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See the lights on that Broadway marquee. They call me Vilkomen Bienvenue. Oh my God. Hey, we don't have time. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Mika Jo. I'm obsessed with all things theatre and there is breaking Broadway news re new starry casting for the current Broadway revival of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, AKA the August Wilson Theatre. If you do not know, this is the recent revival of Cabaret that opened earlier this year on on Broadway. Currently starring Tony Award nominees Eddie Redmayne and Gail Rankin, this production transferred from the West End. My mouth is filling with spit. I'm so excited to bring you this news. Oh my goodness. This news literally just broke moments ago and we've been anticipating what the first star replacements would look like on Broadway. Who these names were going to be for a handful of reasons that I will talk about briefly in today's news update video. But I can't wait to tell you who it is that you've already seen in the title of this video but tell you why this is exciting, why we maybe saw this coming and whether or not I think this is a good move for the show, a good move for these individuals and what their performances might be like. Because if you don't know, I have seen this particular production of Cabaret, though not exclusively on Broadway around 10 times now and I've seen about as many emcees and Sally Bowles in my life, both in this production and in different productions. So I have a decent amount of insight into the world of the musical Cabaret and we're going to be talking about that today. So if you enjoy this video, if you want to stay up to date with all the latest Broadway, West End and worldwide theatre news, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on those notifications so you don't miss my upcoming videos. I'm actually out of breath. My goodness. Make sure to turn on those notifications. Go find me on other social media platforms. I am MickyJoTheatre. Let's do this. Okay, so as you have likely already seen, Auli Cravalho, AKA the voice of Disney's Moana, who has also done an enormous amount of things since then, and Adam Lambert of American Idol, best known recently as the new frontman of the band Queen. They are going to be taking over the roles of Sally Bowles and the MC in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway respectively. And they begin. Let me find you the details. Let's have a look at this press release here. They begin on 16th September 2024 all the way through 30th March 2025 with the original stars Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin playing their final performances on 14th September. Between now and then they each have scheduled performances they will not be at because they each since the Tony Awards have had an alternate going on once a week. So if you want to see Eddie and Gale in the roles between now and then, if you haven't had a chance to see them yet, or if you want to see them again and you have seen them already, then check their performance dates to make sure that you can catch them. But I am very excited by this news. I don't think we have any further casting alongside this, any changes to the ensemble or the supporting cast. By all accounts, this is the same thing we see in the West End. It is the MC and Sally which are the starry cast roles and change the most frequently. So this production opened in London a few years ago at the Playhouse theatre in winter 2021 I believe, and it was Eddie Redmayne. This production having been built around Eddie Redmayne alongside Jessie Buckley. I thought they were both fantastic and they both won Olivier Awards for their performances. The production in fact pretty much swept the Olivier Awards and then they were subsequently replaced by Fra Fee and Amy Lennox. And then we've seen a handful of other stars in these roles since, with many frequent replacements. Callum Scott Howells and Madeline Brewer came next. I think I'm probably going to go out of order here. John McC, Trey and Amy Lou Wood was another pairing we had recently Jake Shears and Rebecca Lucy Taylor, AKA Self Esteem. Then we had Luke Treadaway and Cara Delevingne, currently Leighton Williams and Rhea Norwood. I've missed one in the middle there. I probably saw them as well. Oh my gosh. Mason Alexander park and Maude Apatow were also there and apologies if I have forgotten about another one, especially if I saw them on stage, but we have had a great many Sally Bowles and MCs in the West End and the focus of has very much been on these two. The marketing has been built around these two and star names in both of these roles and it seems as though they're going to do the same thing on Broadway, which is smart. Another show, a completely unrelated show in the UK called 222 A Ghost Story, recently maintained its post pandemic presence for a very long time, jumping between a bunch of abruptly vacant theaters and casting a whole host of different unexpected star names from different worlds. And bringing in, you know, different people. Sophia Bush was in one of the casts and Stephanie Beatrice was in one of the cast. Giovanna Fletcher and pop star Lily Allen and Girls Aloud alumnus Cheryl and Tom Felton from Harry Potter. Like they kept bringing in different people. One of the inbetweeners cast came into the show and EastEnders cast member, like they were drawing from all of these different places. And to a lesser extent, that's what Cabaret has been doing. They do seem very focused on TV and film specifically, but then someone with incredible star wattage like Cara Delevingne also being cast in the show. And to give you a little bit of sneaky tea, I have heard some of the names that have been approached for this show and if you're wondering why they don't just bring in huge stars, believe me, almost everyone you could think of for Sally Bowles has been approached. Like the stratospheric star names have been offered this production and the show in London has been doing consistently, very