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.

The Tony Award experience is a lofty one…particulalry when you win one. Jessie Mueller won her Tony Award for her portrayal of Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. That was Mueller’s fourth Broadway show and her second Tony nomination.

She had previously been nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for her turn as Melinda Wells in the 2011 revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

She’s received two additional Tony Award nominations for her performances as Jenna in the musical Waitress and as Julie Jordan in the 2018 revival of Carousel. Most recently she appeared on Broadway in the play The Minutes by Tracy Letts. Not bad for someone who got their start singing The Wiggly Worm in a school production.

When Mueller takes to the stage of The Wallis in Beverly Hills on June 16th and The Smith Center in Las Vegas on June 17th with Seth Rudetsky, she’ll have plenty to talk about and to sing. I spoke with Mueller last week about various aspects of her career, new musicals on the horizon and finding a way to accept all that she’s accomplished. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview (which does include some singing), please go to our YouTube channel.

17 years ago when you were playing Lady Mortimer in Henry IV, a character that doesn’t have any printed lines. A character that only sings in Welsh that nobody can understand. What were your thoughts then about what your career might be from that moment and how much does your career look like what you expected or hoped it might be? 

That was 17 years ago. I’m still stuck on that. So I was only four. [She laughs.] I mean, it’s incredible. That is wild. 17 years. That is so fun that you brought that up. My experience of that show, I remember, because I got to do it at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in Chicago. And then we got to do it at the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] in Stratford-upon-Avon. They were doing a festival of the whole [Shakespeare] canon and our show was chosen to represent the Henry IVs. 

It was just a magical experience for me personally. I remember feeling like I was starting to be treated like a real adult actor, because there were some folks in the cast that I knew because my parents are actors in Chicago. I’d seen them doing shows growing up, but I felt like everyone was treating me like a peer. I wasn’t the little kid of the actors, friends or whatever. 

I remember that really being a moment for me about thinking maybe I’m really doing this. But as far as what was in my mind of where my career might go, nowhere near what has occurred. I don’t think I could have imagined it. I don’t think I had that kind of scope. My model had sort of been a career in Chicago, which is what I was after. I wanted to be a working actor. Sometimes life takes you in different directions. It certainly did for me.

I know that Into the Woods has been published as your favorite Sondheim show. You’ve played Cinderella in that show. You played Mary Flynn in Merrily We Roll Along and Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music. You’ve done three Sondheim shows, but you have yet to do one on Broadway. Given that Into The Woods was just on Broadway, it’s unlikely that opportunity will present itself any time in the near future. So is there another Sondheim show that you would like to do on Broadway?

I feel like the music from Passion was going through my head the other day, but honestly, that’s not a show I know super well. Maybe I’ll have to wait until Into the Woods rolls around again. Maybe I could “witch” this time around. And then I could play Jack’s mother. That’s the thing about that show, you could just sort of cycle through all the roles. I don’t know. It’s very ironic that Sweeney is happening now. That’s one I’d like to do at some point.

Your career, for the most part in terms of musicals, has been revivals, re-imaginings of shows. Obviously Beautiful is a jukebox musical. But in terms of new musicals, with the exception of Waitress, most of your work in new musicals has been with recordings. You have the recording of My Heart Says Go that’s out right now. Upcoming is the recording for Diary of a Wimpy Kid. What do these recordings tell us about what your passion is for doing new work in addition to doing the work you’ve done already?

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for new stuff just because I guess I find it so exciting. I mean, it also can be infuriating when you’re working on it in the room. Yes, Beautiful was a jukebox. So you had the music already written. We knew that was golden. Working on something like Waitress was so exciting because it was a story that had been conceived, of course, from the film by Adrienne Shelly. But the music was original, so it had never been staged before. It was an adaption.

There’s just something exciting about being in that incubator, being in the process of trying to figure out what’s working, what might not be working. But that’s also the part that can be infuriating is you don’t know. Do we trust what we’ve got? Have we just not cracked it yet? Or is it that we’ve tried everything? I find that stuff exciting depending on who you’re working with. I’ve gotten to work with very generous people that are very open to what you bring to it. There’s that openness about bringing yourself and your perspective and I think it’s a real privilege to originate a role and put your stamp on it.

