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)

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For those of us who remember when we first heard of the show or first saw it, it seems inconceivable that it has been a quarter century since the show become a phenomenon and would go on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

It also made stars out of Taye Diggs, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel (in her Broadway debut), Adam Pascal (in his Broadway debut), Anthony Rapp and Daphne Rubin-Vega (in her Broadway debut). Rent ran for over 12 years on Broadway with a total of 5,123 performances.

To celebrate this silver anniversary, New York Theatre Workshop is holding a fundraiser called 25 Years of Rent: Measured In Love. The event will feature a reunion of numerous cast veterans from the many productions of the musical that have taken place.

Those scheduled to perform include: Gilles Chiasson (Steve and others on Broadway), Wilson Jermaine Heredia (originated the role of Angel/Tony Award), Rodney Hicks (Benny on Broadway), Christopher Jackson (Hamilton), Kristen Lee Kelly (Maureeen – Broadway), Tamika Lawrence (Mrs. Jefferson and others in the 2011 off-Broadway revival), Jesse L. Martin (originated the role of Tom Collins), Idina Menzel (originated the role of Maureen), Aiko Nakasone (Alexi Darling on Broadway), Eva Noblezada (Hadestown), Adam Pascal (originated the role of Roger), Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hansen), Billy Porter (Kinky Boots), Anthony Rapp (originated the role of Mark), Daphne Rubin-Vega (originated the role of Mimi), Ali Stroker (Oklahoma!), Tracie Thoms (Joanne on Broadway), Byron Utley (multiple roles on Broadway for the entire run), and Fredi Walker-Browne (Joanne on Broadway).

New songs from Joe Iconis (Be More Chill), The Lazours, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen) and Rona Siddiqui will also be performed.

Additional participants will include: Sebastian Arcelus (Roger on Broadway), Annaleigh Ashford (Maureen in an off-Broadway revival in 2011), Assistant Director Martha Banta, Adam Chanler-Berat (Mark in the 2011 off-Broadway revival), Linda Chapman, Nicholas Christopher (Collins in the 2011 off-Broadway revival), Set Designer Paul Clay, Wilson Cruz (Angel on Broadway), Brandon Victor Dixon (Hamilton), casting director Wendy Ettinger, producer Stephen Graham, director Michael Greif, Janet Harckham, playwright Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play), Neil Patrick Harris (Mark on tour), Victoria Leacock Hoffman (producer of tick, tick…Boom!, Mariko Kojima, Julie Larson (the composer’s sister), Telly Leung (Angel at the Hollywood Bowl), Kamilah Marshall, producer Kevin McCollum, Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton), Anaïs Mitchell (Hadestown), Shakina Nayfack (Difficult People), NYTW Artistic Director James C. Nicola, playwright Dael Orlandersmith (Until the Flood), Councilmember Carlina Rivera, Jai Rodriguez (Angel on Broadway), producer Jeffrey Seller, director Leigh Silverman (Grand Horizons), Ephraim Sykes (Benny in the 2011 off-Broadway revival), casting director Bernie Telsey, producer Jennifer Ashley Tepper, director Ivo van Hove (West Side Story revival), Tom Viola (Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS), Rent Music Supervisor Tim Weil, Rent Costume Designer Angela Wendt, Rent Choreographer Marlies Yearby and more.

My personal Rent memory surrounds my first time seeing the musical in New York on December 19, 1996. I was in New York with my friend, Matthew Barry. Like everyone I knew, I, too, was fascinated about seeing this musical that was the must-see show on everyone’s list. I didn’t know much about it beyond it depicted the lives of a group of people who lived in the East Village of New York. I also knew that it was inspired by Puccini’s opera, La Bohème. That was it.

Almost the entire original cast was performing that night. The only person out for that performance was Timothy Britten Parker (who played Gordon, the man, Mr. Grey and others). He was attending his sister’s opening night in Once Upon a Mattress (his sister is Sarah Jessica Parker).

By the end of the first act I was, along with majority of theatergoers, convinced that this was a special musical. Then the second act began with the company singing Seasons of Love.

