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Broadway Rewind: THE LITTLE MERMAID Makes a Splash on Broadway!
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Oct 28, 2022
'We then travel to the exciting opening night of Disney's musical, The Little Mermaid and I asked an exuberant Sierra Boggess, who was making her Broadway debut as Ariel, what that magical day meant to her. 'Did it really happen tonight? Are we sure that that just happened! Before I went on stage tonight, I felt my heart pounding because I was just so excited and there was such anticipation and I realized all I had to do tonight was share Ariel.''
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Cue the spotlight, shine them bright, gonna have a grand new show tonight
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With glitz and glam on the marquee, Perhaps a Tony nominee Stars beam brightly, see them glow, sell out nightly SRO
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It's time to applaud the Broadway beat in the footlights of a show like a sweet on the world's most famous street
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Tickets please Cue the band And have your feet to the riddle of the Broadway Beat
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The Broadway Beat Hello I'm Richard Ridge and welcome to Broadway Beat
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beat, our behind-the-scenes look at the very best of what the New York Theater has to offer
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This week we have two new productions, a Disney and a Sondheim. We'll take it to the opening
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night celebration of Disney's newest musical to open on Broadway, The Little Mermaid, which is based
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on one of their most successful animated films of all time. It stars Sherry Renee Scott as the
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villainous Ursula, and making her Broadway debut is Sierra Bogus, as everyone's favorite mermaid
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Ariel. But we start things off at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art, to visit with the cast of
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Roundabout Theatre Company's new production of the classic Stephen Sondheim and James Lepine
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Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George, which is getting ready to open
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on February 21st at Roundabout's Studio 54. This acclaimed production, which comes from London
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was conceived and directed by Sam Buntrock, and stars Olivier Award winners Daniel Evans and
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Jenna Russell. It's been extraordinary to revisit a show, knowing a way through it, having done the show before
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and having worked with Daniel and Jenna before, in a production that connected with audiences and that was
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very successful. And then having them as the constant and everything around them being totally new
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And as we're very fond of saying in the rehearsal room, there is so much in the spaces
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this material. There's so much between the lines, there's so much in and around the text
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that having an elite, and I say elite cast of American actors taking on these roles
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It's fascinating. We are finding new things, and we're finding things that we'd not discovered
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before, and it's very, it's fun, it's fun. It's a, it's a very, very, uh, buoyant, uh
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intense and rewarding rehearsal process at the moment. It's great. It's great
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You just talk about adding it into the space of Studio 54. I mean, you and I started to talk about all of this, but talk about why you think the show
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will fit so well in that space. Well, it's, I mean, it's, it's interesting because I can now, I can now describe it having
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seen the set in the space. Studio 54, it's a very, it's a very presentational space, and it's a very presentational
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piece. It's all about the story of an image. And just the
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way that the auditorium is arranged, the relationship between the auditorium and the stage
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is perfect for this. And it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's just
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it's not, because most people seem to think that it's a leap
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from the menier to here, but it's not, because the menet is 150
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and the Wyndham's where we were in London, 750, and here's a thousand. So it's, it's
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It's incremental. We're slowly expanding. I often say that we have to do it on the moon next to get the next stage of this
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But I think it's going to be, it's going to feel extremely intimate
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And I know that surprises, it will surprise some people, but it's going to feel really, really intimate in 54
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Once again, as I played Mama in 9, I play The Mother or sometimes referred to as the old lady in
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in Sundays in the Park, I play the artist's mother. And they had a rather, seems to be, tempestuous relationship
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And a lot of his sketches and drawings are of her, of Mama
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which is really interesting. I play this guy who, well, in the first half of the show
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I play a guy who's a very good friend of George Surat, who's sort of been much more successful, made a lot more money
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and has consequently become a little sort of superior and condescending. And yet, deep down inside, I think he realizes that George's work is more interesting and more original than his own
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And so he's conflicted about that, you know. And in the second act, I played the curator of the museum where the second act, George, is exhibiting his piece of art
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Many people consider this one of Sondheim and Lepine's greatest masterpiece is
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how do you view the show and what do you love about the show? Well, I'm not a musician and I'm not a good singer
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in spite of the fact that I've done a couple of Broadway musicals. And so I'm a little in awe of the experience, I have to admit