It’s not often that that an actor gets to revisit a role. Eleven years ago you first stepped into the shoes of Miss Adelaide in a production of Guys and Dolls. You got to do it again at the Kennedy Center last fall. How did your professional and life experiences inform who Miss Adelaide is more recently than who she was when you performed that role 11 years ago?

It’s funny because the process is so quick for the Broadway series at the Kennedy Center. So I think in all honesty I was relying a lot on what do I remember. What is in my muscle memory of who this gal is? But sure, I’m older now, I have more life experience. I’ve been in the business for a while. I’ve been an entertainer for a while. Miss Adelaide has been an entertainer and she takes pride in that.

Half the fun, too, is getting in the room with all the new people. This is how this changes this. This is who this Adelaide is because of James [Monroe Iglehart] being my Nathan and all this stuff. So that’s half the fun of it. But it was a joy to revisit it. I wasn’t sure I would ever get the chance to revisit it again.

Honestly, I felt like I was a little young the first time. But I was like, I’m game. Let’s do it. It was my buddy Matt Raftery who was directing that production in Chicago. I went in for Sarah initially. Then he was like, “Would you like to take a stab at Adelaide? Would you go look at the sides and come back?” I was like, sure. I just always wanted to be the character actress with the fun costumes and the big funny songs. I loved doing it again.

It’s been 14 years since Guys and Dolls has been on Broadway. So you know what the math says. It could be time for a revival. 

There was a lot of chatter after we did it in in D.C. We were so glad that it was so well received. And Philipa [Soo], Steven [Pasquale], James and I, we were totally game. We would explore this, but rights were tied up in the [Nic] Hytner production in London which I’ve heard incredible things about. It has just been so well received, so I don’t know what would happen. I don’t know if they’d bring that over here. I know that it might be a challenge just because of the space and with their immersive production which seems so cool. But if the opportunity came around again, I would totally float that idea, especially if I could do it with those three. We just had a ball. 

Most people associate with musicals, but you also got to do Tracy Letts’s play The Minutes. Is it a challenge for you to be seen as somebody who can act as well as somebody who can sing?

That the perception from the outside that hey, I can act too? That sort of thing?

When you come out singing the songs a lot of audience members, I would guess, don’t necessarily think that was also a great acting performance.

Because you’re supposed to make it look easy. It’s not. There’s a difference between someone who can sing and has a great instrument, which is amazing, but someone who’s also a communicator. Then you have those people who have both who have the glorious instrument and the communication tool. I feel like Hugh Jackman says it a lot. It’s the idea of in some ways it’s almost harder to act in a musical sometimes because you have to make it seem believable that you’re breaking into song. You have these very heightened experiences, which is why the characters are breaking into song. I think actors, especially musical theater actors who appear in musicals, don’t get the credence sometimes they deserve for the acting that they’re doing.

I actually do go to the acting first, which is funny when I’m working on something; when I’m learning something. Or as you spoke of earlier, working on something new. I have to remind myself you can’t act it yet. You don’t know it. You have to learn it. You have to do the technical stuff first of learning it and then you can do the acting work because then it’s in your body. Then you can really get inside of it to deliver. Then go back and fix the technical things and all of that again and kind of go back and forth between those processes.

One of the things I love most about your collaboration with Seth Rudetsky is the social impact component of it. You did What the World Needs Now after the pulse shooting in Orlando. You were involved with him with the Concerts for America. What do you feel is your role as an artist in helping to bring about social impact and social change?

If I’m going to be honest, I’m still figuring that out; coming to terms with the idea that I might have a platform that people might be listening to. So if that is the case, I might as well use it for good. I think I’m starting to crystallize this idea more. I really appreciate people like Seth and his husband, James Wesley, because they are doers. I feel like I’m a helper. I like to help. I like to be of service, but I’m not necessarily the first person who’s going to say I will lead the charge. I try to come in and do my thing and do what I can to help.

