← MickeyJoTheatre
MickeyJoTheatre
JOE LOCKE and ARIANA MADIX on Broadway?! | Sweeney Todd and Chicago casting news
00:15:18
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Mickey Jo
Okay, so here I am editing another video while sat on my sofa desperately trying to get through the last two seasons of Stranger Things before I go and see the play. And I get a notification on my phone that makes me fully gasp out loud and run to a camera because apparently tis the season for explosive Broadway casting announcements. Oh my God. Hey, my name is Mickey Jo and welcome back to my theater themed YouTube channel. I am a content creator here on social media. I'm also a professional theatre critic and I see a lot of shows, mostly in London's West End, but I also spent about a month of this previous year on Broadway where I saw maybe like 40 shows over four weeks. And I think between that and the Edinburgh Fringe, I've been working it out and I'm somewhere between 200 and 250 shows for the whole year so far. Now side note, if you want to know how many shows you've seen in London and New York this year, click on the first link in the description of this video and sign up for show scores year in reviews. It's like a Spotify wrapped but for theater. And it gives you fun shareable infographics and data and statistics about the shows you've seen this year, what kind of theatre going choices you made, and if you share it to social media, you also have a chance to win a 365 pound or $365 today Tix gift voucher which as I have pointed out before will buy you a bunch of tickets to West End shows or one fantastic night on Broadway. You could go and see Merrily We Roll along and not be able to take another person. But basically, if like me, you've been lucky enough to see a bunch of shows this year, click on that link and find out exactly how many. But that is not the point of today's video because what I am talking about today is the insane Broadway casting announcements that have come l in the last 48 hours. So first of all, let's go back to yesterday. I made a brief TikTok about this trying to convey how excited I was, but I want to talk about it more because I am still not over it and no one in my immediate sphere here understands how exciting this is. So I actually got sent through the press release for this, which does not always happen, but some Broadway PR agencies do like to talk to me. Here it is. The name on everybody's lips is gonna be Ariana. I am talking about Ariana Maddox, star of Bravo TV's Vanderpump Rules and one of the Key players in last year's scand drama. She is going to be starring as Roxie Hart in Broadway's Chicago at the Ambassador Theatre for eight weeks, a limited eight week run from Monday, January 29. That limited engagement means that she will be playing the role through Sunday, March 24th. So if you're looking to get tickets, those are the dates that she is confirmed to be in the show. Which obviously is not to say that she is guaranteed to be at every performance, but she will probably do her best. She's credited as TV personality, actress and author. And she has literally just been on Dancing with the Stars. Right. I don't know how she did. Let's Google this. Ariana Dancing with the. Is it still happening? Oh, she was third. There you go. She came third. Good for her. Good for you, Ariana. But despite not winning that one, she has bagged herself the lucrative prize of a starring role on Broadway. Okay, so I'm gonna do some Bravo TV background for the theater people who don't necessarily know who Ariana is. And then I'm gonna do some theater background for the Bravo TV people who may be watching this video because you do know who Ariana is and you want to know more about the show that she's going into. So Ariana is one of the personalities from TV's Vanderpump Rules, which is a show about the restaurant by Beverly Hills resident Lisa Vanderpump. It was a spin off of the show the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. It was basically born out of the fact that one of the other personalities on that show, Brandi Glanville, had a run in with a waitress at one of Lisa's restaurants. A waitress who had had an affair with her husband, the actor Eddie Cibrian, who famously is now with Leann Rimes. It's a whole thing. Like, honestly, I could keep going back and back and back and chart the beginnings of all of this with many other TV shows, but Vanderpump Rules. It's all about the servers at this restaurant who are all trying to be actors and models and singers because we're in Beverly Hills. And that's the name of the game, basically. On the show, we see Ariana and Tom Sandoval, years ago falling in love and Tom having an affair that led into their relationship. But then his previous girlfriend became on board with it because she loved them as a couple. The nation or whoever is watching Vanderpump Rules then sees them forging a relationship for a very long time, for like a decade. A relationship that came to a dramatic end when the show's previous season documented the affair that Tom Sandoval had been having with one of Ariana's friends, another personality on the show, Raquel, whose real name is Rachel. As this betrayal blew Ariana's life apart, the entire world rallied around her and she has gone on to have huge opportunities. She was one of the biggest reality stars of the last year. Dancing with the Stars has been a big part of, like, her comeback arc. She's doing the whole, like, best revenge is just to live well thing. She's doing fantastic. And this is another element of that. Playing Roxy in Chicago. Now I know more about the Real Housewives world than I do about the Vanderpump Rules world. I've seen various bits of it. I don't know that much about Ariana outside of the Scandoval drama