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I'm a little overwhelmed by it. I'm by far the least accomplished singer or musician in the company
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And so for me, it's kind of like watching them build a cathedral. I sometimes literally don't understand what they're talking about
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when they discuss it amongst themselves, but it is so beautiful. The music is exquisite
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And the singers, it's a magnificent company of singers. and the two central characters are being portrayed phenomenally by Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell
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And it's a gorgeous experience. We typically have people in tears at the end of rehearsals
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It's gorgeous. I play Yvonne, who I think is terribly misunderstood. You know, I think that it's very interesting that this particular of this piece
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this time, especially with Sweeney Tahn happening and Sam Buntrck, being able to direct this with a fresh face
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You know, Stephen Sondheim has been misunderstood as misunderstood as, you know, probably
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George, Surrah, and there are always those voices that say, oh, I don't understand this at all
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It's terrible. And how does a person, so I think that's my character
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I play the Boatman in the first act and Dennis in the second act, which is a different doubling
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from the original. And it's just a gift. Whenever you get to do his work, it's a gift
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And Lepine's book is so beautiful and so brilliant. It just the icing on the cake It just really is an amazing thing The Boatman is fun because he sort of gruff and mean
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kind of is angry that everyone's in his park. And then Dennis in the second act is a much different energy
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completely sort of introverted. But interestingly enough, the reason that the doubling was changed
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is so there could be this... George is a very specific relationship with the Boatman in the first act
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It's very singular. He doesn't have that relationship with anybody else. And the boatman really doesn't have a relationship with anybody but George
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The same is true for Dennis in the second act. Dennis really only has a relationship with George
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and that relationship is very specific. Sort of by default, Dennis ends up being George's friend
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because he sort of pushed everyone else away in the second act
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So they have that great scene in the park, the 1984 park
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So it's a real... While that is the thread that connects the Bowman and Dennis
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they really could not be further from different as far as their body energy, their vocal energy
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their how they're written, the rhythms of how they speak. It's just, it's every actor's dream
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to get to do in one show to get to do that kind of work, which is great
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Oh, there's so many things I love about the show. I think it's such a rich piece of writing in so many ways
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I was just saying earlier, it has the obvious things about art and creating
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but it also has the more universal thing of love and connection and not connecting
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and two people being so right for each other, but just getting it wrong and how awful that is for both people
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when they try very hard and it's just not going to work and they have to give up on a relationship
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It's heartbreaking. And then in Act 2 you have, and in Act 1, the relationship that both Georges have
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with the older female characters, their mother and their great-grandmother. So the relationships we all have with our mothers
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and how difficult they are, but how much we need each other
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and children and leaving a mark on the world, having some permanence in the world after you've gone
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which I think we all strive for, but it's different people go different ways about
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that they have children or they do create art. You know, and I think, you know, Georges Sir Ryan Act 1, he's left us this legacy, all these things here that you see
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And like coming to see these extraordinary sketches that he did, I mean, he's terribly moving
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He was obviously just this genius, but didn't speak to people, was just this insular, strange person that died at 31
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I mean, what have we missed of this man, this great man
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It's my third time here. Yeah, I'd move in if I could
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No. Oh, God, it's amazing, isn't it? This gallery with all these drawings and sketches
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For me, playing, Sir R, you really feel you get a sense of the man
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You start in the first room, whether these real, almost photograph like sketches with real attention to his
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detail and then as you move through this you go to these drawings which are more
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about tone and darkness and light and then you come to these this room where
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he's obviously working on the bathers and Lagrangeat the paintings that you see
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in Sunday in the park and and you know it's all it's almost all mapped out for
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you right here so it's great synchronicity that this exhibition was was here and
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it's a shame it's not lasting during our run but it's perfect timing for you to
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come to New York to do this show and here it is well we We actually got to look around, Jenna and I and Sam, our director, got to look around the museum when it was closed
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And with a curator, which was such a privilege, because we got to ask questions that you wouldn't, you know, to someone who knew all about Surah
