The Ensemblist

On May 4, 2020, A Strange Loop made history as the 10th musical ever to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. And not only that, A Strange Loop is both the first musical written by a black artist, Michael R. Jackson, and the first musical without an announced Broadway run to be bestowed with this honor.

A Strange Loop follows a black, queer writer creating an original musical as he faces a host of demons. When it premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in May 2019, it resonated with both audiences and critics alike, making a lasting impression on the New York theatre scene.

Here to discuss his experience as an original cast member of A Strange Loop is John-Michael Lyles. Most recently, John-Michael played the role of Toby in the world premiere of Bliss at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre. He contributed additional music to Second Stage Theatre’s We’re Gonna Die  and has performed Off-Broadway in Sweeney Todd, This Ain’t No Disco, and The Flick, among others. Here’s our conversation…

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Today we bring you three stories of unlikely success in the audition room. Tales of booking the role, of not booking the roles, and somehow stories that are both. First up in a story from Josh Lamon. Host of “Josh Swallows Broadway” on the Broadway Podcast Network, he shares with us the story of his very first New York audition. Next up is a story from Ellyn Marie Marsh about how she almost made her Broadway debut… almost. Finally, here is Syndee Winters, a recent Nala in Broadway’s The Lion King, about when she first auditioned for a role more than a decade ago.

Special thanks to Josh Lamon, Ellyn Marie Marsh and Syndee Winters for sharing their stories with us this week. 

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“The Song” premiered on February 26th, 2013. It was written by Bathsheba Doran, and directed by Michael Morris, whose work we last saw in the season two premiere. The viewership was down a quarter-million from last week, amounting to 3.04 million viewers tuning in on premiere night.

We had five featured songs in this episode, with only one pop cover this week! Yay! That cover was Billy Joel’s “Everybody Loves You Now” sung by Andy Mientus and Jennifer Hudson. The only other non-original song was “I Got Love” from the musical Purlie, featured both in its original arrangement and it’s more Derek Wills-Esque risqué arrangement. Lastly we had three Shaiman/Whitman originals, “I’m Not Lost,” “Chest of Broken Hearts,” and the titular song itself, “I Can’t Let Go.”

Veronica Moore has got love for her new one-night-only concert, but with a song list of her greatest hits, Derek is afraid the showcase is just “another good girl role for Broadway’s Sweetheart.” As if by kismet, Kyle and Jimmy are looking to get noticed by trying out their material somewhere that counts. That place just happens to be Veronica’s concert, when Derek challenges the duo to present him with a new song for her to debut. 

As the concert’s music director, Tom tells Kyle and Jimmy that while their trunk songs are good, they aren’t right for the concert. Kyle says that they’ll write “Something Ronnie and Derek, Broadway and them” in the next 24 hours (the same time it took Sondheim to write “Send in the Clowns.” But then Veronica’s “Momager” threatens to fire Derek for making the concert too adult, he succumbs and tells Kyle and Jimmy that their services are no longer needed. 

One of the concert’s back-up dancers goes MIA as - “and I quote - ‘my boyfriend requested that I no longer work with Derek.’” Ivy Lynn pinch hits as it turns out she was a swing when Veronica was Audrey in Little Shop. And in the biggest surprise of all, Karen is actually OK with working with Ivy. 

Julia feels hoodwinked when Peter the dramaturg invites her to his NYU class, only to have his students critique her Bombshell script. But after confronting him about his games, they end up day drinking on a weekday and cracking the code to fixing her Bombshell script. 

Ivy ends up becoming mother hen to the concert: inspiring both Ronnie and Derek to listen to their guts when it comes to the song list. And that final song list ends up including a new song by Jimmy and Kyle after all: a soaring ballad called “I Can’t Let Go.”

One last coda: Bombshell is freed of its legal troubles and OK’ed to move to Broadway but under one condition: Eileen isn’t allowed to produce it any more. Somehow, that pesky Ellis still ruins everything! 

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It’s time for a moment of levity, friends. And what better way to forget your troubles and get happy than by listening to someone else’s troubles. Today, we bring you stories of auditions: both those that are truly wonderful and truly, truly terrible.

Special thanks to Erica Dorfler, Megan Sikora and Vishal Vaidya for sharing their stories with us this week. 

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Today we have for you a very special episode in honor of The Actors Fund and the livestream of their 2015 concert of Bombshell. 

For those of you who haven’t spent the last six months watching Smash episodes (like we have) this will be your perfect promise for remembering what Bombshell was all about. 

Throughout this episode, we will guide you through the most iconic moments of the Bombshell score along with our thoughts and critiques of each number. Enjoy!

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When a Broadway show closes, we often think about the cast onstage being out of work. But really a Broadway production is an entire ecosystem - often with more than a hundred people working in a variety of positions. One of the performers affected by the closing of Broadway's Frozen in Bronwyn Tarboton. As a vacation swing with the company, she had been performing with the company in a variety of tracks since October. Here's our conversation...

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The Broadway adaptation of Frozen will not reopen at the St. James Theatre when Broadway once again opens its doors post-pandemic. It effectively took its final bow March 11 running for 26 previews and 825 regular performances.

Today, we share some of our favorite conversations about Frozen with original Anna standby Aisha Jackson, music supervisor Stephen Oremus, the original Queen Iduna Ann Sanders and original company member Tracee Beazer. Enjoy...