well. It has its own reputation and as this very talked about, very high quality revival, offering a sumptuous, glitzy, slightly immersive pre show experience that's slightly luxurious. It carries a decent ticket price, especially for those front cabaret tables, as it does on Broadway, but for a handful of reasons, when the production transferred to Broadway, it was not met with the same critical response and it isn't necessarily as surefire a hit. Everything on Broadway is also just inherently more expensive than the same production would be in the West End. So the stakes are a little bit higher and the possibility of its success is not quite as guaranteed, especially at this stage, which is why all eyes have been turned toward the replacement casting. It's felt as though this is going to make or break this production because everyone has been excited about Eddie Redmayne and recently there's been a whole conversation about his Tony Awards performance. And I made another video talking about that if you want to go check that one out. I also reviewed the show in New York, if you want to know what I think of it, incidentally. But everyone has been very intrigued to see whether they could bring in names that would reignite enthusiasm for this show and sustain it ongoingly. Is this idea of casting, you know, new stars every few months able to keep this show going in this huge venue? They wouldn't be the only New York based show to do that because Little Shop of Horrors Off Broadway at the west side Theatre does a very similar thing. They bring in Jinkx Monsoon, then they bring in Sarah Hyland. And Andrew Barth Feldman. They are rotating these stars consistently. They bring back Jeremy Jordan, they bring in Darren Criss for a little stint. Again, pulling on people from different fan bases, different worlds. You end up targeting different little pockets of audience members who are suddenly interested in that show. Again, Chicago does a similar thing in terms of the stunt casting that it's been doing for years. Like suddenly it's going to pull in like Real Housewives fans. Suddenly it's going to pull in Bravo fans with Ariana Maddox. Suddenly it's going to pull in Drag Race fans with Jinkx Monsoon. And you know, Cabaret is going to try and do that in a way that doesn't feel quite as. And I'm trying to think of a better word than cheap because Ariana was great in Chicago and so was Jinkx Monsoon. But Chicago will really hire just about anyone. They've hired a lot of non performers in the past. They've had some really great stunt casting choices and they've had some less great stunt casting choices. Cabaret wants to maintain that reputation of quality. They don't want to look like they're bringing in reality TV stars and ex sports people. They are still going to be bringing in performers and everyone they have cast in London. Not necessarily a wealth of musical theatre experience, but they are all to some extent performers. They are all actors on screen or on stage or musicians. So let's talk about Adam Lambert, who is going to be replacing Eddie Redmayne as the mc. Now, in some productions, the MC is less of a focal point in this one because it was built around Eddie Redmayne. This is a very big role and the MC is very important to this production. So this is, you know, a very important piece of casting. However, it's also not Chekhov, it's not Shakespeare, it's not huge monologues and acting sections. And Adam Lambert can act. Adam Lambert has done Broadway before. I think not since his American Idol days, but he was a Fiyero in Wicked back in the day. I've seen the Bootleg on YouTube. It'll probably tell me all of this in the press release. Where's the Adam Lambert section? Lambert is best known as the current frontman of Queen as well as a veteran of American Idol and the North American tour of Wicked. There you go. Also, lest we forget, he was on Glee. And there is an unwritten rule that anyone who was on Glee will automatically do well on Broadway. I'm being facetious, of course, but I do think he's going to do a decent job here. The acting hills to overcome will be the little moments of European accent that he has to do a couple of little spoken sections, but it's not the most careful and nuanced acting. You can go very broad with it and you know the costume is going to do half the work. He wears all of these different elaborate costumes. He gets very sinister, he gets very angry. There's a lot of physicality. I think he's going to do a great job here. It's very theatrical and this is something that we have seen from him before. Vocally, it's going to sound fantastic. And I think the people who didn't or who had a distaste for Eddie Redmayne's vocal interpretation, which I think was a perfectly valid choice of his, are going to be excited to go back and hear Adam Lambert singing it. Because the MC is not a hugely vocally demanding role, but we can assume he's going to make some exciting choices. It's like when Titus Burr just went into Moulin Rouge. That role prior to him you wouldn't think of as vocally thrilling, but Titus made it vocally thrilling. And I am intrigued to hear what Adam Lambert is going to do with the mc. I also say all the time that star casting works well when it ties into a person's brand. And Adam Lambert getting to play this slightly queer coded. And we can debate this back and forth about how much it is in this revival and how much the character is in all appearances. But wearing these elaborate costumes and being this frontman who essentially just does these musical performances within the club setting to an immersive audience, that ties in a lot with his brand as a singer. Right? Doing these big concert shows, doing these stadium tours with Queen. In other words, I think it's going to sell a heck of a lot better than if he were to go and do a play on Broadway, because audience would be like, do I want to go see Adam Lambert do a play? No, you want to hear him sing, you want to see him performing live and in person. I also think that the fact that Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters has done it in the West End, it was sadly One of the MCs that I didn't get the chance to see. But that sort of inspires a lot of confidence for how well Adam Lambert is going to perform in the role. And I also think the conversation around Eddie Redmayne's performance has become such a snake eating its own tail that it will be good for the production in general. As great as Eddie Redmayne was in the role, in my opinion, to get away from all of that and get a fresh mc, then we move on to our Sally Bowles. Now, Sally Bowles, one of the iconic stage roles enduringly associated with Liza Minnelli from the film version, but very different in recent stage outings, both in the well remembered Sam Mendes revival that came before this one on Broadway and at the Donmar Warehouse in the uk, and particularly in this production as well, where the role is a lot more intense and a lot more naive, a lot less likable, still with charm of her own, but evidently selfish and brittle and rough around the edges. And in this role, they have cast an iconic Disney voice performer, Auli'I Cravaillo, AKA the voice of Disney's Moana. Now, for those of you who haven't been following ali'I's career for the past few years, this may come as a surprise and this may sound tonally like a little bit of a shock. However, the road of this career that has been winding up to this point has led to this so perfectly. And this makes such perfect sense. I actually got to speak to someone in Ali's team at the Edinburgh Fringe last year and they had just done Evita in concert in the West End, a couple of performances where Ali I Cravallo played Evita. And I said, with all of the theatrical choices recently, really smart decisions are being made in sort of paving the way gradually for Broadway. And I want to talk about this a little bit more because Ali Ikfayo did Moana and had this fantastic singing voice in Disney's Moana. And it's the kind of a film appearance that makes people go, oh, this person will eventually do Broadway, right? Like, same thing happened with Rachel Zegler when she did west side Story when she played Maria. But rather than rush immediately into a Broadway role, Ali did a little bit of TV stuff and when it came to do theatre, has been perpetrating a very gradual approach and kind of doing a lot of things on the periphery of Broadway because she was in the Kennedy center revival of Sunset Boulevard with Stephanie J. Block, not a Broadway show show, but very much moving in that direction. Then did that Evita concert playing Eva Peron, iconic role in the West End. Not a Broadway show, not a West End show, but still approaching it from that kind of a direction. And then did the Mean Girls movie. Now, this was a film adaptation of the musical version of the show where she played the role of Janice. And this again, like if you took a Disney voice actress from yesteryear and you were to put her into a Mean Girls a few years after having done the Disney film that she'd done, you wouldn't expect Janice to necessarily be the role. Like Cady is much more of an obvious role for a Disney voice performer to go into, or one of the Plastics. Janis is more edgy and rocky and not much like Disney's Moana. And these are all smart choices to diversify the types of roles that she was playing on stage, but also to keep Broadway in the conversation. All of these different appearances make Broadway feel like an inevitability. But she's not rushing to get into that Broadway show. She's going to take her time and wait for the right offer. There was a lot of talk around her possibly doing Hadestown, and I still think that we could see that at some point. But she's landed Sally Bowles in Cabaret and the first replacement on Broadway, which is, I think, a good time because it still has a decent amount of status to be the first one to do it after the opening cast. But it also comes with a little bit less pressure. You don't get all of, you know, the circus of the opening night reviews and the awards season and all of that pressure of, like, oh, well, is she giving as good a performance as the last person who opened the last revival and the person who's doing this show down the street? It's a little bit less pressure for someone who is still making their Broadway debut in a huge role, in an iconic role in a huge show. So I think this is a smart choice. And I didn't get to see Sunset Boulevard at the Kendi center, nor did I get to see Evita in concert in London. But what we saw in the Mean Girls movie makes me very intrigued about her Sally Bowles. And again, we have seen other performers go into this show who are more of a singer than they need to be for the Sally Bowles material and sound great. But this role sort of gives you license to not worry about how pristine the vocals are, especially if you're someone who can sing very well, as we know she can, and has that kind of a pristine, beautiful crystal voice. But this offers the opportunity to really be an actress about it and throw caution to the wind and get a little bit gritty and messy and dirty with it. And I'm very excited to see her do that. I also think that she is going to bring in a tremendous new audience as well. Don't underestimate the popularity of Moana. And when did this film come out like the people who first fell in love with Moana and people are still watching it. Like the statistics around Moana, I think it's really deceptively popular. This came out in 2016. This was eight years ago now. If people were 10, they're now 18. Basically. I think we're going to be surprised by how many people go to see her on stage in New York because, you know, Sunset Boulevard was a limited run. It wasn't hugely talked about. The press around, this is going to be a lot bigger. Her run in the show is also going to coincide with the Release of Moana 2. So this is all lining up very, very well from a PR standpoint. I will add at this point another detail from the press release. If you do want to see these two on stage, they will be maintaining the same seven a week performance