COVER STORY : Mary Poppins Gets Gnarly : Julie Andrews swaps her cheery cloak--or is it a straitjacket?--for the bittersweet world of Stephen Sondheim

“Who can contend with an endless erection that falls on its face when it see its reflection,” sings Julie Andrews, America’s sunniest star, in “Putting It Together,” a new musical revue about sex, love and death.

The show, which opens April 1 at the Manhattan Theatre Club, is among the most anticipated of the New York season. Scalpers are getting as much as $750 for a pair of tickets, and not just because “Putting It Together” marks Andrews’ return to the New York stage for the first time in more than three decades. After all, the theater has long been the refuge of fading movie stars, and the 57-year-old actress hasn’t had a hit since she cross-dressed in top hat and tails for the 1982 film “Victor/Victoria” and in the process earned an Oscar nomination.

No, the big surprise here is Andrews’ return comes at the beckoning of Stephen Sondheim. And they’re working together for the first time in a 299-seat theater far away from Broadway’s glare. It’s an odd coupling.

Andrews, the prim purveyor of the dreamy romanticism of Lerner & Loewe and Rodgers & Hammerstein taking on the edgy neuroticism of Broadway’s modernist master?

The cockeyed optimist sings the Angst -ridden realist? The fair lady and the dark prince?

The pairing was by any measure big news when it was announced in October, especially for the legions of Sondheim freaks and Andrews fans in this town. When tickets went on sale in February for the 12-week limited run, thousands of stoic theatergoers (and scalpers) queued in freezing weather to pick up tickets.

The marriage between these two musical-theater titans promised, among other things, the thrill of watching Andrews--who only last year was whistling a happy tune in a recording of “The King and I”--take on some of Sondheim’s pricklier and more acerbic material, such as the above lyrics from “My Husband the Pig.”

“Will it have the same effect as when she bared her breasts in ‘S.O.B.’?” mused Sondheim, referring to Andrews’ husband Blake Edwards’ film, in which she parodied her pristine image. “The real point is that for the first time she has the opportunity to play a contemporary character in a contemporary musical. She hasn’t had a chance to do that kind of work.”

In fact, when Andrews left New York in the early ‘60s to conquer Hollywood in a 1-2 volley of “Mary Poppins” and “The Sound of Music,” she had already established herself as the queen of the musical theater, creating the starring roles on stage in both “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot.” Her return to the stage has long been rumored, especially since her once-buzzing career had settled in to the medium hum of the occasional film or TV special interspersed with concerts and recordings.

Most recently, the Broadway chatter had centered on a musical version of “Victor/Victoria” to be directed by her husband. People certainly expected her to come back in a big, splashy vehicle, the kind with lots of high-kicking chorus boys flanking a star decked out in glamorous threads.

Instead, Andrews has chosen an intimate revue, where she is one of an ensemble cast of five that also includes Michael Rupert, Christopher Durang, Rachel York and Stephen Collins. The show’s book has been stitched together from Sondheim’s songs, and although it is directed by Julia McKenzie, one of the stars of the 1977 Broadway hit “Side by Side by Sondheim,” it is not a sequel. Each of the cast plays a different fractured piece in the unresolvable puzzle of relationships. Andrews herself becomes a middle-aged, upper-middle-class woman--”smart, tart, dry as a martini”--whose wolfish husband (Collins) leads her into a thicket of marital conundrums.

For Andrews, the challenge of “Putting It Together” has been to return to the theater performing songs that, in her eyes, expose her far more painfully than anything she did in “S.O.B.”

“Stephen’s music bares your soul,” she said in an interview during a lunch break while the show was in rehearsals at MTC’s Chelsea loft spaces. “He pierces to the heart of all our lives. That is, if you allow him to get to you, because it can be too painful. . . .

“The lady I play covers her pain with a lot of wit,” she added. “But the nice thing is that each of our characters start off by being full of veneer, but very quickly reveal who they are. They’re slowly stripped of their illusions.”

Julie Andrews’ own veneer is quite polished. After all, she’s been a star for more than 40 years, ever since she sang a Royal Command Performance at age 13 at London’s Palladium, winning over the future Queen of England. Since that time, she has fossilized in the public’s mind as “sweet Julie Andrews,” with gee-whiz sincerity and ladylike purity. And as has been true for other legends, her persona has been a two-edged sword, blessing her with great success as well as dismal failure: In one of her last movies, the 1987 “Duet for One,” she played a violinist suffering from a debilitating disease who spouts the “F word,” gambols around seductively in the nude and hits the sack with her lesbian maid. Though she earned some good notices, it flopped at the box office.

It isn’t likely that the public will balk at Andrews’ change of pace in the Sondheim revue, however. For one thing, as the composer himself observed, this time she’s singing those dark emotions, not speaking them. Also, “she’s an extremely versatile actress who has a lovely warm presence on stage.”