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“The Dramaturg” premiered on February 19th, 2013. It was written by Larry Shaw, and directed by Bryan Goluboff, both newcomers to Smash as of season 2. The viewership was 3.29 million viewers, which was 1.16 million down from the previous episode two weeks prior.

We saw new material from both of our up-and-coming shows this episode! We were treated to a brand-new song from Bombshell, called “Our Little Secret” written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman, and a preview of a song from currently-unnamed-show-soon-to-be-known-as Hit List, called “Good For You” written by Drew Gasparini. The episode also featured Megan Hilty singing a cover of Robyn’s ”Dancing On My Own,” as well as snippets of The Wiz’s “Soon As I Get Home” sung by Jennifer Hudson, and Katherine McPhee’s mini-rendition of “They Just Keep Moving The Line.”

Eileen demands that Tom and Julia meet with a dramaturg named Peter Gilman to make the quick fixes she thinks the show needs. Tom thinks Peter could be a shepherd for their play, but Julia is afraid dramaturgs are parasites especially when he reads her for focusing on DiMaggio instead of putting the sex appeal into Marilyn herself. 

Derek knows that new musicals take years to develop, but needs something now, something big. So he’s burning the candle from three ends: staging a Bombshell number for producers, scheming with Veronica Moore to get his job back at The Wiz and agreeing to meet Kyle and Jimmy about the plot that goes around their great songs. 

Ivy talks Smash’s real casting director Bernie Telsey into letting her audition for a revival of Liaisons, but feels like she has little chance of booking up again “real names” like Jen Damiano and Jessie Mueller. When she stops by Bombshell rehearsal to ask Derek for advice, she realizes that she needs to start “dancing on her own.” Tom helps her to realize the Liaisons role is more like Marilyn than she imagined, but the boost helps her win the part. 

Inspired or in spite of Peter Gillman, Julia writes a non-PG number for Marilyn and JFK called “Our Little Secret.” It loses Derek a job on The Wiz but Eileen calls it the perfect direction for Bombshell. 

Jimmy is his usual angry-white-man self, seemingly pissed off at every opportunity Karen and Kyle provide him to share their show with the world. When they finally meet, Jimmy describes the story of their show: a young man who hates the world but has a treasure trove of mind blowing music. Stealing his songs to catapult her to fame, a female fling gets addicted to the fame his music provides - and he lets her even though his love will destroy him. Derek is intrigued enough to pound beers with the team, and they begin their work on the new musical...

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“The Fallout” premiered on February 5th, 2013, immediately after the premiere episode. (Aww, remember those two-hour premieres that networks used to do back in the day, Mo?) It was written by Julie Rottenberg & Elisa Zuritsky, whose previous work we saw in the season 1 episodes “Let’s Be Bad” and “The Movie Star,” and was directed by Craig Zisk. Now, here’s a weird thing: viewership for this episode was 4.45 million, down from 4.48 in the previous episode WHICH WAS AN HOUR AGO. I guess 30,000 people collectively turned off their TVs after hour 1?

We had three featured songs in this episode: one cover of the Eurythmics’ “Would I Lie To You?” And two original songs by two different musical theatre composers: the first by then-up-and-comer duo team Pasek & Paul called “Caught in the Storm” sung by Katherine McPhee, and the second by our home team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman called “They Just Keep Moving the Line” sung by Megan Hilty.

Eileen summons her bruised songwriting team to attend the American Theatre Wing gala, but Julia can barely get out the door let alone put on cocktail attire. But Julia heard from Mary Testa who heard from Jackie Hoffman who heard from Cheyenne Jackson who heard from Harvey Fierstein that she and Julia would be presenting at the gala (a lie that Tom made you on the street). 

In addition to Bombshell being put on ice, Derek gets fired from The Wiz - not only because he shagged a couple of actresses but the five dancers are accusing him of sexual harassment. One of them, Daisy, serves Derek the T in front of Schnippers, saying “You don’t get it. You’re a big shot Director. You’re in a position of power from the mind you wake up in the morning and you don’t treat that power with respect.” Derek second guesses his serial seducing in a dream sequence set to the Eurythmics' “Would I Lie To You?”

Ivy is considering leaving the business, as she’s going in for parts that she would have passed on two years ago. But running into a drunken Derek on a stoop, he leaves her with one nugget of wisdom: “You weren’t my Marilyn, but what do I know?”

Karen Cartwright hunts down the young and unknown composing team. Half of the team, a twink named Kyle, is eager to collab with Karen. But while his songwriting partner Jimmy is cute enough to go to Greenpoint for, he is anything but agreeable. Even her attempts to wow Jimmy with an impromptu performance of one of his songs drives him away. Jimmy retorts that he doesn’t need help to make it big, but decides the next day that he’ll give it a go with Karen for Kyle’s sake. 

The American Theatre Wing gala becomes an embarrassment for the Bombshell crew, when Tom gets caught in his lie about presenting and Eileen is asked to leave by the League president. But she decides to leave the industry with a parting shot to remember: an announcement that Bombshell is coming to Broadway this season followed by Ivy Lynn giving a stunning rendition of a never-before-heard tune called “They Just Keep Moving The Line.”

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This week, we share the second half of our conversation with Ruthie Fierberg, Senior Features Editor at Playbill. In the second half of our spirited conversation, we talked about our favorite performance and ensembles of the season. Here’s the second half of our conversation...

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