From left: Jeff Kready, Marika Aubrey and Alex Weisman are stepping as much as the plate at Broadway reveals whereas their trade faces a harsh winter.
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The music man wowed the world lately when he took a second to acknowledge a particular music lady.
Through the curtain name of “The Music Man” on Broadway, star Hugh Jackman introduced Kathy Voytko, standby for his absent co-star Sutton Foster, to the entrance of the stage on the Winter Backyard Theatre and sang her praises. Foster was out with a optimistic COVID-19 check outcome, and Voytko stepped in for the librarian lead on the final minute.
“Kathy, when she turned up for work at 12 o’clock, might have performed any of eight roles,” Jackman mentioned on the preview efficiency. “And at 1 o’clock, she had her very first rehearsal as Marian Paroo.”
He added in a clip that exploded on-line: “The swings [who cover several ensemble roles, or ‘tracks’], the understudies, they're the bedrock of Broadway.”
That’s at all times been true of the grueling year-round stage enterprise, however by no means extra so than proper now. This previous month on Broadway, little slips of paper denoting solid replacements are falling out of Playbills like confetti in Occasions Sq. on New Yr’s Eve.
Understudies, standbys and emergency last-minute fill-ins are the glue protecting Broadway from falling aside through the Omicron surge — performances of “The Music Man” are paused by means of Wednesday after Jackman examined optimistic for COVID-19 final week — and with frequent testing required at Midtown performs and musicals.
Tales like Voytko’s are echoing round Shubert Alley daily. As an example, final Thursday at “The Lion King,” one of many actors who performs Younger Simba stepped as much as assume the position of Younger Nala with a script in hand (though he didn’t want to make use of it).
Swings are tackling roles they by no means thought they'd play, actors who departed reveals years in the past are being introduced again into the fray and solid members from different stagings are being flown to New York at a second’s discover.
Listed below are a few of the hardworking actors protecting Broadway alive this winter.
Marika Aubrey — ‘Come From Away’
Marika Aubrey was unwrapping Christmas presents at residence in New York when she received a name at 9:30 p.m.
It was from Danny Goldstein, the affiliate director of “Come From Away,” the musical wherein the actress performs pilot Beverley Bass on tour.
“He mentioned, ‘Hey? Are you continue to in New York?,’ ” Aubrey, 40, informed The Submit. “And I mentioned, ‘Yeah, I’m right here until the day after tomorrow.’ ”
A happy Goldstein replied: “We want a Bev.”
She arrived on the Schoenfeld Theatre on West forty fifth Road at 11 a.m. the subsequent day, took a COVID check and met a lot of the ensemble she could be performing with that evening for the primary time.
“They didn’t know I used to be coming,” she mentioned. “They’d been sitting there doing the mathematics determining how the present would go forward as a result of they knew they didn’t have a Bev. Then after I walked in, the dance captain went ‘Oh!’ ”
With so many absences, there was a variety of math to do.
“We had 4 standbys that have been in tracks that they by no means do; we had two folks from prior corporations who hadn’t accomplished the present in years who’d simply been rung up just like me throughout their Christmas breaks with their youngsters,” she mentioned. “It was an actual mishmash of people that had by no means labored collectively earlier than.”
With simply hours to go, the wardrobe division dug out no matter costumes they might discover. “This vest suits effectively sufficient!” she recalled somebody saying. By 2 p.m., she made her Broadway debut.
“It felt thrilling,” she mentioned. “Like we have been 16 and needed to preserve the curtain up.”
Aubrey did seven reveals in 4 days, earlier than COVID postponed the manufacturing till Friday. Quickly, she’ll be headed again on the street with the tour.
However, she provides, “It was a pleasant little Christmas current for me.”
Alex Weisman — ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Baby’
5 days earlier than Alex Weisman was set to have his final efficiency in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Baby,” the stage epic that continues the story of J.Ok. Rowling’s books, Broadway shut down on March 12, 2020.
“I had accomplished 800 performances of the two-part play from the primary rehearsal of the unique firm [in 2018] proper up until the shutdown,” Weisman, 34, informed The Submit. “I didn’t get to have my ultimate bow.”
Then, on Dec. 17, Hogwarts rang once more.
“I received a ‘What’s he as much as?’ telephone name,” the actor mentioned. A chat together with his brokers led to him returning to the play as a swing for COVID-related absences 10 days later.
In November, “Cursed Baby” returned in a revised, one-part model, so Weisman needed to adapt.
On video chat with stage supervisor Rachel Sterner and motion captain Chelsey Arce, the actor was crammed in on a flurry of latest entrances and exits, lower scenes and new choreography.
“I discovered that over FaceTime, and after I received to my [in-person] rehearsal, I simply did it,” he mentioned.
Final week, the actor did 5 performances within the ensemble over three days and is on the theater each present day as a standby.
“It was hell on my physique,” he mentioned. “It’s an actual exercise. And it took me till the third efficiency for my adrenaline and coronary heart price to meet up with my mind. I didn’t sleep for like 5 days.”
However, he provides, “as nerve-racking as that is, there's a lovely catharsis for my very own journey to seek out its closure.”
Jeff Kready — ‘Firm’
As Jeff Kready watched his spouse Nikki Renée Daniels onstage as Jenny throughout opening evening of the musical revival “Firm,” he had no concept he’d be becoming a member of her a number of weeks later.
“It was not on my radar in any respect,” Kready, 39, mentioned. “I believed it was a powerful manufacturing, however, in fact, my spouse was the most effective one.”
Every week and a half later, after a efficiency was canceled attributable to a non-COVID sickness, the producers determined to beef up the solid. Kready was requested to be an understudy the subsequent morning.
“My first thought was, ‘No! I might by no means do that job!’ ” Kready mentioned. “Protecting 10 roles in a Sondheim present? That’s an absurd quantity of labor.”
However the alternative to be again on Broadway after a 12 months and a half and do a present together with his spouse for the primary time since they met throughout 2006’s “Les Misérables” proved too tempting to withstand.
He formally begins understudying subsequent week, however is able to be known as to go on at any second.
Within the Sondheim musical with notoriously difficult harmonies and lyrics, Kready has been exhausting at work studying each male position, and he calls it “arms down, essentially the most troublesome job I’ve ever had.” Whereas he's nonetheless absorbing his many components, Daniels is rehearsing to play the lead, Bobbie, in case star Katrina Lenk and others are out.
Rehearsals have been nontraditional. Kready has practiced with the affiliate director from London on Zoom, and had large empty rooms fully to himself when the creatives have been sidelined.
“I’m seeing this as a problem I wish to meet,” he mentioned, “when everyone is killing themselves to deliver Broadway and the humanities again.”
Kready is worked up. There’s one position he hopes to play greater than some other although.
“David, who's my spouse’s onstage husband,” he mentioned. “I believe that the primary time we get to go on collectively and play reverse one another as husband and spouse will probably be a really particular second.”
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