and this relationship. Does she sing? Has she sung historically? Doesn't matter if she doesn't, because people have gone into Chicago before with very little skill set, with really more of a personality, which seems like a good enough segue to talk about that show. So this is a revival production of Chicago the Musical with a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, which incorporates iconic Bob Fosse choreography. This production began its life as a New York City Centre Encores concert and was then smartly recognized by producers as being viable for an ongoing Broadway production. It subsequently transferred to Broadway where it has continued to run successfully. It benefits from being popular and recognisable to tourists, but they also implement a very smart marketing and casting strategy. Not only do they really understand the aesthet aesthetics that work for them in terms of their marketing, they are selling sexy and sleek and Fosse and dance and something that tourists really understand. They know what it is before they've even bought tickets. They know they're gonna have a nice time. But if that isn't enough, these producers understand the benefit of a star name and not necessarily a star name that's already connected to the theatre world. Because Chicago is kind of one of the most well known shows for what we call stunt casting. This is casting where we are putting someone into the show who is going to sell tickets, who is a draw people are going to go to see that person in the show, but it's not necessarily because of the talent that they will bring to it. There is no exact definition for stunt casting, but my interpretation of it is usually the instances where someone doesn't really have the theatrical background. And they may prove to be very impressive. They may have hidden talents that weren't known about before. But like reality TV stars and sports, people have gone into these roles in Chicago before. Jerry Springer has gone into Chicago before. Like, we could be here for a very long time talking about the various clowns over the years that they have put into this show. In fact, Ariana will not be the first Bravo TV celebrity to go into this show. Right before COVID Erika Jayne from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who had already established herself as a performer and as a dancer and as a singer, she was playing the role of Roxy of this character who is in jail right before she was implicated in a massive lawsuit about defrauding the families of plane crash victims. Her Beverly Hills co star, Lisa Rinna had also previously played Roxxxy in the show. And Roxxxy is not the only role that they stunt cast. We have had many a stunt cast Mama Morton in the show before a Billy Flynn, like, wherever they see the opportunity. Jinkx Monsoon went into this show earlier this year. I actually saw her on Broadway. It was actually the first Broadway show I ever saw. We landed. We went to see Chicago. If you've watched my vlogs, you know this already. And Jinkx is not really stunt casting with a capital S because she has always had the theatrical chops to back it up, which makes the casting of someone like her, who also has a draw to a lot of fans, fantastic casting. Ariana, I would call a stunt. I would. I would characterize this as a stunt, but a stunt that I am excited about. And we've seen other performers go into the role of Roxie Hart and surprise us. I'm ready to be surprised by Ariana's performance here. She's shown that she can dance on Dancing with the Stars. She's done a great job over there. So then the only real question mark, I guess, is about the acting, which it's Chicago, it's kind of paper thin. And the vocal, which does not have to be a huge belty vocal of a thing. That's certainly not what I saw when I last saw the show. So I don't feel like it's the biggest mountain for her to climb. I will say there is a moment in the show within the first 10 minutes while another character, Velma Kelly, is singing a song called all that Jazz, when Ariana as Roxy will have a line, something to the effect of, oh, Fred, nobody walks out on me. And then she will shoot this guy who was her lover. And I just feel like that has the capabilities to get a standing ovation on the back of everything she's been through very publicly in the last year and how huge this was. If you're not a reality TV person, I need to convey to you, this was massive. Like, I didn't really watch the series. This was everywhere. And I became obsessed with it. Like, this was a very big deal. Like, Ariana got invited to the White House Correspondents dinner where they made a joke about Scandoval. That's how big this was. But she is not the only new star arriving on Broadway in January. Because, like, minutes ago, I got the most insane notification on my phone and I'm going to share it with you now. Here it is, the Sweeney Todd Broadway Twitter account, which just earlier this week had shared new artwork of Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster, who will be taking over as SWEENEY Todd and Mrs. Lovett, respectively, on February 9th, a few weeks after current stars Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford are set to leave the roles they today just dropped. He'll send the demons howling deary. The delectable Joe Locke will be playing tobias Ragg beginning January 31st. And in their excitement, they actually misspelled Tobias and they wrote to bass. But now 23.8 thousand people have seen it and so it's too late. I've run Twitter accounts for big companies before. I get it. No shade to you, Sweeney Todd, however. Oh my God. So Joe Locke is joining the show January 31, a little bit before Aaron and Sutton are going to arrive. But I was not expecting this news. Let's talk about it. So Joe