the craptacular

It was pretty much unanimous when the reviews for First  Date came in — Broadway loves Zachary Levi and thinks he should stay with us forever. I mean, I may be paraphrasing here. But still.

Anyway, since I am Zachary Levi’s self-proclaimed biggest fan — I loved him before all you theater fools got on the bandwagon — I’ve come up with some roles he can play on Broadway in the future. Because as I said, we’re never letting him leave.  Ever.

I will fully admit that I am more of a Zachary Levi expert than a dreamcasting expert, so hit me with your other ideas in the comments, team. Oh, and these are in no particular order, by the way.

 

Prince Topher in Rodger’s + Hammerstein’s Cinderella:
Not that I ever want Santino Fontana to leave that show, but Levi has the goofy charm thing down and I think he would be a fitting replacement should Santino Fontana ever choose to leave (hopefully for another New York run of Sons of the Prophet).

 

Rapunzel’s Prince in Into the Woods:
Look, it’s not that I only see him as a prince, but how funny would he be as one of the princes in Into The Woods? And I only picked him as Rapunzel’s even though Cinderella’s had more to do because he was in Tangled, which leads me to…

 

Flynn Rider in Tangled:
It’s not a Broadway musical yet, but eventually, Disney will get to that point on the list and there is only one person who can play Flynn Ryder. And how great would it be if Donna Murphy reprised her role as Mother Gothel?

 

The Emcee in Cabaret:
I know this is the weirdest casting ever, but I’d like to see Zachary Levi stretch himself.

 

Fiyero in Wicked:
You know you want to see him in those tight pants. You know you do.

 

Princeton in Avenue Q:
I’m not sure how his puppeteer skills are, but we know he can do comedy and play the nice-guy-trying-to-figure-out-his-life.

 

Bobby Strong in Urinetown:
Are you noticing a trend here? Basically any goofy leading man role, cast Zachary Levi.

 

Jerry Lukowski in The Full Monty:
Honestly, I’m not sure whether he would be convincing as a blue-collar man’s man, but he might surprise us. But I just really want a revival of this. And I want to hear him sing “Breeze Off The River.”

 

Bud Frump in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying:
It would be nice to see him play the bad guy for once. And he has the comic chops for this role.

 

And last but not least…

Chuck in Chuck The Musical:
I know it doesn’t exist and his character Aaron in First Date is basically Chuck, but Chuck The Musical would have Jeffster and I think we can all agree that that’s clearly something Broadway has really been missing.

Nothing quite prepares you for how mad and brilliant the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is. Or how many cereal bars you end up getting through. Yes, there are shows that are fantastic and some that are so awful they become spectacular. More than that, it’s largely like-minded people from around the world coming together for a month every year, to a festival where there is something for everyone. If you want an unauthorized musical based on Doctor Who, or an early evening look at the history of alcohol (complete with free drinks), you can see both of those things. In one day. Since was my first trip to Scotland, let alone the festival, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Here’s an amateur’s guide…

 

1.    The Royal Mile

 Some actors doing some acting.

Throughout the Edinburgh Festival, the city’s high street becomes a compulsory visit for performers and punters alike. If you head down there any time during August, within 5 minutes you will have been accosted by an interpretive dance troupe, a jaded comedian, a duo of magicians and/or an overly earnest student drama group. Guaranteed. The Royal Mile is shitty if you’re not in a welcoming mood, but brilliant if you want to get a feel for the so-called “spirit of the Fringe,” aka sheer variety and mild insanity.

 

2. Double takes

Half buried in a mound of sand, the glowing light bulbs of an old motel sign light the path.  More moonscape than desert, ominous music wails and builds.  Was something about to happen?  Sand in my shoes, I wait, I walk around a static funeral scene with an audience of straw-men mourners, I see a solitary woman in a veil wandering through the sand and… I get bored and leave the floor, apparently just missing a key scene in the narrative in Punchdrunk’s most recent offering The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable.