Her warmth is immediately apparent in person. She is also much sexier than on screen. Dressed in a simple white blouse and black velvet pants, a plum sweater draped across her shoulders, her short-cropped hair is now a sassy red shade, and she has a bawdy laugh that’s more barmaid than governess. When she politely says, “ ‘Scuse me while I munch,” and then tears into a chicken salad sandwich with the zest of a wrangler, the actress brings to mind what Paul Newman once said of her in less politically correct times: “She’s really one of the last of the truly great broads.”

As much as she has tried in the past to stretch her abilities, Andrews has also learned to effectively use her popular image as a shield. Early on, in fact, she earned the sobriquet “The Iron Butterfly” for the ferocity with which she has navigated the extraordinary pressures of stardom. She is sensitive to the charge. “I’m resilient and I’m professional,” she said curtly when the nickname was brought up. “If that’s iron, then so be it.”

“Julie’s not an easy person to get to know,” Edwards said. “She’s very cautious about opening up too much, particularly to the press. She’s been hurt a lot in the past.”

“One does build one’s defenses so well,” she said. “There’s a certain degree of that very controlled, careful lady and I’m not unaware of it. By nature, I really am a fairly bouncy and sunny individual. There are elements of me in the roles I’ve played in the past. But people forget that Mary Poppins was just a role, too. I’m more complex than that and it’s just a question of allowing those sides to come out.”

The opportunity to explore those emotional facets in “Putting It Together” came about last October when Andrews, producer Cameron Mackintosh, musical director Scott Frankel and McKenzie met in Sondheim’s East Side Manhattan brownstone to go over the score of the show, which had begun as a three-week showcase in Oxford, England, earlier that year.

The composer had been a visiting professor there on an annual fellowship endowed by Mackintosh, and the program was initially prepared as an informal valedictory. Impressed, Mackintosh wanted to transfer it to London’s West End with Diana Rigg in the role of the brittle sharp-tongued wife. But when he could not immediately find an appropriate theater available for the intimate show, he approached artistic director Lynne Meadow about presenting it at the Manhattan Theatre Club.

“A number of big names had been brought up as to who might be right for it,” recalled Meadow, “when my associate Michael Bush turned to me and said, ‘Wouldn’t Julie Andrews be great?’ I thought it was an inspired choice but I knew that if she was going to do it, Steve would be the person to convince her.”

Sondheim and Andrews have been friends since the ‘50s, when she was married to designer Tony Walton, who created the sets for Sondheim’s first solo success, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” But they had never worked together. “I don’t know why her name hadn’t come up before this,” said Sondheim, who added that, in his opinion, Andrews could well have been cast in any number of roles from his past musicals.

“I didn’t know that she was even available until recently.”

In fact, while Andrews had long talked about returning to the theater, her role as “mum” to an extended family--her own daughter, Emma Walton; Edwards’ two children from a previous marriage, and their two adopted Vietnamese daughters--precluded accepting any of the numerous offers she had received over the years.

When the call came from Sondheim, the timing was right. The last fledglings, 19-year-old Amy and 18-year-old Joanna, were about to leave the nest, and Andrews and her husband were talking more seriously about preparing the stage musical of “Victor/Victoria” for the 1993-94 season.

Her short-lived summer sitcom “Julie” had recently been drubbed by the critics as a version of “Maria Von Trapp in the Little House on the Prairie,” and her film career was at low ebb.

She still had unlimited concert dates for the asking, and her repertory even included two Sondheim songs, “Not a Day Goes By” and “Being Alive.”

“But,” she said, “quite frankly, I found that it was . . . I don’t know what the word is, ‘depressing’ or ‘irritating,’ to keep saying ‘And then I sang . . . and then I did. . . .’ I wanted to wake up my brain, to be contributive, to be of today, rather than 30 years ago.”

The limited engagement at the Manhattan Theatre Club could provide not only that challenge but also a chance to wean herself away from familial duties. She could also be using this ensemble production to get her feet wet for an eventual return to Broadway.

“Yeah, well, um, Sondheim is hardly dabbling in a little pool,” Andrews said with a laugh. “It’s more like diving into the deep end. When the call came, I knew that I would have to seriously consider it, but there was still a part of me that said, ‘Hold on now. Let’s just think about this a bit?’ ”

Her reservations were dispelled at the October meeting at Sondheim’s townhouse. As the afternoon wore on, and the various participants acted out or sang the material, Andrews became increasingly excited. “She began asking a lot of penetrating questions about the characters,” Mackintosh said. “She was really working herself up to the point where she could finally open a new window to do this.”

Once committed, however, Andrews said that she was “utterly terrified” when rehearsals began in February. But if that is so, she reportedly has been supportive of the entire company from the beginning, even while fighting off her own insecurities.

“It was kind of great seeing someone’s who’s a legend going through all the same paranoia that we all do,” actor Rupert said, “and going through it knowing that the audience’s expectations are jacked up. I remember going up to her and saying, ‘Boy, am I glad I’m not you!’ and she laughed. She accepts that responsibility.”

