She starred on Broadway, then lost her voice. She’s mounting a comeback in Kansas City

For a young singer from the eastern tip of Newfoundland island, dreams coming true don’t get any bigger than landing a role on Broadway.

And nightmares don’t get any more real than losing the ability to sing.

Such was the fate of Tina Maddigan Mayer, who suffered paralyzed vocal cords that left her unable to speak, much less perform, in 2018. Now living in Overland Park, Maddigan is mounting a comeback, playing one of musical theater’s most iconic roles — Rose, the mother of the title character in “Gypsy.” It will run June 15-July 9 on the Music Theater Heritage stage.

“This really is a dream role,” said Maddigan, a native of St. John’s in Canada. “I hope my voice is ready for it, because I’m ready to finally take a step back out onto that stage and see what that feels like again.”

Back in 2001, Maddigan, then 25, played the daughter Sophie in “Mamma Mia!” when the ABBA-infused musical opened on Broadway. Advertisements in East Coast newspapers proclaimed, “Tina Maddigan is a luscious ingenue with a voice of considerable power,” citing Ben Brantley of The New York Times.

Fast-forward to 2018, when she was preparing to return to “Mamma Mia!,” this time playing Donna, Sophie’s mother, in a New Theatre Restaurant production in Overland Park.

After suffering pain and tremors in her right arm, Maddigan eventually visited a neurologist. She was shopping at the Target on 151st Street later that day when her doctor called with the MRI results.

“If you slip at Target right now, you will never walk again,” he told Maddigan. “You have to go to the hospital. This is an emergency surgery.”

Doctors operated the next day to correct a herniated disc pressing against her spinal cord. Worse, there was a slight chance the surgery could affect her vocal cords.

“I came out of surgery, and I could talk,” Maddigan said. “And then six days later is when it started happening.

“Even when I think of that day, I’m, ‘This is not happening.’”

Not only was the New Theatre gig gone, but she also had to resort to non-verbal communication with her two children — two claps for Sadie, the second child, and one clap for older brother Riley.

At about the same time, the new musical “Come From Away,” which is set in Newfoundland, had opened on Broadway and was mounting a national tour. Friends urged her to audition.

“They were saying, ‘Why aren’t you coming in for ‘Come From Away’? This is a shoo-in for you. You’re a Newfoundlander. …’ I finally had to confess that I couldn’t sing it.”

Eventually, her agent dropped her.

Grand dame of ‘Mamma Mia!’

Louise Pitre, described by Broadway World as “one of the grand dames of Canadian musical theatre,” played Donna to Maddigan’s Sophie in “Mamma Mia!” on Broadway and on the national tour that preceded it.

The pair became friends backstage and offstage, but Pitre’s motherly instincts did kick in.

“She was pretty new in the business, and from Newfoundland, she’s got this whole sort of smaller-town way about her,” Pitre said. “And to be plunked in New York, I did feel maybe protective of her that way.

“She’s such an amazing social person, she adapted pretty damn quickly.”

The two developed a tradition of sharing a bottle of red wine while changing costumes for the musical’s climactic wedding scene.

“It was our little secret,” Pitre said. “It was such a happy thing. And we would talk about something really cool, quickly, and then go and do the wedding scene. I would walk her in.”

Pitre and Maddigan, whose dressing rooms were side by side, both remained with the show for two years. When they left, the red-wine tradition continued with their replacements — until the new Sophie got married with a large red splotch on her wedding dress after a backstage accident.

Pitre was nominated for a Tony Award for “Mamma Mia!,” which ran on Broadway for 14 years and was made into a hit movie. She also played Rose in “Gypsy” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2014. With multiple solos, highlighted by “Everything’s Coming up Roses,” the role — made famous on Broadway by Ethel Merman and later played by Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone — is not for the faint of heart.

“It is said to be the toughest role for a woman in the standard musical theater,” Pitre said. “For sure, it is an absolute killer. She sings and sings and sings and talks and yells. Oh, my God, it’s huge.”

Pitre isn’t surprised her fellow Canadian and former protégé has overcome adversity to take on Rose.

“She doesn’t get down about anything, that’s what I think about her,” Pitre said. “She’s kind of on the high of life. And it’s a beautiful presence to have.

“How to describe Tina? She’s a pretty crazy, wacky ray of out-of-control sunshine. She’s a very neat person. And she’s off the wall, she’s funny, she has the biggest heart, she’s incredibly talented, she’s truthful. You know what, she’s a stand-up kind of guy. I adored her.”

Reinventing herself

“I have to say, I’m nervous,” Maddigan said. “I can’t lie.”

To reach this point in what has been a 22-year saga, Maddigan took some detours.

She co-hosted the Travel Channel series “Road Trips” for one season in 2004, then joined the cast of the ill-fated Broadway production of “The Wedding Singer” in October 2006. It closed two months later.

Next came the births of Riley and Sadie, a move from New York to Kansas City (where her husband, Danny Mayer, is from) in 2008, a relocation to Virginia in 2013 for Danny’s work and a return to Kansas City in 2015 when Danny’s sister was diagnosed with breast cancer (she’s now cancer-free).

Then the back pain, spine surgery and vocal cord paralysis.

Maddigan starred in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” at the New Theatre in 2012 but had done little other stage work here.

“I was starting to get job offers in Kansas City,” she said. “My kids were old enough that I could go and do a show. I was ready. And now this has happened, and I was, ‘Well, it’s happened for a reason.’ … This Broadway girl had to reinvent herself.”

While working with doctors and therapists attempting to recover her voice, she discovered TikTok as an outlet for the impersonations and funny voices she had always enjoyed.

“I started posting there like crazy and drew a nice following,” she said. “We’re almost at 600,000. And it was just about creating characters out of what voice I had.”

Meanwhile, Maddigan turned to teaching aspiring actors at Stage Right Performing Arts, which helped produce Justin Cooley, recently nominated for a Tony Award for his role in the Broadway musical “Kimberly Akimbo.” Twelve-year-old Sadie is among the students at Stage Right.

Maddigan loves inspiring youngsters, but she wasn’t crazy about Sadie following in her footsteps.

“I tried to keep my daughter away from theater, but, nope, that has happened now, too,” she said. “Because theater is tough. You’re too fat, you’re not tall enough. Will you dye your hair? Will you cut off a limb? It can take a toll on your mental well-being, especially when it comes to body imaging.”

Theater also can take a toll on even the healthiest voice. Maddigan, who says her voice is now “definitely a different instrument” than it once was, is taking a realistic approach to “Gypsy.”

“I’m still keeping my fingers crossed,” she said. “I’m not going to be ‘I’m going to kill it!’ because I’m still kind of like, ‘All right, this is the one test.’ If you don’t dip your toe in the water, you don’t know how it feels.”

Maddigan might never have dipped her toes if Tim Scott, MTH’s artistic director, hadn’t come calling with the offer to do Rose.

“It’s been a long recovery, but it is really exciting to come back with a role like this,” she said. “I’ll be very honest, if this is the last one I ever get to do, I will be very happy.”

But that doesn’t mean she isn’t dreaming. A return to Broadway “if the role was right,” movies, television, even “Saturday Night Live.”

For this Newfoundlander who once reached the pinnacle of musical theater, why not?

“I don’t think you’re ever too old to get back at it,” Maddigan said. “As long as we keep dreaming, the possibilities are endless. Don’t close any doors.”

‘Gypsy’ at MTH

The musical “Gypsy” opens at 7:30 p.m. June 15 and runs through July 9 at MTH Theater at Crown Center. ($39-$65). musictheaterheritage.com.