Alas, these are the risks of Punchdrunk’s immersive theater, where the journey you go on is truly individualized.

As you enter the cavernous Central London theater space, you are handed a card telling the tale of a movie studio love triangle, insanity, and murder. Other than that, you’re on your own. The rules of the show are simple: the audience wears masks, actors do not, and you are not allowed to speak.  Follow the actors to discover scenes, touch whatever you want.  And if you’re lucky — or unlucky, depending on how you see things — you might get touched back.

When I arrived, I was deposited on a floor where the story was about the denizens of a desert town which abuts the Temple Movie Studio.  I wandered through a dress shop, rusty old campers, and a saloon-like bar, where scenes of raucous cowboys and the women who tangle with them unfold.  Rowdy drinking leads to dancing and it is only a few steps from lust to violence. As one cowboy has sex with one woman up against a windowpane outside the bar, her boyfriend watches in horror. Baseball bats come out and the men fight.

Picking up the story by following one (or more) of these actors you are led from room to room. Another fight ensues in a dank hotel room, a woman rushes into the street calling for her girlfriend and off they go to the cowboy bar where a drag-queen torch singer mounts a cowboy on top of the bar.  You know, the usual.

The multitude of two-hander scenes led to brief but intense moments. And while, in some ways, the myriad of confrontations felt repetitive — they either end in sex or violence and sometimes both — they gave the overall feel of The Drowned Man a heat and a tension that I did not feel as acutely in Sleep No More.

On other floors of the multilevel installation, there were movie studio sets where groups of actors performed lip-synched musical numbers dressed like motorcycle greasers.  A Sal Mineo-esque actor is manipulated by a director and producer.  Other parts of the space looked like abandoned movie studio spaces left to decay.

Much of The Drowned Man’s staging created a sense of voyeurism.  You could peer through dirty windows with the curtains half-closed, watch what was happening inside from outside the building. Rather than putting you in the immediate space of the actors, this layering both supported the movie-making narrative and enhanced the lurid quality of the experience.

Near the very end of the evening I came across the main narrative for what I’m pretty sure was the first time. I watched as the movie star disrobed her companion entirely and gave him a graphic blow job while the aforementioned director protégé engaged in a similar scene with his young male protégé. After describing this to one friend, she talked of seeing a slightly different version of this scene wherein everyone’s clothes came off (I only saw the companion fully naked).  I heard there were naked cowboys but I only saw clothed ones — the one in the red shirt was my fave, I would have liked to be pressed up against a windowpane with him — while other friends mentioned a drowning and a stabbing, neither of which I saw. In fact, other people have complained about the lack of action and I can understand how they’d feel that way, I nearly left a few rooms just before major scenes happened and other times I wasn’t lucky enough to stay.

If you get tickets, there is no specific show strategy I can suggest, though breaking off from my friends probably helped me, as I was lighter on my feet and more able to chase performers. Patience may or may not be rewarded. In some spaces it seems nothing happens, while in others I saw multiple scenes take place over time. Several times, thinking I had already “covered” a space, I stuck around anyway and learned that a totally different story was about to unfold. In the end, I had only 2 hours in the show and wished I had more.

Unfortunately, while The Drowned Man is heavy on atmosphere, sometimes it’s a little hard to put your finger on what’s being referenced.  It is noir-ish at times, but mostly seems to be riffing on 1950’s Hollywood, with hints of melodrama, genre icons (motorcycle gangs, cowboys), and racy scandals.  Ultimately I think Punchdrunk has a limited theatrical vocabulary, but they dress it up in truly rich and colorful clothes.  If you’ve seen Sleep No More you might find The Drowned Man feels at times redundant (another drag queen torch singer, inexplicable lip-synching, nudity, writhing/dancing). But if you’re  not too worried about the narrative, the B-movie atmosphere is a lot more suitable to the immersive format, and infinitely more sexy and fun. Let’s just say it’s lucky the air conditioning was set to high, as the entire evening could get anyone a little hot under the collar.

