This is my interview with Gavin when he was touring in Into the Woods. Thank you Gavin for your time, your artistry and your generosity. You will truly be missed.

Whether that’s intrinsically a part of the characters he’s playing or just who he is as an actor, Ceel is easily one of the most likable people in musicals today. Take his performance as The Wolf and Cinderella’s Prince in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods. Even though The Wolf is menacing (in a dandy sort of way) and the Prince is “raised to be charming, not sincere,” Creel is sincerely charming and, when the role calls for it, charmingly sincere.

Into the Woods is finishing its mini-tour of ten cities with a final stop in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre. The show runs June 27th – July 30th. Creel, who played the part on Broadway, is joined by many of the production’s Broadway cast including Sebastian Arcelus, Stephanie J. Block, Katy Geraghty, Montego Glover, Kennedy Kanagawa and Nancy Opel.

I recently spoke with Creel who was in San Francisco for the penultimate stop of Into the Woods. In our conversation we talked about Stephen Sondheim, why the cast took this show on the road and about his own show, Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice, which will have its world premiere in November at MCC Theater in New York. Los Angeles audiences can get a preview of that show when Creel performs at The Hotel Cafe in Hollywood on July 24th.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: In 2003 you were in Stephen Sondheim’s Bounce [later renamed Road Show] in Chicago and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. What did you learn from that experience of working on Sondheim’s material that perhaps informs the work you’re now bringing to Into the Woods? 

What comes to mind is that I watched the greatest, at that time, living musical theater composer and arguably the greatest living producer director of our musical theater time: Hal Prince. I watched them in the mud. I got to watch them trying to make the lotus blossom. And if I’m honest, it wasn’t successful. Obviously it wasn’t commercially successful, but it was bumpy. 

I did this very foolish innocently enough thing of deciding that they must come out of the womb formed. These ideas must just be hatched in brilliance. And I was like, Oh yeah, this moment isn’t really that great. Sondheim can write something that’s really not that great. And then Sondheim goes, “This is really not that great. How do I make this great or I can do this here and do this, and then watch it become something that went to the next level.” To see that in front of you is very humbling and an encouraging and freeing experience. 

How would you compare the process of working on a musical with Stephen Sondheim to working on one of his most successful musicals, arguably his most successful musical, without him any longer?

It was sad, I have to say. James Lapine, on the first day of rehearsal, we all circled up and everybody and there was a space next to him. He said, “It’s odd to me that there’s a space. I feel like Steve made a space for himself. This is a bittersweet moment because we’re all here to lift this beautiful piece up and I’m honored that you’re doing this piece that I wrote with Steve, and Steve would be standing next to me.”

This is sounds woo woo, but I think Steve was guiding us from the other side. I still feel a presence. It’s a rock concert response to our show in a way that James is like, I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s crazy. I think that is definitely a testament to the show being so beloved for almost 40 years. But I also think we were guided. I think there was a spirit on the other side. The best spirit of all going, “I’m going to help.” It got into all of our hearts. 

When I saw the show at the St. James in New York in December it looked to me like everybody was having the time of their lives, which is not easy to do as an actor. How much of it is the fact that you are all genuinely having a good time?

It is really hard to fake joy in that way. Even if you’re doing a really good job of it, the audience can sniff it out. I’m personally having the time of my life. I did not expect to be a part of this. I was going to go watch my best friend Sara [Bareilles who was the original Baker’s Wife] in the concert at City Center. And then [director] Lear deBessonet called me and was like, “Hey, would you ever consider coming in?” The first time my ego was like, I don’t want to play that part. I want to be the baker. And then I thought about it. Let’s just do the job. I need the health insurance. I’ll have a good time. I’ll get to hang out with Sara again. We had such a good time doing Waitress for that small amount of time together [in 2019]. Here I am, over a year later, still getting to tell the story across the country. We are literally still having fun and I can’t believe this leg of it is going to be done in six weeks. It’s nuts. We’re very sad to let it go. 

Many of you who appeared in this production on Broadway have come together to continue telling this story. That is very rare these days for so many cast members to take a show on the road. Why do you think the mold was broken for Into the Woods? 

I think the world has changed since what we went through. The pandemic changed me. Certainly I can speak for myself of just really appreciating what you have in a new way. I just don’t think we were ready to let it go. What a gift! This just dropped in my lap. Personally, I could save money. I could work. I could see the country. I could take a breath from everything that we’ve been through. I think that story sort of whispered through the building. Gavin’s going to go and hey, you think about going on? Let me tell you why I’m going. When does this ever happen? We could actually all go together. Our show was definitely closing [in New York] because New York, New York needed a theater. We had to close, but we didn’t feel ready to be finished. 

I think one of the one of the main things that Sondheim wanted to get across with this particular work, and he said so in an interview around the time of the release of the film, was that the message of Into the Woods is about community responsibility. There’s obviously a sense of community within Broadway. There’s a sense of community within this company. Do you think that this musical offers any insight into how we perhaps can better serve ourselves by coming together as a community in our regular lives? 

Yes. I think it’s two parts, to be honest. The whole thing starts with “I wish, more than anything.” If we can acknowledge that everybody wants something for themselves then we can see the shared community in that fact. How wonderful it would be if we could help each other get what each other wants. And this musical lays that out so beautifully.

The other I was going to say is when you said that about community, no one is alone. On the surface it seems like it means I’m with you. But also I’m with you in helping you get what you want. We can work together to help you achieve your dreams. There’s always a force outside of you that’s greater than you, that is against you in some way. The giant isn’t bad. “Witches can be right. Giants can be good. You decide what’s right. You decide what’s good.” The giant is just trying to do what they can to survive. We can see the community in that statement, which is what I think the show really illuminates. It means more than just you’re not alone, as in you don’t have to be sad and lonely. It means you’re not alone in your desires, your dreams, your wishes, your hopes. I’ve got them, too. So let’s both dream together.

You’ve been working on Confessions of a Museum Novice for a while and you’ve been performing it a concert version off and on in different places. How has the work evolved since you first started sharing this with the world? 

It continues to evolve. Originally I was invited to have a meeting with Limor Tomer and Erin Flannery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who run the Live Art series. They said, would you like to come to the Met? We’ll give you a membership card at the museum. Look around. And when you find a piece of art or pieces, anything that you’re inspired by within the building, let us know and we’ll help you produce a show for one night at the Met. I’d never been there. I was an imposter syndrome times a million. I’m not a huge fine art person. Museums tend to overwhelm me, but I went for it. 

We ended up doing it in October of 2021 with a fully masked audience for two shows and it was electric. I have to turn this into a musical. I have to expand this a bit, too. I still play Gavin Creel. It’s still about a man who’s having a sort of a midlife meltdown who for some reason called the Metropolitan Museum of Art to try to figure his life out by walking through and figuring out what’s going on. It’s about love and life and art and loneliness and ultimately forgiveness and love again.

What we’re going to do in L.A. is we’re going to do the first 45 minutes of the show to give people a taste. And then we’re going to do some covers, theater and pop covers to give people some stuff they know.

Let’s go back 17 years ago to when your album GoodTimeNation came out. You have a song on there about what Might Still Happen. What has you most optimistic about what might still happen to you personally and professionally?

I wrote that as a kid 20 years ago on the roof of my studio apartment; 250 square feet. Some of the hardest and happiest times I’ve had. One of the best lessons of living in New York in 250 square feet is you have everything you need in that much space. Anything past that is icing. I have a two bedroom apartment, thank God now, but I could live in 200 square feet if you made me. I might sell it all and just chill. My buddy Robbie Roth, who I made my first two records with, we would crawl up to the roof illegally because the fire door didn’t shut. We would sit up there, put a blanket down and pick around with melodies. That song is ultimately about heartbreak, but it’s hope.

It was a call to my future self. It makes me emotional to think about the idea of being a young person and feeling really sad but saying there’s good stuff coming, keep going. You can’t know the future, so just sit in the present. Just be. Get yourself a beer, get a friend, get a guitar, get on the roof, look out over the city. There’s possibility everywhere.

Not to bring it back to Into the Woods, but I was really broken before the pandemic, through the pandemic and after. It was just a terrible time in my life. Into the Woods was like this beautiful life raft that not only buoyed me out of storm, but it continued to lift me and set me down on solid ground. I will never forget this time that I’ve had and I just hope that we pack the house at the Ahmanson because I want to go out with a bang.

To see the full interview with Gavin Creel, please go here.

Main Photo: Gavin Creel in the Broadway production of Into the Woods (Photo by Matthew Murphy and Ryan Zimmerman for MurphyMade/Courtesy Center Theatre Group)

The post REST IN PEACE: Gavin Creel: “It’s Really Hard to Fake Joy” appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the Broadway musical The Lion King would be a monster hit when it opened in 1997. It was also clear that this is a tough show to perform. No one would know that better than Keith Bennett who is the Resident Director of the US Tour.

Bennett appeared on Broadway as Banzai, one of the hyenas in the show. The Lion King begins a 31-performance run at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, CA on February 1st. The show then moves to Omaha, Nebraska; Minneapolis, MN; Dayton, OH and more. [You can find the full itinerary here.] Of course, the show continues on Broadway where The Lion King has amassed over 10,250 performances with no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Recently I spoke with Bennett about his work keeping this very precisely designed and choreographed show up to the highest possible standards. We also spoke about the role The Lion King has played in his life, but we started with a conversation about the first Broadway show in which Bennett appeared: Oh Kay! which opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on October 16, 1990 with a cast that included a future Tony Award winner.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation with Keith Bennett that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Before we start talking about The Lion King, I’m specifically thinking of a date October 16th, 1990. And on that date was the very first preview of Oh Kay! At the Richard Rodgers Theater when you were in a company that included Brian Mitchell, who did not go by Stokes at the time, in only his second show. At that point in your career, did you ever foresee into the future that your life and your career would be so entwined with one particular show?

Everything’s so spontaneous. You never know where you’re going to go. They used to call us gypsies. You go from one show to the next show to the next show. [Producer] David Merrick was behind the show, I thought it would run forever. When you’re young, you think that way. [Oh, Kay!, a revival of a Gershwin musical, ran for 77 performances.]

They used to have this event called Waiting in the Wings. They would get an understudy from each Broadway show and they would have a big night where you would perform and that night I did one of the numbers in the show. I understudied the great Stanley Wayne Mathis, who also took over the role of Bonzai on Broadway in [The Lion King]. I was this number called Fidgety Beat. So I went on that night, I did that number and I got an agent. So I wasn’t looking ahead at what’s going to be in the future. 

As somebody who has been on stage in The Lion King, as Bonzai, how exacting is Julie Taymor’s direction? How much does that require of the cast members and how particular is Garth Fagan’s choreography so that every performance hums the way you probably remember it the first time you saw it? 

