From Presque Isle To Broadway: John Cariani Stars In Hit New Msical

Actor and playwright who grew up in Maine assumes its most important role to date in the hit musical "Something rotten!

NEW YORK - Thirty minutes after the final ovation, John Cariani walks the empty stage of the St. James Theatre. It's mostly quiet apart from the talk in the wings.

"Stop for a minute," he says. "Just stop for a minute and look."

It is situated on the edge of the stage, looking out through the 1,700 empty red seats and says in a voice that suggests reverence: "There is so much history here are ghosts of the past.”

St. James, West 44th Street that opened in 1927, is one of the theaters of Broadway floors. Yul Brynner is where sang and danced in "The King and I", which starred Carol Channing in "Hello, Dolly!" And where the cast of "! Oklahoma" made Broadway history in 1943 as the first musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

This summer, Cariani, who grew up in Presque Isle, helps bring the ghosts to life as one of the stars of the musical comedy "Something rotten!" He has a one-year contract to perform in the musical, which opened in April.

Cariani, 45, is best known as a playwright in Maine. He is the author of "Almost, Maine," a play about falling in and out of love in northern Maine. It has become one of the most played produced in the United States. He has written several other works that have occurred in Portland Stage Company and elsewhere in Maine, and has been on Broadway before, in a revival of "Fiddler on the Roof," for which she earned a Tony nomination in 2004.

But there has never been a success like this.

"It's a little overwhelming," he said after signing autographs for fans who waited for him outside the theater after the show. "When I was in the 'Fiddler,' nobody stopped us on the street. This is a very different experience. I've been in the works that people love, but not how people love this show. People love this show”.

Cariani is a character actor who has had mostly small roles on stage, television and film. "Something rotten!" She puts her front and center on the stage of St. James in a leading role, and offers the opportunity to transform his career from small parts of something bigger. The show parody 400 years of theater, and especially musical theater. Casey Nicholaw, who directed "The Book of Mormon" and "Aladdin" among others, directs.

Cariani bill has the No. 3, behind Brian d'Arcy James and Christian Borle, both with large loans and Broadway experience. Cariani is the unknown of all.

"Something rotten!" It is a silly, witty and some would say immature musical, set in London in late 1500. It is about two brothers, Nick and Nigel Bottom. Nigel, played by Cariani, is a playwright. His older brother, played by d'Arcy James, is a producer. They are desperate for a hit, but cannot escape the shadow of the star of the day, William Shakespeare, played outrageously by Borle.

A soothsayer tells involves the future of theater and dance while singing acts and suggests that first written musical world. The show-stopping number, "a musical," names or references almost all music you've ever heard, and this show is becoming a cult hit among theater people.

CANTO SERVES AS WELL

 

He has been in New York for almost 20 years, working as an actor in television and making off-Broadway and regional theater. He has appeared on TV in "The Good Wife", "Fatherland" and "Numb3rs." He has been in movies and done a lot of TV commercials. We saw it in a campaign of TD Bank a few years ago as a guy who could not endorse a check on the service desk from a rival bank because the chain on the boom was too short.

But this, by far, is its most important role and reason moved to New York - even though he never imagined himself singing and dancing on Broadway, necessarily. He sang a little in high school in Presque Isle, but was more than one type of band. At Amherst College, he sang in the choir. He is a tenor with the ability to sing in falsetto. Much to the dismay of alternates Cariani, creators of the series, wrote the paper with Cariani account to take advantage of her sweet voice.

Singing was fun, she said, but distressing. His first solo comes early in Act I, when it moves to the front of the stage and sing directly to the audience.

"That's the hardest thing for me, every night I'm not connecting with another person on stage I have to sing for the public -... And I can see them a little, and it's big and scary."

One of his co-star and love interest in the play, Kate Reinders, likes to be on stage with Cariani, because, he says, "He is a goober such. And he really loves to sing, and I do not know that Maine him. But he's really good, and he loves it. His voice is so clear and sweet. "

Your favorite moment with Cariani occurs when you hold hands and sing to each other.”It's like a great song in a Disney movie. It's just kind of fun and wonderful," he said.

Cariani loves this role. Most of the plays he writes are about normal people falling in and out of love, but rarely get to play one on stage. "I'm just a guy falling in love with a girl and trying to write a good game," he said. "I want to play the love story, and when you're a character actor who did not play the love story. So it's very fun to play the geek in a love story. I love love stories and I love the love ".

HEARING continues to grow

The musical opened in April, and the show was well outside the door, getting decent reviews to draw large crowds. When Tony nominations were announced in May, "something rotten!" He got nine, which swelled and public advertising helped build word-of-mouth.

