SUMMER Comes Early! Meet the Cast and Catch a Sneak Peek of The Donna Summer Musical!

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Disco is back and is coming to Broadway

Summer is the Donna Summer musical about the legendary disco icon. It will open on April 23rd at the L'Infantan Theatre

and we drop by the rehearsal room to bring you a sneak peek and meet the company. I don't think that I can take it

Cause it took so long to bake it And I'll never have that recipe again

Oh, God. You are about to return to Broadway as Donna Summer

What's going through your mind? Oh, my God. I'm so excited. I can't even stand it

But I'm also, I'm not intimidated, but I realize that this is the first time I've really stepped out in this way before

So it does make me nervous. but the Broadway community is my family

It's my home, so I know they've got me, and we're going to have a really good time

I mean, after all, I get to play the disco queen. The three women you have playing Donna

Yeah, well, the whole thing's been about opportunity for great actresses, and LeChanze and Stormlever and Ariana DeBose, The Bullet

It's just great to have the three of them together, and they've had an awful lot to do with the development of this piece

Their talents are really to be celebrated. I learn more about Donna Summer every single rehearsal

because her story, yes, we love her music. Yes, we love what she did for us

She makes us want to dance. But she also was a powerful woman who survived an awful lot

which you'll learn in the story. And you know me, I'm a drama queen. I love the dramatic roles

I love doing things that pull at the heartstrings. And this is a story that definitely gets going

I'll never be alone. My friends are known for all the love you show I want to thank you my friend oh no

You play young Donna, right? I played Duckling Donna, the baby Donna

Tell us, that's during the German years? This is not during the German years. This is even pre-Germany

This is her getting her start in church. This is her being presented with

knowing that I want to sing at a very young age, and her getting asked by her pastor

I don't usually give solos to someone your age, but you are such a talent. Let's see what you got

And her having to make some difficult choices even in that. It started so young when she had to choose this field

and take control of her life even then. The first musical number I worked on was I Feel Love

That's the first one. And the one that I still continue to work on. And then the last one that I worked on is a song called Unconditional Love

from one of her later, later albums. And, you know, that one has a little bit more of a Calypso

sort of Caribbean feeling. So that's, you know, and that one has to do a little bit more with the way

like in terms of how we're using it in the show. And so that one is just, it's taken a while to crack

The other day, I walked out on 46th Street coming out of a meeting

and they were putting the marquee up. And I looked up, and I saw the marquee, and I just started crying

I mean, I think at that moment, the magnitude of what was going on hit me

We've been creating something like in small rooms together, and now the idea that we're just getting more and more ambassadors for it

We've been really trying to mine this really beautiful story about Donna Summer

really trying to give people a glimpse of Donovitt and people didn't know about. We've been, you know, talking to our family, getting to know

It's just become a family affair, honestly. Bruce Sedano has been such a great supporter, and Brooklyn and Mimi

and, you know, we've been meeting all over the place because everyone's just so invested in telling this story of this icon

that we all love and revere so much, you know? So it feels like I feel so blessed to be a part of this truly It been a great experience I mean we have a company that mostly women which is really unusual and fantastic And I worked in the past with Sergio and with Dez

so it's great. What's it like being in the room with Dez and Sergio again

It's old home week, but it's also like an incredibly fine-tuned watch

I mean, a Dez McEnough show is all these complex parts that work together

It's incredible synchronicity. What song did you enjoy the most on working on for this show

Two of them. MacArthur, definitely, and She Works Hard. Des gave me the chance to sort of write a free vocal arrangement behind it

And so I watched what Sergio was doing with dance and paired a vocal arrangement to his moves

I really feel like we came up with something. She works hard for the money

So hard for it, honey She works hard for the money So you better treat her right

She works hard for the money So hard for the money She works hard for the money

You better treat her right So cool, you just had a baby girl

and now you're coming to Broadway in the Donna Summer musical. What's going through your mind

Oh my God, that I'm the luckiest guy in New York right now. I have a beautiful girl and I get to play Donna Summer's husband

I get to play Donna Summer's husband in the musical of her life. I'm the luckiest guy in New York

So what's it like living in the world of this incredible musical and the world of Donna Summer

It's heaven. It really is heaven. I mean, just to be able to play an actual person

who influenced her, who doesn't get, you know, I mean, she's a superstar, and rightly so

but to know what role her father played in her superstardom and in her life personally

is just, it's beautiful to be able to inhabit and to share with audiences

You can't wait. I play Neil Bogart and Gunther. Neil is sort of my main role

He the head of Casablanca Records sort of brought her to New York got her going and Gunther was a painter who was her German abusive boyfriend And she beats me up to enough is enough Just the three of you have you talked together like LaShawns and Storm and you

Have you like sat and said, look what we're doing? Oh, absolutely. We make it our business to stay connected and go to lunch

And I'm like, also, I get to have lunch with LaShawns. So everybody's three

The pinch me moment, right? Yes, it so is. And I was talking to someone the other day and I was like, you know what

LaShawn's opened a lot of doors for girls like me. And now she's my colleague and she's lovely

and has been nothing but supportive of myself and Storm. And we're the luckiest to be able to be on this journey together

and have her helming it with us. What's incredible about sharing the stage with them is not only as beings

are Ariana and LaShawn the warmest, the sweetest, the most supportive. We both get to be such different versions of her

and we're all, we have the same goal is to represent this wonderful woman Donna Summer

and they have been so wonderful with me who's all about like, let's sit down

let's crack up on this book, let's find out who she is and they're right there with me like

we need to go deep. We all know the glitzy version, we all know this fabulous version

let's figure out who this woman is together and they are incredible with that. They both are just amazing

They both really are amazing to work with. They're powerful young women, super talented

and they're playing me at different parts of my life so I'm very proud