Monday is usually a day of rest for Broadway. But instead of catching up on sleep, this season’s biggest stars were out in force at Variety’s Business of Broadway Breakfast to preview the fall’s buzziest shows.
“I had a really great joke about the name of this breakfast,” said Ethan Slater, who hosted Monday’s event, presented by City National Bank. “I was workshopping it, but it took, like, seven years to develop, and we’re struggling to get the funding. Hopefully next season.”
Slater, the star of “Wicked: For Good” and the upcoming play “Marcel on the Train,” spoke about the close-knit theater community before he introduced the featured conversations, including “Chess” stars Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher; “The Queen of Versailles” actors and creatives Kristin Chenoweth, F. Murray Abraham, Stephen Schwartz, Michael Arden and Lindsey Ferrentino; “Waiting for Godot” leads Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter”; as well as “Ragtime” stars Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz, John Clay III and director Lear DeBessonet.
“What a beautiful thing it is to be a part of a community where people devote their time and energy, whether or not they’re getting paid, to creating art, to creating something that speaks to people,” Slater said. “And thank you, Variety, for giving this community a place to eat without having to pay the bill.”
Here are four takeaways from the artists bringing some of the most exciting theater to New York.
All the Knight Moves
“Chess” star Lea Michele is brushing up on the rules of the game as she prepares to debut the revival that revolves around two grandmasters who clash during the Cold War.
“I’m reading ‘Chess for Dummies.’ I have two kids, so I’m trying to read as much as I can,” she confessed before cracking, “No reading jokes, please,” referencing an internet rumor that falsely claims she’s illiterate. “I have a lot of chess jargon I say throughout the show. I’ll look through the guide and be like, ‘Oh, that’s what that means. But don’t ask me to play chess right now.”
Michele, who is co-starring in the revival with Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher, is taking on another challenge — to make “Chess,” a cult favorite that’s notoriously difficult to adapt, into a mainstream hit.
“Every revival brings a history for better or worse,” she said. “We’ve seen recently revivals come back, like ‘Merrily We Roll Along.’ Sometimes it’s just the right time, right place and right people.”
As she gears up to return to the stage, she won’t be too far from fellow “Glee” actors, Jonathan Groff, who plays Bobby Darin in “Just in Time,” and Darren Criss, who returning to “Maybe Happy Ending.”
“I haven’t been on Broadway at the same time as Jonathan in many years, so we’re very excited,” Michele said. “We’re basically neighbors. Jonathan, Darren and I are on a text chain, so we plan to get together once ‘Chess’ is up and running.”
Bill & Ted, Back for More…?
Samuel Beckett seems far removed from Bill and Ted, the two slacker buddies that made Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter famous, but the deep friendship forged by the duo while making the 1988 comedy “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and its two sequels was helpful in their stage dynamic in “Waiting for Godot.”
“[Director] Jamie [Lloyd] remarked that our friendship, our history together, really suits the play because of the friendship and connection that two characters have,” says Winter.
Asked if they’d revive their buddy act and do a fourth “Bill & Ted” movie once their Broadway run ends in 2026, Reeves emphatically said, “Yes and yes.”
Don’t Judge a Trophy Wife by Her Couture
In “Queen of Versailles,” Kristin Chenoweth had to confront her own preconception in portraying the socialite Jackie Siegel. She met the woman behind America’s most over-the-top McMansion and realized Siegel is more grounded than her Chanel pumps would suggest.
“There’s a dichotomy with her. Did she marry somebody or did she work hard?” Chenoweth said. “This is just an example of who Jackie can be: I was meeting her and she had on a dress. I said, ‘I love your dress.’ That night she sent me the dress and said, ‘I couldn’t find it in your size, but maybe you can alter it.’ That took me off guard. I made an assumption about someone.” While the two have their differences, she adds, “that’s what makes the world go around.”
Composer Stephen Schwartz added that he admired Siegel’s response to having her life dramatized to song and dance.
“Imagine if somebody came to you and said, ‘We’re going make a show about you. It’s going to be your name. A lot of the facts are going be your life, though not all of them. We’re going make some up, but we’re not going tell people which ones we’re making up and which ones are true. And you have no right to approve any of it.’ How many of us would be brave enough to say, ‘Sure, go ahead and do that.’”
History Repeats Itself
“Ragtime” is set in the dawn of the 20th Century, but its searing look at race relations, the immigrant experience, and political polarization isn’t too far off from America today.
“There are some elements that are truthful to this society that we live in today. Sometimes systems can outlive people and democracy has a way, we would hope, of prevailing most of the time,” says John Clay III, who portrays Booker T. Washington in the musical. “But I just would love people to walk out of the theater and just pay attention to certain signs of ‘are we going backwards or are we moving forward?’ And ‘what part are we actually playing in that?’”
First produced on Broadway in 1998, the musical is returning to the stage after three decades amid a period of unprecedented upheaval.
“We’re in a moment of intense fatigue and almost numbness in some ways because of the inability to sustain those operatic feelings at all times,” said the show’s director Lear DeBessonet. “This is a space not just to feel something by yourself, but to actually reconnect to other in a unique space of emotion. I hope that feeds a deep human need that we all have.”
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