You did an interview with Patrick Healy of the New York Times just after winning the Tony Award for Beautiful. You said, “I thought I’d get wrapped up in all the wrong things” of your move to New York from Chicago. You continued to say, “Now look what’s happened. It feels like a wonderful accident.” I love that expression: wonderful accident. Nine years later, does your career still feel like a wonderful accident? Is there perhaps something more complex going on?

I think so. I don’t think it matters how quote unquote, successful you are, whatever the heck that means. It’s hard on your heart. It’s personal. Even when it’s not personal it is personal because the work is personal. You bring yourself. That’s the job. You’re supposed to feel and think and move and act and talk in front of strangers sometimes as someone else, sometimes as yourself, and hopefully create an exchange of meaning and maybe memory and maybe a spiritual flow and all these things. That is hard.

But I think it’s not an accident. I’m working on owning my achievements and I’m proud of them. But the moment you hook into that and give that too much meaning you are often very quickly reminded that it doesn’t hold in a storm. It’s this constant evaluation of what I put importance on and not diminishing an accomplishment or achievement or how hard I have worked. But acknowledging that it’s not the most important thing. God has been so good about where I’ve been led and who I’ve been led to and the opportunities that have been put in front of me. But also I’ve worked my ass off with the gifts I’ve been given.

I think also at that time in my life I was really trying to figure out where I fit in the whole scheme of things. I mean, I still am. What is humble? What is self-deprecating? Where are those lines? How do you stay true to yourself, who you are and what you believe in, but also have the grace and humility to just keep it real.

To watch the full interview with Jessie Mueller, please go here.

Main Photo: Jessie Mueller (Photo by Jacqueline Harris for The Interval/Courtesy The Wallis)

The post Jessie Mueller And Her Beautiful Career appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Since then Williams has appeared on Broadway in The Color Purple as Sofia, Porgy and Bess, Waitress, Tina and more. It is her role as the bandleader of an all-female band in need of two additional musicians that opens the musical “so the good times can begin.” Williams gives a performance of such energy that Jesse Green in the New York Times said Sweet Sue “gets a brace of hot jazz numbers that NaTasha Williams…knocks out of the park while incidentally introducing the show’s freedom-for-everyone philosophy.”

Earlier this week I spoke with Williams about the show, the Billy Wilder film on which this (and the 1972 musical Sugar) is based and a life-changing phone call she made to her mother during that performance of Ragtime. What follows are excerpts from my conversation with Williams that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Billy Wilder is quoted as having said, “Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own instead of someone else’s.” At what point in your career did you learn to trust your instinct, and how did any mistakes you may have made lead you to the stage of the Shubert Theater in New York appearing as Sweet Sue in Some Like It Hot?

I really feel like I’m still learning that now. But I definitely began to celebrate who I was and not try to fit into other people’s mold. I think right when I took my first Broadway show, which was the original The Color Purple, I was very aware of other people’s demands on me. I was always constantly trying to do what I thought they wanted. That was the first time I said, Look, I really want to be in this show. Let me just do what is best for me. Ater that it just sort of took off.

I’ve certainly made some mistakes. I think a couple of times I chose to not take a job ,or take a job, based on somebody else’s needs. So I think any time I made a mistake, it was always because I was making a choice for someone else as opposed to something that I deep down really thought was best for me.

Why do you think this film – this very unique mix of music, love story, gangsters and cross-dressing – has inspired audiences from the time the movie first came out to now a second Broadway musical? 

The movie has those devices, those ideas, those personalities that resonate with people today and resonated with people in 1959. I think the genius of everyone involved in the movie speaks for itself. That is why the movie has stood the test of time as one of the best movies ever. I think the musical has the challenge of not only honoring the movie and all of the people that love it, but also making it current and coming into the day.

Do you think there’s something at the heart of this story in terms of wanting love and wanting to find the perfect person? 

I think we all want to be loved and needed and appreciated. That’s a very basic human need. Every character in the story, not just the two guys who are running for their lives, has those issues and those desires and are pursuing them. Whatever your need as a human, as an audience member, you can find it in the show.