The thing about them, it’s changed, too. I call it updating the product. It has evolved and keeps evolving. It keeps changing. A lot of it has gone back to the simplicity of telling the story. The same thing with the dance. The truth is when you look at Garth Fagan’s choreography, it’s not much you can change or alter. They mess around with the kick butt dance somewhat. The same thing with the direction. She comes in now and she updates certain things to make moments more clear. 

Do you really have to make moments so clear when a show’s been running for 25 years? Isn’t there a certain clarity that the audience is already getting?

You want to keep it fresh. When a different performer comes in they have a different take on the role. We just had a lighting situation here in Portland. You maybe move something in a different area of the stage ever so slightly. The work itself, it’s changed somewhat. The truth is we changed some of the dialogue around ever so slightly. And the show has been cut down. We cut down the show for Vegas. And they saw that was a means of like, we can try this with the national tour. 

In the first year or two of the show on Broadway, there were tons of stories about injuries. I’m assuming that technology has shifted and changed so that the costuming or the puppetry isn’t as heavy as it might have been when it first started. What does a performer go through, physically, during eight shows a week of The Lion King? 

The Lion King is tough, number one. You’re dancing with ornaments and equipment on your head. There’s probably not one character in the show that gets a break. Everyone wears something that can be constricting in terms of movement. You find you’re in constant mode of exercise and taking ballet classes because it’s tough. 

It also is not just a costume. I call it equipment that we wear. Eight shows a week is hard on all those dancers. On Broadway they have a raked stage. So my heart goes out to all those dancers. You have to stay in the gym. You have to train. You have to get your rest. But the honest truth is sometimes that’s not enough. We’ve had a lot of injuries. That’s why we have a lot of people coming in and out and people who have to take time off to let the body heal. It’s a hard show. But that’s what the public likes, seeing the costumes and how big they are.

As resident director, Keith Bennett, you have to make sure the show is consistently good night after night after night. How difficult is it to maintain that level of consistency night after night, week after week, town after town?

I’m blessed to have these trained actors that know where to go on stage at what point, and the script. It’s been easy for me. It’s been easy to maintain. There haven’t been too many issues. Of course, when, I call them the big wigs, come out here, they update and change some things around based on Julie’s vision. But other than that, I’ve been blessed to have these guys stick to the script. 

I’m not the type of director, you know, paint by numbers. When I work with them, I believe if you want to get the best out of your actor, it has to be a collaboration, a coming together. A meeting of the minds when you sit down and you’re working on a certain scene and you tell them, all right, let’s sculpt this. Let’s take this thing and sculpt it and see what happens.

I read an interview that Julie Taymor gave the New York Times in 1997, around the time of the show’s opening on Broadway, and she was talking about the puppetry in particular. She said, “I want to see the rough edges. I don’t want it to be slick.” Doesn’t a long-running show, and a show that’s toured the world as many times as The Lion King has, have to be slick to be as successful as it is?

You have to work against that, because that work machine can stifle the creativity. One has to work against that. I think that’s why she comes back, to keep it fresh and maybe change some things around. Here’s the truth though. Most of these actors have their own interpretation. Which takes away from it being just a mechanical machine performance. They have their own way. It’s still defined, but, you have the human element behind it, which takes away from that thing of being just slick. 

I think the long running successes of a show like The Lion King or Phantom of the Opera or Chicago, is that kind of success good for Broadway? Doesn’t that at a certain level rule out any number of shows that could equally be as worthy as those or any other show that’s on Broadway from getting a chance to be seen? 

Put it this way for the actor it has its financial benefits. 

And for the creators. 

And for the creators, but we know the creators are going to be fine. The thing I like about a long-running show like this, you have dancers who now can establish a financial foundation. We’re in this business. We love doing good work, but we do want to eat at the same time.

I was in a show called High Rollers. We were at the Helen Hayes Theater. We closed in three weeks. We have to be honest. That’s the nature of the business. I guess that’s why when I got The Lion King, I was like, I’m going to milk this cow for as long as I can. In the 80s and the 90s, I paid my dues. That’s the only thing I can say. I do love new works coming to Broadway. There’ve been some incredible shows that only lasted for a year. 

Or lasted much less than that. The hottest ticket in New York right now is the first-ever revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, and the original production in 1981 only ran 16 performances.

And that’s just how it is. I went to a party some years ago.People were like, you get a good government check. That’s what they were saying about The Lion King. They know that show was not going anywhere. I’ve been able to put myself in a different financial situation with my family. I talk to a lot of people they’re like, God, that show has been running a long time. They want to do something different. But for me, the financial benefits outweigh me going for a job. I do hope a lot of shows get more longevity. 

Keith Bennett, you played Richie in A Chorus Line. As you well know, when Paul injures himself late in the show, the question comes up, what do you do when you can’t dance anymore? Clearly, you’ve found an answer for yourself by being involved as long as you have been with The Lion King. But what do you think you’ll do when you can no longer feel the love tonight? When you can no longer wake up in the morning and say I can’t wait to be on this show?

You move on to something else that’s gonna inspire you. You have to do more than one thing. I’ve been able to study acting, singing and dancing. When I left the show on Broadway, my wife and I went back out to LA, and then we moved down to Florida. I got my real estate license.

When you feel that thing is draining from you, that’s when you have to make the decision. Either you try to regroup to find something else that can further involve you in this thing, or you have to say to yourself, I have to move on. The thing with this show directing thing, though, it’s so much to learn. But when that time comes, I just have to make that decision. Trust in God and say, okay, Keith, it’s time for you to go and do something. I’ve done it hundreds of times in my career. What do you do when the show closes? You go and audition for another show.

To see the full interview with Keith Bennett, please go here.

Main Photo: Resident Director Keith Bennett (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

The post Resident Director Keith Bennett Still Feels the Love Tonight… appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Menken has won 8 Academy Awards, 1 Tony Award and 11 Grammy Awards. Fear not, he’s an EGOT with his winning of a Daytime Emmy Award for the song Waiting in the Wings which he co-wrote with Glenn Slater for Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. He’s had a variety of collaborators and by any measure a massively successful career.

He will be celebrating that career this weekend when he gives performances of his show A Whole New World of Alan Menken at the Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona on March 31st and The Soraya in Northridge, California on April 2nd.

Recently I spoke with Menken about his career. Rather than focus on the projects everybody knows (many of which are featured in his show), I opted to ask Menken about some of the lesser-known works of this remarkably successful composer (and sometimes lyricist). What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview (which includes him singing part of a beautiful song you’ve probably never before), please go to our YouTube channel.

I want to get your perspective on your work by asking you about a lyric that comes from one of the songs that you wrote. The lyrics go: “In the end, it’s only your voice matters. You never hear it, though, for free. You got to pay dues before you choose to be the man you’re going to be.” Those are David Spencer’s lyrics from The Man You’re Gonna Be from your musical adaptation of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. At what point did you find your voice and become the man who created the work we’ve all grown to love?

I fell in love with music at a very young age. I was kind of just this kid who was a dreamer. I liked to just play at the piano. But I really hated to practice. I just hated schools. I just didn’t like where it was going. All the men in the family are dentists or doctors or whatever. So I would say that voice always lived inside of me. 

When I was in college I went as a pre-med. I just didn’t want to go into the lecture hall. I just said no. I made a right turn and went to the piano practice room and just made music. I didn’t care. I would say my voice was found there. My voice is not my music. My voice is my love of music and my desire to make it in all the different forms. I take my voice from characters, from stories or from myself.

A Whole New World of Alan Menken began its life almost seven years ago in 2016. How has the show evolved?

For the most part, as I perform it, I really go back to the moment when I wrote them. Just the memories of where they came from. People say, “Oh, Disney composer Alan Menken.” I love Disney. I adore Disney. But I said I would like [the show] to be some medium in which it’s my career. Which contains Little Shop of Horrors or, as you said, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz or A Christmas Carol or Sister Act or A Bronx Tale or whatever it is. So it really came from wanting to share.

There’s a whole generation of people for whom you are so closely identified with Disney properties, whether they are on screen or on stage. I happen to be a little bit older than that. My first Disney reference is Robert and Richard Sherman. Is there any way in which they were influential on you or were part of your understanding of the Disney history when you started getting involved with Disney?

Obviously they are a big part of the history. To be honest, I go further back to the Disney films that set my imagination on fire like Fantasia. It was that marriage of classical music and images that just forever had me creating images in relation to music. Nobody was more welcoming to me when I came to Disney than Richard Sherman. Richard and [his wife] Elizabeth were so kind. I’ll never forget that.

Just before I started writing the Disney films the AIDS crisis was just this unbelievably horrifying specter that was killing our friends. By that time Tom [Eyen – Kicks: The Showgirl Musical], passed away. First it was Howard [Ashman – Little Shop of Horrors], then it was Tom. Before that it was Steve Brown [Battle of the Giants].

But leading into this time Anna had been born. [I was] bringing my daughter into this world that is fraught with this nightmare because none of us knew the extent of it or how it could be contained and how it was being treated. I would sit with her on the couch and all the Disney classics had come out on VHS. I was putting in Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty or Peter Pan and just sitting with her. Watching them and going this is the ultimate safe space in the world. You just felt it. I felt that from that material.

We are creating the ultimate safe space. We want to be emotionally true and to come from a place of love and redemption and belief in the beauty of life and everything. And so all of that informs, I guess, my approach to Disney.

What stands out to you most about your days at Sesame Street? 

I was making a living. “We have an assignment for you.” Yay! 35 bucks. Yay! I can pay my rent. Literally. Sesame Street was a wonderful, safe space. Howard and I wrote a song which is called The Count’s Lament. “Why I can’t I say ‘w.’ I want to and wish that I could.” Oh, God. Howard’s brilliance. The most special part was being able to write something with Howard for Sesame Street.

I saw an interview you did with Michael Riedel around the time of Sister Act and you said, “I never let go of anything.” What relationship do you have with the works that haven’t been seen as much that maybe will someday have new opportunities? 

Occasionally we would like to nudge them forward if there’s an opportunity. I remember [Music Director/Composer] Lehman Engel always used to say “What’s next?” I will always prefer to just move on to what’s next. I’ve learned that things come back on their own. I didn’t bring back Newsies. Newsies brought itself back. We would see it everywhere. People were just doing the songs from it.

Tom Schumacher [President of Disney Theatrical Group] said, “Look, we should do something. Just a a version for stock or amateur. Just so there’s something because people are cobbling together their own versions of Newsies.” If I sense an opportunity. I go for it.

You mentioned Duddy Kravitz. It’s a really well-written musical. At the same time it’s complex and it’s got a real darkness to it. Duddy is a conundrum because he is one tough, complicated character. It’s going to take context and an audience that really wants to dig into something that’s got some real guts to it.

There was a musical Howard wanted us to do a following Little Shop on stage. It was based on the movie The Big Street and we couldn’t get the rights at the time. He knew that he had a very finite amount of time. He wasn’t telling me at that moment. So I said, we’ll wait. After he passed away I did get the rights. I worked on that twice. But again, the genre, the story, the complexity of it, the the darkness of it, you have to really handle it in just the right way. I’ve learned not to try to force things. Somehow the time will come. I just am a believer in that.