 

Photo: Pari Naderi

 

“Have you ever stood outside a picket fence? You could see through, but you can’t get to the inside.”

Yes. That’s a Hanson lyric. And no, I’m not just quoting it because I love Hanson–though I do–I’m also quoting it because it’s a very accurate description of what I felt like when seeing Soul Doctor, the musical about influential Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, which opened last week at the Circle in the Square Theater.

I am, as you may have guessed by a nickname like The Mick, an Irish kid raised entirely in the Catholic faith. And though growing up on Long Island gave me what I thought was a lot of exposure to the Jewish faith, I was not, in any way I could recall, familiar with Rabbi Carlebach’s music when I entered the theater. Sadly, though Soul Doctor gave me a cursory glance at his life, a chance to peek through the slats of the fence, as it were, I never felt as if the story reached out and pulled me completely into its world.

Of course, trite, overly-obvious lyrics by David Schechter–Carlebach’s original lyrics were mostly disposed of for the stage show–did nothing to improve the distant, paint-by-numbers quality of the show, nor did the inadequate size of the cast. I understand staging a musical is expensive, but seriously, the frequency with which female actresses were costumed as men for any number of the show’s over-choreographed company scenes was distracting. Throw in the cast’s frequent forays out into the audience and Director David Wise’s entire show ultimately gave the impression of a cleaned up, Hebrew Hair. (Subtract an acid trip, add a detour through the Yeshiva.)

However, unlike Hair, Soul Doctor did not tell a tightly focused story and that was, perhaps, the show’s biggest problem. With material spanning around 40 years–beginning with Carlebach’s childhood in Holocaust besieged Vienna and ending with his return to perform there in the early 70s–Soul Doctor felt like a staged greatest hits album, leaping from important moment to important moment without taking the time to develop the deeper human resonance of each story as it related to the audience.

In addition, I found it alienating to be surrounded by people so familiar with Rabbi Carlebach’s music–of which I knew note a single note–that they were completely unable to keep from humming and singing along aloud. This disconnect served only to underscore my distance from the material.

Actually, it was that very element of the Soul Doctor experience that brought Hanson to mind. As a diehard Hanson fan–someone who knows ever melody they’ve composed inside and out, and who marks many of the most important events in her life by the Hanson songs that were playing at the time–I imagine my experience of Soul Doctor is a lot like what friends and family might feel like at a poorly written jukebox musical about Hanson’s life and career. And despite strong, sensitive, well realized performances by Eric Anderson (as Shlomo Carlebach) and Amber Iman (as Nina Simone) and a few touching scenes–in particular, a scene where the pair bond over their different people’s shared heritage of mistreatment–Soul Doctor never became more than a hodge-podge of musical numbers that everyone but me had heard before.

 

Photo: Provided by the Production

 

In May, Joe’s Pub hosted an even where composer Michael Friedman and adaptor/director Alex Timbers previewed a few songs from Love’s Labour’s Lost and chatted with a lucky audience. That fine evening, Mr. Timbers noted that his first show at the Delacorte Theater would also mark his first foray in directing in thrust. (Incidentally, this writer has still not recovered from the experience of hearing Alex Timbers say the word ‘thrust.’) After having seen the show, I gotta say, for someone who just popped his thrusting cherry, Alex Timbers is pretty much fucking killing it right now.

All sex jokes aside–at least for the time being–from composition to staging, Love’s Labour’s Lost is something of a love letter to Shakespeare in the Park. And what a love letter it is. Not only does their affectionate adaptation of one of The Bard’s lesser-known plays truly embody the spirit of Joe Papp’s brainchild, but this production doesn’t miss an opportunity to pay homage to the quintessential summer-in-NYC event. From cheeky references to the nature of Shakespeare in the Park ticketing to Timbers’ use of every inch of the Delacorte’s enormous, iconic circular stage and the extremely permeable border between actors and audience it creates, to the incorporation of Belvedere Castle in the backdrop, LLL wrings every aspect of the Shakespeare in the Park experience dry.  We’ve even heard that the boat at the end of the show is actually in the Turtle Pond!

