With Chicago, Alyssa Milano Becomes the Broadway Baby of Who's the Boss?'s Family of Stage Stars
On September 16, Alyssa Milano makes her Broadway debut as Chicago’s unrepentant murderess Roxie Hart. It’s a career milestone for the actress who is still one of the most recognizable faces of ‘90s television. A usual suspect in the Aaron Spelling multiverse, she played little sister Jennifer Mancini on the soap opera Melrose Place and littlest sister (for the first three seasons) Phoebe Halliwell on the supernatural drama Charmed. However, America first met her on the ‘80s sitcom Who’s the Boss? (1984-1992) where she and Tony Danza (as father-daughter duo Tony and Samantha Micelli) became a tag team of fish-out-of-water Brooklynites transplanted in the posh suburbs of Connecticut with Angela Bower (Judith Light), her son Jonathan (the adorable Danny Pintauro) and her mother Mona Robinson (Katherine Helmond). From blended family antics to a high-powered businesswoman with fluffed hair and shoulder pads, it was the definition of ‘80s comfort TV—and happened to feature a cast with some of the finest theatrical street cred around. Take a deep dive into the thespians of Who’s the Boss? and learn why Milano’s Broadway debut was just a matter of time.
Tony Danza
Danza started his career as a middleweight boxer, but pivoted to acting in the late ‘70s as cab driver and part-time boxer Tony Banta on the sitcom Taxi. Who’s the Boss? (where he played a housekeeping Tony) solidified his TV stardom—a fame he parlayed into film and a stint as a talk show host. By the late ‘90s, however, the stage came calling. He kicked off his Broadway resume with a pair of classic dramas, replacing Anthony LaPaglia as Eddie in a Michael Mayer-helmed revival of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge and playing bartender Rocky Pioggi in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Having proved himself a crooner, he eventually transitioned to musicals, taking over as The Producers’ Max Bialystock in 2006, and in 2015, originating the role of pro gambler Tommy Korman in Jason Robert Brown’s musical adaptation of Honeymoon in Vegas opposite Rob McClure. Catch him at the Café Carlyle this fall with his cabaret show, Tony Danza: Standards & Stories. And who knows—maybe his former TV daughter will pay him a visit while she’s in town.
Judith Light
In TV land, Judith Light starred as divorced advertising executive Angela Bower in desperate need of live-in help. But before she became America’s prototype for single motherhood, she had already been on Broadway twice—as Helene in a 1975 production of A Doll’s House with Liv Ullman and Sam Waterston, and as Julie Herzl in a short-lived 1976 production of Herzl, Dore Schary and Amos Elon’s stage adaptation of Elon’s Theodor Herzl biography. The latter only ran for eight post-opening performances, sending Light into the loving arms of the soap opera One Life to Live, where she played Karen Wolek from 1977 to 1983, followed by eight years of will-they-won't-they with Tony Danza. But post-TV fame, she’s consistently come back to Broadway, picking up her first Tony nomination in 2011 for her performance as Marie Lombardi in the Eric Simonson play Lombardi, and earning consecutive Tony Awards in 2012 and 2013 for her featured performances in Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities and Richard Greenberg’s The Assembled Parties. In 2019, the Tony Awards honored her again with the Isabelle Stevenson Award, celebrating her “Advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights and the fight against HIV/AIDS."
Katherine Helmond
Katherine Helmond joined Who’s the Boss? as Angela’s flirtatious mother Mona Robinson with a decades-long theatrical career under her belt. She made her stage debut in a 1955 production of As You Like It, going on to perform for years at Hartford Stage in Hartford, CT and Trinity Repertory Theater in Providence, RI. She earned the Clarence Derwent Award for her 1971 off-Broadway debut in John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves, and in 1973, she earned a Tony nomination for her performance as Margaret in Eugene O’Neill’s The Great God Brown. Her TV career took off in the late ‘70s when she became Soap’s ditsy Jessica Tate, but she paid the New York stage a few more visits, including a 2001 stint with Joie Lee and Hayley Mills in Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues—a play Mona Robinson would have absolutely commuted in from Fairfield to see.
Alyssa Milano
Milano is only now making her way to Broadway, but her stage resume was already filling up by the time she came out swinging as Samantha Micelli at age 12. Beginning at 7, she spent 18 months on the road in the national tour of Annie, and just before Who’s the Boss? kicked off, she performed in Wendy Wasserstein’s one-act play Tender Offer (fittingly, a father-daughter story) at Ensemble Studio Theater, and made her official off-Broadway debut in a Second Stage production of John O’Keefe’s apocalyptic family play All Night Long. Milano also sought out theater near the end of her run on Who’s the Boss?, starring in Butterflies Are Free at the Court Theatre in Los Angeles. “I had been looking for a play,” Milano said in a 1991 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “[I] didn’t want to do anything with a lot of sets. I wanted to do something intimate, a play about people.” If those preferences still stand, the famously set-less Chicago will be just the ticket for her Broadway debut.