If you dig deep enough on the internet you can find seven demos from The Honeymooners, which I think are some of the best songs that you wrote in your career. 

Those are my music and lyrics. Before I met Howard I was exclusively composer and lyricist. We never got the rights to do it. I am very proud of that. Someday maybe we’ll get those songs out there again. People occasionally record the songs.

There’s a lot of there’s a lot of material that you’ve written that people don’t know unless they were lucky enough to be in workshops or to be at shows. I love the song Hero from Babe.

We have five songs from from Babe.

You have a song, Daughter of God, that you wrote for Emmylou Harris…

Atina: Evil Queen of the Galaxy. It was written for Divine. That one I am now actively reviving and hopefully getting that on stage.

You have such a wealth of material. It seems to me you probably have at least two two discs worth of material, probably more, that could be recorded so people can experience them. Is that something you would like to see happen? 

Sure I would. My daughter Anna, who is a singer, songwriter and producer living in Nashville, one of the things she’s been discussing with me is she would love to have me open up the archives and either record it myself or get other people to record things. So it’s always a possibility that those things will get out there.

I think one reason I have had the success I’ve had is because I’m never resistant to throwing something out. Never. Generally the best thing will always rise to the surface. I’m just that kind of collaborator. It’s not about me. It’s about being part of something bigger and putting your talent out into that. That’s how you maximize your abilities.

I threw out a song I loved from the movie of Hercules. It’s called Shooting Star. Love that song. And then we wrote Go the Distance. We tossed out a song called We’ll Have Tomorrow from the second act of Little Shop of Horrors. But we didn’t need it. Part of its success is that tightness. I mean there are some shows where I’ve written 14 songs for one moment. Leap of Faith – it’s just like the most ridiculous archive of songs.

The Howard Ashman Archives published a two-part interview with you. I don’t know how long ago this was because there was no date on it. But you were asked about Howard and you said, “But I know honestly that he has remained my collaborator in so many ways in the over 20 years since he’s been gone.” Is that still true for you today? How do you feel his presence in your work today?

Occasionally he’ll just be in a dream where we’re writing together. Sometimes in your subconscious there’s almost an alternate arc of your life that’s happening on a subconscious level. When he passed. First of all, I had vivid dreams. I mean, literally on the moment he passed.

Please watch the clip below to see images of Howard and hear the next part of the story.

And then I went back to sleep and that’s when he had passed. Shortly after he and I met in the dream I said, “Tell me what happens. What happens when you die?” He sort of talked me through what his experience was, which was very interesting. Sometimes in the dream we’re writing something, but he’s saying “You’ve moved on. I can’t keep up with what you’re doing or I don’t want to.” I do have a visceral sense of him in my life. I just think in some ineffable way he’s a part of me. He’s just a really deep part of me.

When I think about the things we would have done. Howard wrote Smile. It was really a wonderful score. But people wanted it to be about a beauty pageant in a nice, light, kind of happy story. And it wasn’t. It was about the dark side of a beauty pageant. I was playing [Disney Fan Club Expo] D23. It was already planned that I was playing it. Marvin Hamlisch, who was Howard’s collaborator on Smile, passed away. I said I really should play Disneyland [a song from that musical]. I knew what Marvin and Howard had written for the basic song, but I wanted to sit with the lyric and kind of play what they had written, but put it in my own voice and my own fingers. I wanted to play this from my heart and it was the first time I had a lyric of Howard’s in front of me since he passed that I hadn’t worked with before. It just blew me apart, the memory of that, because he was just on an absolutely incredible level as a writer.

You said on New York Theater Talk that at various stages when you were growing up you wanted to be Beethoven, then the Beatles and then Bob Dylan. What’s been the most satisfying thing about being Alan Menken instead? 

If I think about being me, to be honest, is that I’ve maintained. I’m the same person I was when I was struggling to write. Janice [his wife] and I are together over 50 years now. I talk to my daughters all the time. I’m dad. I love that. I know this thing… Well, Irving Berlin called it my little knack. I think that was his. My little knack is great. I love having it.

I was working on a new song for this Nancy Drew musical I’m writing and I get lost in them. I want to go someplace I’ve never been before. And I want to take an audience someplace they’ve never been before. I’m blessed that I move on. I think it’s a blessing to move on. Even with my concerts there are times I go, “Wow, I’m up here. I’m reliving the last how many years of my life?” 50 years. 50 years of my life. But I see how much it means to audiences and I kind of go there’s something here that’s special. What am I going to do if I’m not doing this one thing? 

Because of what I’ve done in my life, I don’t really have hobbies. So this is kind of it. I’m going to do this or I’m just going to my feet up and I don’t know what am I going to do. You just love the craft, you breathe it in and then you breathe it out and you leave it to others to define what it is you do.

To watch the full interview with Alan Menken (complete with some singing), please go here.

Photos: Alan Menken (Photo by Shervin Lainz/Courtesy AMP Worldwide)

The post Bo23: Alan Menken & Some Lesser-Known Works appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

THIS IS THE THIRD OF OUR BEST OF 23 REVIEW OF INTERVIEWS: On April 19th of this year I spoke with Tony Award-winner Stephanie J. Block about her upcoming show with Seth Rudetsky at The Wallis. She was on tour at that time with Into the Woods. But the show with Rudetsky was postponed. It has since been rescheduled for this Sunday at The Wallis. Instead of just one show there are now two.

I held the interview you are about to read until closer to the rescheduled shows. Which means some of the conversation we had is less timely now that it was in April. Discussions of Into the Woods, Funny Girl and her performance as Norman Desmond in Sunset Boulevard at the Kennedy Center aren’t as topical today as they were then.

But Block is not just a great performer – as her roles in Falsettos, The Boy From Oz and The Cher Show (for which she won her Tony Award) can attest – she’s also a great interview. So though slightly dated, this is one thoroughly entertaining conversation. What follows are excerpts from that interview that have been edited for length and clarity. I strongly encourage you to go to our YouTube channel to see the full interview.

You’ve sung on stage with Cher, you sung with Dolly Parton, and of course, you have your Tony Award. When you were tackling the very intense roles of Fifer, Belle, Ariel and Mary Poppins at Disneyland, is this what you imagined your career would be?

First of all, damn you! Secondly, as the story has it and it is true, my mother forged my birth certificate so that I could audition for the Disneyland Summer Parade. I wasn’t yet 16, so she had to forge my birth certificate. So that already tells you enough of what you need to know about the loving show mother that embraced me and encouraged me. But I was serious even back then.

I went to the Orange County, which was the High School of Performing Arts back then, and everything had that high level of stakes and intensity and discipline. So whether I was Fifer the Pig dancing down the parade route at Disneyland, I took as much pride in that as I did with doing Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

You were referred to at your church as the little Ethel Merman when you were seven years old. You have since had the opportunity to play Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, which is a role that Ethel Merman originated. Are there other Ethel Merman roles that you would like to do?

I think with a lot of the classic musical theater pieces there might have to be some reworking. Would I love to play Annie Get Your Gun? Absolutely. I’d love to play Annie. But I think someone like Larissa FastHorse might have to go in there and change a lot of the lines in the material. But does the music still hold up? Yes. Does the sort of crackle in her performance and the indelible performance that she’s left for us still hold true in my heart? Yes. Because in my heart, I’m an old MGM girl. You put on one of those old movies – anything with Judy Garland, anything with Ann Miller – and it just changes the whole course of my day.

I saw you in Falsettos, and frankly, I think you were robbed for the Tony Award because that performance, that whole show, was one I will never forget. I saw 9 to 5 in Los Angeles. I saw The Boy from Oz and I recently saw Into the Woods before it closed in New York. And the first time I saw you was in Crazy for You at La Mirada. 

Oh, my gosh.

Those shows, absent Crazy for You, are a mix of huge successes and less successful shows. Something Hal Prince said that I thought was really interesting was how much he learned more from the shows that weren’t successful than the ones that were. Is there a difference between the lessons you’ve learned on shows that were successful versus the ones that were not?

I think we just have to say that 75% of most Broadway endeavors would be defined as quote unquote, failures. So right off the bat, three quarters of every show that gets mounted is not going to last [long enough to] get their money back. I can’t speak to the producer end of it. I can only speak to the actor end of it. Yeah, I do learn a lot about myself when things don’t go as I hoped, prayed or wished. I will say I always enter a piece 150% because I think you have to love the project with that much in order to dive in.

When it starts falling apart, I’m also very much aware of that. I like to drink the Kool-Aid, but, all of the flags start going up. Or you go, Oh, this may not be going to Radio City to collect all the Tonys. But somehow I look at these artists that always start from scratch, begin again, are willing to put their vulnerable selves on the line for show after show after show. That, to me, is the biggest statement of most artists I know. That we really are willing to accept three quarters of it as failure and a small one quarter as success, and we keep jumping in headfirst.

Your performance in Falsettos of I’m Breaking Down, strikes me as a three-act play in 4 minutes and 48 seconds. What was the process of creating the ever increasingly intense breakdown over the course of that song?

You’re exactly right. You’ve got to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I find it so interesting that [composer/bookwriter] William Finn wrote essentially an 11:00 number in the first half hour of the play. That, in and of itself, is so out of form that it’s kind of wild. [Director/bookwriter] James Lapine said, I’m going to give you your space. I’m going to give you a couple days by yourself with our choreographer. I’m going to give you a whole host of props that you would find in your kitchen. I’m going to let you play and then I’m going to come in to see what you have created. For James, it’s very much simplicity defines mastery. Believe it or not, that epic song had more crap and props and movement to it than what you saw in its final version on Broadway. But I approached him and he said, How do you see this song? And I said, I think I see this song is like Carol Burnett having her own culinary show. And he goes, okay, well show me what you got.

This is Carol Burnett-slash-Trina trying to put on a very composed culinary show. Little by little, her inner voice, all of her demons, just start taking over. I actually went too far and he had to bring me back. Now we’ve got to find the balance between humor, angst and a conversation with the audience. So that was the balancing act.

Carol Burnett has to be a huge influence for you. While you were doing Sunset Boulevard you posted on your Instagram account a picture of Gloria Swanson side by side with Carol Burnett and said that your performance was going to be a combination of the two. How important is Carol Burnett in your life?

She’s wildly important to me. She, to me, being able to stand up as her and have a conversation with her audience to break that fourth wall and to be secure enough to say this is who I am as Carol, let’s banter and talk, then to embody a character in some of the most dramatic things I’ve ever seen. Then to embody humor and to not be so serious about herself that she could absolutely make fun of herself in the middle of a full skit. She’s a genius. I knew that if I could even do a fraction, if I could do one quarter of what Carol Burnett was doing, then there was a place for me in this world. 

Regarding Into the Woods, you said that was a dream role, 30 years in the making. What inspires you most about this show in general and more specifically about the role of the Baker’s wife?

