Olivia is an actor-singer-musician whose favorite credits include Girl in Once, Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods, Marianne in Sense & Sensibility, and River in Appropriate.
In some of these shows, she has played piano, accordion, ukulele, percussion, and the theremin.
Select Awards
Outstanding Lead Performance Winner - Girl in Once -Theater Bay Area Awards
Best Female Performance Winner - Girl in Once -Ashland Sneak Preview
Best Lead Actress in a Musical Nominee - Girl in Once - B.Iden Payne Awards
Best Lead Actor in a Musical Nominee - Baker's Wife in Into the Woods - B.Iden Payne Awards
Best Production of a Musical Winner - Once - Theater Bay Area Awards
Best Ensemble Winner - Once - Austin Critics Table
Outstanding Work in Theater (Twice Winner) - Princeton University
Thesis Award - “Yoga for the Actor - The Hidden Key to Stanislavski’s System” - Princeton University
Press
Reviews
ONCE: Pacific Northwest Premiere
A straight-talking, life affirming waif, Girl is played by the infinitely irresistible Olivia Nice, whose performance is the best part of this show.
She has two knock-out numbers, “The Hill” and “If You Want Me,” both heartfelt songs of longing and loss, and lovingly performed.
Nice is a remarkable actor. In “Once,” she transforms herself into a Slavic sorceress through posture, movement and expression. She’s not a big, bold, colorful witch, but a slight, somewhat dowdy Czech sprite with hunched shoulders, a sly wit and sudden extravagant gestures. Her loose limbs are natural and relaxed, moving with intention and unexpected grace. As Girl, Clari wears an old sweater and big boots, an oddly beautiful foreigner with unkempt brown hair framing a heart-shaped face and luminous, shadowed eyes that see and understand.
Newcomer Olivia Nice — whose acting training includes time at The Studio / New York — is an excellent performer with a strong emotional delivery that is never overplayed and always graceful. This is hard to achieve in a production that could overflow into territory of saccharine sentimentality. Ms. Nice elbows her way out of the obvious ingenue role and into something quite special, giving her character the opportunity to exercise a willful and humorous personality and, despite a less than ideal end result, never come off as the victim.
Olivia Nice is perfect as the pretty but not beautiful, provocatively inquisitive Gal...Nice is more than nice with her deceptively powerful voice and understated but precise performance.
Into the Woods at ZACH Theatre
Stephen Sondheim's sly interweaving of the Brothers Grimm's greatest hits may seem like an ensemble piece, but Into the Woods will always circle around the baker and his wife. With Paul Sanchez and Olivia Clari Nice as the protagonists and occasional troublemakers in the new Zach Theatre production, the audience is immediately in safe hands.
And even with a strong ensemble… it's Nice and Sanchez who anchor the emotional heart of Sondheim's cunning fairytale. Nice in particular emerges from the forest, finding all the lust and longing and desperation and restraint in "Moments in the Woods" and making it into one of the show's truly memorable numbers.
ONCE: San Francisco Premiere
But all those pale in comparison to the accomplished and compelling performance of Olivia Clari Nice as Girl. Just as her character seizes control of the show from the opening moments, so too does Nice seize control of our hearts and minds with a lovely, nuanced, deeply textured portrayal of Girl, a bloom-where-she's-planted sort of woman who makes the very best of every situation in which she finds herself. "Life is good. Even in Dublin," she says. Her accent is sweet and endearing, and she displays an innocence that somehow melds with her confidence to create a most wonderful portrayal. Physically, she moves in ways that make it seem gesture is a second language to her that she also speaks with an accent.
The power of his vocals only increases when Olivia Clari Nice joins him from the piano, singing with a voice that blends in a harmony full of haunting in their initial “Falling Softly.” The sensuous, searching pulls and tugs of her voice rise and fall in “If You Want Me” as her Girl and an echoing Guy both now imagine in song a possible love relationship. She seems to be searching for a sign that this is the man for her – she still being married to a husband now back in the Czech Republic and Guy still in deep hurt for an ex who is now in New York. When Girl sings “The Hill,” the individual words of the song often glide and slide in a single syllable in a flow conveying her searching for the answer to “Where are you my angel now?” Olivia Nice’s voice touches our hearts as her song takes on the tear-filled, voice-rippling sound one might expect to hear from a country-western singer’s love ballad. Both in voice and in acting, her Girl is another key reason this Once is ever-compelling during its entire two-hours, twenty minutes.
Mayer and Nice handle the “non-romantic leads” so perfectly that the final scenes radiate truth and bring a lump to your throat that is dissapated with the final scene to wrap up the show on a hopeful note.
The bulk of the evening rests on the sturdy shoulders of Corbin Mayer and Olivia Clari Nice, who deliver immensely appealing portraits of the two musicians who fall in love and slowly come to realize that tending to the responsibilities of their previous relationships is more important than consummating their current romance. Both artists have strong charisma, solid voices, and excel in their roles, with Ms. Nice adding a particularly dry and blunt kind of humor to the evening as “a very serious Czech.”
- George Heymont, Once More Unto the Breach
Olivia Clari Nice stars as Girl, the soulful, blunt-spoken Czech immigrant finding her feet in Dublin. She is supported by a strong ensemble cast and plays sweetly and seriously against Corbin Mayer's love-sick busker.
May in Fool for Love
"a masterpiece of understatement and illusion...you won’t see it done better — anywhere."
...best performance of the summer. She’s a beautiful emotional wreck, clinging one moment and slugging the next.
ONCE at the ZACH. Austin, TX
Olivia Nice's hearty take on the girl's songs bring to mind Over the Rhine's Karin Bergquist as she pours her heart out over the piano.
The cast is perfection from top to bottom. Olivia Nice brings a lovely quirky quality to Girl and a fair share of mystery.
- Frank Benge, Broadway World
Olivia Nice brings a lovely quirk to Girl, truly bringing the character to life.
- Nick Bailey, Black Texas Mag
…allows us to see the nuance and depth that Olivia Nice brings to the role. Though she is endearing and hilarious throughout, in the second half we also realize that she, too, is enduring a great deal of pain trying to come to terms with the haunting ghosts of past love.
River in Appropriate
Franz who is working at forgiveness...with the spiritual help of his very young New Age vegan girlfriend, River, played with panache by Olivia Nice.
River (Olivia Nice, in a standout performance), Franz's hippy-dippy fiancée, believes in exorcising the spirits that haunt the house and its contents, which perpetuates a certain brand of thought that centuries of horror can be cured through good juju.
Argonne Seaborg in The House on Poe Street (World Premiere)
Olivia Nice as Argonne Seaborg is gloriously dark and sensual in the role with an uncanny ability of making you feel totally "creeped out."
Olivia Nice and Eliza Shea are the heart and soul of the entire performance. They are lovely to watch. Their timing with each other, and moving and speaking in unison was impeccable. They have such great chemistry, their singing voices are well matched.
- Virginia Jimenez, Times Square Chronicles
The splendidly peculiar Argonne and Flourine are two of the most bewitching characters I have seen in recent theatre...However, the true stars of this cast are Olivia Nice and Eliza Shea as Argonne and Flourine Seaborg. Believable as close sisters, the duo plays well off of one another – with Nice’s authoritative and collected demeanor complimenting Shea’s quirky and bright-eyed unabashedness. Both have beautifully harmonious voices and impeccable comedic timing, and I can only hope that I have an opportunity to see them on stage again soon.