Houses are on average 80 percent of capacity, and the show is making $ 1 million in box office receipts every week, according to the World trade publication Broadway.

Those gains put solidly in the middle of the table of 30 or so shows on Broadway this summer. By comparison, "The Lion King" was top earner Broadway during the period of the most recent report, $ 2.5 million for the week ending July 26.

But "something rotten!" It's brand new, no history. Producers hope that the public will continue to build over the summer and fall. Some observers think they have the opportunity to be a great success with a long-term, because it is fun, light and easy to digest.

When the Tonys were awarded in June, Borle was the only "something rotten!" To win. Cariani not receive a nomination, it does not bother him, and until people told him he should. He received a nomination for actor in a musical for the Outer Critics Circle, although they did not win.

He shrugs when asked about Tony snub. "People come to see the show. To be on a show that people want to see is pretty impressive," he said.

His manager suggested that not getting a Tony nomination can benefit you, because people are talking about him as someone who was despised rather than someone who did not win.

The marketing team for "Something rotten!" He was amused by the lack of trophies at the Tonys series. In ads that ran after the Tonys, a big red flag was drawn in over the sample logo with the word "loser" At. That campaign generated buzz Broadway and helped set the tone that is a show that does not take itself too seriously.

Brian Allen, artistic director of good theater in Portland, saw "something rotten!" In May, after Tony nominations he came out. He loved the show and was surprised Cariani was not nominated.

"I thought it was great," Allen said. "Their role is not as flashy as the brother or the boy who plays Shakespeare, but John is the heart of the fair. I gave her a Tony nomination if she were on the committee. I thought it was brilliant."

Cariani has a one-year contract, which means that it is committed to "something rotten!" Through the spring of 2016. In addition to being on a show that people love the most beneficial aspect of being in a very popular Broadway musical it is the opportunity for other producers and directors to see. For an actor, you see it is essential for landing more jobs, he said.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Groundbreaking Hip-Hop Musical, Hamilton, Hits Broadway

One of the characteristics of genius is the ability to detect connections between seemingly disparate and then move to create something that reveals the world in a new light things. The young lyricist and composer-performer Lin-Manuel Miranda made a connection of this type about seven years ago, during a break from running Broadway musical In the Heights, in which he also starred. Miranda was, he says, "just chilling" in Mexico, reading the biography of Ron Chernow of Alexander Hamilton, when suddenly. "I was like, this is an album-no, this is a show How has anyone done this? It was the fact that Hamilton wrote his way to the island where he grew up. That's the story of hip-hop. So I searched Google 'Alexander Hamilton hip-hop musical "and fully expected to see that someone had already written. But. So I set to work. "

The result, as you may have heard, is Hamilton, a musical that uses the vernacular of hip-hop (not to mention R & B and Broadway) to convert the life of the "ten US dollars Founder" in the history of the immigrant experience and the birth of a new nation. With an impressive multi-ethnic cast under the masterful direction of Thomas Kail, exploded on stage at the Public Theatre in February for a race three months, critics (including this one) driving overjoyed, drawing crowds incredibly starry, sweeping the Obie awards Lortel, and Drama Desk, and causing a frenzy of entries. Fortunately, Hamilton is not history-that comes to Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway this month, and it is simply a miracle. "Lin to tell the story of the origin of the United States with people and music that look and sound like what America looks and sounds like today," says Jonathan Groff, who gives a comic turn as a vain King George III. "It's a game-changing piece of theater."

Miranda spent a year writing the first song, which appeared in the White House in 2009 (I dare to watch the video on YouTube and not get a shiver of view of a child of an immigrant rap about the son of an immigrant to a son of an immigrant who became the first black president of the United States). It took a year to write the electrifying "my shot", in which Hamilton says: “Hey yo, I like my country / I'm young, feisty and hungry / and I'm not throwing my shot," Miranda says: "It is each couplet must announce my 'A-Gonna Fall of a Hard Rain.' '. Hamilton is in the world, and nothing will ever be the same' "

I fuck with Miranda at the offices of the producers of the program, which comes directly from a matinee of the visit, the Kander and Ebb musical starring Chita Rivera darkness. "I'm going crazy," he says. "I mean, Chita, those songs." Restless, hyperverbal energy seems to be the default setting of Miranda. In jeans, shirt, sneakers and, with brown hair and a goatee grown for Hamilton, that is, at 35, still youthful, almost handsome, even with big bags under his eyes and puppyish (he and his wife, Vanessa Nadal, has a son eight months). If he represents the future of musical theater, it is also the latest in a long line of first and second generation of American composers, dating back at least to Irving Berlin, who have shaped our sense of self country itself.



