March 29, 2024

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Rebecca Luker, a Broadway Star for A few Decades, Dies at 59

Rebecca Luker, the actress and singer who in a lauded 3-decade occupation on the New York stage embodied the essence of the Broadway musical ingénue in hit revivals of “Show Boat,” “The Seem of Music” and “The Songs Gentleman,” died on Wednesday in a hospital in Manhattan. She was 59.

The demise was verified by Sarah Fargo, her agent. Ms. Luker introduced in February that she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, generally recognised as A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Ms. Luker’s Broadway occupation, fueled by her crystal-clear operatic soprano, brought her 3 Tony Award nominations. The to start with was for “Clearly show Boat” (1994), in which she played Magnolia, the captain’s dewy-refreshing teenage daughter, whose life is ruined by marriage to a riverboat gambler. The next was for “The Music Guy” (2000), in which she was Marian, the prim River Town librarian who enchants a touring flimflam man who thinks — mistakenly — that he’s just passing by means of town.

In amongst, Ms. Luker delighted critics by enjoying towards type in a 1997 Encores! creation of “The Boys From Syracuse.” As Adriana, the neglected spouse who receives her groove again (with her husband’s very long-lost twin brother), she wore slinky 1930s gowns and exuded what Ben Brantley, in his review for The New York Times, known as “a disarmingly confectionary sexiness.”

Participating in Adriana was fun, Ms. Luker admitted. “For the to start with time in my lifetime, I got to do a little bit,” she informed The Occasions in 1998. “Learning to turn to the viewers, discovering to keep for laughs — I ate it up with a spoon.”

But by the conclude of that yr, she was deep into ingénue territory once again, enjoying Maria, the undisciplined newbie nun turned stay-in governess of 7, in “The Sound of Songs.”

When she acquired her third Tony nomination, this one for most effective highlighted actress in a musical, it was for enjoying Winifred Banking institutions, a married Englishwoman with two youngsters and a gifted nanny, in “Mary Poppins” (2006).

For all her success in musicals, Ms. Luker did not identify as a show-tunes sort. “I am so not a musical theater person,” she informed Playbill in 2003. “I love rock tunes and jazz. I love the ’70s things I grew up with.”

Rebecca Joan Luker was born on April 17, 1961, in Birmingham, Ala., and grew up in Helena, a small town close by. She was a single of 4 little ones of Norse Doak Luker Jr., a construction worker, and Martha (Baggett) Luker, the regional substantial school’s treasurer. Rebecca sang in her church choir (First Baptist of Alabaster) and was a member of the Thompson Substantial marching band.

In superior university, she entered a elegance pageant. Singing “Much Extra,” the ballad of girlish desires and resolve from “The Fantasticks,” she received a university scholarship as initially runner-up to Alabama’s Junior Skip.

That took her to the College of Montevallo, just 14 miles from her parents’ residence, where she was a tunes important and received her diploma in 1984. Graduation was a calendar year later on than prepared simply because she took a split to get the job done with Michigan Opera Theater, wherever she satisfied her foreseeable future New York agent. Just five a long time right after university, she was on the Broadway phase, assuming the guide feminine function in “The Phantom of the Opera”— Christine, the chorus lady who is the item of the phantom’s affections.

“Phantom” was her Broadway debut she began as the understudy to the unique star, Sarah Brightman grew to become an alternate and took over as Christine in 1989. She remained with the demonstrate until 1991.

Ms. Luker moved on immediately to another Broadway demonstrate: She played a ghost, the very little orphan girl’s lifeless Aunt Lily, in “The Top secret Backyard garden.” In his review in The Times, Frank Rich singled out “I Listened to Anyone Crying,” Ms. Luker’s haunting trio with Mandy Patinkin and Daisy Egan, for specific praise.

In numerous of her later Broadway roles, Ms. Luker changed the primary actress in a long-operating hit. She took around as Claudia, the director-protagonist’s movie-star muse, in “Nine” (2003) Marie, the temperamental fairy godmother, in “Cinderella” (2013) and Helen, the frustrated wife and mother who misses currently being an actress — just as Mrs. Banking companies had in “Mary Poppins” — in “Fun Home” (2016).

She grew more mature gracefully in a number of her later Off Broadway roles. Twenty several years just after starring in a 1996 revival of “Brigadoon” as Fiona, a Scottish lass so exceptional she seriously does come together only as soon as a century, she played a droll Buffalo matron in A.R. Gurney’s comic drama “Indian Blood” (2006). In 2011, she was an Italian duchess grieving her son’s death in Maury Yeston’s musical “Death Normally takes a Holiday.”

Ms. Luker also had a thriving cabaret vocation, showing at intimate venues like Café Carlyle and Feinstein’s/54 Below, but she professed a specific like for “the are living knowledge in front of an orchestra.”

The phase was often her first property, but she did ultimately make her display performing debut in her late 30s when she appeared in “Cupid and Cate” (2000), a Hallmark Corridor of Fame television motion picture in which she played the heroine’s ideal and beautifully sensible sister. Between 2010 and 2020, she experienced guest roles on series which include “Boardwalk Empire” and “N.C.I.S. New Orleans” and appeared in three feature films, including “Not Fade Away” (2012), a drama about a teenage rock band.

Her final stage position was as a modest-city minister’s narrow-minded wife in a 2019 Kennedy Heart generation of “Footloose.” She done at a concert in honor of the lyricist Sheldon Harnick in March 2020.

Her last performance was in June, by using Zoom, in a prerecorded profit general performance, “At House With Rebecca Luker.”“When I sing,” she informed The Moments soon right before that show, “I feel it heals me. It allows me sense like I’m nevertheless a aspect of anything.”

Ms. Luker married Gregory Jbara, an actor, in 1993 they divorced in 1996. In 2000 she married the actor Danny Burstein, whom she satisfied when they starred with each other in “Time and Again” in San Diego.

Mr. Burstein survives her, as do two stepsons, Zachary and Alexander Burstein a brother, Roger a sister, Suzanne Luker her mom, Martha Hales and her stepfather, Lamar Hales. An additional brother, Stephen, died last calendar year.

Seeking back again on her job in a 2016 Theater Individuals podcast, Ms. Luker expressed gratitude for the roles she’d had but admitted that she likely really should have damaged out of the primary-lady mildew — examined performing for a longer period and much more severely, appeared in much more performs, finished extra comedy.

“I wish I had branched out a small extra,” she claimed cheerily. “Maybe played a bitch or a little something.”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.