~Broadway.com February 8th, 2005~
Kevin Anderson Abruptly Leaves Brooklyn for Film Role
by Cara Joy David
Kevin Anderson abruptly left the Broadway musical Brooklyn after the February 6 performance to film the upcoming big screen adaptation of Charlotte’s Web. According to a production spokesperson he will return to the musical on February 19.
Rumors swirled over the weekend that Anderson had left the production for good, amid industry chatter producers were trying to stunt cast the role (with Patrick Swayze among the list of actors who have passed). When contacted Monday, a spokesperson for the show said that, to the best of his knowledge, Anderson was still with the production and was expected onstage Tuesday, February 8 and throughout the week. However, upon checking, he confirmed that Anderson had left, but only for a pre-scheduled vacation, which would end February 19. A representative for the actor told Broadway.com that he would also be filming Charlotte’s Web (which recently began production in Australia) for a good part of March, though he has no official dates off from Brooklyn during that month.
Brooklyn invited Tony voters back to the Plymouth Theatre to see their show anytime before March 20. This means many voters conceivably won’t see Anderson (an original cast member and former Tony nominee, who is eligible to be nominated in the Best Supporting Actor in a Musical category).
Understudy Lee Morgan, who starred in the show’s world premiere at the Denver Civic Theater, will play Taylor Collins while Anderson is away. Brooklyn also stars Eden Espinosa, Cleavant Derricks, Ramona Keller and Karen Olivo.
~Playbill Sept 10th~
Cast Treasures the Creation of Brooklyn, the New Broadway Musical About Searching the Streets for Your Heart
By Morgan Allen
10 Sep 2004
For a time, composer Mark Schoenfeld — a tried and true Brooklynite — lived on the streets of his city. He scraped by singing on the corners of its famous avenues; using what little money his talents collected him to buy food and the necessities of life.
His experiences and musical prowess will soon be on display at the Plymouth Theatre, where the musical he has written with Barri McPherson, Brooklyn the Musical, begins previews Sept. 23.
McPherson and Schoenfeld share far more than the theatre piece they have created with the help of producer-director Jeff Calhoun (Big River) and producer-music supervisor John McDaniel (“The Rosie O’Donnell Show”). The pair worked together briefly years ago when Schoenfeld, after hearing McPherson sing at a Big Band concert in New England, asked her to record one of his songs. They worked in a recording studio for a single day, promising each other they would work together again in the future.
Nine years later as McPherson was on her way to a private party she was to perform at in Brooklyn Heights, the sounds of a street singer caught the wind and, more importantly, her ear. It was Mark Schoenfeld, whose song she had recorded years ago.
McPherson swept Schoenfeld up and brought him to her home and welcomed him into her family. The songs they began writing together during that time, initially intended for McPherson to perform, have become the framework for a new Broadway musical, featuring one of musical theatre’s rising stars, Eden Espinosa, in the role of Brooklyn, a street singer who shares the name of New York City’s hip outer borough.
All who are involved with production, especially the small cast, have strong feelings about the show and its creators.
“I think musical theatre is a lot luckier because we found them, that stuff would have been wasted, I feel honored that we get to sing it,” Karen Olivo told Playbill On-Line at a Sept. 9 open rehearsal for the show.
Olivo is a Rent alumnus who portrays Faith, one of the five street-singer characters that comprise the core of the show. “I think everyone’s going to want them to start writing musicals for them,” the actress said.
The cast also includes Kevin Anderson (Sunset Boulevard, Death of a Salesman), Dreamgirls Tony-winner Cleavant Derricks, and Ramona Keller (Caroline, or Change), with Manoel Felciano, Caren Lyn Manuel, Julie Reiber, Horace V. Rogers, and Haneefah Wood.
Derricks’ journey to the production has been a rapid one.
“Two weeks ago I was in California minding my business when a producer called me and asked me if he could come up and pitch the show,“ the actor said. “I said ‘this is a little strange’, but when he got there he had such enthusiasm and such a love for the show that it struck me. Anybody who has the kind of love this man had, I’ve got to investigate it.”
David Jennings, the actor who first portrayed Street Singer, the role Derricks will create on Broadway, was forced out of the production “due to surgery that required additional recovery time”, according to a press announcement. Jennings played the role in early workshops as well as at a try-out production earlier this year in Denver. Derricks was no stranger to the material, however.
