She’s ready for more lucre

Rebecca Luker has arrived at some sort of a crossroads in her career.

“It’s a weird time for me,” confesses Luker. “I am not really sure what direction I am going in, to tell you the truth.”

Since she replaced Sarah Brightman in the role of Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera” in the late 1980s, Luker has been Broadway’s leading musical lady. A two-time Tony nominee, she’s starred in “The Secret Garden” and the acclaimed revivals of “Show Boat,” “The Sound of Music” and “The Music Man.” Luker has appeared in concert with symphony orchestras around the country including at the Hollywood Bowl, recorded CDs and managed to squeeze in a few TV appearances. And now she’s starring in the Reprise! production of “She Loves Me,” the charming 1963 Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick musical comedy, which plays Tuesday to March 30 at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse. Luker, though, is eager to spread her wings.

“I am on the cusp of who knows what,” says Luker. With her strawberry blond hair and peaches-and-cream complexion, Luker, 41, can still pass as an ingenue.

Since “Music Man” closed last year after an 18-month run, she has been trying to break free of her soprano image. She appeared off-Broadway in December in “The Vagina Monologues” and has auditioned for several plays this year. Luker says her musical-comedy background hasn’t prejudiced the minds of the producers. “I came close to a lot of those plays. I think it’s just a matter of time. I would really like to do something different and something that makes money. A film would be nice, or a TV show. I am ready to make some money and work a real job -- not that this isn’t a real job. I am trying to put a lot of irons in the fire.”

One of them is a pop music CD that she recorded recently. “I grew up singing folk, rock and jazz, and I do all kinds of music,” she says. “I do a Carly Simon cover, ‘Boys in the Trees,’ a Janis Ian song, a couple of Joni Mitchell songs, a Billy Joel song and a Beatles song -- ‘She’s Leaving Home.’ ”

“She Loves Me” is bringing her out to Los Angeles just as the networks are gearing up for the fall TV pilot season, and Luker is hoping she’ll get a few auditions. Her husband, Danny Burstein, also a New York stage actor, is also coming to L.A. to audition.

So the play’s short time-frame suits her. “This is fun to do because it is only a two-week run,” Luker says of the Reprise! Productions, which are somewhere between a concert version of a Broadway musical and a full-fledged production.

“It’s sort of interesting. You put in a lot of work into it and then it’s over. A long Broadway run is very hard. It’s nice to take a break from that.”

Inspired by Lubitsch film

“She Loves Me,” which was based on the classic 1940 Ernst Lubitsch film “The Shop Around the Corner,” revolves around two feuding boutique clerks in 1930s Budapest who work together but don’t know they are actually romantic pen pals. Tony Award-winner Scott Waara, fresh from the Mark Taper production of “Big River,” plays Luker’s love interest. Gordon Hunt directs the production, which features a glorious score including the title tune, as well as “Dear Friend” and “Ice Cream.”

Before the start of rehearsals, she hadn’t gotten a handle on her character of Amalia, so she found a conversation she had with Hunt before rehearsal began to be beneficial. “He said it’s the ‘30s and the Depression, and these people are hard-working, often penniless,” says Luker.

“So I come into the store [for a job], broke and hungry. It’s not just a sweet, funny scene ... it’s literally about saving my life and surviving. It will be hard for me to [find the character] in just two weeks. I usually need more that that.”

Hunt deadpans when asked his impression of Luker as rehearsals begin: “She’s a nightmare. She’s so demanding,” adding, “I am delighted. When they called up and they said we got Rebecca Luker, I said great. But then, I am delighted with everybody we got.”

Waara and Luker worked together about 15 years ago in a New York workshop for a revue of Hoagy Carmichael songs. “She sounds as terrific as she ever did,” says Waara.

The gift of music

Luker didn’t have the opportunity to see many musicals while growing up in Birmingham, Ala. “There weren’t many to go to down there,” she says. But music was always part of her life with her two older brothers and younger sister.

“We were singing constantly. I sang in church a lot and every singing group I could get into. My mother had a lovely voice, and she taught me a lot about music.”

When Luker was 16, her mother surprised her by signing her up for vocal lessons at the local college, the University of Montevallo. “It was just the best gift in the world,” she says.

Luker won a four-year scholarship to Montevallo when she was chosen first runner-up in the state’s Junior Miss pageant, performing “Much More” from “The Fantasticks” for her talent program.

“I was a music major from the beginning,” she says. Though Luker originally thought about becoming a music teacher, “in the middle of my freshman year, I decided to go strictly performance-oriented.”

She starred in the college’s musical-comedy productions and then she took a few semesters off to intern at the Michigan Opera Theater in Detroit. She landed an agent when she appeared with actress Judy Kaye in a production of “Sweeney Todd.”

“He came to see [his client] Judy Kaye,” she says. “He wrote me a letter right after that and said, ‘I’ll sign you.’ ”

So she had the good fortune of having a foot in the door when she went to New York after graduation. And Luker admits that she didn’t have to struggle much in the Big Apple. She only waitressed for a week, quitting after she missed an audition. She soon got a part in a one-act opera written by Charles Strouse and then did concert performances of vintage Broadway musicals at the New Amsterdam Theatre.

“I met people and I made more connections, and then ‘Phantom’ came long. I was one year in the chorus and two years as the leading lady.”

Last summer, Luker participated in the acclaimed Stephen Sondheim festival that took place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, playing the flirtatious Clara in Sondheim’s “Passion.”

“I just had a ball,” she says. “Sondheim was there and he worked with us. Everyone just worships him. I got kind of nervous when he walked into the room. He just wanted nothing more than to be treated normally.” Luker feels her voice is stronger than ever. “I know how to take care of it. I really don’t worry about it,” she says. “I am not paranoid. I go out to eat after the show. I have to eat what I want. I have to have a normal life.”

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‘She Loves Me’

Where: Freud Playhouse, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood

When: Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m.

Ends: March 30

Price: $50-$60

Contact: (310) 825-2101