Steinkellner Plays It Forward with New Version of Her Musical Baby

Longtime Montecito resident and four-time Emmy Award winner (Cheers) and Tony nominee (Sister Act the Musical) Cheri Steinkellner thought she had seen the last of Hello! My Baby, her original musical set in the apex of the Tin Pan Alley/Gangs of New York era. The song-filled musical is about “King of the Song-Pluggers” Mickey McKee – who sings like a dream but can’t write a note – and factory girl Betty Gold, a garment worker who writes like a demon, turning into Buddy O’Reilly, the new plugger king, in a funny, charming and decidedly singalong celebration of young voices too bold to be boxed in. 

It premiered starring young actors at Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre 13 years ago and later played at the Lobero, but never made it to New York, instead finding a home at high school and theater academies, including at Goleta Valley Junior High, where a planned production was scotched by the pandemic shut down after the dress rehearsal. 

Steinkellner’s latest effort – 2023’s stage adaptation of the Judy Garland/Gene Kelly MGM musical film classic Summer Stock (now called Get Happy) – received rave reviews from critics in its Connecticut debut, admirers including the almighty New York Times. Now that Get Happy is on its way to Broadway, Steinkellner naturally got to thinking about the earlier work deserving another look. 

“The songs are still great, ones from the public domain that are adapted to help tell the characters’ stories in their voices to push the action along, which is very different from a jukebox musical,” Steinkellner said. “That was part of my original impetus for writing it: to put old songs in young people’s hands so that they would ‘sing new’ again – songs my grandma taught me that can live on through new generations. But I wanted to tweak the story.” 

Steinkellner described the adjustment as a slight shift to more clearly create a theme that the music itself supports, to transcend the limitations that we place on ourselves or that the world places on us. 

Which is why Steinkellner also changed the show’s title to All of Me. 

“A lot has changed in the last few years around identity, and what was timely then now feels urgent,” she explained. “This is the story of a young girl who goes out in the world and explores a much larger, more all-encompassing identity than she ever imagined she could. Now more than ever, the message that we are more than we let ourselves be is important for all of us and especially for theater kids who are drawn to this world where they are trying on all different kinds of ways of being through theater.”

This Saturday, August 9, the new version gets a staged reading debut at the New Vic Theatre in a special performance as the centerpiece of Ensemble Theatre’s 2025 Play It Forward, which benefits ETC’s Education and Outreach Initiatives. It’s also a reunion with program director Brian McDonald, who helmed the original production at the Rubicon in 2012. 

Steinkellner herself joins a huge cast that combines young local thespians and a few veterans near (Rod Lathim and three local theater teachers) and far (Khaila Wilcoxon, Six the Musical and Hadestown; Gilbert Bailey, Beetlejuice, The Book of Mormon). Direction is by Will Roland, who appears in Get Happy and gave the Steinkellner notes on her script changes. 

“I did the original demo tracks way back when, but this will actually be the first time I will have ever performed it on stage with an audience,” she said. “It’s very exciting.” 

Even more so is the idea that All of Me (née Hello! My Baby) is enjoying a “rebirth” with a potentially unlimited future. 

“It has reminded me how much I loved it in the first place and how much more I’ve grown to love it ever since,” Steinkellner said. “It’s so exciting I can feel my skin tingling just thinking about it.”