Sue has decided to leave working for somebody else, start her own band and make it happen, even though she needs investors and all this stuff. But she’s decided I’m not working for anybody else anymore. Let me get a band together. Let me go.

As you get to know these characters everybody in the audience can identify with one or more of them in terms of the need to be loved, accepted, to be successful, to be safe, to be appreciated for who you are at the very basic point of who you are, to be accepted for who that is.

I was looking at the character of Sweet Sue in the film and I think her screen time in the movie is shorter than your opening number What Are Your Thirsty For? How is Sweet Sue, from your perspective as the artist bringing her to life in this musical, different than the Sweet Sue that we see in the film?

Well, it is very different. When I got to audition I went back to watch the movie again. I was like, wait a minute. Where is she? What is she doing? They’ve given me these songs so clearly she’s going to be doing more than she was doing in the movie. She’s a combination of Sweet Sue and the manager in the movie [Bienstock]. They combined those characters and fleshed out a little bit more.

We made her be a great big sister, mother figure, auntie figure, for the band. And she gains a lot from that as well. She’s not just giving orders, she’s gaining a family as she takes them on the road. My interpretation of her just became someone who was nurturing, who’s in charge, who wants to make decisions that help herself, as well as the group that is supporting her. So I just took that and ran with it.

There was an interview that co-writer Matthew López gave the New York Times and he talked about Sweet Sue. He said, “Sue always felt to me like a character out of a jazz age movie, except in a way she would never have been depicted at the time.” Do you agree with him? What, if any, conversations have did you have in rehearsals with him or with director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw about how this particular part has been adapted for a modern time?

I think our creative team has been very intentional about the direction that the show has taken in the writing. We are set in the 1930s. I am a Black woman running this band and working and traveling throughout the country. Mostly toward the West so that it is a little safer, but it is still dangerous. It is still during this very challenging time, a time that sort of resembles a lot of what we’re seeing today in terms of racial challenges that we’re having in our country. So I do agree that she would not have been depicted this way.

There are some scenes and some moments where I have to really navigate how I’m going to speak to certain people and still maintain the safety and joy in the particular scenes that we’re having. Because of the intention of our creators, Sue travels a road that is difficult, but she’s navigating it very well and not offending people and educating people as to what is possible.

There were a couple of musicals that were based on very popular films that featured men in drag in the last couple of years. There was Mrs. Doubtfire, which did not do well, and Tootsie, which also didn’t do so well. I talked to numerous people who said maybe men in drag is just not that interesting anymore and not that funny. Maybe it’s a tired old trope. This show is succeeding. You are entertaining audiences. You’ve gotten the reviews. What do you think makes the way Some Like It Hot tells its story work in ways that those other musicals were not able to accomplish?

I think it has a lot to do with not making it a trope. Making it just be what these two people had to do in that particular situation. So the jokes don’t come from I’m going to put on a dress and I’m going to sway a certain way. I’m going to talk a certain way to depict what I think a woman is or what I think a man is dressed as a woman. What I think a drag performer would do. None of the scenes are like that.

They’re all about the truth of the situation when they put on the drag. They’re trying to save their lives, first of all, and then it becomes their life. So it’s not poking fun at it. We haven’t made the jokes about the dress. We’ve made the jokes about the truth and the life of what would happen if this happened.

In looking at some of your costumes – and I don’t know if this was the inspiration – but I thought I was looking at a female Cab Calloway. 

There were a lot of Black female bandleaders. [Lyricist] Scott Wittman told me that they patterned this woman after Victoria Spivey. Gladys Bentley always wore tuxedos and pants and stuff like that so it was patterned after her. But Cab Calloway was also a person I watched and there were several female conductors that I began to look at during that time who danced a lot and were very showy and moved around. So we put a little bit of that in our show as well.

You were an ensemble member of the touring production of the musical Parade which is back on Broadway at the same time that you’re in Some Like It Hot. Why do you think Parade may be resonating now with audiences in a way that it didn’t 25 years ago? 