The best part about Love’s Labour’s Lost, though, isn’t Timbers and Friedman’s touching homage to the free for all that is Shakespeare in the Park. It’s their ability to locate musical theater directly in the center of modern popular culture again. Sure, some of the show’s greatest scenes reference musical (and Public) theater gems like A Chorus Line–Holy Christ, Bryce Pinkham–or reach back twenty years to Dazed and Confused. But Friedman and Timbers have created a language for the show that places it in a direct dialogue with today’s Facebook-overshared, Daily Show inflected culture.

It also hurts exactly no one that LLL comments quite perfectly on the reality of modern dating and relationships–several times I almost stood up and shouted ‘amen!’ at the cast–while remaining true to the spirit of Shakespeare’s original work. Because apparently, my father is right, and dating really hasn’t changed all that much in… well, ever.

You know what else hurts no one? The near universal strength of the LLL cast. Colin Donnell makes Berowne both obnoxious and romantic, as well as disgustingly handsome and well-sung. Both Patti Murin and Ceasar Samayoa–in this show’s equivalent of Christian Borle’s aria of “oh my gods” in Peter and the Starcatcher–take nonsense sounds and turn them into emotive, storytelling devices with precise inflection and perfect body language. In roles of varying sizes, Daniel Breaker, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe, Bryce Pinkham, Jeff Hiller, Charlie Pollock, Rachel Dratch, Kevin Del Aguilla, Justin Levine, Andrew Durand, Rebecca Naomi Jones Kimiko Glenn and Audrey Lynn Weston–did I not say it was ‘near-universal’?–bring wonderful humor and humanity to their characters.

The only weak spot in the show, for me, was Maria Thayer’s Rosaline. Which is a shame, as one of the interesting aspects of Love’s Labour’s Lost is the way it sets the sidekicks up to be the most compelling characters in the show. Still. While I wish that Thayer’s performance had been a bit more vibrant and crackly–after all, she’s the girl who snags cad Berowne’s heart and changes it–I also think the writing for Rosaline is a bit under baked. Rosaline should leap off the stage and capture the audience’s heart, too, and we need to see more of her spunk and spirit earlier in the show in order for that to happen.

But that small quibble aside–yes, despite the centrality of Rosaline’s role, this is a small quibble–the strength of the piece as a whole overcomes its flaws. Love’s Labour’s Lost is a delightful romp through theater, pop-culture, and The Public’s biggest hits. And besides, who can hate a show that has a boyband scene so smart and flawlessly constructed–A KEYCHANGE JOKE, Y’ALL!–it must have been sent to us directly from heaven. Or Alex Timbers’ perfect brain, which is kind of the same thing.

If you didn’t already know, the height difference in podiums was the best indication that tall-drink-of-water (and Tony winner) Gabriel Ebert was about to do a reading of British playwright Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs.

Since I’ve been fangirling over the play — which debuted at the Studio Theater in DC in 2011 and got raves when it played at the Paines Plough/Sheffield Theatres Roundabout Season in the UK — I made my reservation super early for the Araca Group’s Monday reading. As in, even before the cast was announced.

Still, even without seeing the amazingly tall podium, I was certain Ebert had joined the reading. Not just because I’d read about his casting (alongside Jenni Barber), but also because, well… I rode the elevator up to the performance space with him. And I kinda could not breathe.  When he asked me if I was going to the same floor, I think I squeaked out an affirmative-esque sound.  I don’t know.  I may have blacked out.  What can I say, he’s just so gawkwardly dreamy.