American Original "I searched Google 'Alexander Hamilton hip-hop musical" and fully expected to see that someone had written, "says Miranda.”But no. So I set to work."

The son of a political consultant and a psychologist who both came here from Puerto Rico, Miranda grew up in northern Manhattan, near Inwood Hill Park, listening to records sauce parents and original-cast albums. At seven, he saw his first Broadway show, what else? -Les Miserables. "Now it's part of me at the molecular level," he says. By the time he was a freshman at Hunter High School, he won at a high level to play the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance. "All the girls have to pretend to be in love with you, and all the boys have to pretend to follow," he says. "Why would I do something else for a living?" In his senior year, he led West Side Story. It was not until I saw Rent on Broadway, at seventeen, however, found a way to tell stories of his own: "The idea that a musical could take place today and sound like today was innovative for my.”

But Miranda was just a nerd Broadway. He was also a nerd salsa and hip-hop nerd, obsessed with Ruben Blades and Juan Luis Guerra and analyze the rhymes of A Tribe Called Quest and Wu-Tang Clan. Even now, he is just as smooth citing the late rapper Big Pun ("Dead in the middle of Little Italy little did we know that plagued some brokers who did diddly") and Sondheim ("As his cross fade with it"). "I live in the center of this Venn diagram very rare," says Miranda. He drew from his many influences of Tony Award-winning In the Heights, musical love letter to a Spanish enclave Manhattan he wrote in Wesleyan and developed after graduating with another alum, an aspiring director named Thomas Kail. "It was the beginning of a conversation that never stopped," said Kail. The two began to put on hip-hop shows improvisation called Freestyle Love Supreme, along with fellow cast future Christopher Jackson and Daveed Diggs, a rapper from the West Coast, and the occasional help of Alex Lacamoire, and heights Hamilton orchestrator and musical director. "Our community has a very active underground shit," says Diggs. "But Lin is so unapologetically himself, and that is invincible."

After In the Heights, as Miranda fought with Hamilton, Kail said "You know, Lin, who took two years to write two songs. If we could crank up a little, maybe we could see what we have." Six months later, Miranda made ten new songs for the American Songbook series of Lincoln Center. The response was thunderous. "I saw John Kander face light for rap battles between Hamilton and Jefferson," Miranda said, "and I knew we had something."



All Together Now From left: Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, Christopher Jackson, Leslie Odom Jr., Jasmine Cephas Jones, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, and Anthony Ramos.

When the curtain on some of this month, audiences will find themselves face to face with a past that feels as alive as the present, with Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom Jr.), James Madison (Okieriete Onaodowan), Thomas Jefferson rises (Diggs) and George Washington (Jackson) strutting on stage crew rap in coats and pants-and Levites from costume designer Paul Tazewell Burr asking:

Kail fluid sexy staging, choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler propulsion, the number crackles with the fierce urgency of now. Two levels of David Korins set of wooden shipbuilders' brick and unfinished invokes a country populated by a set that looks on as the action unfolds, witnesses (like us) to history. "Musicals are about transitions," said Kail. "I knew every scene change would be carried out by people who were building the United States."

In the center is Hamilton, who arrives in New York as the effort to eighteen years old in 1773 and quickly became the right hand of George Washington, co-author of the Federalist Papers, Treasury Secretary Leading Actor in a proto -Monica Lewinsky scandal and the victim of a fatal bullet in an infamous duel with Burr. As written and performed (with a poignant intensity) by Miranda, Hamilton is bright, ambitious and idealistic, driven by a strange hunger for success and a haunted awareness of his own mortality. As a lyric reads: "Why do you write as if you were running out of time" He is a flawed hero who, like his creator, believes in the power of words to change the world. Citing effortlessly from the B.I.G. Notorious and Rodgers and Hammerstein score Miranda is a verbal pot, full of invention, great ideas, amazing rhymes, and the blatant emotion. He knows how to lay down a beat and how to write a captivating melody. Lush ravine Lacamoire percussion orchestrations bring it all to life.

 

The cast is exceptional, Anthony Ramos in the dual role of John Laurens and Hamilton's eldest son, Philip Jackson, captures the nobility and vulnerability of Washington. Then there's Jefferson, who just returned from five years in France. "He comes to sing a jazz tune your parents might listen, ask, 'What have I lost?'" Says Diggs. "He has to catch up fast day. There's so much of Oakland, where I grew up in Jefferson. The presentation cooling is something we do very well."

