How many college discus throwers end up on Broadway? And end up in productions of The Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia!, Oklahoma, The Light in the Piazza, Les Misérables, A Tale of Two Cities, Impressionism, the first and only revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music and Sting’s musical The Last Ship? As if the first criteria wasn’t enough, by the time you add those credits you can only be talking about Aaron Lazar.
One of Broadway’s go-to tenors, he’s making his Los Angeles cabaret debut Monday at Rockwell Table and Stage in Los Feliz. This will also make the debut of his new solo show, Aaron Lazar: From Broadway to Hollywood. Lazar, who relocated from New York to Los Angeles to raise a family and take a stab at television and film, spoke with me after a rehearsal for this show.
“Hollywood became this place of mystique when I decided to change career paths from medical school to theatre,” Lazar reveals. “You had to decide between Los Angeles and New York. My showcase was in New York and I stayed there. LA became this place I wanted to move to and I finally have. I never wanted to look back and say I wish I had tried LA. That was part one. Having a family was part two. The quality of life out here is so amazing. Plus pushing a stroller up and down stairs to make a subway is crazy.”
The show he is debuting at Rockwell is his second solo show. The first, “Look for Me in the Songs,” he said was the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. So how challenging is doing his sophomore show? “That’s a great question,” he says. “It’s certainly been challenging, but not nearly as difficult. The show is running about 75 minutes. There are 30 songs…16 full songs and pieces of 14 others. We’ll see what we learn from it. There is no place better to see what works and doesn’t than starting in smaller rooms. It’s scary, but that’s where all artists live.”
The overlap between the two shows is minimal, though stories and references to the man he calls his major influence, Stephen Sondheim, will be part of it. “I had been writing him since I was 19,” Lazar offers. “I’ve been corresponding with him for years and years. He writes you back. To get cast in the only ever revival of [A Little Night Music] and to get to work with Steve and go to his house and to get to know him – It doesn’t get better than that.”
When The Light in the Piazza was broadcast on PBS, Lazar was in the very demanding role of Fabrizio, the young Italian who falls in love with an American girl. “That was the pinnacle,” he says. “There is no need to overstate it. It’s like everything stopped. It’s one of those undeniable works of genius. I miss it.”
Whether he misses his time on the track throwing discus, he does find parallels between the discipline of the sport and the discipline of doing this show. “I think I settled on the throwing events in track because they were these very individual pursuits, it’s you against yourself. And I think a career as an artist is a lot the same thing. It’s you against your own demons. As an actor you have very little control. Your reps get you opportunities and you hopefully book the jobs. When you are between jobs, how do you define yourself? Cabaret takes you out of a character and puts you face to face with yourself and what you have to say and who you are. The faster you can get in touch with your authenticity and share that, the happier you are going to be as an artist.”
Main Photo Courtesy of Scott Mauro Entertainment