It may be hard to believe but Cindy Williams, a.k.a. the wide-eyed ingénue “Shirley Feeney” we loved from the iconic 1976-83 TV series “Laverne and Shirley,” is going through “Menopause” – and for the third time. In this case, however, she’ll be experiencing her hot flashes, mood swings, and weight gain only through August 28th and strictly for audiences at Harrah’s Las Vegas.
Having performed in both the Tampa, Florida, and Laguna Beach, California, productions of the acclaimed “Menopause the Musical,” the actress isn’t having night sweats over the reprisal of her role of the fifth girlfriend, joining current cast members Vita Cormibi, Earth Mother; Lori Legasy, Iowa Housewife; Jacquelyn Holland Wright, Soap Star, and Lisa Mack. (Professional Woman. Monica Heuser understudies all four roles.) Rather, she is excited about doing what she loves and making her Las Vegas debut in the show.
“I’m kind of like the hostess,” Williams says. “It’s an extended little character added to the show just for me. I’m like an accent to it and I’m there throughout the show, having been scripted in. I was supposed to have done this a while ago in the Vegas production and, in fact, was rehearsing here when I got sick and had to go home. When I was feeling better, I was asked to do the role in Laguna Beach, which is how this all came about. I’m very happy to be performing it in Las Vegas.”
Although she made her mark in television, Williams was trained for the stage and has been performing in theater ever since “Laverne and Shirley’s” eight-and-a-half-year run ended. Most recently, she appeared in the comedic play “Beau Jest” with her former “Laverne and Shirley” co-star, Eddie Mekka, (“Carmine”) at The New Theater in Kansas City, playing a Jewish mama. Williams has retained her bent for the comedy genre in her career, acknowledging that playing “Shirley Feeney” in “Laverne and “Shirley” was the role of a lifetime.
“People still approach me and call me Shirley,” she laughs. “They come up to me and other members of the cast with joy, humor and happiness. It’s a God-given gift to be able to make people laugh, to have the gift of humor. I was also given the gift in my life of being able to make lemonade out of lemons. Penny [Marshall, who played “Laverne”] has that, too, and we both applied that to our characters and it brought that out in the audience and in all of us together in our consciousness. When everyone laughs in the same place and at the same time, everyone is together in consciousness. Penny and I would sometimes be biting our tongues because we wanted to laugh, too.
“When we were filming ‘Laverne and Shirley,’ we had a live audience of 250 people and we performed each show from top to bottom and we went in order,” she continues. “If we got the energy going between us, that energy got translated to the live audience and also to the TV audience, giving them the feeling of being there. Otherwise, it would have been dead space and Penny and I were both aware of that.”
What may come as a surprise to many is that, amidst the humor, the show demanded extreme physicality from the cast. Williams says that there were three cameras running, taking full body shots so that they could move around. In addition, they were working on a concrete floor with no give. She says that it was very grueling and that they were always on their feet, including blocking the show, and had to conserve their energy.
“It’s not easy to play the person slipping on a banana peel,” she cajoles.
Friends to this day with Penny Marshall, Williams notes that her co-star was one of the few people who could make her laugh out loud. But there was a lot more to their friendship than met the eye.
“I have dyslexia and adult ADD,” she reveals, “and I didn’t realize at the time that I had it; I thought I was just slow at reading. Penny has a mind like a steel trap and a great memory. But neither one of us had any patience back then. It took me longer to memorize the script, which they were constantly changing. It was very tough for me and very tough on Penny who was waiting for me. But I had all the physical comedy down right away.”
With it all, the divorced mother of two adult children says that she loves doing plays but wouldn’t mind doing TV again, even though she recognizes that the process is very different than it was when she was doing “Laverne and Shirley.” Williams has also written a memoir called “Shirley I Jest!” her heartfelt account about her hilarious life in entertainment, which she signs after each “Menopause” show.
It all goes to prove that there IS life after TV. Sometimes one just has to change channels -- and, once in a while, in a flash.
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