Jonathan Groff Cue King George III, who appears in a powdered wig, a crown velvet and costumes worthy of Liberace, as if he wandered from another musical. With wounded pride and a touch of threat, singing "going back" Brit-rock melody deliciously cheesy about the perfidy of the colonies. "It's a throwback to a sixties Beatles tune," says Groff. "It is a song of rupture between the United States and England, which is fabulous. Its like, 'You're leaving? Oh really? Well, good luck with that.'"

As Chernow, Miranda foregrounds the two main women in the life of Hamilton: bright Angelica Schuyler (a beautiful, commanding Renée Elise Goldsberry) and his sister, Eliza firm (a light Phillipa Soo). In a dazzling sequence, we see Hamilton and Eliza meeting, courtship, and marriage, and then rewinds action to show the same events through the eyes of Angelica. "She has killed so much to love him," Goldsberry says, "but the decisions she makes are despite that, and that is exciting to play." In a moving coda, we learned that Eliza Hamilton survived for 50 years and founded the country's first private orphanage in New York. "I knew there was something more for her to do," So said, "and take the pain that her husband had felt like an orphan and address it head on." (Jasmine Cephas Jones is sensational as both the third sister and lover ballad -belting Hamilton.)

Running through the story is the growing tension between Hamilton and Aaron Burr frenemy politician, played with Teflon bonhomie and slow simmering anger over Odom. In his inevitable showdown, the impetuous Hamilton finally throws away his shot just as the elusive Burr finally throw caution to the wind. "You see Romeo and Juliet, and each time I hope you will play the other way," says Odom. "That's what I do. I let shock me every night."

Hamilton I saw in the audience was more than ready for prime time, but its creators resisted instant Broadway transfer. "Lin and I know that the bones are solid," said Kail. "But we've never been afraid to do better, and go through it to make sure that every moment justified its presence."

As star and author of the series, Miranda admits that it was difficult to take a step back with a critical eye ". It would be like the lobster trying to notes from inside the pot" with its hopes, Javier Muñoz, on stage, Miranda could see from the public, and found the experience, he says, "overwhelming. Like in the opening number, hit the point where the entire cast singing" Alexander Hamilton, "and-boom-end of the number. For the first time I realized that all bowed heads except for Hamilton's and I began to mourn. "

But what has probably moved more Miranda is the way the public of all kinds have connected to Hamilton, a musical that, as income before it has the potential to become a touchstone for a new generation.”Every time you write something, go through many phases," he says. "You're going through I'm a fraud phase. You go through the stage than ever Finish. And once in a while you think, What if I have actually created what I set out to create, and received as such? With this show, the real world has exceeded my fantasy life in an absurd degree. "

Musical Stage Adaptation Of The Devil Wears Prada In The Works

Already in 2012 he asked readers Broadway, and now it seems that your prayer has been heard! A stage adaptation of the hit 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada is developing. According to the AP, mega-producer Kevin McCollum, whose Broadway credits include the current Tony nominees Something rotten! and the hand of God, is trying to make a musical of the film in association with 20th Century Fox.

 

Meryl Streep received her 14th Oscar nomination for his portrayal of ice tastemaker Miranda Priestly in the film adaptation of the novel by Lauren Weisberger. The comedy follows Andrea Sachs, a recent college graduate Grounded played by Anne Hathaway, who manages a highly sought after position as co-assistant Priests a fashion magazine editor powerful and demanding. The film also featured Broadway veterans Tracie Thoms and Stanley Tucci.

Creative team still does not know the time or the theater, but we are clearly already dreamcasting.

‘Hamilton’ Musical Unveils Post-Tony Broadway Opening After Sold-Out Run, Rave Reviews

UPDATE 15:45: The Public Theater announced this afternoon that Jonathan Groff has been chosen as a replacement for Brian d'Arcy James as King George Hamilton. Groff (Looking for HBO, Fox Glee) joins the cast next Tuesday, March 3 at the Public Theater. The show moves to Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway in July.



PREVIOUS, Tuesday, 14:30 more information throughout. The successful musical based rap-Hamilton is moving from the Public Theater Broadway this summer, today told the producers. Advances in the production of 12 million dollars will start July 13 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, with the official opening scheduled for August 6. The final performance in the race sold out in public will be the May 3 airline main stem of the season on Broadway on sale on March 8.

"Lin-Manuel Miranda is Shakespeare in his ambition and his achievement," Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, told a packed press conference in the lobby of the theater on Tuesday afternoon. Besides show's cast and creative team, the crowd included author Ron Chernow, whose biography of first secretary of the US Treasury Miranda inspired to write the musical, in which he also plays the title role.