In the beginning of my career I wanted to wear characters as like a costume and take on their shape, their form, their sound. Now as I get older, the goal is to bring myself to a character. To bring my story, my shape, my sound to these characters. The Baker’s wife is very much that. I am playing opposite my husband [Sebastian Arcelus]. So the baker and the baker’s wife couldn’t be more true than I feel is being portrayed now. My husband and I had quite a journey to get a child. It took us well over five years. As you can imagine, from Chinese herbs to shots to geriatric pregnancies, all of the above. When we tell that story, we are them and they are us.

The themes that are interwoven in this piece: it doesn’t matter if you’re in high school or you’re 80 years old or you’re a middle-aged woman, or you have a child, don’t have a child. Everybody’s journey personifies a different stage in someone’s life, and that’s what you’re going to hear. That’s what the audience is going to be attuned to. So right now, my journey as the baker’s wife and having a child is far different than me wanting to play the baker’s wife, like you said, 30 years ago.

You met Sebastian when you were in Wicked together. You got married before a performance, I think it was six years ago, and then you just went on stage. What do you remember most about that performance, particularly when you were singing As Long As You’re Mine?

Any time a couple, regardless of what stage it is in your relationship, when there’s a secret that just two of you hold, there is that sort of butterflies in the belly. There is sort of the giggle and the unspoken. We know something that nobody else knows. So that excitement certainly carried through. I’m sure we had smiles. [Elphaba] isn’t supposed to smile through the whole show, but internally I’m sure I had an extra sparkle in my eye and a smile that was underneath that green make-up when we did As Long As You’re Mine. It was a defining moment, certainly in my career, because all of those words took on a completely different meaning as husband and wife.

I saw one of the interviews that you did around The Boy From Oz and you said you weren’t doing the Liza Minnelli that we all know and love. This is Liza who was 18. It was before her fame had come to her. If 30 or 40 years from now, somebody wants to do a musical about somebody with whom you collaborated and an actor was going to take on the role of the young Stephanie J. Block, how would you like that character to be portrayed?

I would like her to be hopeful. I would like her to be silly. I would like her to be brassy because I was big and brassy. And I think always kind. Always kind, but ready to play. Those would be the words that I would infuse into the actress. It would be, I think, much like Liza, very difficult to watch that portrayal. Especially if somebody was to play young me but span 35 years of me in 45 minutes. I would feel like there’s a lump in my throat going, Oh, but there’s more. Oh, but you forgot to add that. But I think I would also have an open heart and the grace to accept it and receive it and hopefully lovingly support it.

In a 2006 interview you did with BroadwayWorld, you called the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl your “favorite regional theater role.” You went on to say, “It’s time to bring her back to Broadway. What a powerhouse role for any actresses. Producers interested can call 555-Stef!” which I thought was terrific. Fanny is back on Broadway now in a production that has had more rollercoasters than Disneyland. What does this production tell you about the challenges of producing contemporary musical theater and the pitfalls that have to be avoided? 

If I’m going to answer this, my disclaimer is I am taking great liberties because I have no horse in the race as a producer. But what I would like to see happen is that we cast a part based on the merit and the truth and the marriage of an actor and a piece not based on what could possibly sell tickets because of the pedigree of one particular person or one particular thing. It is a collaboration and a marriage and they all have to meet up.

I think we also have to entertain the idea of thinking outside the box. Then step into rehearsal. And then if it doesn’t go as planned, that there is the open-heartedness and the grace that I just spoke about to say, okay, great. You are monstrously talented. Perhaps this is not the vehicle that we all thought it was going to be for you, and that’s not going to service you or the piece. Let’s rethink. How do you feel about that? Let’s re-engage the conversation.

Much like art, live theater, is a living, breathing thing that I wish the creation of a piece can continue to be that without looking at the bottom line. That something is being created for artistry’s sake, and that within that landscape or ecosystem, things change or mistakes were made or gosh, this isn’t working out the way we hoped, or my God, this is working out even better than we hoped, right? But that the conversation can still happen and that grace can surround that. That’s what I feel.

Reviews and audience response to the Kennedy Center production of Sunset Boulevard means you’re giving us all optimism that there might be a Broadway revival. Do you have any new ways to dream, shall we say, about a Broadway production in which you play Norma Desmond?

I have 25% chance, maybe 50% chance, that there will be new ways to dream. The timing is not the timing I would like. There is a project that is in the works for cinema for Sunset Boulevard. That is ALW’s [Andrew Lloyd Webber] focus. That’s The Really Useful Group’s focus. And I can understand that as a business woman. As the artist, I would have loved to have seen a momentum and a transfer.

When I was asked by [Broadway Center Stage] Artistic Director, Jeffrey Finn of the Kennedy Center, what would you like to do in the next year, and I came out with this, I had no idea that this part and I would embrace each other in such a way that it affected me. It affected the audience. It affected the whole piece to be looked at in a completely different way. That was not my goal. But that was one of those times where we were all jumping in headfirst with no expectations, just wanting to create something different. Timely. I am of the school now that if you are going to revive, there needs to be a why. So we shall see what the next couple of years might bring. I’d like to hope that there’s space for it back on Broadway. We’ll see.

There was a Tony Monday last year or the year prior where you posted a video saying to your friends who were or were not nominated, that regardless of that the story continues to be told. What’s the story that’s most important for you to tell through your work today and through these evenings you have with Seth Rudetsky?

For me, right now, the word that is screaming in my head is connection. Absolute connection. If you are putting something out there and it is not being received and then digested and something is being thrown back at you, that’s my ultimate goal. Whether I am playing a part, whether I’m myself, whether I’m beside ridiculous, monstrously talented and smart Seth Rudetsky, for me, the evening was not a win if I did not connect and communicate with my audience. So that’s always the goal.

I certainly think we’ll do that at The Wallis. These intimate nights and spaces, they’re a joy to me. They really fill up my artistic bank. And much like Carol Burnett, it does feel like I’m standing there in my own skin wanting to meet them and wanting them to meet the real me. 

To see the full interview with Stephanie J. Block, please go here.

Main Photo: Stephanie J. Block (Courtesy The Wallis)

The post Bo23: Stephanie J. Block: From Disneyland To The Tonys appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

During rehearsals for his Black Mona Lisa Tour Volume 1, Porter told me when he goes online that “sometimes you hear, I didn’t know Pray Tell can sing!” Which, of course, surprises me since Pray Tell sang in multiple episodes of the television series Pose: “The Man That Got Away,” “For All We Know,” “Love’s In Need of Love Today” and “Home.” Porter won an Emmy Award for his performance in the first season of Ryan Murphy’s series.

His concert tour, to support an upcoming album of the same name, will showcase all aspects of his career. Porter’s tour begins on Saturday, April 29th in Seattle. The 25-city tour will take him during the first week to Salt Lake City (May 1st), Denver (May 2nd), San Jose (May 4th), San Francisco (May 5th) and Los Angeles (May 6th). To see the full itinerary, please go here.

In Los Angeles Porter will be performing at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre which is very near his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame which he received on December 1st of last year.

Earlier this month I spoke by phone with Porter about the tour, the album that he’s recorded and about his life on and off the stage. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

On stage, you’ve been able to embody Belize (Angels in America), Lola, Aubrey Lyles and so many other characters. With this tour you’ll be doing what a lot of actors consider the toughest of all possible roles: just being yourself. What challenges and opportunities does your Black Mona Lisa Tour Volume One offer you?

First of all, that is a really amazing question. I moved to New York City December 27th, 1992 to be in the original cast of Miss Saigon. It was the middle of the AIDS crisis. Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Actors Fund taught an entire generation how to activate. I was trying to get a better deal at the very same time, which I did. My first R&B/soul album came out in 1997. So my trajectory in my twenties was Broadway shows and getting a mainstream contract.

The only way to do that was to do concerts. I did concerts three, four or five times a year fronting a band. So showing up as myself, it’s something that I’ve been doing for the entirety of my career since I was 21 years old. So I am so happy to be able to get on stage and just be myself because I know how to do that very well.

Your book, Unprotected, created such an intimate dialogue with your audience. How would you like this upcoming album and tour to continue that dialogue and move the conversation forward?

I want the next layer to include one of my original dreams which was to be the male Whitney Houston. That was always my goal. Like I said, my first album came out in ’97. The mainstream industry was homophobic. They put my ass out. I had all these years to make something of myself. Now I get to come back to the mainstream industry on my own terms.

This album is everything that I want to say musically and exactly how I want to say it musically, visually, conceptually. All of it is rooted and grounded in the life that I led. I’m so excited to share it with the world. Ironically, I spent the first 25 years of my career trying to get people to take me seriously as an actor. Now I sort of exist in so many different creative spaces.

The unfortunate part of our world is that very often these creative spaces don’t talk to each other. The literary people don’t talk to the music people. The music people don’t talk to the film and TV people. The film and TV people don’t talk to the fashion people. The fashion people don’t talk to the theater people. So the audiences are all there for different reasons. It’s like, okay, so I have some educating to do, you know? My hope is that this concert with music, since it is a universal language, will bring all of my disparate audiences together. 

How autobiographical with this whole album be? The first line in your first single, Baby Was a Dancer, references your own birthday.

It’s completely autobiographical. It’s completely my life. Just like my book, it’s a celebration of life. It’s a celebration of how I can heal trauma. The concert is going to be a celebration of life and love and hope and joy. I’ve been saying I want to give the world a big bear hug. We’ve all been inside of and continue to be inside of a collective trauma that is devastating. I want to be a part of the healing. I’m coming to minister to the people in these 25 cities and start the process of healing together. The only way we can make a difference in this world to heal, to create change, is to do it together. Now we can gather again. So my hope, my intention, is to get the ball rolling with that. My hope is that audiences will leave inspired and hopeful and be called and re-called to action.

What discoveries have you made about yourself since the publication of Unprotected and will those discoveries find their way into Black Mona Lisa?

They have found their way. The album is done. What discoveries have I made? I would say that healing is a journey, not a destination. If we can learn to enjoy the journey in all its forms, even when it’s uncomfortable – and a lot of times it’s going to be uncomfortable -when we can understand that the space of the journey is where the peace is, where the joy is, where the hope lies with healing. It’s in the journey that we find that space in our lives. That’s what I really have been able to lean into that since the book and the trauma therapy that went along with writing that book.

What I couldn’t have known when I saw you in Angels in America in 2010 is that while you’re playing this incredible angel of a nurse who dispenses truth and compassion in equal measure, you were carrying a secret inside about your own health status. What was that experience for you, knowing what you knew about yourself while appearing in this play? 

As you know from the book, going to see Millennium Approaches [part one of Angels in America] in 1994, while I was in playing the Teen Angel in Grease, prancing around like a Little Richard on crack, our theaters backed up against each other. The actors from Angels in America, I was friends with a couple of them. [They] were like, “We could always hear in our dressing room where your number was!” That was the play that began the evolution of Billy. I saw Belize and I saw myself – a reflection of a Black queer man who was not the butt of the joke. Who was not the one that was reviled. Who people didn’t want to kill. Who was the moral compass of the show. It changed everything for me.