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And we asked, is this just a great coincidence that these two things are coming together
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And she told us that she'd been working on this exhibition since 2002. So it is, it's just a great coincidence
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Let's talk about the man you play in the show. Talk about what's so wonderful with revisiting him now in the rehearsal process for this show
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Well, you know, I've never done this before. I've had an 18-month break between the end of the West End run
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and the beginning of rehearsals here in New York. And I really recommend it to actors because I hadn't thought about it
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At the end of the West End run, we didn't know we were coming. And even when we found out we were actually coming
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I didn't start re-looking at it until about October. And I just started going over the score again
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And, you know, things like putting it together, which is a real, really difficult number for me
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because there's every word that rhymes with ishen in the dictionary appears at some place
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And I couldn't remember a single thing. But then after a week, it came back very quickly
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And now in rehearsals, it's an amazing feeling because somehow the songs and the dialogue are in your body
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And it means that we can be freer and much more open to the new impulses
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and the new things that the great American cast are bringing the American actors that are working with us
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a great bunch of people, great actors, great singers. And so we're really open to change and to ditch the things
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that we never liked in London and to get new things and to hopefully really enrich the whole process
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and the whole show. One of Disney's most beloved and successful animated films
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of all time, The Little Mermaid, has been adapted for the stage, and it's just open of a Lund Fontam theater
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Guiding the show along is esteemed opera director Francesca Zambello. The score features all the classic songs from the film
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which were composed by eight-time Academy Award winner Alan Mencken and his partner of the late Howard Ashman
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and 10 new songs written by Mr. Mencken and Glenn Slater. The production features a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright
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We caught up with them and the cast, which includes Sherry Renee Scott, Titus Burgess
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Sean Palmer, Norm Lewis, and Broadway newcomer, Sierra Bogus, who's making her debut as everyone's favorite mermaid, Ariel
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to go out here, no hard to jam here, oh yes, each you to smell here, no heart to wear here
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that why it hotter on the water the other book here It been a joyous experience
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It's been a three and a half year process from when I met Tom Schumacher
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We were joking about it the other day. We had our first dinner over sushi
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just three and a half years ago. And most people I don't think realize
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it takes three to five years to make a musical. It's a long process
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And so the development through creating the work, all the additional new material, and then
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of course, finding the visual language, the movement language has all been a big process
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a big challenge, and one that's been very, very gratifying. So what has the last month been like for you during your extended preview period to opening night
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Well, in a funny way, the last month was actually the easiest month, because we froze the show just before Christmas
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before Christmas. So it's really been letting the performers own the material now and giving
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it to them. So the last month in a way has not been the most stressful. There have been more
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stressful months earlier on. I would say being entrusted by Alan Mencken to work on material
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that he's lived with for 20 years and that's so beloved by so many. And so it was really a treat
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I've been feeling like an eight-year-old kid for the last six months. And it's made me feel like
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one of these guys and that's a really welcome thing. Congratulations, welcome home. Good to see you
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guys. Take a wave. Give a high five. I think the language of the show was great for me to do
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to have different language, to find these shoes that you can dance on. And the company are just
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so talented. And it's just making it your own, making it more fluid, and not having wires
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or water was a big thing. So to have these shoes, which are helies, which we call merblades
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with these brilliant instrument we've had. So hopefully it worked to keep my fingers with
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the easiest part of the show to make dance and what was the most challenging for you? Challenging, the most challenging was under the sea because not everybody were dancers
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I only have four dancers in the show. But the whole company had to learn to dance and then put the shoes on and balance completely different
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So that was the most challenging. The easiest thing is the smaller numbers with Ariel on her own
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She's just beautiful. The duet with Ariel and Eric. One step closer was a real joy for me to do
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A dance is like a conversation except you never need to. to make a song
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And once you've begun, you speak as one give and take back and forth
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round and round. It's been, it's been