There was no doubt that Hamilton would move to Broadway; the only question was how quickly. Variables include the availability of a suitable theater, either to open before the cutoff date for Tony eligibility April this season, and how long Miranda and other equipment primarily creative director Thomas Kail, choreographer and musical director Andy Blankenbuehler I needed Alex Lacamoire to work on the show. Despite almost unanimous raves, the 2 hours 40 minutes-sung-through musical was judged too long by several critics. "We never stop working on the show," said Miranda Term after the announcement, but added that cutting length is not their top priority.

Speaking at the press conference, Miranda recalled that two years before his birth, the day his parents were married, attended musical Runaways Elizabeth Swados', another transfer from the public (along with hair, A Chorus Line, That Championship Season, Bring In Da Noise / Bring In Da Funk and others too numerous to mention). His parents later explained to the child theater called the attention they wanted to support the work of artists from the public. Since then, he said, he had expected a work which opens in the East Village complex. Tony Award winning musical In The Heights Miranda did not do that, but ran in the Richard Rodgers, who is soon to be vacated by musical If / Then.

For Broadway, Hamilton will be produced by Jeffery seller, Sander Jacobs and Jill Furman, who financed the career in public, which is also advertised as a producer. A key question not addressed in the ad is who will replace Brian d'Arcy James, who scored big announcements in the King George, but must leave the show after this weekend to co-star with Christian Borle something rotten Another new musical, which happens to be produced by frequent production partner Kevin McCollum seller. Replacement D'Arcy James' has not been announced.

Broadway Performers To Take The Stage For High Tech High School Theater Fundraiser

A group of artists from Broadway will have a slightly smaller stage, as part of "Broadway Love" - a special performance to raise funds to help 25 high school students from Hudson County raise money to pay expenses to attend an international festival of the arts.

Proceeds from the concert performance, which will be held February 2 at 7 pm, will help students of high school to reach its goal of $ 150,000 to attend the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland's capital.



High Tech High School was chosen from 1,000 schools that applied to represent the United States, based on excellence in musical theater.

"I am grateful that these talented actors, grace and occupied have taken time out of their schedule to help raise money for our kind of musical theater. We hope that our community can come to support us," the student said 16 year’s age, Sydney silver, to be performed in the show.

Tickets for the show, which will take place at school (8511 Tonnelle Avenue in North Bergen), are $ 50 and are available at www.onlineticketspot.com looking "HT Musical Theatre Broadway Love".

Broadway performers scheduled for the show include Kerry Butler ("Catch Me If You Can," "Xanadu," "Hairspray"), Christine Pedi ("Chicago", "Newsical"), James Carpinello ("Rock of Ages" "Saturday Night Fever"), Telly Leung ("Godspell," "Rent," "Glee"), Anastacia McCleskey ("Violet", "book of Mormon", "Priscilla"), Kate Loprest ("First Date" "Wonderland") and Clarke Thorell ("Annie," "Hairspray"), Constantine Maroulis ("American idol," "Rock of Ages", "Jekyll & Hyde"), Mandy Gonzalez ("Wicked", "in the Heights ") Michael Cusumano (" American in Paris "," Chicago ").

"We are very pleased that the brightest stars of Broadway join us and take to our community in supporting the arts, our trip and passions," director of High Tech Theatre Alex Perez said. "We are very grateful and hope people can donate and pitch in to help these children reach their goal."

Perez organized the event by partnering with artists he met throughout his career, which has included the experience of running worldwide, performed on and off Broadway, and production for film and television. He said he has been in talks with artists and coordination with their schedules since September.

Broadway stars perform signature songs with a live band, led by Broadway musician Carlos Santoro and love songs for Valentine's Day.

Led by Perez and Musical Director Rod Shepard, High Tech theater program has represented US Oberhavel Germany in the Festival of the Arts in 2001 and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007.
In total, the program has been recognized with nominations and 10 awards thirty Papermill Playhouse production, choice of costumes, makeup, acting, presented artists and the educational impact.

Student’s current tech theater plan to hold their spring production "A Chorus Line" in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, held from 1-14 August.

The festival, which attracted more than 49,000 artists last year, brings together big names and unknown artists in hundreds of locations across Edinburgh, Scotland, covering the full range of entertainment - theater, comedy, dance, physical theater , circus, cabaret, children of shows, musicals, opera, music, spoken word and exhibitions.

Anyone who cannot attend the performance and would like to donate to musical theater tech visit www.onlineticketspot.com.