Lungs speaks to how we are in relationships, how we are to each other, and how we are to the world. Since  I’d already read the play (nerd-alert), it was a delight to hear it aloud.  The reading afforded me the opportunity to more fully experience the rhythm of the play’s overlapping dialogue and the layering of its two characters. It also left me contemplating my own behavior — the things I say, the things I hold back, the inordinate amount of recycling I should (but don’t) do.

As a bonus, after the reading I caught Ebert munching cheese and crackers with one of my favorite playwrights, Annie Baker (The Flick), and it was like being at the cocktail party of my dreams!  Because yes, my dreams are weird, G-rated, and very Off-Broadway oriented.

But really. Ebert and Barber were great interpreters and Lungs is as comic and touching in person as it was on the page. Here’s hoping the reading blossoms into a New York production soon.

In honor of the fact that Nick Blaemire and his band, The Hustle, released a brand new music video for their tune “Trouble” today, I thought it was high time to dig into The Craptacular’s archives and dust off some awesome pics that we didn’t get a chance to post before the Tonys.

Back in May The Hustle played a gig at 54 Below, and we were there–backstage, and in the audience–to capture the whole shebang. Below, in exactly 29 pictures, is an inside peek at what went down:

***

Pre-Show on the 14th Floor

 The Hustle’s right hand lady, Kristin Goehring, prepping the swag.

 Favorite sign backstage is favorite.

 You guys. Lucky is so excited about her slap-bracelet, you don’t even know.

 Raena White & Nick warming up with Jesse Vargas on the keys.

 Tim Stocker and Allison Phillips talk horns. And woodwinds, too , probs.

 

 

 Dylan Heaney, pass that flask!

 Jesse Vargas, fearless leader, addresses the band.

 Then Nick takes over. Lucky, obvi, listens intently.

 Shoe shot. Like we’d ever pass up the opportunity to snag one of these.

 

 Band shot.

 And turn.

*

Downstairs for the Show

 

 Table swag.

 We spotted @itsdlevy enjoying his new glasses.

Of note: even though you can’t see his face, the dude in the blue striped shirt alllll the way in the right-hand corner is totes Benj Pasek.

 

 

 

 

 

 Lexi Lawson is killing it, yo.

 

 Horns. Also, Allison is basically our favorite. Girl trumpet (and flugelhorn) plays FTW!

 Raena White takes us to CHURCH! (#shitmrtylermartinssays)

 Art shot. Through a mirror, darkly… or something.

 

 

 

There are two ways to go about putting on a jukebox musical. You either weave a catalog of songs into an original story that has basically nothing to do with the original artists or songs themselves (see: Mamma Mia!, Rock of Ages), or you use a catalog of songs as the basis of a biographical story of the original artists (see: Motown: The Musical, Million Dollar QuartetJersey Boys). Both methods have their weaknesses, of course. Not every song fits perfectly into a new book (see: Movin’ Out), and there’s a good chance audiences won’t give two snaps about the musicians whose story you’re trying to tell (see: Baby It’s You). But ultimately, if you want to use a catalog of popular songs in a musical, there’s a pretty clear roadmap you can follow.

Unless, of course, you want to use the songs of The Beatles. Then, apparently, your only choice is to completely throw out all signs of story and character and put-on a glorified concert performed by second-rate substitutes.

That’s what happened back in the late 70s, when Beatlemania began performances on Broadway. The show featured a combination of stock footage and Fab Four lookalikes, recreating the sound and frenzy of the world’s most popular boy band. Beatlemania would eventually play over 1,000 performances on Broadway, and launch simultaneous tours and productions worldwide (Los Angeles, London, Australia, Asia, Chicago, Europe, Africa, etc).  Then, in 2010 the Beatlemania concept made its way back to Broadway for a limited-run, this time styled as Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles. And now again, with Let It Be, which opened last night at the St. James Theatre and runs through December 29.