When I got my diagnosis of HIV in 2007 my biggest fear was that people would find out and I would never work again. So to have my return to the New York stage after a decade of not working be the very piece that changed everything for me, that really changed my life. That was all I was thinking about at that time.

Because it was a piece about HIV I could just be in it. As an actor that’s what we strive for. We strive to not have to be acting, but to just be. So it was magical for me. I was able to think about something else. I was able to not have to wallow in that. By that point I was on medication. My T-cell count was higher than yours is now. That medication is actually a miracle drug. The diabetes and the HIV diagnosis simultaneously turned this Black man into the most healthiest I’d ever been. I was relieved to be working again and happy to be healthy. That was really where I was when I was doing that.

From the outside looking in on your life, it would seem like you have found a way to make the world your oyster right now. Do you feel that way? What would you say to others, particularly those who go to your concert, is the best way for them to live with such apparent joy and appreciation? 

You choose it. Joy is an action. Love is an action. Hope is an action. All of those things are actions that don’t just happen. So we have to be conscious and sure of it at every turn and every success. There’s equal measure of challenges. The challenges never stop. They just are different. The more success I have, the more intense the challenges are. So do not get it twisted. The world is sort of an oyster and there’s a lot of bullshit, too.

We last spoke in 2018. I asked you at that time if it was possible for our government to come closer in parity with the country’s culture. You said “I get to be part of that change, that catalyst that creates changes.” Giving everything that’s now going on with the LGBTQ+ community, what are the conversations you hope your audiences will have after seeing these concerts about further changes, not just in society, but also in ourselves? 

I think the big takeaway from what’s going on right now is to remember that we’re all human. Just in my estimation and what I’ve observed, being separated and isolated in our homes for two years because of the pandemic allowed for inhumanity to flourish and it allowed for people to forget that we’re all human beings. It allowed for that to foster a bit. That’s what I’m excited about with my work is that it’s a reminder that we’re all human beings and we don’t have to agree on everything. We can agree to disagree. The conversation is not about tolerance or acceptance. The conversation is a demand for universal respect for humanity. Period.

So you don’t get to create legislation that takes rights away because you don’t agree with me. That’s not what America is. That’s not what any place should be like. My rights have been up to legislation since the moment I could comprehend it and before that, too. And it still continues to be okay. That still continues to be the way of the world. It’s not just America, it’s all over the world. 

It’s like What is this? It’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of this? It’s crazy. It is. The answer from me is fuck you. If the worst thing that I do is cuss, because that’s what people like to talk about, well, we have much bigger problems than my fuck you. Come on, the sky IS falling, right? It already is falling. I need to see some urgency in these motherfuckers now.

Main Photo: Billy Porter (Courtesy Republic Records)

The post Bo23: Pray Tell, Billy Porter Can Sing appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Sometimes you’re dreams get broken in pieces
But that doesn’t matter at all
Take it from me, there’s still going to be
A summer, a winter, a spring and a fall

For the creators of the Broadway musical – writers David Thompson and Sharon Washington; composers Kander and Ebb and Lin-Manuel Miranda; director/choreographer Susan Stroman – their big-budgeted musical didn’t make it in the city that doesn’t sleep. The show closed after only 110 official performances.

But for fans who loved the musical or the people who never got a chance to see the show, there is the ultimate souvenir to experience: the original Broadway cast recording (OBCR).

As they did for the show itself, orchestrators Sam Davis (who was also the arranger) and Daryl Waters were in the studio with the cast and creators to memorialize the enormous amount of work that went into this show so that their little town blues could melt away and they could all make a brand new start of it. And more importantly, so you could hear the 28 songs and 5 demos.

It’s not unlike how they first became aware of musicals.

“Everything I know about musical theater, and my whole love of shows and show music, all came from albums,” said Davis for whom New York, New York was his twelfth Broadway show. “I would get cast albums as a kid and listen to the songs and love the songs, but not know anything about the plots. So, for instance, I made up my own plot for South Pacific.”

Waters, who grew up in Cleveland, got to see shows, “but certainly not Broadway quality,” he recalled. “Listening to all this glorious music just draws you even that much closer to the whole scene and makes you want to be a part of it. That’s how I ended up here.” It was Waters’ work on Shuffle Along, or, The Making of The Musical Sensation of 1921 and All that Followed, that prompted Davis to bring Waters in for New York, New York.

Davis recalls, “I had never worked with Daryl before this, but Shuffle Along made me think he’d be really great with Stro [Stroman] working with dance. I arranged the whole score of New York, New York, but wasn’t going to orchestrate the whole thing myself because it would be too much work. It was such a stylistic hodgepodge that there were definitely areas that were taking me out of my comfort zone as an orchestrator. So I thought it would be great if we could get someone else to do a lot of the orchestrations and bring their flavor to it. Darryl was the perfect person.”

The hodgepodge that Davis was referring to was the various sources for the songs that made up this musical.

“We have classic Kander and Ebb songs like New York, New York and But The World Goes Round, and then we have lesser known Kander and Ebb classics like Marry Me [from The Rink],” Davis listed. “Then we also had these new songs that Kander was writing with Lin. We had a song from Funny Lady [a 1975 film sequel to Funny Girl – the song is Let’s Hear It For Me]. And the danger would be that they would all sound like they were from different shows – which they are.”

According to Waters, they made it work. “The way that Sam has delivered that thread throughout the show was absolutely incredible to me. When you talk about art, threads are important. All I had to do was layer in my own part. Sometimes I feel like I have to superimpose something on there that wasn’t there. It was all there this show.”

When it came time to go into the studio to make the OBCR, Davis and Waters faced some challenges in recording an album that mirrors the show.

Davis recalls, “The show is such a big dance show and it’s such a visual show. How do you create that? How do you keep the joy of that when you don’t have anything to look at? Mostly that just meant in the way that the songs were performed. We have a big production number in Act Two called the San Juan Supper Club. When you see it in the audience with Susan Stroman’s choreography, it was thrilling. But when we recorded it the way we do it in the show, without the visuals it seemed a little lackluster. So we ended up doing it almost twice the tempo that we do it in the show to create all the excitement that you saw visually. There were lots of little tweaks like that.”

But they also go to enhance the experience as well for the album. Waters reveals, “Let’s not forget something very major: You try and keep to the minimum number of players because every year it gets more expensive. For the album we had the luxury of actually adding some strings that gave us a much richer sound than you would normally hear.”

During our conversation I mentioned to Waters and Davis that seven years earlier I had interviewed Kander and he mentioned that he hoped that revivals of his shows The Rink and Steel Pier might happen soon. Neither show was a hit, though he was deeply passionate about them.

So if New York, New York gets a revival in the future, what do Davis and Waters think the reason for that revival would be? What discoveries could be made that didn’t engage an audience this year?

Waters responds first, “This is the everyman story – at least for New York City. We all can relate to all these stories. I’m disappointed more people didn’t get a chance to see it this time. Next time, it’s just have to come on in there and take a look at it. Because the storylines are real. The truth is real.”

That truth, that honesty, is also important to Davis.

“What lasts in theater is when pieces have something to say that is honest. If a little time goes by and we forget arguing which plot line we should have cut or which scene didn’t work, people will realize the show really does say something genuine about New York. Every scene, every song and every musical moment expresses all of our collective love and our fantasy about what that means being in New York and arriving in New York from somewhere else. We all put it so fervently into the piece. I just feel like it’s there waiting to be discovered.”

Until then there’s the cast recording. A recording that will last as a permanent document of the show. So what happens in five decades from now when someone first listens to New York, New York? Will they create their own storyline as Davis did? Davis has some ideas.

“One thing that may not be clear 50 years from now, but what I think is so unique now, is how unusual it was for a show like New York, New York to open in 2023 – just a couple of years out of the pandemic and and in a time where everyone is scaling down and so many shows have contemporary pop scores – that we were doing a show with a big budget that had a huge set, fantastic lavish costumes, great choreography and a full orchestra with strings. It’s like a defiant throwback in a way.

“Maybe in 50 years every show will be like that again. But I would love people to know how brave and unusual that was that we did.”

To see my interview with Sam Davis and Daryl Waters, which has plenty of other stories about New York, New York and other shows and collaborators, please go here.

Main Photo: The company of New York, New York (Photo by Paul Kolnik)

The post The “New York, New York” Cast Album Lives On appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

There are multiple musicals that inspired such deep passion within audiences that you would have expected them to be smash successes. Side Show, about conjoined sisters Daisy and Violet Hilton, is one of those shows. The original 1997 production, which earned great reviews and received 4 Tony nominations including Best Musical, closed after 91 performances. The 2014 revival, directed by Bill Condon (the film Dreamgirls), earned 5 Tony nominations including Best Musical and closed after 56 performances. For book writer and lyricist Bill Russell those results didn’t match the passion of the audiences who saw each production.

On Monday, September 25th, Russell will present My Side of the Show at Birdland Jazz Club in New York. He’ll be joined by cast members from the show for an evening of stories and songs.

I got my own stories earlier this week when I spoke with Russell about this musical he wrote with Henry Krieger (Dreamgirls) that still holds a very important place in his heart. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To get even more stories about Side Show, please watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.

Q: How has your relationship to Side Show evolved since you first started working on it to where we are today? How will that influence how you present your memories from this chapter of your career?

It’s certainly been an education in a lot of ways – especially in how musicals get to Broadway. It has been on Broadway twice and it’s been a flop both times now. That’s a very loaded term, but I’m using the definition by Variety, which was considered the showbiz bible for a long time – I’m not sure if it still is. But they define a flop as any production which does not recoup its initial investment. And there are a lot of long-running shows that classify that way.

Jekyll and Hyde ran for four years on Broadway. Never recouped. Thoroughly Modern Millie won the Tony Award for Best Musical and it never recouped. I don’t think Sunset Boulevard did either. But, we live in a capitalist culture and it’s easier to measure success in terms of dollars and cents. But I don’t feel Side Show is a flop because it’s meant so much to so many people.

I looked at Vincent Canby‘s New York Times review of Side Show when it first opened on Broadway and he compared your work as a lyricist to the work of Betty Comden and Adolph Green who had had a production of On the Town going on in Central Park the summer prior to your opening. Since Side show was your first Broadway musical, not your first musical, but your first Broadway musical, what did that comparison mean to you?

Oh, God, it meant the world to me. To be mentioned in their company? I mean, they are just legendary and I loved their work. I met Betty Comden once and I mentioned that I can’t believe somebody would compare me with you. So that was a wonderful, wonderful moment for me. 

Vincent Canby’s review of the show was very, very positive, but most of it was a discourse about conjoined twins and it didn’t really help sell tickets. At that point I was wholly obsessed with that because we weren’t selling as well as the audience reaction seemed to have warranted. Every performance was getting instant standing ovations and people just were loving it. So I had very mixed emotions.

