Like a thief in the night, Helen Carey slipped into town, made her New York and Broadway debut on the last day of the season and filched a supporting-actress Tony nomination for "London Assurance" at the Roundabout.
In a play she calls "a wonderful verbal dessert," Carey plays Lady Gay Spanker (yes, that's the name), a robust, cheery countrywoman whose tastes run to strong horses and weak men."You've seen those British women who ride," she said. "No matter how dressed up they get, you know that the boots and the crop are not far away. Although the play is Victorian, it translates into a very liberal and modern mentality, doesn't it? She's uninhibited, straightforward and says what she thinks."
Carey, who began her career at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis under Tyrone Guthrie, has pursued an off-again, on-again schedule in repertory theater, at the Stratford Shakespeare Theater in Ontario, the Hartford Stage and the Arena Stage and the Shakespeare Theater in Washington. Her tours of duty were regularly interrupted while she put in stints abroad with her husband, a Foreign Service officer, and her two daughters.
"It's been kind of a spotty career," said Carey. "It's only in the last 10 years that directors have been able to get a bead on me."
One of those is Joe Dowling, the artistic director of the Guthrie and the director of "London Assurance," who has cast her in five previous productions, most recently "The Cherry Orchard."
When the Tony nominations were announced, Carey was in Washington, picking up a Helen Hayes Award for her role as Lady Politic Wouldbe in "Volpone" at the Stratford Shakespeare Theater in Ontario. "I took that part for one reason only," she said. "It has the line, `I pray you, lend me your dwarf.' "