Oddly, for a show built around the The Beatles, Let it Be only mentions the band by name only once – on the Playbill. (“A celebration of the music of The Beatles,” the Playbill cover reads – in color, for what it’s worth). The rest of the time, our faux-Beatles (“Featles”) are referred to as ‘Let It Be’ – a decision so ridiculous and utterly moronic, it could only have come from a gaggle of lawyers. Heck, the cast (a rotating group featuring Graham Alexander, John Brosnan, Ryan Coath, James Fox, Reuven Gershon, Chris McBurney, Luke Roberts, Ryan Alex Farmery, John Korba and Daniel A. Weiss) aren’t even listed with the name of their Featles counterparts. Instead, they’re identified by the instruments they play (“guitar,” “drums,” etc). Because, you know, we couldn’t possible figure out who they’re supposed to be.

For what it’s worth, the cast I experienced sounded pretty darn great. Ryan Coath (“Fohn Lennon”), Graham Alexander (“Faul McCartney”), John Brosnan (“Feorge Harrison”), and Chris McBurney (“Fingo Starr”) captured the sound of The Beatles so perfectly, my colleague even wondered whether they were lip-syncing at one point. Alexander especially evoked his Featle-persona so spectacularly, it was hard not to be captivated by his talent. Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to view the performances as anything but impression, in no small part because Let It Be never allows the audience to delve into who The Featles are (were?) as people. Save for a few lines of stage banter here and there, we’re meant to focus on the music.

And boy is there a lot of music to focus on. The good thing about The Beatles is that most of their songs clocked-in under the 3-minute mark. The bad thing about The Beatles is that they had a million of those songs. And director/musical supervisor John Maher decided to pack almost all of them into Let It Be. All the faves are here: “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “She Loves You,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Yesterday, “In My Life,” “Twist and Shout,” “Hey Jude,” “When I’m 64,” “Come Together,” “Hello Goodbye,” “Blackbird,” and of course, the title song “Let It Be.” Plus, approximately 100 other songs (the show runs 2 hours and 20 minutes, but it feels like strawberry fields forever.)

At first, the songs are performed chronologically, with projections and costumes taking us through historic locations in the Featles career (Liverpool’s Cavern Club, The Ed Sullivan Show, the 1965 Shea Stadium concert, etc). Between numbers, we get classic 60s television commercials. During numbers, the on-stage action is projected in vintage TV monitors, interspersed with clips of screaming teenagers and fainting youths. There are even pre-recorded cheers from audience members and flashing camera lights that really make you feel like you’re part of the frenzy. (Props to Jason Lyons and Gareth Owen for lighting and sound design, and to Duncan McLean’s early video design.)

But then, Let It Be completely abandons that concept. Act II is performed in a nondescript time and location, with song selections stretching over The Beatles later catalog. There are roadies in modern-day clothes setting up mics and clearing water bottles. “Fingo” talks about CDs. The projections behind our Faux Four become more and more outrageous (a few songs are accompanied by what might as well be a lyric video). There’s even a fourth musician (also in contemporary clothes) in the corner playing a bundle of additional instruments. Are these supposed to be the ghosts of the Featles? Or what they might be like if they were alive to play today? Is this heaven? Or purgatory? Hell if I know!

Let It Be was originally envisioned as a West End tribute to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles (the show is still running at the Savoy Theatre in London). And while the songs sound great, the performances lack any sense of spontaneity that one might look for in a true ‘tribute.’ There’s no reinterpretation, no artistry, no chance for a real moment to be had. Everything feels artificial and manufactured. Like it’s simultaneously trying too hard and not trying at all. Sure, there’s probably an audience out there for Let It Be who won’t care. But here? On Broadway? (And not, say, Vegas.) On Broadway there’s so much potential to do something great and perhaps the keepers of The Beatles’ rights will one day allow someone to take their catalog and make it shine. Until then, we’ll all be suffering through interminable impersonations. And singing “Let It Be” (Over).