The musical opens with Come Look at the Freaks. It seems like as a society we have evolved into a people where that’s all we do. We just look at the freaks on Instagram, we look at them on Tik-tok, we look at them in every possible aspect of social media. When you wrote the lyrics for that song did you ever think that we, as a society, would embrace being and looking at the freaks as much as we have today?

No, not really. When I was first interviewed about the show in the mid-nineties they would ask, “What attracted you to this subject matter? Because sideshows don’t even exist anymore.” And I said, Are you kidding? They’ve moved to afternoon television because Jerry Springer was featuring conjoined twins regularly and much shorter people than them. I do think there’s just this fascination that is innate. It’s both fascination and repulsion about people who are radically different. But I do believe that we’ve become much more accepting. And now, as you say, we see freaks everywhere. I’m proud to own that world, by the way, because I definitely consider myself one. Certainly I did growing up. It’s a good point that they’re everywhere now.

There was a much more successful show that had the song Let Your Freak Flag Fly – Shrek the Musical. How has being a freak become more accepted if it’s going to be part of a popular musical like Shrek? 

In a way it has, but it still creates a barrier in terms of selling tickets. When the revival came about we thought that change you’re talking about and now is really the time for this. But women buy the most Broadway tickets. Though Side Show is very female-focused, I think when women hear it’s about conjoined twins they think it’s going to be sad and make them uncomfortable and they do not buy tickets. Once they see the show they love it. But getting them in just is a problem. It’s a continual marketing challenge.

You had to have known that when you started it.

When I was first pitched this idea I just was immediately interested. I thought the theatrical possibilities of two actors singing and moving together were great and the metaphorical ramifications were huge. Once I started diving into their story, I was just so fascinated. There was a point when [producer] Manny [Emmanuel] Azenberg, when we were doing readings of the show, came to me and said, “You realize, Bill, that this subject matter has a real ick factor connected with it.” And I was like, Really? I knew this wasn’t exactly standard Broadway fare, but I thought it was just intriguing and it never occurred to me it would be such a hard sell.

You have worked with composers Ronald Melrose, Janet Hood, Albert Evans, Peter Melnick. What sets your collaborations with Henry Krieger apart from all those other collaborators with whom you’ve worked? 

Henry, you know, he’s such a mensch. He’s just a great guy. He, like Irving Berlin and many other well-known composers, does not read music. So that was different. Our first meeting he asked me, “How do you prefer to write – music or lyrics first?” I was like, I go both ways as a lyricist, but oddly enough most of the composers I’ve worked with prefer the lyrics first. That’s far from typical with Henry.

In the morning I’ll work on a lyric, sometimes the whole lyric, but more likely an intro in a verse or a verse and a chorus. I take it down to him. He lives downtown, I live uptown. We will have discussed where it comes in the show, maybe a musical feel, but not always. He doesn’t read it first. He puts it on the piano, sits down, puts his hands on the keyboard, grabs it and looks up, and after a brief pause, starts singing and playing at the same time. I would say that 50% of the time what comes out of his fingers that moment defines what that song will ultimately be. 

As with any musical there are a lot of songs that never see the light of day or maybe are in early versions of the musical and then get taken out. Some of those from this musical were Why Haven’t You Learned Yet?, Side Show, The Choice I Made and more. How painful is it for you as a creator to have to say goodbye to something you put your heart and soul into?

When I started writing songs for musicals and we had to cut something, it was like, Oh, I can’t do that. But anymore it’s nothing to write another song. We frequently would write maybe five songs for the same moment in the show, just always refining it. Then we would cut stuff because the plot changed. It hasn’t been that hard. I will say when it came to the revival and working with Bill Condon, there were a couple songs that were really hard for me to lose, but I totally understood why.

Is there a whole alternate world of Side Show that exists in songs we’ve never heard? 

My husband Bruce put together a CD of songs we wrote and it’s 90 minutes long, and that by no means includes everything. When we first met with Bill Condon he asked for everything we’d written for the original production and he was mentioning songs we didn’t even remember writing. Honestly we’ve written so much stuff. It’s quite a bit of music and some really good stuff. 

You said writing songs is easy. You know how many people wish they could say that and mean it.

It’s easy for Henry and me, I have to say. Honestly, I could write lyrics every day. I have a much harder problem with books. I think they’re much harder, at least for me. But I love writing lyrics and you can finish them in a finite bit of time; unlike books, which never are finished. 

I saw an interview that you did with Henry, I think it was from Broadway.com. You mentioned that only one song remain untouched for the 2014 revival. What was that song and why? 

It was the the twins’ first song called Like Everyone Else and it wasn’t intentional that we didn’t didn’t touch it. Some of the changes in the other songs were just minor lyric tweaks or whatever. But it just so happened that song, nothing changed.

There’s one song, as you know, that has turned into an anthem for freaks, for performers, singers, and it’s Who Will Love Me As I Am. It’s a song that that has outlived the show on a certain level. Why do you think that song resonates so much with people and did you have any sense in writing it that this would be become the anthem it has?

That lyric came from a really personal place for me. I grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota. My grandparents were cattle ranchers over the border in Wyoming. Everybody called my father cowboy because he was one. He broke calves in rodeos. In that hyper-macho environment of cattle and cowboys, hunting and sports and cars, I felt like the biggest freak in the world. So when I started working on this show, I just felt right at home. I understood it.

Some people regard the show as a gay metaphor and I’m fine with that because that was really my entry into the world. But I do feel that limits a bigger metaphor than that. If I’ve learned anything doing this, it’s that I think everyone feels like a freak on some level or at some time in their life; certainly adolescence. So that lyric came from such a personal place, and it was one of the first five songs we wrote for the show. Whenever we would play it, people were so moved by it and so I wasn’t surprised.

Did your father live long enough to hear that song and to see the show?

Unfortunately, no. He died just when we started writing it. 

Do you think there’s going to come a time where Side Show will be loved as it is? 

Oh, I think it is that time. They arrived back with the original. It’s just the people’s perception of what it might be like if they haven’t seen it. That’s the issue. Not from people who see it. At least once or twice a month somebody comes up to me, finally having found out that I wrote the book and lyrics and they just go off about how much the show means to them. How much hearing the album when they were in college; how they just couldn’t stop playing it. I can’t think of anything more gratifying for a writer. It’s more gratifying to me than making millions of dollars from a huge commercial hit.

To see the full interview with Bill Russell about Side Show, please go here.

Main Photo: Bill Russell and Henry Krieger at the opening night of the revival of Side Show (Photo courtesy Birdland Jazz Club)

The post Writer/Lyricist Bill Russell Revisits His Musical “Side Show” appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Both lead actors play two roles in the show. Act One depicts painter George Seurat’s intense mission to finish his masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. His muse and mistress is Dot. In Act Two, which takes place one hundred years later, a descendant of Seurat’s, also named George, is giving the world premiere of one of his works. Joining him for that premiere is his grandmother, Marie, who claims to be Seurat’s daughter and that her mother is the woman featured prominently at the front of his painting.

This is Alabado’s first time in a Sondheim musical. She’s appeared on Broadway in Mean Girls, American Idiot and American Psycho. On tour she’s also appeared in Spring Awakening and Evita.

Earlier this week I spoke via Zoom with Alabado about the dual roles she’s playing, specific lyrics of Sondheim’s found in the song Move On and about her experiences working with David Bowie on the musical Lazarus. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

As Dot you sing in Move On, “Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see.” How does playing this role allow you to see more of yourself as an actor and a singer?

This is my first time, in my 15 years of doing this professionally, of being able to tackle Sondheim. Which didn’t come out of not wanting to, but rather just the way that my career has gone. It just has never taken me in the path of Sondheim.

Also, I am a Mexican Lebanese woman. I think that, in the last five years maybe, this is the first time that we’ve seen different types being cast in these beautiful, huge Sondheim shows that possibly didn’t have that kind of accessibility for somebody like me in the past. So I feel very privileged and honored to be tackling this work. 

I didn’t know Sunday in the Park very well. Every time I sing those lyrics in Move On I learn and find something new in them. I feel like I am changing as an actor, as a singer, as a performer with the incredible messages that Dot is trying to relay to George throughout the piece and the messages that Sondheim and James Lapine are trying to give us as the artists interpreting them. It’s been very moving for me.

When you’re tackling the work of Stephen Sondheim it’s obviously different than tackling Mean Girls. Not to belittle Mean Girls, but they don’t aspire to be the same thing at all.

What’s great about musical theater is we have so many different types of musicals. Sondheim is, as we all know, a complete genius in the art form – possibly the greatest musical theater composer creator that has and will ever have lived and touched all of us with his incredible work. I think tackling this is completely different than tackling Mean Girls.

I did American Idiot and Spring Awakening, all these different types of musicals. There is a density of this material that requires a different piece of you. You have to give yourself to it differently. Also, my brain has to activate in a certain way that takes a lot of focus as an actor as well. Not that I’m not focusing in those other shows, but this is a little bit of a different muscle.

I looked at an interview that your director, Sarna Lapine, gave to The Interval New York in 2017 when this production appeared on Broadway with Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. She was talking about the arc of the show as, “The mistress is the muse in Act One and she becomes the teacher in Act Two.” Did you and Sarna have any conversations about that way of looking at these two women that you’re playing?

Not in particular like that. But one of the things that we and Graham have always been in conversation about is what does Dot get from George? What does George learn from Dot? What does Marie teach George act two? What does George teach Marie in turn? How are all of these people still helping each other?

Dot and George have a harder time because they both want different things that Dot knows deep down she can never get from him and he can never get from her. [That’s] why it’s such a heartbreak what ends up happening for George and Dot. Me and Sarna had many conversations about the wisdom which Marie gives to second act George and where that comes from. It comes from the song Children and Art. It’s this idea that all we can do is learn the lessons from the people that we have passed, that have passed through us, that have come through us. 

Do you think that her approach might be different as a woman and that she may have brought different resonance, different tones, different ways of depicting and telling this story?

Yes, absolutely. Sarna saw the original when she was eight years old. She talks about that. She talks about how deeply important this piece is to her, to her family, but really her personally. 

What’s beautiful about reviving shows or trying them in different ways is that the show originally was interpreted so specifically by these two people that created it. The beautiful lesson that we all get to take when we revive or try shows again later on is that this gift was given to us, which is the original interpretation. [That] also involved Bernadette and Mandy. Everything about the original was crafted with this group of people so specifically. Then our job as interpretive artists is to find our way and new ways into it. How is the world different? How are we different? How do we interpret art differently? I can’t wait to see what Sunday in the Park with George interpreted in 2050 would be.

But as a woman with a woman director, which I don’t get to do very often either, we’ve had incredibly deep, wonderful conversations. Me, Sarna and Graham have really been so connected in this process. I think that Sarna, interpreting it through the eyes and lens of a woman, has given us wonderful new ways to see things and try things.