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Alan is such a glorious, glorious composer, and to be able to
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I have the opportunity to step into Howard Ashman's shoes, very big shoes, I might add
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and help burnish this jewel in the Disney Crown has been such a wonderful experience
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With Alan, you always know you're going to get a gorgeous sounding song, so a lot of pressure on me to not fall down on my end of the deal
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but I'm very happy with the way it's all turned out. Glenn is a perfect foil, perfect compliment to Howard
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has a similar intelligence, similar ability to reach the zeitgeist of our culture
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in terms of the smartness of his lyrics and the... It's just a sense of craft, I think, on a par with Howard's
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Now, nobody is Howard Ashman, and there is nobody who can replace him. But I really felt very most proud about the seamlessness of the score
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and the way we were able to protect the original seven songs and keep them up front
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and still create 10 other songs that are able to be the glue between them
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and I think equal them. How proud would Howard have been tonight had been here at this opening
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I think Howard would have been pleased. I think he would have been proud. I think he would have had other ideas here and there
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You never knew what they would have been, and I never will know what they would have been
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But I've always feel that that angel on my shoulder So I think he would be pleased
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It's not my first Disney Prince, you know. But I actually, I have to say that I don't feel like there's shackles to being a Disney Prince or any other
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It's this story and it's a fantastic story. And if you really look at the literature that it comes from, it's such a beautiful story about, you know, the growth process and finding yourself and establishing your stance outside of your family
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I mean, there's just a wealth of things to mind from this material. and I think that's where we, that's our responsibility every night is to go and find that stuff
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So whether it's Disney or not, like I'm glad that it's, that audience enjoys it, but I don't feel
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restricted to being at, you know, Disney Prince. I think it's, it's just a storytelling
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like anything. Well, I guess, I guess my look is kind of, it's very kind of uptight, buttoned up
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and I suppose it's really the only one of the, well, not only, but one of the few costumes in the show
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you can actually tell what the period we're in. It takes place in sometimes. in the early 18th century
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So it's, you know, they sort of used me in that way, I guess, that character
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My own, one of my daughters and her daughter are coming to see it in July. I'm already booked tickets, so I guess I'm confident
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Well, I know it's sold out, but you know the director, so you'll get tickets. Oh, honey, I'm never going to worry about that
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I'll call Mother Disney and say, oh, please, Mother Disney, help me, help me
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But I am so proud of every one of those cast members. Richard, they are all fabulous
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And Sherry, Renee Scott, bang on. bang on. Alan Mencken did such a good translation of Ursula from being up on a screen
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to being in the theater. That's different, Richard. You know, in the movie house, the camera
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is the verb and does all the action force. In the theater, the poor actors have to do all
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of that, and she is my... Everybody in the cast is fabulous, but I was, of course, looking out
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for her moves because I wanted to see how she was going to do. She did great. This one longing to be thinner that one wants to get the girl and do I help them
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Yes indeed. Those poor and poor toned souls, so sad, so true, they come flocking to my cauldron, crying spells
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and I'll please, and I help them. Yes, I do. First of all, Pat Carroll and I share the same acupuncturist, so we were able to joke that we both get poked by the same man once a week
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once a week. So we not only share Ursula in common, but we do share that, which is nice
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And you know she said to me something really great that she has children and I have a child and she said don ever forget that what you doing is not only making people feel better it good for families
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And in this time, to have a musical that's good for families, you should be so proud of yourself
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And I said, you know what I am? I feel really strongly that whatever art we send out into the world right now needs to be healing and beautiful and have heart
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And this show does. We're totally connected. And offstage. Yeah. See? Flotsam and Jetson, we are Ursula's minions
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We carry out her bad deeds, is what we do. Yeah. Yeah, and Slyther a lot
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Tell me what the best part of this experience has been with working on this piece and leading up to tonight
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I think working with the creative team and Alan and Francesca, Stephen, Tom Schumacher
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and the cast has been really marvelous. It's been, like I said, nine months, so we've really gotten to know each other as a family
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So, yeah, and the story is beautiful. The story is great. We kind of flesh out our characters a little bit
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or they're a little more prominent in the play as opposed to the movie. So we enjoy, like, creating that and exploring that
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It took a while to prepare for this. It took a while for us to figure out what's going on
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And my involvement has only been since I found out December 23rd, 2006