They got to the bridge with the lyrics:

In truths that she learned
Or in times that she cried
In bridges he burned
Or the way that she died

My mother had passed away three months earlier. As you can imagine, I was a mess. All I could think about was mom. I’m sure there were people around me at the Nederlander Theatre who couldn’t understand what was going on with me. I was too caught up in my emotions to care. I somehow managed to pull myself together and enjoy the second act.

After the performance was over, Matt and I left the theatre and it was lightly snowing. It felt like a sign that everything was going to be just fine. Rent, with its own story of love and loss (both on stage and off) had offered one of many forms of catharsis I would rely on to get me through that first year after my mother’s death. To this very day whenever I hear any of Larson’s songs, I always think of my mother.

What are your personal memories and experiences of seeing Rent? Leave a comment on this post.

Tickets for 25 Years of Rent: Measure in Love are $25. The show will be available for streaming through March 6th at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST.

Photo: The cast of Rent at New York Theatre Workshop (Photo by Joan Marcus)

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The first is Lazarus, the musical Bowie created that was inspired by the novel The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Trevis. The musical had its world premiere at the New York Theatre Workshop in late 2015. It immediately sold out and was running at the time of Bowie’s death. If the title sounds familiar, it is the same story that inspired Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 in which Bowie starred.

Dice.fm is making a film of the British production available for only three showings this weekend.

The film revolved around Newton who is an alien that arrives on earth seeking a solution to the lack of water on his planet. In Lazarus, considered a sequel to the film and the novel, finds Newton, 40 years later, living in a penthouse in New York, but not having much of a life. His new assistant is not only finding herself falling for Newton, but also taking on the personality of Mary Lou, the earthling who fell in love with him in the movie. Things get complicated by the arrival of a young muse who knows exactly who Newton is and promises to return him to his planet.

Irish playwright Enda Walsh collaborated with Bowie on the book. He’s the playwright of the musical Once, the stunning play Misterman (which featured an absolutely staggering performance by Cillian Murphy) and the films Disco Pigs and Hunger.

Bowie uses many of his classic songs in Lazarus including “Heroes,” “All the Young Dudes,” “Life on Mars,” “Absolute Beginners” and “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” The title song, found on his album Blackstar is in the show as are three other new songs.

Michael C. Hall (Dexter), who played Newton in New York, stars in this film. He is joined by Amy Lennox as Newton’s assistant and Sophia Anne Caruso as the young woman. Ivo van Hove (director of the new revival of West Side Story that opened last year) directed the production.

Here’s the schedule (and there’s no on-demand viewing):

January 8th (Bowie’s 74th birthday): US & Canada – 6pm PST / 9pm EST; Australia & New Zealand – 7pm AEDT ; UK & Ireland – 7pm GMT  and Europe – 8pm CET 

January 9th: US & Canada – 6pm PST / 9pm EST; Australia & New Zealand – 7pm AEDT ; UK & Ireland – 7pm GMT  and Europe – 8pm CET 

January 10th (5th anniversary of his death): US & Canada – 1pm PST / 4pm EST; Australia & New Zealand – 3pm AEDT ; UK & Ireland – 3pm GMT  and Europe – 4pm CET 

Tickets are $21.50 in the United States. Each date listed above is a link to purchasing tickets for that specific showing.

If you want to just hear Bowie’s music without the structure of a musical, you can watch A Bowie Celebration which becomes available on SATURDAY, JANUARY 9th at 9:00 PM EST/6:00 PM PST.

Amongst the artists performing in this concert are Ian Astbury (The Cult), William Corgan (The Smashing Pumpkins), Andra Day, Duran Duran, Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction), Peter Frampton, Macy Gray, Michael C. Hall (Lazarus), Lena Hall (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), Gary Oldman, Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Gavin Rossdale (Bush), David Sanborn and a wide array of musicians who at one point in their careers were members of Bowie’s band. This includes Omar Hakim, Tim Lefebvre, Carmine Rojas, Catherine Russell, Charlie Sexton and Tony Visconti.

Tickets are $25 (with various package deals including merchandise available at higher prices). Tickets allow you to stream the show for 24 hours, but it is only available just for one day.

Photo: David Bowie (Courtesy DavidBowie.com)

UPDATE: Due to technical issues, A Bowie Celebration has been delayed by 24 hours and will now start on Saturday, January 9th as per the updated information above.

