Mary Kay Bergman could make several women in the same animated film sound like separate people. She is a strong reason to watch the South Park film, even when its toilet humour becomes wearing.
Fi1m perspective
Listen to the women in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999): Liane Cartman, Sheila Broflovski, Sharon Marsh and Wendy Testaburger are all Mary Kay Bergman. We hear separate characters, not a performer repeatedly announcing a change of voice. That is valuable in a film whose jokes are already competing hard for attention. Bergman makes a substantial contribution without asking us to notice the workload.
The earlier work offered fewer chances to show that breadth. Disney made her its official Snow White voice in 1989, and Beauty and the Beast (1991) used her as a Bimbette. Sweetness was a useful skill, though it also became a restriction: the early parts tended towards the cute. Her Disney supporting work continued with additional voices in Mulan (1998). Those credits deserve respect, but they give us less reason to seek out an individual performance than her work in South Park.
South Park (1997), with co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, gave her nearly all its female voices and considerably less need to sound suitable for children. The feature lets us hear that work inside an accomplished musical and a sharp satire about censorship. We laughed at South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut because the songs carry the jokes as well as the tunes. The toilet humour sometimes outstays its welcome, and Bergman's skill is no reason to excuse that. Still, this is where having one actor keep so many characters distinct makes the clearest difference to a film we can recommend.
Brad Bird's The Iron Giant (1999) is the stronger film, funny and deeply moving despite moral divisions that can be too tidy. Bergman supplies additional voices, so its success gives us less to assess in her acting than the larger collection of parts in South Park. Start with the South Park film to hear what she could do, provided there is agreement on the sofa about how much toilet humour is enough.
Biography
Mary Kay Bergman was an American voice actress. Born in Los Angeles on 5 June 1961, she provided voices for numerous animated films and television series until her death on 11 November 1999.
She was the lead female voice actress on the animated series South Park (1997–1999) and its feature film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999), voicing characters including Liane Cartman, Sheila Broflovski, Sharon Marsh, Carol McCormick and Wendy Testaburger. Her other film credits include Bimbette in Beauty and the Beast (1991) and additional voices in The Iron Giant (1999). She was also the official voice of the Disney character Snow White from 1989 until 1999, and contributed voices to other Disney productions such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997) and Mulan (1998). Bergman was sometimes credited as Shannen Cassidy. Her husband Dino Andrade established the Mary Kay Bergman Memorial Fund after her death.
