Tony Vierling Talks "Little House," Melissa Gilbert and Gay Marriage

BY: COLIN MURPHY – SENIOR WRITER

    Let’s face it—most of us of a certain age have a soft spot for the 1970s television series, Little House on the Prairie while many more grew up reading the classic American books of the same name by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

    So it should come as no surprise that continuing in the long tradition of musical theater drawing its inspiration from the four corners of the creative universe, that Little House on the Prairie, The Musical makes its debut at the Fabulous Fox Nov. 24-29.

    The musical stars Melissa Gilbert, who rose to fame as a child playing ‘Laura" in the wildly successful aforementioned NBC television series—but this time Gilbert continues the legacy by stepping into the fiery petticoat of "Ma."

    Little House also stars Steve Blanchard as "Pa" and Kara Lindsay as "Laura" who help head an ensemble cast to tell the story of a pioneer family carving a life for themselves out of a new frontier.

    The Vital VOICE recently caught up with the musical’s Dance Captain and Swing Cast Member, Toney Vierling who talked about Little House, why it appeals to gay audiences and working with the iconic Melissa Gilbert.

Tony Vierling: It’s going well. If you count New Jersey, which we were in for five weeks, we’re in our fifth city—so it’s going really well.

TV: I don’t know if surprised as much as I can’t believe someone hasn’t done this before. It seems like the perfect vehicle for a musical—especially a family musical—so I was kind of surprised that no one had done it before. But I thought oh, this is perfect. This is gong to be like Beauty and the Beast and Phantom of the Opera. This will hit a certain audience and run forever.

TV: Yeah—I’m a little older than Melissa [Gilbert] is, so I was more of a tween when the show came on. So I watched it and I always enjoyed it and I always cried—once a week they made you laugh and cry. But I liked the books—which when I was in elementary school we read the books—and I have more vivid recollection of the books.

TV: Oh, absolutely.

TV: Exactly. So far just from kind of seeing who we have coming out of the theater or stage door, it’s a lot of mothers and daughters—and gay men.

TV: Right. So what I do is I’m the Dance Captain, so I’m in charge of taking notes on the show and keeping it clean and running rehearsals. And I also understudy 10 men’s roles from the Doctor to Mr. Oleson all the way across the board. There are 10 different tracks that I cover. So I have to know all the men’s parts, except for Pa and Almanzo, and then I have to keep the notes going out so that we stay within the boundaries that the director and choreographer set for us and the show stays clean.

TV: Yes [Laughs], it is just that. We had a situation where Melissa’s son is in the show and he plays Willy Oleson, Nellie Oleson’s little brother. And he’s 14-years-old in real life and the character of Willy is about 12—and he’s a small 14 so he passes for 12 very easily. But we were performing and rehearsing and during rehearsal that day his foot got run over by a piece of scenery and they had to take him to the doctor. So they just turned to me and said, you’re going to be playing Willy Oleson tonight. Now, I am not 12—nor am I 14 [Laughs]—but it was a matter of we had no choice, I had to go on. So they discovered that night that they had to add another understudy in my contract. So now I officially understudy Willy Oleson as well. So yes, it was a situation where they just turned to me and said you’re going to do this tonight.

TV: Oh, absolutely. When I was younger—when I was in my 20s and I looked like a teenager and when I was in my 30s and looked like I was just coming into my 20s—I thought of it as kind of a curse because everybody treated me like I didn’t know what I was doing and I was young. But now I’m able to play younger roles with a sense of maturity and understanding and it’s also keeping me working longer because a lot of my contemporaries are not able to work as much because they’ve grown out of the roles. And I still pass for my 20s—even though I’m not in my 20s—nor am I in my 30s.

But yeah, I was playing Riff in West Side Story when I was in my early 40s and I played Tommy Dijilas in The Music Man when I was 39, so I’ve been able to play young—12 is the youngest I’ve ever played.

TV: Yeah—the director said I looked more like I was 18 instead of 12 but hey—I’ll take 18.

TV: It takes place when the family moves to South Dakota when Laura is about 12 and it goes all the way up until she marries Almanzo when she was about 16. So we kind of cover from when the family is heading west and staking their claim for their land and then the hardships they go through. Just like the book—the long winter and Mary getting Scarlett Fever and of course, you’re meeting Nellie Oleson and their rivalry starting up. Then Laura goes off to teach in a small town called Brewster which is where she first went off to teach school to help raise money for Mary to go to college. That’s the second act. And then, of course, she develops a romance with Almanzo and we end with a happy ending.

TV: It’s amazing. The first couple of rehearsals it was just strange—because I did the show at the Guthrie a year ago—so that was the first time I got to do work on the project and meet Melissa. So the first day of rehearsal she walked in and it was so hard to disassociate her from being Half Pint—the little character, Laura. But as soon as she was up on the stage and she was doing the role I was like oh, this is such a natural transition for her to stay involved in the project and become the mother. In real life she is a mother and her son is in the show so it’s really cool. It’s like being in a piece of American iconography—of pop culture history.

TV: Well Laura has this line in the show at the very end where she says, you can’t be rooted unless you’re free and you can’t be free unless you’re rooted. And it sort of encompasses searching for a home—looking for a place to fit in, the love of family, the love of land and the country. It’s got these very fundamental values of home and hearth that I think speaks to me because that’s how I was raised. I was raised in Iowa. We weren’t the farm family, we lived in the capitol city of Des Moines, but family was very important. My family still lives there, my grandparents still live there, and they all live within a few miles of each other. And I think it’s a core value of America—home and family.

TV: Oh I think it’s fantastic. I have a gay brother also. There are four boys and two of us are gay and two are straight and I never in my wildest dreams thought Iowa, of all places, would be someplace where I could get married. You know I got my share of teasing walking down the hall and I got pushed around and called names just like everybody else. And I fled Iowa so that I could go and pursue my art and be more accepted in an environment. But I’m thrilled. I still just can’t quite believe it. I can go to my home state and get married, that’s pretty amazing.

colin_murphy@sbcglobal.net