Savannah Randall shares a scene with Tristan Steel during the production of “Big,” which was choreographed by big sister Chelsea Randall. (WICA photo)
Savannah (left) and Chelsea Randall, the early years.
Chelsea (left), Savannah and mom Elizabeth Herbert (right), out for a day on the town.
Savannah Randall can lay down rhymes like Tupac.
The very definition of talented, the 23-year old South Whidbey-based actress (one of the stars of the upcoming Whidbey Island Center for the Arts production of “City of Angels”) has juggled four theatrical productions at one time.
She’s had a second home on the stage (“Life is so … mundane … without it!”) since she was three.
She’s starred in countless short films written, directed and edited by the other two thirds of a crack trio that includes mom Elizabeth Herbert and older sister Chelsea Randall.
She has a beautiful singing voice that can skip from Nicki Minaj to Idina Menzel, while putting her own unique spin on the song at hand.
And yet now, in between bites of a sandwich at the Greenbank Store, the bright, bubbly blond is laying down lyrical truth about dinosaurs, until she dissolves into a brief fit of giggles.
There are people who act, or at least try their hand at it, and then there are stars. Bright, burning, irresistible super novas who grab your attention and refuse to let go.
Savannah Randall is, most certainly, one of the latter.
Musical comedy, serious drama, teenage soap opera, childhood detective sagas (her 13th birthday featured her family and friends producing a professional-grade, ready-for-rental DVD called “Chloe Solves a Mystery”) and (maybe) even a TV series she’s writing based on her life — she can do it all, and often does.
When she and older sister Chelsea were selling candy as youngsters, instead of going door-to-door, they set up a tap dance floor outside of a grocery store in Las Vegas and then hoofed it until the money poured in.
In a lifetime of entertainment (her dad is a stage manager, her mom a child actress turned writer/director, her sister a dance prodigy/screenwriter/choreographer/film editor while grandpa Pitt Herbert was a character actor in the movies who played opposite everyone from Elvis to Jimmy Stewart), Randall has rarely, if ever, shied from the spotlight.
“I was a rambunctious, precocious child I guess. I really, really liked the attention!,” she said with a laugh.
And, if that means dancing along side her sister in 118-degree weather on a flat bed truck parked at an Air Force base — while dressed as the characters from “Men in Black” while an air show roars by in the background — so much more the fun.
“I’m white, white, white and Norwegian, and we’re wearing black suits and sunglasses and planes are dive bombing us in the background and everything is swirling round and round,” Randall said. “I have never been so hot in my life, but it was one of the greatest moments of my life!”
The Randall sisters grew up on the stage (their parents met when dad became mom’s agent), and Savannah made her stage debut at three, singing at one of Chelsea’s school productions.
“I watched my sister dance and knew I really, really wanted to do that with her. I wanted to do everything with her!”
A dancer until age 17, she moved into ballet, but developed a fondness for hip hop (“I wanted to be the next Britney Spears, when she was sane”).
Attending one of her mother’s acting schools as a tot (“She told me I had to sit in a chair and not move, not interrupt the class. I didn’t move the entire year — I was riveted”), she soon developed the acting bug.
The Acting Bug is actually the name of the school the family founded in Vegas, immortalized in wrist tattoos the three women share. Her time there was invaluable to her growth, as an actress and a person.
“We learned everything, the kind of stuff you don’t touch on, that you need for being on a theater stage,” Randall said. “Not just lines and blocking, but learning to scream and really sell it, how to die and make it convincing, continuity — who teaches that ? — but it’s so important.”
The trio moved to Whidbey Island in 2007 and plunged into local theater work, while also bouncing around to do work off-Island as well.
At one point Randall, who is playing dual roles in “City of Angels” and has to recite her dialogue backwards during a moment when the film noir movie-within-a-movie gets rewritten on stage by the Hollywood screenwriter who is dreaming it up, bounced like a pinball between four shows.
She was starring in “Blythe Spirit” and “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” (where she had her favorite role of her career so far channeling four-year old Sally Brown), stage managing “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and starting up on “City of Angels.”
The women in her family have no time for sleep.
“Four shows, that’s my limit. Well, maybe…”
And then she giggles at the thought that maybe, just possibly, she could do more than four shows. After all, she was still singing and working a “real” job while doing the aforementioned shows.
“Theater makes me feel alive,” Randall said. “You’re making something magical, creating something that shines brightly for a few days, or a few weeks, and then it’s gone and you need that next cosmic, wonderful, life-transforming moment.”
Whether it’s making a quick-change backstage during “Rocky Horror Picture Show” that required “fishnets, blue eye makeup, red lipstick, a black slutty slip, dog collar, black gloves and heels that I had to tape together to keep them from coming off during the next dance,” or rewriting dialogue for “The Full Monty” on the fly, to keep the audience from knowing that a cast member was being wheeled out in mid-play after a mild heart attack, she lives for the adrenaline rush of live theater.
Maybe it’s a family trait, as Chelsea once cut an actress out of a pair of skates that refused to get untied during a production of “Big,” then, hand gushing blood after the scissor blades slipped, ignored it since she needed to make a kite appear from above the stage moments later.
First rule of the stage — the show always, always goes on.
Second rule — get Savannah Randall to star in your show, have Chelsea Randall choreograph it and Elizabeth Herbert direct it, and your standing ovations are already assured.
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