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But Disney has been working on this for years. So I can't imagine the number of incarnations the show has gone through
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But we started rehearsals May 29th of last year. took it to Denver, had a successful run
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We sold out the entire run. And, you know, the audience plays a very important part in telling the shows
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creators, and the actors, what's working, what's not. So thank God we had an out-of-town tryout
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It changed the life of the show, and it changed the direction of the show
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it changed the intention of the show. And we were able to come back and cut and snip and piece together, make concise
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and what we hope is a wonderful thrilling evening of theater. I see her sitting there across the way
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She don't got a lot to see, but there's something about her
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And you don't know why, but you die in the trial want to kiss a girl
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Right, right. Well, King's right, and obviously the King of the Sea, and he's right
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has to, you know, look over all this, all his creatures underneath. This story is mainly pushing about the father-daughter story and that relationship
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And I've even had a lot of fathers come up to me afterwards and say, you hit it right
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on the head, you hit the nail on the head with not wanting to let them go and protecting
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them and just sometimes even being overprotected. And I think I love that
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I love that. You know, I get to play a king on Broadway. And it doesn't matter what color I am
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And it's like I have seven different daughters of different races, and you see all kinds of races on that stage
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And it doesn't talk about race. But it does talk about race in a way. It talks about tolerance
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So I love that part of it. And I love just showing up to work. And everybody backstage is amazing
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And, you know, we're just getting along so well. I'm so thrilled with Sierra
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She's just filled with unbelievable joy. And when I heard part of your world, I just fell apart
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It was just gorgeous. Really gorgeous. They were a favorite memory. I mean, everybody knows you're the voice of Ariel
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and the wonderful Disney anime. made a film, what was the best part of doing that? Recording that song, you know, with Howard and Allen right there
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and Ron and John and behind the glass, and working on it for seven hours straight
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and just turning off the lights, and Howard telling me how to get in that moment
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It was, it's a moment I'll never forget. And that does come up in my mind when I hear that song
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So it was a glorious night. I'm so thrilled, and I'm very honored and blessed to be a part of it
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Did it really happen tonight? Are we sure that that just happened? This was your favorite movie growing up, and now to sort of recreate her, make her your own Ariel for the stage
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Must be so amazing for all the little girls you're touching now. Yeah, absolutely, because that's all that I thought of tonight, because before I went on stage
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I felt my heart was pounding because I just was so excited, and there was so much anticipation
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and everyone was just feeling this excitement. And then to center myself, I'm like, all I have to do tonight is share
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That's all that I have to do. I have nothing to prove only to share, and I had to just give her to the audience and the world tonight
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It's the best way that I could, so... Just talk about the reaction at the stage door with all the little girls and the people your age that saw this movie
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Absolutely, I get a lot of children, and I get mostly, I get people my age, and even older, who are just like me, who adore this movie, and just they love it
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love it and and that's really cool for me to meet these people that this movie and this character
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especially has touched a lot of people it's really amazing so and the kids are so cute with their
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dress is aerial and they're wide-eyed and just oh it's just it's unbelievable to be working with
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alan mencken someone you totally admire to sing howard ashman's lyrics and now glen slaters
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what's up in life it's been it's been really amazing i actually thought of Howard Ashman, though I had never met him, but I thought of him tonight while I was on stage-thinking part of your world
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and it gave me a sense of calm, because before I sang that song, I'm like, I mean, this is the song for me
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and this is this amazing song, and I really was trying to stay calm and present, and I thought of him
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and I know he was looking down on this show, and Alan especially
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My final question for you is, what is the last thing you do that puts you on track for Air
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when you're getting ready before you go on stage, what's the last thing you do that says she's complete now
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I'm ready to go on? Well, usually once I get my wig on
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it's about five minutes until places. So when my wig goes on
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I'm absolutely transported because it's amazing. I mean, that's Ariel, this hair
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And so once I'm there, then I still have to get dressed
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but I'm already there. So I guess it's my hair. Wouldn't I love to explore that shore of the land
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Oh, does see? Wish I could be there
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part of that world
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