She’s given you new things to see. You get to do things in a new way. You’re living out what Sondheim wrote, aren’t you?

Right because that’s all we can do as artists.

I read an interview that Bernadette Peters gave thirty years after Sunday in the Park with George. She was talking about singing Move On and she said that it, “got to be like meditating. It was so healing and uplifting.” What do you experience when you get to that moment in the show?

The first couple of times we sang it I could not help but sob through it because it’s just cathartic. It’s oddly a release, but it’s a release in the most peaceful way, which is why the song to me is so incredible. The wisdom that is given to us in those lyrics, and that Dot gets to impart on George, is so moving. It’s what all of us desperately need to hear as actors, artists, creators. It’s, I agree, a meditation, a self-healing moment for me personally, for Dot or George, for Graham, for our company, for the audience. And it feels like this big moment of what we all need to hear right now. So I find it to be very healing in that way.

I do want to ask you about one new musical that you did, because I am a massive fan of another genius, a gentleman we used to have on this planet called David Bowie. What was the process like of working on Lazarus with, in and around David Bowie? 

That’s a for a whole other hour of talking. But in short, it was one of the most unexpected, incredible things I’ve ever gotten to do in my life. When I was thinking I was going to do musical theater for a living, did I think I would get to work closely with a legend like that? The whole thing from start to finish was magical and zany and so unexpected and just so cool.

I started my career doing more rock musicals. So I was in that world. But then being able to find this with David and with the creators of Lazarus, with Ivo van Hove the director, what an opportunity and memories that I will never, ever lose because he was such a good person. And he loves musicals, which I didn’t really know about David until we were working on it. He was so grateful that we were all doing it. Everything he wanted was to write a musical and to have it performed. So it was just really important to him and, in turn, important to us.

We recorded the cast album on the day that he died. We didn’t know. It was a very interesting time. I hold it very dear to my heart in many, many ways.

I want to finish up our time by going one last time to Move On because it has my favorite lyric that I think has ever been written. “I chose and my world was shaken, so what. The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not.”

That’s my favorite lyric of the whole show.

Does that thinking play a part in how you move through your career, in your life, not only during Sunday in the Park with George, but for whatever else comes after that?

If anyone wants to know what it’s like to be an actor it’s that. Everything that we do feels like a little leap of faith. You never know what’s happening. I find that to be why my life is so rich and full of experiences and emotion. I could never be the person I am without having done this.

What we do is complicated. It can be very, very challenging, very hard. And it can also be really complicated to find levity in a business that sometimes can feel really difficult. I think that lesson in itself is why I love what I do so much. You do just have to choose. You have to take a leap.

You maybe made what could be interpreted as the wrong choice. But doing it is what was the right choice. All we can do is just keep going. I think that will always stay with me moving forward after this show, because that’s one of the hardest things I find as an actor is choosing and making choices and not being afraid of that. I think Dot is trying to teach us, and teach George in that moment, that just choosing and going forward is all we can do. We can’t know if it’s right or wrong, but all we can do is do it.

To see the full interview with Krystina Alabado, please go here.

Sunday in the Park with George continues at the Pasadena Playhouse through March 19th.

Main Photo: Krystina Alabado and Graham Phillips in Sunday in the Park with George (Photo by Jeff Lorch/Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse)

The post Krystina Alabado Moves on With Dot and Marie appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

So it was quite a surprise to me when in the late afternoon last Thursday I was asked if I could do an interview with White in advance of her appearance with Seth Rudetsky at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills on November 3rd. I wanted to talk with her, but I was pleasantly surprised that it came about so quickly.

Two hours notice to interview her after that evening’s performance of Hadestown. There were no ground rules. Nothing was exempt from conversation. At 10:30 PM in New York and 7:30 PM in Los Angeles we connected via Zoom, each of us with a glass of wine at our side. She had white wine, I had red. Her dinner was cooking, mine would be afterwards.

Before we get into the interview, White has made a name for herself on stages around the world. In addition to her role as Sonja in The Life, White has appeared on Broadway as Effie White in Dreamgirls, Mama Morton in Chicago, Grizabella in Cats and Funmilayo in Fela! In Los Angeles she appeared in a production of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in the title role.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. The interview was very enjoyable and I had hoped to post the video, but she asked me not to due to the incessant attention she was getting online. The end result is a slightly longer interview than I usually post, but hopefully an enjoyable one.

Since we’re doing this post-show, what are your post-show rituals?

Our post-show rituals depends on the night. Tonight is Thursday night. So we had an early show tonight. We had a 7:00 show. On Tuesday nights I come straight home because I have two shows on Wednesday. But on Thursday night I will have a glass of wine. And maybe not. And I cook something to eat. I feed and take care of my animals. I have a dog and a cat. I just relax and chill and maybe watch a movie, maybe watch something on TV. I try not to watch the news too much because it makes me sad. But I watch the news enough to keep up with what’s going on in the city and in the world.

My post-show rituals on other nights include coming home and getting something to eat, taking a bubble bath with candles lit and just kind of taking off the day and getting ready for the next day. When you’re in a Broadway show you pretty much live for the show. Everything you do is to prepare and to be prepared for the show the next day, over the next two days, over next week. So that’s what I do. I try to take care of myself. 

I saw Hadestown on Broadway before it won the Tony Award. When I first heard that you were taking on the role of Hermes it answered the question that I had as to whom could possibly replace André de Shields? I know that a friend suggested this part to you and said you should think about this. At what point did it make sense to you? What was your response when the producers said it makes sense to us, too?

Susan Davison and I were sitting right here at this table, I believe, and we had heard that André was leaving. I said I’ve got to do that role. I only said that because I’d seen the show opening night and I just thought it was a magnificent show. It was very moving. It was very timely. It has a lot of very important messages for the world that we’re living in today. I just thought, Oh, I’d love to do that role. I didn’t think anything else of it. I really just didn’t dream of it.

So Susan said, “Well, you should call your agent”. So I did and my agent said, “Wow, that’s a great idea, Lil. I’ll talk to the people.” They thought it was a great idea and that’s how it happened. 

That is the best possible example of going for what you want.

And positive thinking because the word “no” never came into my mind about this. It just didn’t. I’m not being egotistical or anything like that. I just thought it would be a great idea. 

You saw the show from the audience’s perspective. Now that you’re on stage and have been doing it for a number of weeks, has your perspective on why the show works as well as it does changed? Do you have new insights as to why Hadestown resonates as much as it does? 

As Hermes I get to see it a lot from my own perspective. And I think that it’s moving, it’s an emotional ride and it speaks to the times that we’re living in. Even though based on mythology, there’s a lot of truth in what’s being told on the stage in Hadestown. The actors are bringing it. They are giving you the truth of the story.

I keep saying it’s timely. They talk about building a wall. Why would somebody build a wall to keep other people out? Who are the people being kept out? It’s the love and the caring for someone and the self-doubts that we all have from time to time, maybe on a daily basis, maybe not. But we all have some doubts about what we can do to make our dreams fulfilled. And so there are lots of things that I see now because I’m on the stage.

I see and I hear that rumble of Hades voice every night. I see the love between the Eurydice and Orpheus every night. It’s really, to me, a demonstration of what our realities can be if we pursue them, if we pursue the right kinds of things. It’s a different perspective watching it every night, watching the workers every night sweating. I get to see that every night and I get to look at the audience. I get to watch them watch the show and it’s very telling. I mean, I saw a man in the audience and, to me, he could have been the devil because of the way he was responding to a particular moment in the show. It could be my imagination, but maybe not. 

You and André got to work together in a musical a lot of people don’t know about called Gotta Dance (2015). As the baton got passed from him to you did you have any conversations with your former stage mate or did he offer any advice to you?

We talked very briefly and he’s thrilled for me as I am thrilled for him to, too. He’s moving on to a wonderful show, Death of a Salesman. One of the things that he said to me that I really held on to was it’s a lot of work. When he said that I was just beginning rehearsals.

Now I really understand what he meant because the role is not just standing and reciting and telling the story and moving the story along, but it’s also remembering cues about props. Then where to stand and where to walk and when to say what. It’s a lot of mental work. What I’m finding is that this is not one of those shows where you can kind of walk through it. You have to really be in it and be aware of what’s happening in every second – which you should do anyhow.

I don’t like to walk through anything. I like to be in the moment, every moment, because that’s what translates to the audience. That’s how you get people to understand what the story’s about and to see the characters that you’re portraying. I think that you have to stand in them, go 50/50, because, of course, you have to be who you are – your personal self has to be in the mix there to portray the character. You have to give 100% every time because every night, every show, there’s someone there who’s never seen it before. 

I don’t want to rehash the challenges that you’ve been through in the last week and a half or two weeks. 

No, we’re not going to talk about that. 

But I want to know from an actor’s perspective what are the challenges of keeping all that noise outside and not let it impact the work that you want to do? 

I think the blessing of it is that I do have a character to portray. So I can throw myself 100% into that character and forget about all this other stuff. Because in the scheme of things, the people who come into the show to watch the show the next day and the next evening, they don’t want to know about any of that. They want to see the show. They want to know what happens to Eurydice and Orpheus. They want to know what Hades has to say. They want to see what Hermes is going to do.

So I don’t want to bring any of that into what I’m doing on a daily basis. There are certain things that are going to be addressed. And they should be. But that’s that. 

How do you, with all of the distractions, find happiness at this point? 

Listen, I am blessed. I’m a mother, a grandmother. I have pets. I have plants. I live in a beautiful apartment in New York City. I’m healthy and I’m loved. So that’s what keeps me going. I’m loved and I know that without a shadow of a doubt. So with all of this other stuff that has been happening, this is what I know for sure. That tiny little bit of people who don’t, don’t count. Because I’m only coming from love, you know? I think that’s one of the things that really keeps me going and keeps me grounded.

What excites you most about still being on stage at this point? 

Oh, it’s always the work. The play itself. The music. Listening to these wonderful musicians on stage and the audiences. During the lockdown I did some work here in my apartment with my music director and we did several performances that were videotaped and live streamed. It was fun and it was good, but there’s nothing like having people in the house or people in the audience.

Even if I had people here in my apartment it would be nice. It’s the people; the reactions and the interchange of energy. Whether you’re a jazz singer or blues player or an actor who does acting and doesn’t sing, or whether you’re somebody who only sings and doesn’t act, whether you’re a dancer or a painter or a sculptor, it’s about people witnessing what you do and their reaction to it. It’s tied to your heartstrings and that’s what does it for me.

it’s interesting that you said “whether you’re a jazz singer or not,” because I came home from running some errands today and I listened to TSF Jazz radio out of Paris. The first person that came on was Dinah Washington, whom I happen to love dearly. I was thinking, God, I would love to see a show about her. Then when I found out we were talking two hours ago and saw that you did Dinah Washington, I thought I have to ask you about her. 