I think it has a lot to do with all of the social injustice and racial injustice that we are experiencing. Not that it wasn’t always there. But the awakening of it and the realization, really since George Floyd’s murder, I guess people are more aware of some of the disparities in our society. I think any story that will tell the injustice of any particular group of people will probably resonate a little bit differently now. I’m hoping that is the case. I’m hoping that it is a part of the shift of people recognizing that we all have a story to tell. I have a space to take up and that doesn’t negate space for anyone else. It just means that there’s room for everybody’s story to be heard. So I’m hoping that’s what the shift is for Parade because it’s a beautiful story, a heartbreaking story.

In 2019 you did your Broadway bucket list video where you sang songs from Caroline, Or Change, Porgy and Bess and Smokey Joe’s Cafe. Four years later has your bucket list changed? Does success in a show like Some Like It Hot give you a new perspective on what’s possible for you and what you might like to do now?

Oh, yes. Certainly the success of Some Like It Hot and being this character has inspired me to to think bigger. But also the shift in our country has certainly inspired me. I am a part of Black Theater United, which is a group that is very interested in protecting Black artists lives – not just in theater, but also in the world, in the community. So my shift is basically learning how to be more like Sweet Sue in making decisions that affect other people; going on journeys that empower people.

I’m not really sure what that means artistically, other than maybe I want to write more. I want to create more and create more vehicles and stories that will tell some of the unsung and untold stories of Black people and of other people disenfranchised groups. 

There is, of course, the title song Some Like It Hot, but would some like it Tony as well? 

Oh gosh, who wouldn’t like that? In the last two months the things that have opened up have been very exciting. I’m so glad that Broadway’s back, first of all, and that it is back with so many choices. I’d be crazy to say we don’t want Tonys. Of course we do! But if we don’t, the work that we’re doing is great work and I’m very proud of it: the music, the costumes, the story, the book, the actors, the dancers. Everything really is wonderful and hot.

We say to the audience and those that come in, come commune with us. Because we can gather in a space together, we can laugh together and there’s space for you inside this theater and in the world. So go claim your space. I’m hoping we get lots of Tonys. But even if we don’t, I’m hoping people come in and they get that message. I can take that away because that’s what’s blessed me. There is space for me, for my talent, the space for a full-figured woman, an older woman. There’s space for multigenerational groups in this particular show. We get to see all of that diversity, all of that equity. That’s what is most important. I hope the Tony people see that and say, Wow, there’s something very special about this production. 

I want to take you back to the end of the first act of Ragtime in 1997, when I believe you made a phone call to your mother. You said, “Oh, my God, this is what I so want to do. I know I’m in the right place.” 26 years later how do you feel at the end of each performance of Some Like It Hot? I’m assuming you aren’t having second thoughts about this being the right place for you.

I feel like I am literally living my dream every day. It hasn’t always been as wonderful and as fulfilling as it is right now, but it has always been the goal. If I could make that phone call to my mother right now, which I can’t as she has passed, but every day I feel like that little girl 26 years ago making that phone call.

I got to meet and work with [Ragtime lyricist and composer] Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty years later at Dessa Rose. Ragtime changed my life. I moved here to be a performer. There wasn’t a question prior to or how I was going to make it happen. That afternoon in the theater certainly solidified it for me. I knew that whatever I had to do that on that stage was where I wanted to be. The fact that I’ve gotten to do that is a gift to me. It’s something that I don’t take lightly and I’m forever grateful. No change of plans. That’s where I want to be. It fulfills me in a way that nothing other than maybe motherhood has done. I’m just grateful. Just grateful.

To see the full interview with NaTasha Yvette Williams, please go here.

Main Photo: NaTasha Yvette Williams at the opening night of Some Like it Hot (Photo by Chad Kraus)

The post NaTasha Yvette Williams Likes It On Broadway appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Henry received nominations for his performances in The Scottsboro Boys, Violet and the 2018 revival of Carousel. He’s an original cast member of In the Heights and has toured in Hamilton. Some of his other Broadway credits include The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess and Shuffle Along, Or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. Most recently he became the first Black actor to play the role of Dr. Pomatter in Waitress.