schedule as their predecessors. So each of them will will be out for one show a week and the role will be played by one of the show's very talented alternate performers. For those of you who mind less about casting, tickets are very possibly going to be cheaper at those performances because you have to assume the majority of people want to see the two starry principals. Getting my breath back. Where did we get up to? Let's read through the official credits in the press release in case there's anything I missed. How Leo Cravagh voices the title on Disney's Moana and the upcoming Moana 2 and co starred as Janice in the recent Mean Girls musical film. She also appeared in a Vita in concert. I told you all of this. I know what's up. It does tell us here that casting for the roles of Sally bowles in the MC after March 30 will be announced in the new year. But you know, this is a six month stint. Just over six months. It's a decent amount of time for them to be playing the roles you have to assume. Everyone who wants to see them is going to have the opportunity to see them if they can afford to travel to New York to go and see them. We have some statements from the two of them. Adam Lambert said growing up on the musical theatre stage, it was always a childhood dream to perform on Broadway. With this production of Cabaret, it finally felt like the right time to accept an invitation to make my debut. I love that because he's saying, you know what, I've been offered so many shows over the years, but this one finally felt like the right time to accept. Finally I picked up the phone that's always, always ringing. Good for you, Adam Lambert. Good for you. The themes of this show have always resonated with me. And given the current sociopolitical climate. Correct. The world is. Oh, sorry. And given the current sociopolitical climate the world is in. Feel eerily timely. Don't they just. Don't they just. Eddie and Gale have been a dream pairing. How charming. How courteous. And I'm looking forward to working with Ali to create our own magic. It's thrilling to be able to sink my teeth into this important story and collaborate with the rest of the talented artists in the cast and crew. Speaking of his growing up on the musical theatre stage, apparently this is pre American Idol and everything. He was once in a singing competition with Lindsay Mendes and I believe Lindsay Mendes won. That's no shade to Adam Lambert, who is one of the most skilled vocalists on the face of the earth. But there is also only one Lindsey Mendes. I'm thrilled to join the long line of talented women who have taken on the iconic role of Sally Bowles. Most recently the woman I watched with notebook and pen in hand, the dynamite Gail Rankin. I love how respectful they're being to their predecessors in the role. This is so nice. There's no sort of diva ness about it. To join a show with so much history and such a stellar cast and crew means it's quite literally an honour to get my butt kicked each week. And to say there have been so many Sally Bowles over the years. The one most closely associated with Disney was perhaps Susan Egan, who replaced at one point in the last Broadway revival of the show. But I can't think there's been anyone I would call really similar to Auli who's taken on this role and I'm really intrigued to see what she does with it. And I do think, like I was saying before, that it's been a smart choice of hers to wait to make the Broadway debut at the right time. And a lot of them do Shakespeare. Rachel Zegler is doing Shakespeare later this year in Romeo and Juliet. Tom Holland, who has been on the stage before he was Spider man, but in his post, you know, Hollywood career stage return, is doing Romeo and Juliet in London. A lot of them go to the Shakespeare plays. And why? Because it is esteemed serious actor work and musicals are taken a little bit less seriously and they want to still be taken seriously. Good for Ali E Cravalo doing a proper musical, being unashamed to be associated with musical theatre and, you know, getting to land such a big role. This is way better than coming in as a Betty in Sunset Boulevard or Like the eighth replacement in Hadestown. I love Hadestown. I still think she'd be great in it. But this is more high profile for sure. Anyway, those have been my thoughts around this casting. I enjoy this show very much. I don't think it's necessarily been completely understood by the New York critics. And you know, it took me a few watches to really appreciate all of the nuances of it in London, especially that ending that really irked me the first time I saw it. And then as I go back more and more, I see the vision and the whole thing reveals just a little bit more of itself to me. And now having had the privilege of seeing it around 10 times, I do feel like I really understand the ideas that make this cabaret happen. And I want it to have the success that it deserves on Broadway because it represents an enormous creative collaboration between a great many very talented and hard working individuals. And I think this casting is going to be exciting. So if you haven't seen it yet on Broadway, please consider going to see the show. I know it's expensive. If you can find an affordable way to go and see the show, I encourage you to do that. Absolutely. And for what it's worth, I think this casting is going to be very exciting. But as always, I'm so intrigued to hear what you think. Please comment down below with all of your thoughts and feelings about this latest star casting news. Which of these two are you most looking forward to? Do you think they're going to be great in the show? Have you had the chance to see either of them performing before on stage? Let us all know in the comments section down below. And if you enjoyed this video, don't forget to like it. Subscribe to my channel. All those good things. Share it with your friends. In the meantime, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Minky Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey. For watching have a Stagey day. Subscribe.