 

In the past few years, super, super cute, angel-voiced actor AJ Shively has taken big roles both on and off Broadway, in revivals and new works. Currently, he’s starring as bookish, sweet brother Edwin in Carner & Gregor’s Unlock’d for The Prospect Theater Company. While AJ has been keeping busy over at The Duke on 42nd Street, he took some time out to chat with us. Topics covered include advice he’d give to his character Edwin, Saturday nights at the Steak ‘n Shake in suburban Ohio, and 90s cartoon theme songs. Obviously.

Sophie: Ok, so, what drew you to Unlock’d?
AJ: Well, I’ve worked with the writers Sam [Carner] and Derek [Gregor] a few times before, so I knew that the material was gonna be good. And hearing my character’s big song–I just knew I had to sing it; I knew I had to do it. And I have so much respect for Prospect [Theater Company] and Cara [Reichell] and Pete Mills, so it was just a confluence of people who I really admire and it ended up working out for me

S: Is it good to have a relationship with the people involved before you start?
AJ: Yeah, it sets up a nice rehearsal process because you feel comfortable asking questions and they feel comfortable answering your questions. And if you don’t understand it you can be like, ‘Hey I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ and you don’t have to worry about ruffling any feathers because you already have the rapport.

S: Uh, there’s a lot of comedy in the show, which is all about the timing–have there been any brilliant onstage mishaps?
AJ: Oh, man. All the time. There’s moment of the show where Roderick and Edwin exchange scissors and they give each other big bro hugs. Well, the other night my pair of scissors got caught in his sleeve and after we hugged they got knocked clear across the stage. Thankfully not at eye level. So we had to figure out a, an adjustment to the choreography so I could go pick up the scissors, ‘cause, you know, they’re kind of important to the plot. And during the big battle scene I accidentally stepped on the back of one of the ladies’ dresses and they’re all rigged to come off easily for the quick changes, so, half her dress came off. On stage.

S: Oops.
AJ: [laugh] So little things like that happen every now and then. But nothing too terrible. And then there are the wonderful moments when you get tongue-tied, or you talk yourself into a corner and you’re like, oh, that’s not what my line is.

S: If you could give your character Edwin any advice, what would it be?
AJ: Well, I think the advice he gets through the story-line is to “raise your eyes up, look at the people around you, connect with the rest of mankind, cause there’s a lot of valuable things to learn from other people,” so I think that’s what I would say to him at the top of the show. And I guess at the end of the show I would just say keep with it. Just keep going in that direction. And maybe just relax a little bit, have fun.

S: You’ve done both revivals and original work — what do you think is interesting about each of them?
AJ: The major difference in doing a revival is that they’re not fiddling around with the material from the moment you’re cast you can learn your role and it’s not gonna change. So that enables you to show up off book and be ready to play around in the rehearsal room in a different way. Whereas you can do the same thing with a new work but by the second week of rehearsal most of it’s gonna be rewritten anyway. So it’s different parts of your memory, I guess. But ultimately I found I look at every new project as a kind of blank-slate opportunity to figure out maybe, in a revival, something different about the story that hasn’t been on the surface, maybe, in previous incarnations that we can shed some light on.

I enjoy doing them both, though I have a soft spot for watching a new work come together. Taking note of all the changes and figuring out why a song doesn’t work in a certain place or, you know, for Unlock’d, on the last day in the rehearsal room they re-ordered the entire first 15, 20 minutes of the show and it worked so much better. It was all the same material just in a different order. And it’s very interesting to the intellectual side of me, to try and pick apart why it works so much better. I find that really fun. That’s the Edwin in me.

