Catherine O’Hara sang the role of Sally in Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” so, of course, she’s delighted to return to the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday, Oct. 29, to sing the role again.
Though delight isn’t all that she’s feeling.
“Oh my Lord, all I can think is 30 years ago he set that key,” O’Hara says, laughing about the notes written by composer Danny Elfman then that now seem somehow higher. “That’s all I can think about. Oh boy.”
But it’s fun, adds the actress, an Emmy winner for “Schitt’s Creek,” and always a thrill once she overcomes her offstage jitters and starts to sing.
“I’m horribly nervous; I am, I am,” she says of those moments before the spotlight hits her. “I try, even though the character’s actually up on the screen, I have to imagine I’m the character, you know.
“The first time I did (the live-to-film show) there was no dialogue, and I happened to add the dialogue. You know, ‘Jack, dear, Jack, whatever,’ just to help remind myself and that audience that this a character, not a singer on the stage. Which I don’t pretend to be.
“So as long as I’m in character, and I try to be, then that gets me through the song,” O’Hara says. “Otherwise, it’s a tricky song.”
This year, O’Hara will only perform Sally, and Shock, a smaller part from the film, on Sunday, Oct. 29. On Friday and Saturday, Oct. 27-28, pop-rock singer Halsey will perform Sally while singer-actress Riki Lindholme handles Shock.
The rest of the singers include actor-musician Fred Armisen in the role of Lock and Ken Page as Ooogie Boogie, which he also did for the movie. They’ll be backed by a full orchestra and choir led by conductor John Mauceri.
Becoming Sally
O’Hara had worked with Burton on the 1988 movie “Beetlejuice” five years before making “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
“I guess it was because we’d worked together and had a good time, and so he very kindly offered me the part of Sally,” she says of how she was cast in “Nightmare.” “Then I went in to record with Danny, and that was exciting and scary. And we also got to do a Lock, Shock and Barrel song with dear Paul. (The late actor Paul Reubens, best known as Pee-wee Herman, played the role of Lock in the film and in past Bowl shows.)
Her work on the film was mostly done in San Francisco where director Henry Selick was meticulously filming the stop-motion animation in which Burton was making the film.
“To go into the studio was a thrilling and mind-boggling thing,” O’Hara says. “In one shot, five seconds of a scene, I think that’s like a week’s work. When you see the movie it’s just so beautiful and fluid and realistic in its own little world. You just forget all that work, but I really do appreciate it.”
The reception that “The Nightmare Before Christmas” received — in 1993 and throughout the following three decades — was never imagined, she says.
“I did not expect it,” she says. “But I guess I don’t ever think of work that way. You try to get involved with good people, work on a good script, and have some fun. You never really know what will happen.
“But this, yeah, I’m shocked and delighted every year when they want to do the live performance again.”
Strike up the orchestra
For O’Hara, perhaps the best part of the live-to-film shows she’s done at the Hollywood Bowl and in Europe in years past, is the chance to experience what feels like to be back by a full orchestra.
“It’s especially cool, I’ve got to say, to rehearse,” she says. “Because when you rehearse, you’re in the room with the orchestra and you can really hear every instrument right there. You know, right there beside you, behind you. You know, it’s not my world, and I never knew that I would get a chance in my life to sing with an orchestra. It’s truly a beautiful gift.”
Onstage at the Hollywood Bowl, the orchestra loses some of the intimate power it carries in the rehearsal room, O’Hara adds.
“You’re getting all the music through the monitors at your feet,” she says. “So it’s almost like doing karaoke at that point. Even though I know, and I keep turning around and there’s a big orchestra behind me.
“I have to remind myself there’s an actual live orchestra right there, but in rehearsal, you really feel that.”
From Sinatra to Sally
“In the show, I didn’t realize they were going to stop the movie and have us come out and sing the song,” O’Hara says of her not-very-actorly hope that no one would watch her onstage. “I thought I could just sort of sneak in and sing the song while the movie played.
“So that amount of focus is a little frightening,” she says. “People have their own little relationships with this character, with all the characters. And with Sally, that song is just so beautiful and tender and sweet, and sad and a little tricky to sing, as I was saying.
“But you know, the audience is so for Sally, so I just hope when I’m out there they’re looking at the screen and seeing the original Sally instead of me.”
Still, O’Hara says she never forgets how wonderful an opportunity this little film has provided her.
“It’s fun to get an opportunity to do something really different, and try to learn how to do something new,” she says. “And to be on the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, where Judy Garland and Jimi Hendrix and Frank Sinatra and all those people played over the years, that’s rich.
Despite the Bowl’s 17,500 capacity, she says, “it’s shockingly intimate.”
A ‘Nightmare’ endures
Thirty years on, O’Hara says she’s come to understand the reason this quirky stop-motion animated film lives on.
“It’s the combination of beautiful art,” she says. “Wonderful songs. And then, you know, sort of the common theme in a lot of Tim’s movies, of the outside character who just wants to be appreciated and loved.
“Jack is another character like that,” O’Hara says. “Kind of a freak, but not a freak. He’s a sweet soul. Like Edward Scissorhands, and so many characters in Tim’s movies. So yes, the art, the music and the sweetness of it.”
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’
What: Live performance of the score and songs to accompany the film.
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 27-28, and 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29.
Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles.
How much: $39-$250.
For more: Hollywoodbowl.com.
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