Life and Career
Criswell was born in Hampton, Virginia, but grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After she graduated from high school, she studied musical theatre at the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music. She then moved to New York where she landed a role in the touring company of Annie. She made her Broadway debut in The First in 1981. She has been in numerous musicals and has appeared with some of America's leading symphony orchestras as the featured soloist. She won the Helen Hayes Award in 1989 for her 1988 performance in Side By Side By Sondheim at the Olney Theatre in Washington.
In September, 1991 she presented her one-woman show Doin What Comes Naturally, at the Shaw Theatre in London. She has lived in London since 1992 when she was invited to play Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin's musical Annie Get Your Gun.
On August 1st 2009 she was a featured soloist in the "BBC Proms 2009: a Celebration of Classic MGM Film Musicals" at the Royal Albert Hall. On that evening she performed a number of songs including: "The Trolley Song", "Over the Rainbow" and "Get Happy" all originally made famous by Judy Garland. She additionally performed the songs "I Got Rhythm" (also in Garland's repertoire) and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" in a duet with, perhaps surprisingly, Seth MacFarlane. On October 4, 2009, she was a featured artist at the Broadway to West End Gala in the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. She repeated her Proms Concert success when she appeared in a Rodgers and Hammerstein evening, once again with the John Wilson Orchestra at The Royal Albert Hall with opera singer Rod Gilfry in August 2010.
In January 2012 she performed at Vienna's Volksoper, starring in Bernstein's "Candide".
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Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“We have got to know what both life and death are, before we can begin to live after our own fashion. Let us be learning our a-b- c’s as soon as possible.”
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