The Cast Of CHASING RAINBOWS: THE ROAD TO OZ Meets The Press!

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

Up next for the famed Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey is the new musical Chasing Rainbows, The Road to Oz

which will run from September 26th through October 27th. It's directed and choreographed by Dennis Jones

and we drop by the rehearsal room to bring you a sneak peek and to meet the company. Building God

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! I can't take responsibility. It was Tina Marie, our conceiving producer, who found her

But you were, I think, 16 years old, and you sang Zing at a..

Musical theater intensive, yeah. Yes, and Tina Marie called me. We were just starting the project, and she said, I found her

And believe it or not, her name is Ruby. Tina Marie loves to tell this, but I always said that I thought, you know

older Judy Garland was kind of scary because she's so raw and so open

It was always kind of like, oh, God. So learning about her early life and seeing where she came from and just like how she became who she was was so eye-opening

And now I just love every part of her so, you know, open-heartedly

Like it's, she's my favorite, favorite movie star, singer, anything. Yeah. You know, this score is the Great American Songbook, but it all sounds brand new with the arrangements and how it's done

What's it like singing this score? Oh my god, I grew up singing jazz and swing music, so this show and getting to sing this music is just my sweet spot

I love every second of it. Meet the beat of my heart Meet the song it rehearsing You gonna meet heaven in person when you meet the beat of my heart What kind of research did you do to play Judy dad You know basically just that And talking with John Fricke who around a lot with us

one of the Judy Garland biographers, and just taking it from there and using their material

and just imagining what that must have been like for the two. Because he was very, very sweet, very complex

You know, I want people to come and see and learn more about him. I don't want to give it all away. But he had a lot of demons, a lot of complexities

but he was so close, so in love with his daughter, and vice versa. So it's really cool. So cool to play that

Was there something specifically that unlocked Mama Come For You? It was tough because at first, you know, the impulse is to go Mama Rose

And she's not that. She's not quite that. But it was being with the kids

It was seeing the small Francis and the small daughters interact with Max, who plays the father

and how different the relationship is. Mama's the performing, the taskmaster, and Mama puts the act together

So it was kind of seeing them interact with him that really kind of unlocked it for me

And seeing the humanity of, you know, she loves this man she's married to

but this marriage is complicated. You made me watch you, and all the time you knew it

You made me happy, sometimes. You made me glad. But there are times, dear, you made me feel so sad

It's wild. I mean, I think people understand, obviously, the icon that she became and, you know, where she went in life

But I don't think as many people, myself included, didn't know where she started and how she became, you know, went from Francis Gumm to Judy Garland

And what I was saying earlier was I feel like what I learned the most is that Judy and Mickey and a lot of these people have a very emotional similarity in that they had kind of rough childhood moments

And they used entertainment to sort of lift themselves out of that. And they bonded together over that

Something that we all go through in our own way. So it's pretty cool. I am jumping out of my skin right now

You can see there's bits of me flying all over the place right now. It really is. It's really a lifetime in the making, this project for me, because I'm old enough to remember when Judy Garland died 50 years ago

It's one of my earliest childhood memories. And I've always associated the idea of somebody dying and going to heaven with going over the rainbow

And that is really the fundamental concept behind the story because it is a story about loss and about Judy relationship with her family and the loss that she experienced So we kind of excavating this Hollywood myth

to be able to examine the real Judy, R-E-A-L, from the real Judy, R-E-E-L

The end of the rainbow is happiness, and to find it I just have to try

All my life is a song, so I can't go wrong If I sing when I want to cry

I'll turn my face into the sunshine The rain will finally pass us by

I'll earn my place and we'll be just fine If stars can shine, then why can't I

Here you are for this glorious production kicking off at Paper Mill

How excited are you? So excited and so grateful to everybody involved

It takes a village to put together a show like this and to really honor the legacy of this amazing icon

And it means so much to me, in addition to all of that, to be taking the show to Paper Mill

with whom I've had a very long relationship with. This is the eighth show that I've done at Paper Mill

I'm very close to the staff there, and it very much feels like a home away from home for me

So to be able to bring this production to Paper Mill is like, I mean, Zing went the strings of my heart

I'm just going to say that right now. Yeah