S: So, you were on tour with The Sound of Music when you were very young. Did you always know you wanted to work in theater?
AJ: I love stories and storytelling and I think that’s what the entertainment industry is. From before I can remember I have been a voracious consumer of film, you know, at four years old I discovered the movie Ben Hur and was able to sit down through the entire 3 hours and be captivated by it. But it didn’t really occur to me that I could do it until I was probably 8 or 9 and I saw the national tour of Big and there were boys that were probably 12 on stage doing this play. I had always liked seeing plays but until then I didn’t really connect that I could do it. That’s when I started doing community theatre which, thankfully, led very quickly to The Sound of Music and some real professional experience.

S: How old were you when you did that?
AJ: I was cast I was 12. I turned 13 on the road.

S: Wow.
AJ: Yeah. It was crazy, it was a crazy couple of years to go from being your quintessential suburban Ohio elementary school student who had his piano lessons and was on the swim team, and the soccer team to two years later being on a national tour getting tutored to keep up with my school work and everything.

S: A sort of atypical adolescence.
AJ: Yeah definitely. When child acting slowed down for me it was great to be able to go back to Ohio and I have the experience of going to those giant public schools you see in all the teen films, you know?

S: So when you were 16 you sort of were back in sort of normal public school system and all that?
AJ: Right.

S: What would you have been up to on an average Saturday evening back then?
AJ: Oh man. I guess it depends if I’d been cool enough that week to be invited to anything [laugh]. No, I mean, usually a typical Saturday was just going over to a friend’s house and, and watching movies, and just goofing around. There’s really not that much to do in suburban Ohio so, you know, we’d go loiter in different places. We would just drive to the Steak ‘n Shake and sit in the parking lot, then drive around and come back to the parking to see who was in what car, then drive around again.

S: Sounds brilliant.
AJ: Yeah, very, very exciting.

S: Okay. Lightning round! If you could revive any musical or play for yourself what would it be?
AJ: I wanna play Sweeney Todd so I’ve got some time for that one. But I think that that’s the musical that I would try and get done for myself.

S: What’s your go-to warm up song?
AJ: I don’t know if I necessarily have one. In the dressing room at Unlock’d we’ve been listening to a lot of 90s cartoon theme songs, which has been getting us into the right mood for the show. So, last night we listened to the Gummy Bears theme song and Darkwing Duck. So that’s kind of our warm-up in the dressing room.

S: That is the best answer I’ve ever heard.
AJ: It’s really fun. I mean you can’t help but be in a good mood after listening to a 30-second, nineties-pop, synthesized cartoon jingle.

S: In that case, what’s your favourite mid to late nineties pop song?
AJ: I always liked the Edwin McCain song that goes, “I’ll be your crying shoulder”, but I always thought it was “I’ll be your dying soldier” and I would, like, commit to it and sing it full out in the car and everyone’s looking at me like I was dumb. So, I really liked that and, I don’t know the 90s pop scene kind of flew right by me. I always liked James Taylor and those kind of more folk-rock people. And The Beach Boys. I grew up listening to James Taylor and The Beach Boys.

S: Favorite book when you were a kid?
AJ: There were a lot of them, I read all the time. I really liked the Encyclopaedia Brown books. And I also really, really liked the King Arthur legend. Because that’s what my name is, Arthur Jonathan, that’s what the AJ stands for. And my father is Arthur as well, so we would read the King Arthur books, ‘cause we were Arthurs.

S: What’s your favorite book now?
AJ: My favorite book now–it’s gotta be Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series. I can’t pick one of them but I’m just obsessed. He creates such a vivid landscape, such a vivid cast of characters, you really believe the world exists. You can just lose yourself in the storytelling.

S: Tell us something we don’t know.
AJ: Oh gosh. Uh, I just went to Murray’s Bagels? [laugh]

S: Final question. My editor in New York thinks you sound just like Gavin Creel and she tells me about it all the time. We were wondering, do people say that to you as well?
AJ: Oh wow… No, I’ve not heard that very often, and I take that as a huge compliment so thank you very much. We went to the same school but we had different voice teachers. I don’t know, we’re both Ohio guys who went to Michigan so maybe there’s something in the water.