I took this occasion to talk to Henry, who was just announced along with Adrienne Warren as the Broadway stars to announce this year’s Tony nominations, about his first-ever stage role, to look back on his career so far and to also look forward to where and what Broadway might and should become. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

There’s so much more to hear from Henry, so I strongly encourage you to watch the full interview on our YouTube channel for stories about Carousel, tick…tick…Boom!, Stephen Sondheim and more.

I want to start by asking you about something that Harold Hill says in The Music Man, the first role you ever played which was at Florida Bible Christian School. He says “A man can’t turn tail and run just because a little personal risk is involved.” It strikes me as though that is the journey every actor takes to try to get on Broadway. What are the kind of risks that you feel you’ve taken that have been most successful for you in getting this career that you have now? 

I love that quote. I would say one of the biggest risks that I took was when I was doing In the Heights and it was my first Broadway show and Lin-Manuel [Miranda’s] first Broadway show. We had just won the Tony Award for Best Musical. I was in the ensemble and I had the opportunity to go to a principal role on Broadway in Godspell and play Judas. [In the Heights] was going to run for a long time. But I was like, Oh, I definitely see myself as a principal.

So I decided to put in my four weeks notice, leave and go do Godspell. And this was in 2008. Long story short, the show lost its investment and it didn’t happen. So I find myself in between these two amazing things, just right in the middle of a valley. That’s one of the biggest risks I took. I’m so glad that I took it early on because it showed me the highs and lows of the business and how I need to find something to sustain myself beyond the highs and lows. 

When you think of Broadway as it was back when you were doing In the Heights and Broadway as it is today, pandemic aside if that’s possible, what do you miss most from the way it was and what do you like most about what it is now? 

That’s a good question. I’ll start with what I love about what it is now. I think we’re just much more aware of bringing lots of voices to the table creatively and management wise and producing wise. For instance, Black folks are much more in control of their narrative and the way that they run their shows. I think that’s really important.

What do I miss about what was pre-pandemic or even 2008? For me, it was just this incredible community. It’s still an incredible community, but what struck me when I just got here was how it was just fun. It was just absolute fun. I came from Miami, Florida and coming up to New York in 2006 it was just this world of wonder. And I think now it’s not just fun for me anymore. It’s trying to do the right thing. It’s also fun, but now I’m much more aware and I’m much more strategic in how I’m trying to amplify different voices.

Last year I saw the revival of Caroline, Or Change, a show I loved when it was first on Broadway. But it felt like time and audiences had caught up with it in a way they didn’t the first time around. If The Scottsboro Boys was given a revival today do you think this awareness you mentioned might breathe new life into the show?

100 percent correct! Caroline, Or Change is a great example, it depends on the moment. The audiences in 2010 didn’t want to hear about this true story. I bet you now if Scottsboro Boys is on Broadway right now, oh my goodness! Art sometimes lines up with what’s going on. I’m so sad that I missed Caroline, Or Change because I heard it was incredible. Scottsboro Boys went to the West End and won some Oliviers there. It’s had a great regional life since I did it again at the Ahmanson Theater. It all depends on the moment and I do believe that if Scottsboro Boys came back right now that it would do really well.

You’re on Billy Porter‘s album The Soul of Richard Rodgers, which is completely a pop approach. I’m wondering how important you think it is for projects like that to exist so that people don’t think that Rodgers and Hammerstein or moving forward, even someone like Stephen Sondheim, is part of a previous generation or generations past, and that there’s still something viable about what these songs have to say and that young audiences should be paying attention to them.

The great thing about Stephen Sondheim music, Richard Rodgers music, is it’s just phenomenal storytelling, phenomenal lyric, incredible melodic lines. As someone who grew up in the 90s listening the R&B, pop, rock, jazz, I’m going to see great material through my lens and I’m going to want to interpret it like that, just like Billy Porter or Michael McElroy would want to in their lenses. And I think incredible material that speaks to us will stand the test of time and genre interpretation.

I’m glad to be part of a school of thought that wants to bring those incredible composers as current as possible just to people that don’t know and just think that that’s way back. And I hope that a lot of institutions now understand that and we can rethink some of these classics. They’re fine on their own. But what we’re talking about is bringing them to a newer audience and that’s going to take a little more fine tuning.