Andrews admits she initially worried she wouldn’t be able to pull off a couple of the songs. “I was really just scared of them,” she said. “The joy has been to discover it’s OK to go for bust and see what happens. It’s probably something that every actress except me has done over and over again. It’s just a question of losing certain restrictions you place on yourself.”

She refused to say which songs set her off, but it’s a fair bet that the actress--who describes herself “as one of those Libra ladies who tries desperately not to fight”--found it difficult to plumb the anger in “Could I Leave You,” a bilious rap sheet of marital sins that her character drunkenly spits out at the end of the first act.

“I know I probably have a lot of rage in me that I don’t show,” she said, carefully wrapping up the remainder of her sandwich. “But I’m not about to wallow in it or reveal it. You’ll have to ask someone else.”

“I’m not sure Julie has a darker side,” Edwards said, “but she has demons and a lot of depressing memories. There’s got to be a lot of rage down there, enough rage to make a person know that they could kill. What we see in her is mostly this tremendous struggle to overcome that by taking care of people: Me. The children. The cast and crew. Everybody.”

As the talented daughter of an alcoholic mother and stepfather who were vaudevillians, Andrews quickly took on the role of the breadwinner to her family of five. Her early career touring with her parents was a bleak and tacky repetition of drafty dressing rooms and cheap hotels in crumbling resort towns. There were endless shouting rows between her parents, which she escaped by immersing herself in the sentimental pop hits of the day. By age 18--just before stardom beckoned with a featured role in the Broadway production of the West End hit “The Boy Friend”--she felt washed up, her career over.

“It was the end of vaudeville and I hadn’t found my identity,” she recalled. “I just knew I could belt out a number. It wasn’t until ‘My Fair Lady’ in London, many years later, that I discovered that I could make people laugh and forget the tax man. I could make the pain of their worlds go away. I began to feel quite valuable--to myself, obviously.”

At the peak of her popularity, after the 1965 release of “The Sound of Music,” she teetered on the brink of a nervous breakdown. “I was confused and depressed,” she said of those years, a time when she commanded one of the highest fees in Hollywood.

Andrews found solace in psychotherapy and in close friends like Carol Burnett, with whom she could talk “dirty” and cuss a blue streak. “I’m really much trashier than she is when we get together,” said Andrews of her chum, with whom she starred in a 1962 television special, “Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall.”

In the distorted glare of publicity, her first marriage to Walton failed and she surprised many by taking up with Blake Edwards, then known as the querulous director of Peter Sellers’ comedies.

The pair share a wicked wit. For example, when Andrews was told that a certain columnist--responsible for spreading some scurrilous sexual rumors about the couple--was about to have heart surgery, she reportedly said, “I hope they go in through her feet.”

Saddled with a large extended family, Andrews threw herself into her favorite role as a caretaker and provider. When each of the couple is asked separately the secret of their 24-year union, Edwards says “respect” and Andrews says “therapy.”

“I think if she were ever to leave me,” Edwards added, “it would be such an indictment of myself that I couldn’t stand it.”

Edwards has also been instrumental in shaping his wife’s career. She relies on him for advice and when they have worked together in such films as “Darling Lili,” “S.O.B.” and “Victor/Victoria,” the result has been as much a glorification of Andrews’ pert image as the occasional send-up of it.

Though Andrews is the first to poke fun at herself, she is also careful to correct the impression that she looks askance at her past work. While there may reside an implicit charge in Sondheim’s astringent work that the sentimental musicals of the past were in some way false, Andrews claims that she has never felt emotionally betrayed by them. She is a true believer of what she sings, whether it is “Could I Leave You” or “Hello, Young Lovers.”

“There are recognizable and relevant things in both songs,” she said. “I’d hate to think of the world without Rodgers & Hammerstein’s music or Jerome Kern. It’d be a rather tart place.”

And while Cameron Mackintosh praised Andrews for bringing what he calls “a warmth” to Sondheim’s music, the actress insisted that the charges against the composer for being too chilly or too cynical are misguided. “His music wouldn’t be so moving if that were true,” she said. “He’s just blazingly honest and that frightens a lot of people.”

If Sondheim is a cautious, lucid romantic then, at least according to the people around her, so is Andrews. Her seniority--and the years spent on the analyst’s couch--have given her an emotional range that, in her opinion, makes up for the notes that age has shaved off her celebrated four-octave range. Told about the parody done of her in the satirical revue “Forbidden Broadway” in which Susanne Blakeslee sings “I Couldn’t Hit That Note,” she laughed and said, “Well, I can’t anymore! I don’t think I sing as well, but then I was entirely defined by my voice. I was terrified of losing it because that would mean losing me. Now I sing for the sheer joy of it.”

There are other compensations to her intimations of mortality. They include a stint as ambassador for the United Nations Development Fund for Women. That work, she said, has helped to keep her priorities “sane.” “I really think I’m a late bloomer,” added this woman who’s been in demand since the ‘40s. “I’ve been late in coming into my recognition of just about everything in life. That’s OK. It gives me someplace to go.”