She’s a heroine of mine. She was a force of nature. She was a business woman, she was a tough cookie and she demanded excellence from everybody around her. I loved playing her because I got to play an icon – a really wonderful iconic figure in Black music who didn’t stand for any mess. She did what she wanted to do in terms of the music. She spoke loudly about civil rights and she contributed to the success of the civil rights movement. She wanted things the way she wanted things and so she had it that way. I loved playing her.

In December of 2000 Stephen Holden in the New York Times wrote a review of your cabaret performance. He said, “Listening to this gifted theatrical pop soul singer, it is easy to wish that belters like Patti LaBelle and Aretha Franklin would show a similar sense of balance and sensitivity.” When you aren’t just reviewed favorably in their company, but set up as an example for them, what goes through your mind? 

That’s the first time I ever heard that quote from Stephen Holden. Stephen Holden has written me many love letters and I’m really very happy that he gets me. 

I’m speechless to be honest with you because these are the people that I grew up listening to. I think they’re brilliant, not just singers, but brilliant musicians in the way that they can turn a song and make it palatable and make it honest. I feel like that’s the best way to be as an artist – to be honest. If I’m honest with what I’m doing the audience is going to get it.

In August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom here in Los Angeles you acted more than you sang. What did you like most about that role and about being part of that production?

What I liked most was the acting, the ability to bring that character to life. I love to sing, obviously, but there are other aspects to my artistry and I like being able to explore that part of it. I felt very fortunate to have the brilliant cast that we had and to have Dr. Phylicia Rashad as the person leading the helm. She really helped me so much get into that character and make it real, make it truthful.

So let me ask you something about risk taking. I’ve been a longtime Fela Kuti fan and I when I saw Fela! in New York I thought it was a brave show for Broadway. The show ran 463 performances. In an environment where pre-sold entities are given top priority I love the fact that a show like Fela! could be on Broadway. Do you believe Broadway can be as equally brave today as it was when Fela! was put on stage? 

I absolutely do. I think it just takes brave producers who are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Fela! was something that made people a little bit uncomfortable. They stand up and dance a little bit. You had a man with his shirt off smoking weed on a stage. You had a man with 27 wives saying these are all my wives. And you had a woman, me, playing a ghost. She was literally a ghost of his of his mom coming back.

It wasn’t your typical Broadway show, but I think that that’s what makes the world go round. We can portray the sharp edges of humanity, of intelligence, of art. I think it’s important for us to view and experience all of it.

We have to open our minds because the world is so big now. It’s big and it’s small because we can travel from here to Japan in a day. People’s ideas change about marriage, about the feminine and masculine and all of that. There’s so many different things that are going on. We have to keep up. 

When you received the Tony Award for The Life I loved the dance that you did. I revisited this today and was moved when you thanked your grandmother for putting you on the table to show your family your talent. If your grandmother could see you on stage in Hadestown today, what do you think she would say about everything you’ve accomplished so far in your career? 

Oh. [She takes a minute before continuing.] I think she would say “You did good, baby.” I think that she would probably not love everything that I’ve done so far. I don’t suspect that my grandmother would have loved to have seen me in The Life, but my mother did and my Aunt Lillian did and my uncles and my aunts and my cousins. Everybody in my family who came to see it understood that this was my job to play this role. I don’t know that my grandmother would like that at all. But right now she’d be very happy. 

And what would you say to her? 

Grandma, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming, Grandma. Are you hungry? You want to eat something? Because she would do that for me. She’d say, “Baby, that was good. Baby, you’re hungry? You want to eat?” Yeah. She’d feed me and give me kudos – as with all of my elders in my family.

With that Lillias White’s dinner was just about done. Our planned thirty minute conversation had lasted over 45 minutes. To think, three hours earlier that day it wasn’t something either of us imagined doing.

Main Photo: Lillias White in Hadestown (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

Update: In an earlier version of this story, we posted that Fela! 28 performances. That number was inaccurate. It has been updated to reflect the actual run of 463 performances. Cultural Attaché regrets the error.

The post A Post-Show Chat with Lillias White appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Jud is the outsider in Oklahoma! He’s a ranch hand who is smitten with Laurey (Sasha Hutchings). But he makes her and everyone around him uncomfortable. Curly (Sean Grandillo) also has his eyes on Laurey and he keeps a watchful eye on Jud and will do anything to make sure he doesn’t end up with her.

Last week I spoke with Bannow about how this production of Oklahoma! is different, what it has to say and how we define what a good guy is in a musical. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

You’ve been on tour with Oklahoma! for quite some time. You also understudied the show in New York. Now that your journey is nearing its end, what do you know about Jud that would surprise your original conception of the character?

I’m lucky. I’ve been able to continue to mine it and discover things throughout the process. I’ve been struck recently just by how much antagonism he faces by doing so very little. This play is full of men pursuing women and there’s a lot of very misogynistic, dominating language that’s used throughout this play by all of the men in it. I’m struck more and more as I listen to the play every night how much of it is allowed for other characters in this play and how little of it is tolerated from from Jud, a.k.a the bad guy, and how little sense that makes. I’m struck by people’s reactions to the role and by people telling me that they’ve seen things that they never thought they’d see in the character because of the particular take on Jud. So that’s been really enlivening and helpful to hear as we’ve been going through the country.

We assume that Curly is the good guy in the show. After all, Hugh Jackman, Patrick Wilson and Alfred Drake have played that role. But is he truly the good guy? He over-zealously pursues Laurey and he makes a truly vile suggestion to Jud.

It is funny feeling the audience from the very get-go be like, Oh, that’s Curly – he should be with the girl. It’s funny to feel that assumption because all of his actions, if you just take them on as they are on paper, he’s a schmuck. He’s a horrible person. He’s giving Laurey a bunch of shit and he’s with another woman at the same time. He tells Jud to kill himself. He’s by no means a perfect gentleman. But for some reason there’s this ideal version of what a man, a western rough and tough man, should be. And Curly embodies that. So regardless of what he says or does, the audience applauds at the end when he and Laurey get together, because that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Someone saw the show this week and sent me a text and was like, “It’s crazy how it’s such a radical idea for us as Americans to feel empathy for the outsider.” And that’s really why he is the, quote unquote, bad guy – simply because he’s the outsider in this community. And I think in this country, we hold very dear to our identity and our identity is made in part by deciding who is not in our community. 

I think that there’s a humanity to Jud that is central to our having empathy for him. What was your process of understanding that that empathy was there and then figuring out how best to get that across to audiences who may just assume that Curly’s the good guy?

I think that I have a natural inclination towards Jud. As an actor I’m drawn to outsiders. I’m drawn to anti-heroes. I’m drawn to people whose convictions are counter to the culture and community that they’re a part of. In this production, it’s funny, I don’t think Daniel and I ever had a real conversation about the inner workings of Jud. I just think that he saw in me, and I saw in in him, this kind of understanding that this human is as complex and as multidimensional as any great character. Neither one of us wanted to diminish him ever to being an antagonist or a villain or the foil to something else.

Every night there’s this moment in the play where I can feel the audience, if they’re truly listening, I can feel this energy shift where they click into the fact that this production isn’t going the way that they thought it would go. This character is going on a journey where they’re not being asked to laugh and point and kind of be afraid of him, but they’re actually locking into his inner workings and a bit of his fear and his hope and his anxiety. I think it really shifts the focus of the story of Oklahoma to being about this community and how they decide who is a part of it and who isn’t. It’s pretty clear by the end of this production that not everyone gets to join the club and Jud, unfortunately, gets kicked out in so many words. 

On Tony Sunday in 2019, on your Instagram account, you were asking do audiences celebrate the show for its radical approach? Amongst those questions is, “Is it really radical because it refuses to applaud the audience for coming to see it.” I feel like so much of theater now is placation and the audience is standing as if to say, “Wow, I made it through.” Can you elaborate from an actor’s point of view what you meant by that? 

I remember writing that and I remember feeling it. Feeling that this production is the first musical that I had ever seen where the ending wasn’t a kind of celebration of the audience. So much of musical theater, I feel, it’s always about the happy ending. It’s always about and now our story is complete. So it is a bit of placating the audience. Thank you so much for coming. Please buy the cast recording and tell your friends to come as well. They’ve got to see it.

When I experienced the ending of [Oklahoma!] I felt like I was being celebrated, but in a very different way. I feel like this musical at the end is challenging the audiences to receive it. The ending of this is no less engaging of the audience. In fact, I would say it’s probably more engaging than a typical musical. It’s just that the way that it engages the audience challenges them. It asks them to fully receive the images that we are presenting towards them. It’s amazing to see people’s faces because they’re not used to being acknowledged in that way at the end of a musical.

On that same Instagram post you asked a question that I want you to answer. “Are we nervous to have our musicals actually look at our audiences? Is that radical?” I’m assuming you have an answer to that question.

I think it is still radical because I think that any piece of art that truly invites its audience to question themselves, or their state of being, is a radical idea because people don’t like the questions and people don’t like to re-think what they assume they know. If you want to engage with the largest amount of people you’re going to produce something that can be easily digested by the largest amount of people. I think this is just true of musical theater. I think it’s true of any art in the capitalist society where you’re always thinking about marketability as much as you are artistic integrity.

Daniel Fish is a producer’s best dream and worst nightmare because he is going to make something that’s fully engaging. But he’s also never going to apologize for it. He’s not going to back down and he’s not going to water it down, either. I love that because I never know if an audience is going to embrace this musical or hate it because what he’s doing is so personal that there’s no way to know how you’re going to react to it until you see it. I truly think what he’s doing through this classic American musical is probing into personal questions. As a result, people are having to respond to it personally. 

Oscar Hammerstein II said, “If you really believe in the brotherhood of man and you want to come into its fold, you’ve got to let everyone else in, too.” It seems like he could have said that about Oklahoma!

If you’re going to celebrate this show as a kind of celebration of identity, then you have to, when you see the show, accept the fact that you’re celebrating this community that is not embracing the fellow brotherhood of man, right? Fully embracing that is acknowledging the fact that we are selective and exclusive and that’s defined our identity. Whether it’s Irish immigrants or Italian immigrants or African-Americans or Hispanics or Asian Americans, the rate of exclusion is just impressive, right? And it’s always changing.

What that tells me is that it’s not actually about who you’re excluding, it’s the act of exclusion. You’re now accepted. Well, now they’re not. It’s this need to push someone away because it’s intrinsically tied to our sense of self as a country. And so if we’re going from what Hammerstein said, then I think this musical is a beautiful way to have many, many, people engage with the truth that when territories become states, they have to push people out.

To see the full interview with Christopher Bannow, please go here.

Oklahoma!, which won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, continues at the Ahmanson Theatre through October 16th. The US tour concludes in Tempe, AZ at ASU Gammage from October 18th – October 23rd.

Photo: Portrait of Christopher Bannow by and courtesy of Emily Crombez

The post Chris Bannow: Is “Jud” in “Oklahoma!” the Bad Guy? appeared first on Cultural Attaché.