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Local audiences may know Michetti’s recent work at the Pasadena Playhouse with their production of King Charles III. Not needing to talk about the production to boost ticket sales, I had a refreshingly frank conversation with Michetti about his vision, how he feels this version is faithful to the playwright’s intent and the risks any director takes when trying to breath new life into a classic play.

What inspired this production for you?

I’ve always loved the play and have seen many productions. I was re-reading it and then began to realize, in a deeper way than I had understood, that one of the things Williams was dealing with was the difficulty of people facing the changing demographics of our world.

Blanche represents privilege from Southern Plantation life and debutante balls and was coming into a city that was vibrant, impoverished and multi-cultural/multi-ethnic and she was having troubles in this changing world. That was very true of our cities after World War II when [the play] was first produced. It is something we are still dealing with.

When re-read through that lens, I thought what if we amped up these themes and made clear those themes Williams was going after. That was the inspiration. The Williams Estate won’t allow you to change race, time periods or accents without permission. We had to make the pitch.

When did you realize that taking this risk with the play would work out?

This was an idea I had been toying with for 2-3 years before we got into it. Through most of this time I was imagining it in my mind. The first time I heard it and what I hoped we could do was in auditions. That was one of those moments where I got this jolt of excitement that we were onto something really great. We were discovering right up to moments before opening. Until you get the last part of the recipe, which is adding the audience and seeing their response, you don’t really know what you have or how they will react.

Desean Kevin Terry, who is African-American, plays Stanley Kowalski, the role made famous by Marlon Brando. How large is the shadow cast by Brando over anyone tackling this role?

He haunts it a lot! I was really thrilled when Desean and I really worked with it. He was aware of the film, but had not seen it in a long time. So he was approaching this in a very different way. For us approaching it as an African-American man in 2018, it’s a very different person than Brando created. The script tells us that Stanley is a salesman for some kind of company selling auto parts or something like that. An African-American man selling for a company like that today would have to have a certain polish and couldn’t be as working class as Brando was in the film. He’s not deliberately trying to be the anti-Brando, but he’s making choices to go in a very different way that shook off the ghosts of Brando.

For every successful revival of a play with a new vision that succeeds there seem to be dozens more that fail miserably. How risky is this for you as a director?

I have seen brave attempts at revitalizing and re-envisioning classic productions that have worked wonderfully and ones that have failed miserably. Some of the ones that worked wonderfully have revealed a whole new play I didn’t know. The great thing is these plays still exist. A production that tried and didn’t work doesn’t mean the property has been hurt by it. I think it is important that we allow artists to find new things in classic works. Particularly ones that have been produced as often as plays like Streetcar. I’m a big fan of Ivo van Hove who dusts things up and reveals things. I remember seeing Hedda Gabler directed by Ivo in New York. That was not Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. It used his text, but it revealed a whole other play. There was an example of taking it too far and reaping some great rewards.

Did you see his production of The Crucible? I thought by making the girls actually witches he destroyed the metaphor Arthur Miller was using as the center point of the play.

I had the same feeling about that production. There were many things I found invigorating and exciting, but that central thing made it a different play. I had trouble seeing that there was greater merit in telling a play about actual witches than telling the story Miller had written. I wish I could sit down for coffee with him so I could understand that more.

So when do you know, as a director, whether what you are doing is going to end up being a disservice to the play?

It’s a really good question. I don’t know that I have an answer for you. I always make a deal with myself going in that if I get to the point in the process where it feels like what I’m doing is fighting the play too much or that the play is fighting what I’m trying to do too much, that I will back off from it. Yet there does come a time, and this is the nature of making theatre, you question how and where you can course-correct things once that course begins. It’s always a tricky thing in theatre.

If Williams were to walk in and watch your production, what do you think his response would be?

I think he would freak out a little bit because there’s a lot of technology that, when he was alive, he didn’t even experience. The whole way we are presenting this is so new to him. He was frequently excited when somebody brought new ideas about one of his plays. He had a lot of thought in his lifetime about Stanley being played by an actor of color. I don’t know that he was ever able to experience that. I would like to think he’d be very excited. I’d like to think he’d be very invigorated by how relevant the themes feel in this production.

Production Photos by Jeff Lorch.

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