Having spoken with composer Frank Wildhorn about his upcoming tour and Broadway revival of Jekyll & Hyde, I met Friday with the show’s star, Constantine Maroulis, the American Idol sensation who went on to headline Rock of Ages (and has a small role in this summer’s film version with Tom Cruise).
We met at an Eastside diner and while we chatted, I could see out of the corner of my eye members of the wait staff gawking at Maroulis.
Although he is a rock star celebrity, it was refreshing to hear him talk with affection and reverence for the musical theater, a love nurtured as a kid from watching the movie of West Side Story. Spending time with him has definitely increased my interest in the Jekyll & Hyde revival which, according to Wildhorn, should take Maroulis’s career “to a new level.”
In the afternoon, I interviewed Anthony Lyn — the tour director for Les Miserables (coming to the Kravis Center next month) and Mary Poppins (coming next season). We almost got together Thursday, but hadn’t connected because of mixed signals.
With the creative teams for both shows long since returned to England, Lyn has overseen the assembly and maintenance of both tours. Therefore, he has to deal with the frequent requests for interviews, which he accommodates with quotable good humor. Presumably waxing articulately about Mary Poppins is no more painful for him than rehearsing the near-constantly changing parade of youngsters in the show, which he headed off to do again after our talk at a theater district Dean & DeLuca’s.
Friday evening I saw what should be the hands-down Tony Award-winning play of the season, Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, a major work that just missed getting the Pulitzer Prize earlier this month. As much as I enjoyed Peter and the Starcatcher and One Man, Two Guvnors, neither one will be confused for anything profound.
Baitz’s play, on the other hand, is a rich, substantial drama about a Palm Springs family plunged into turmoil and recriminations by the arrival of a grown daughter. She brings with her a manuscript of a memoir that will imminently expose a dark, buried secret involving her deceased older brother. As layered and complex as the script is, it plays even better, thanks to the performances of Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach and Judith Light, under Joe Mantello’s direction.
It is heartening to see such a play thriving on Broadway, where it has been playing since November. In an earlier era, an exciting piece of theater like this would almost certainly go on tour. Instead, it falls to regional resident theaters, like Coral Gables’ Actors’ Playhouse, which has already announced plans to produce Other Desert Cities in its 2012-2013 season.