Do you remember your first audition for a Broadway show and the song you sang? What was it and what do you think your perspective would be on both how you think you performed it then and how you might perform it now?

Oh gosh, my first Broadway show was off-Broadway at the time, but it was In the Heights. I sang the song “Hear Me Out.” That was a song that Benny sang to Nina’s dad to be like, “Hey, listen. I can handle some more responsibility and I can handle your daughter. Just trust me.” It didn’t make it to Broadway, but that song it’s very hip hop and R&B.

It’s funny that the the title “Hear Me Out” means so much more to me now. I have a hat I was just wearing and it says, “Be Heard.” So like, hear me out, you know? Now I think about it in terms of Broadway. I want to be heard in a different way now. I want more voices to be heard.

If I’m going to sing that song now, though, oh gosh. You know what, Craig? I think I’m going to cover that. I’m going to cover that song. I’m going to put it on Tik Tok because I haven’t thought about it in a little while and I’m going to text Lin. I’m going to be like, “Yo, check this out.” I’m so glad that you brought that up. 

To watch our full interview with Joshua Henry, please go here.

Photo: Joshua Henry (Courtesy his Facebook Page)

The post Joshua Henry Talks All About Broadway appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Waitress is based on the 2007 film of the same name that was written and directed by the late Adrienne Shelly. Both tell the story of Jenna, a waitress who is in an incredibly unhappy marriage. She gets pregnant and falls in love with her gynecologist. Jenna is also an expert baker, so a contest in a neighboring town might offer her a ticket out, if only she can muster up the courage to make the changes she wants.

Desi Oakley leads the cast as Jenna in the role originated on Broadway by Jessie Mueller. Director Paulus is best known for the revivals of Pippin and Hair.

Waitress will also play Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa in November.

Photo by Joan Marcus

The post Waitress appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

The best way to make this concept clear is through this clip of Gavin Lee, Ethan Slater and Wesley Taylor, all cast members from SpongeBob Square Pants: The Musical, perform “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from Stephen Sondheim’s Company. In the show, three different woman who have all dated the central character, Bobby, sing about how difficult Bobby is to date.

One of the most talked about shows in New York this season is The Band’s Visit. For Miscast, Katrina Lenk, who plays the love interest in The Band’s Visit, takes on the role of Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof. And if singing isn’t enough, she also plays the violin.

This year Jeremy Jordan, perhaps best known for his television role on Supergirl, but who also made a splash on Broadway in Newsies and Bonnie and Clyde, performed “She Used to Be Mine” from Waitress. (By the way, Waitress will be at the Pantages Theatre this August.)

Much like Donna McKechnie, who had to be both singer and dancer, Robert Fairchild (who starred in An American In Paris on Broadway) took on the role of Cassie in A Chorus Line for his version of “The Music and the Mirror.”

What’s exciting about a show like this is not only do you get to see some of Broadway’s finest talent take on material they would never otherwise have a chance to do, you get to really see the quality of song shine through. If “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” can be equally effective performed by three women or three men, then you have a very good idea how well the song has been constructed.

MCC Theater has been doing this for several years and here are some other highlights from past years:

Lin-Manuel Miranda (you know who he is) and Raúl Esparza (Company) perform “A Boy Like That” from West Side Story:

Carmen Cusack, who recently performed at the Ahmanson in her Tony-nominated role in Bright Star gets to play royalty as she performs “You’ll Be Back” from Hamilton:

Ben Platt, who won a Tony Award for his performance in Dear Evan Hansen, performs “The Man That Got Away ” from the film A Star Is Born (the Judy Garland version). Dear Evan Hansen will be at the Ahmanson Theatre beginning in October.)

And one of my personal favorites is Norbert Leo Butz (two-time Tony Award winner for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Catch Me If You Can) taking over the role of Effie White in Dreamgirls.

Here in Los Angeles we may not have the same volume of ongoing performances as New York, but we certainly have the talent pool to make a show like this happen here. And we should. Why should New York have all the fun?

The post We Should Do Our Own Version of “Miscast” in Los Angeles appeared first on Cultural Attaché.