Locke is one of the breakout stars of Heartstopper. He, along with Kit Connor and the supporting cast around them, have become huge on the back of this now beloved queer coming of age TV show, which Erin and I recently watched together and became obsessed with. In fact, Aaron ordered all of the volumes of the books after we'd seen the first episode, and the most recent one just arrived today. Now, Joe has done theatre. He was in a show at the Donmar. He won a what's On Stage award last year, and I recently saw him at a press night back in the summer. But I for sure thought Kit Connor was gonna be the first of the two of them to then do a really big theater role. I say this because it feels like Kit Connor has been getting a lot of press and media attention and because I'm hearing rumors that he may be attached to different projects in development. But for now, it is going to be Joe Locke in a musical of all things, on Broadway, of all places. Who is going to be taking to the stage now, in terms of what I think about this casting, I think this is terrific. When this revival opened, it was Gaten Matarazzo. I. He was great. I thought he was robbed of a Tony Award nomination, actually. And by that point, I hadn't seen Stranger Things. I didn't know of Gaten from anywhere. I thought he was excellent in it. In fact, one of my highlights of the production. Now, I do not know if Joe Locke can sing. Do we know that Joe Locke can sing? I know Kit Connor can. He was young Elton John in the Rocket man movie. I don't know if Joe Locke sings. And that does matter to me for this character because it's Sondheim. It is hard to navigate vocally. And you have the beautiful song, one of my favorite Sondheim songs, not While I'm Around. I need for that to sound fantastic. You also have to command a certain amount of vocal confidence to perform. Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? And do Pirelli's Miracle Elixir, all of that stuff. I think the acting is going to be, like, chillingly good. I think he's going to play the youth and the vulnerability and the naivety and the fear as this little, like, urchin. I think he's going to be adorable and heartbreaking. The vocal is really my only lingering question, but I am excited to find out what the answer is. Now, when he starts in the show, he's not going to be opposite Annerley. She's already going to have left because predominantly his biggest relationship on the Stage is with Mrs. Lovett as a character. She becomes a maternal figure to him. They have a beautiful scene in the second act, but it's also not going to be with Sutton. She doesn't start until a little bit afterwards, just over a week later. We are assuming it's going to be with Gina Duvall, who is currently standby for Mrs. Lovett and the Beggar Woman, who you may know as the star of Diana the Musical, who was in London on Monday night seeing Diana the Musical. Same. And they have not officially announced that she is going to be playing Mrs. Lovett for the interim, but I am assuming that that may be the case. There is another understudy as well, and on Broadway they do this a little bit differently, where they do tend to share the role more evenly between the two understudies, whereas there is more of a hierarchical system in the uk, where the first cover will go on and only in the availability of the first cover will the Second cover. Go on. So we can assume that when Joe Locke on January 31st it will be with Gina Duvall. And honestly, my brain is too busy exploding from all of this news to really process it, but I can get behind both of these casting decisions. I'm excited. I am sure you are all excited and I want to hear all of your thoughts. Comment down below. What do we think about Ariana going into Chicago? Let's not be completely precious about it because like it's Chicago, she's not playing Jenna in Waitress. Like everyone's gone into Chicago at this point. It is what it is. And you know, I'm not sure how many casting announcements could have got me interested in Chicago again. And you know what, they know exactly what they're doing because this has definitely got me interested. Then of course, Joe Locke in Sweeney I was already fascinated because of Aaron and Sutton going into the show, but then with him going in as well. Are they hoping to extend the show past its announced sort of current booking period? Because everyone was speculating would it end with Josh and Annley and then they announced Sutton and Aaron, but that it would run through the summer. But now adding in Joe Locke as well, this feels like one of two things. Either they just still want to keep tickets at the price they were at with Josh and Anley and they know they need a certain amount of star power, or they are putting him in to see if the show might have future life beyond the initial two stars. Or secret option number three is the show coming to London and they're giving him the opportunity to go and do it over on Broadway so that he can then prepare to open the show as Tobias over here. That's a complete left field assumption, but stranger things have happened. And speaking of stranger things, I literally need to go and continue watching Stranger Things because I have not enough time before I go and see this play and I have so many episodes left to watch. So I'm going to leave you there. Comment your thoughts down below. I hope you've enjoyed this video and my slightly manic energy today as I attempt to do a million things. Make sure you're subscribed to my theatre themed YouTube channel so you see all of the videos coming very soon, including my Stranger Things review, including more theater news happening worldwide. And I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theater. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.