twenty years. Just not to the same person. In fact, I’ve been married three separate times.” She riffs on the men who have been in her life with a lacerating wit that hardly masks a lasting sense of outrage. The misogyny in her life has been pronounced, not just among boyfriends, but bosses, or would-be bosses, such as the “very prominent producer” who took her out to dinner when she was 19 years old, and offered to buy her an apartment in exchange for being his mistress
I hadn’t planned to listen to “Nobody Cares” as an audiobook. I wanted to see the show at the Minetta Lane, but I couldn’t get a ticket during its run in May. I normally avoid audio-only platforms because my hearing is poor, but I secured a script of “Nobody Cares” to read afterwards in case I had missed anything. Even so, there are moments on the audiobook that made me feel left out for not having been in the theater. Several times, there are bursts of audience laughter, unexplained. I assume these were because of a moment of Benanti’s trademark physical comedy or comic expression. One such burst of laughter is explained Benanti shows the theater audience a photograph of herself as an overly serious child, and talks about it. (“This is always how I see myself.”) A pdf of the photograph is available in the “library” accompanying the audiobook, but it’s just not the same. (What Audible could do in the individual “library” for each recorded theater piece is provide the play’s script.)
Yet, listening to “Nobody Cares” as an audiobook offered an experience that in other ways was enhancing. After having (finally) found a group of female friends, and (finally) finding a happy marriage, and becoming a mother to two daughters, Benanti talks about watching her older daughter Ella and thinking of her old childhood: “I was overcome with love for the broken hearted, broken necked, people pleasing, well intentioned, badly behaved, lonely ingenue I used to be.” She was about to tell Ella how much she loved her, when Ella suddenly said “Why do you have so many hairs in your nose?”
“And in that moment I realized becoming a mother is the final step in my people pleasing recovery program.”
It’s an entertaining story, but hearing it, and Bennati’s subsequent thoughts about it, as a part of a memoir rather than as part of a show, It somehow felt less an effort to please than to ponder.
Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares, 81 minutes
