Laura Benanti on Tackling Songs She ‘Should Never Sing’ for American Songbook

Tony winner Laura Benanti is capping off Lincoln Center’s annual American Songbook series with two concerts on February 11, and she recently gave Broadway.com some insider information on her upcoming gig.

“There are two shows back to back, one at 8:30 and one at 10:30—which sounds like a nightmare,” she exclaimed, before adding a tongue-in-cheek warning to her later audience. “But just for the 10:30 folks, [my voice] is all going to be gone. I want them to know I’m just going to be signing.” Or maybe taking her clothes off, as a solution? “Yeah, I mean, that’s what I do basically in every job now,” joked Benanti, who won her Tony playing Gypsy Rose Lee, showed plenty of skin in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and just starred in NBC's short-lived drama The Playboy Club.

However she gets through the evening, Benanti is excited about her shows’ killer line-up. “I’m singing mostly Broadway stuff, and a song that I wrote,” she explained. “I always do a medley of songs that I should never sing, ever, but I put them all in a medley and it’s pretty funny. And then I just make an ass of myself!” she said with a laugh. “It’s a very relaxed environment. Too relaxed.”