Isabel Keating is Morrible in ‘Wicked’

When you talk to actors and actresses on the phone during the course of an interview, they’re not, at least initially, real.

You remember characters they’ve played, plays they’ve been in, movements on a stage, the clothes they wore and how they affected you.

So it was talking with Isabel Keating, the actress — fondly and vividly remembered here from back in the day — who, at the same time, has enjoyed a kind of homecoming here late into this year. It is a way, one could suppose, of encountering her in two places at once.

When we talked with her, she was getting ready to catch up with the national touring company of “Wicked,” now at the Kennedy Center Opera House for another stop. She would be taking up the complicated role of Madame Morrible (rhymes with, well, you know), a professor of magic in Oz and the Wizard’s righthand person and henchwoman.

Before that, she played Birdie, the troubled, much put upon but ultimately defiant member of the greedy Hubbard family, in the recent and highly successful production of Lillian Hellman’s “Little Foxes” at Arena Stage.

“It is, isn’t it,” she said. “It’s like being home again for a while. I know so many people here that I’ve had the privilege to work with — they’re my friends, I like to think — and it’s an opportunity to remember all that. Twice, no less. This is such a wonderful theater community.”

Keating was not the star of “The Little Foxes” and is not the star of “Wicked,” but in both cases she makes her presence felt to the point that you don’t forget her. Birdie is the sad, frustrated conscience of “The Little Foxes,” in which the glorious Regina, played with dazzle at Arena by Marge Helgenberger (and originally by Tallulah Bankhead on Broadway and Bette Davis in the film version). “Birdie is such a terrific part. It’s such an opportunity to dive into a part.”

As for “Wicked,” people talk about the sets, the Stephen Schwartz score and lyrics, the “Defying Gravity” number, the twists and turnabouts on the original tale of Oz, the green witch and the blonde witch. But Madame Morrible has more than her share of moments; she’s the most modern, even cynical person in the production.

“This woman has aspirations,” Keating says. “She is interested in power, and she’s in close proximity to it. Like everybody, I’ve been following this election and the aftermath, and she reminds me of some people. So you think about that a little. She is after all close to the Wizard.”

There is a lot of serendipity going on with Keating right now. She is back, in some way, in the world of Oz by indirection. In 2003, she was part of the resurrection of “The Boys of Oz,” a musical play about Peter Allen (Hugh Jackman), who ended up marrying Liza Minelli, the daughter of Judy Garland. Audiences found that Keating, who played Garland, was not only a terrific actress, but that she could sing and break your heart, much like Garland herself. The result was a Tony nomination, as well as a Drama Desk Award and the Theatre World Award.

One writer said that she “channeled Judy Garland.”

In some ways, that’s exactly what happens when you watch her onstage. It may be an obvious observation to suggest that actors do transformations somewhat similar to the work of Madame Morrible, who has some magic gifts. I suspect that’s especially true for Keating, who brings to a role not only her gifts but some part of herself that fits it best, so that, for instance, the Birdie she played is exclusively hers.

“Wicked” is for the New York-based Keating her first time being part of a national touring company. “I’ve become a traveler,” she says. “It’s exciting and daunting and it’s a very different sort of life. Usually, it’s Mark [Berman, the man described as the love of her life] who’s touring and I’m working in New York.” Berman is a noted jazz pianist and composer, who played in the orchestra in “The Boys from Oz.”

“Wicked” closes at the Kennedy Center Jan. 8, then moves on to Orlando, Tampa, Schenectady, Syracuse and Rochester, with a final jump to Minneapolis in May.

Keating grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and if you listen hard, you can hear the tone, if not the accent of something of a Southern Belle (but then you heard it with Birdie, too).

What Keating brings to her parts, and I think her conversation, is a generous spirit. Her work in Washington at the Studio Theatre is still remembered — as Irina in “The Three Sisters,” in “The Rise and Fall of Little Voice,” “Slavs” and the remarkable Joy Zinoman-directed production of Tom Stoppard’s enigmatic and moving “Indian Ink,” for which she won a Helen Hayes Award as best actress.

“Oh my, those were something. Such terrific plays, such rewarding work, to work with remarkable people,” she said. “That was a good time for me.”

In none of these plays, or in “Wicked” or at Arena, did you get a sense of her as she is — on the phone, where she’s impulsive, reactive, fresh, or in picture. She appears in photographs as a slender, attractive woman, bright eyes, presenting an openness and curiosity that no doubt serves her well as an actress.

On her website, there is a photo section, including production stills from a play called “One Foot on the Floor” in Denver, Colorado, some time ago, in which Keating is playing a woman named La Vita, wearing a hat that has space for an outdoor advertisement, and another outfit, made up mostly of fruits, which Carmen Miranda must surely have worn to the prom.

“Oh, that was so much fun, really,” she says. “You just sort of ride with it. I had a ball.”

The effect is of course wildly ridiculous, not something many actresses who are not Carol Burnett or Lucille Ball can bring off, or want to.

Which brings us to Madame Morrible, who makes an entrance in green, and then spectacularly in red. For a moment, she stands imperious, surveying what she beholds, looking like an act of magic, conjured up and dangerous.

That’s the life and gift of the actress Isabel Keating, right here under a giant dragon’s head — and there’s still no app for that.