Luft brings pedigree to role

Actress Lorna Luft was born to show business. By age 11, she was singing on TV with her legendary mom on “The Judy Garland Show.” Her father was producer Sid Luft, and her half-sister is Oscar and Tony winner Liza Minnelli. Luft made her Broadway debut at age 16, singing with Garland at the Palace Theater, and by age 19 was in a Broadway show on her own, “Promises, Promises.”

Since then she has done national tours, regional theater and world tours in a variety of musical-theater roles. Her best-selling book became a 2001 television miniseries, “Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows.” She intermittently performs a stage show titled “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” which is on CD as well.

Last week we caught Luft, 56, on her cell phone in a Times Square rehearsal hall in New York City, where she and the cast of “Irving Berlin's White Christmas” were preparing for a 10-week tour. Based on a 1954 movie starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, it opens Sunday at the Orpheum Theater. Luft sounded pumped about the show and her role, which she originated in London's West End in 2006.

Q. How are rehearsals going so far?

A. Well, they're fast and furious, and thank God we've all done this show before. Putting it up in such a short time, it's quite extraordinary. But people are picking it up fast, like, yeah, yeah, I know what I'm doing.

Q. I read on the Internet you've done “White Christmas” several times since 2006 in London. Have you always played the same character?

A. The same character, Martha Watson. For me, it's one of the great parts. Now to be joining the American cast is just wonderful. As much as the U.K. cast was fantastic, to hear the show with the right accent is stunning.

Q. How does your character differ from the one Mary Wickes played (Emma Allen) in the movie?

A. Mary was not as big a character. (Director) Walter Bobbie and the show's creators (David Ives, Paul Blake) took this character and made her Martha the Megaphone Watson. She's a combo of a lot of those loud, over-the-top showbiz caricatures. She looks a little like Lucille Ball, talks a bit like Martha Rae, sings a bit like Ethel Merman. This woman really runs the inn in Vermont (where the show takes place, owned by an Army general). The general barks out orders, but Martha is his equal when it comes to who wears the pants.

Q. Are there any big differences between the musical and the plot of the movie?

A. Not really. Two couples meet and get a crush on each other. There's no snow at the ski inn, so they put on a show in the barn to draw customers. You can't mess around with that story. But what they've done is add more Irving Berlin songs. And that really opens it up to amazing, theatrical stage numbers that will take your breath away.

Q. What's your favorite moment on stage in this show?

A. I do love doing “Let Me Sing and I'm Happy,” my number. And it's been changed since the U.K. Now I have boys (dancers) behind me and all that. It's really a showbiz number. It's fantastic. I also love the end of the show when we're all standing there singing that (title) song. Puh-leeze, no one will have a dry eye in that house. It tugs on your heartstrings. This is what musicals are about.

Q. You've done a lot of musical theater. How does “White Christmas” stack up?

A. For me it has a little bit of an edge over all of them. I'm a huge fan of (leading man) Stephen Bogardus, and (leading lady) Kerry O'Malley is extraordinary. For everybody who comes to see the show, it brings back the first time you heard these wonderful songs. You can't beat this score: “Count Your Blessings,” “I Love a Piano,” “Blue Skies,” “How Deep Is the Ocean.”

Q. Irving Berlin, of course, worked with Judy Garland — on “Easter Parade,” for example. Does this show take you back to your mom's era of musicals in any way?

A. To my mom's era of musicals, and to the first time I saw shows like “42nd Street,” those big shows where every song is a classic. You come out humming the songs.

Q. What advice did your mother pass along that helped you as a musical-theater actress?

A. Just give yourself. And you gotta be there 110 percent. That's what every person on this stage does. It's sort of like, once the overture starts, the train pulls out, and it's going, and it's not gonna stop.

Q. What's next for you after this tour ends in January?

A. Are you kidding me? I have to get to Omaha first.

Contact the writer:

444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com