“The first time I heard about this show was five years ago [when] my brother did a workshop in California,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to come back to New York with something, I felt that this is it, the way that everything worked out, this has to be the one, and I cannot tell you, these last two weeks…there’s a lot of dialogue I’ve had to learn, but it’s been some of the best two weeks that I’ve had in a long, long, long time. It’s good to be here.”
The show itself, as described by director Calhoun, asks the audience to join the cast as they create a “sidewalk fairy tale,” whisking you to and from locales such as Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden, all while remaining on a solitary street corner in Brooklyn.
The production’s costume designer, Tobin Ost, revealed that “all materials used to build the costumes had to have a history or at least a legitimacy on the street — most were quite literally taken from gutters, dumpsters, and so on.”
Such practices are somewhat uncommon in the glittering bright lights of Broadway, but that’s just how the cast wants it.
“I take every experience in theatre as learning and I have to say that I just worked with three geniuses: Jeanine Tesori, George Wolfe, and Tony Kushner are geniuses in their own right and I so admired just watching them,” said Ramona Keller, of her recent run in Tesori and Kushner’s Caroline, or Change. “Then to come here to this, it’s not that much different because the genius is just a different type of genius. The things that they have created visually in this show are going to blow people away, to see the things that we’ve done with trash. It’s really going to blow them away. [Caroline and Brooklyn are] two totally different pieces, but at the same time, they’re both art pieces.”
Despite the fact that everyone involved with Brooklyn may be rolling around in some of the city’s finest refuse, their conviction and commitment to the project remains sky high.
“I think that we are very, very spoiled and lucky to be in this working environment,” said Eden Espinosa. “Everyone creatively is the same from the workshop and everyone is really invested in this piece, it’s not just a job they were hired out for. They really believe in it and therefore it comes through in the piece.”
Espinosa enjoyed recent attention due to her powerhouse performance as Idina Menzel’s standby in the hit musical, Wicked. She has been associated with Brooklyn since its first workshop and has contributed to the crafting of her character, who, in one of the show’s sub-plots, comes to the city in search of both fame and the father she never knew.
According to John McDaniel, the show’s producer/music supervisor/arranger/orchestrator, “It’s a very ‘up’ gang. It’s a very fun place. It doesn’t feel like we’re coming to work, it does feel like we come to play. We have such respect for the creativity of everyone and everyone’s creativity is welcome, so it’s been a very positive place to create the show.”
~New York Daily News~
A trek to Broadway by way of ‘Brooklyn’
By ROBERT DOMINGUEZ
DAILY NEWS FEATURE WRITER
In “Brooklyn, the Musical,” starting Broadway previews next week, a down-and-out street singer ends up performing at Madison Square Garden.
Farfetched? Not quite.
It may sound like a old Hollywood rags-to-riches plot, but the show’s storyline mirrors the true-life tale of Mark Schoenfeld.
A little over 13 years ago, Schoenfeld was a homeless street musician performing on Brooklyn street corners and surviving on what passersby tossed into his guitar case.
When “Brooklyn” officially opens Oct. 21 at the Plymouth Theatre, Schoenfeld will be happily perched in one of the best seats in the house. It’s one of the perks that come with being the co-creator, composer and writer.
“Brooklyn” is about a young woman who travels to New York and joins a street-corner singing group while searching for a father she never knew. Eden Espinosa stars as the title character.
“The story is mostly from imagination,” says Schoenfeld, who wrote the music, lyrics and script with Barri McPherson, another Broadway first-timer.
“But the soul and spirit of our experiences did go into the finished product.”
The show’s stranger-than-fiction origins began in 1982, when Schoenfeld, a native New Yorker, was a struggling musician living in New Hampshire.
McPherson was a singer performing with her band at a local club. Schoenfeld liked what he heard and asked her to record one of his songs.
“I loved the stuff he was writing and we spent a few hours together in a little studio,” recalls McPherson. “That was the extent of our knowing each other.”
In 1991, McPherson, now married with children, was in New York for a singing job. While walking down a Brooklyn street, she stopped to listen to a street performer who sounded familiar.
It was Schoenfeld.
McPherson moved the homeless singer in with her family. For the next several years, the duo worked on songs and a script that would evolve into “Brooklyn.”
“I have always felt that from the moment we met, we were guided to this point,” says McPherson. “By what, I don’t know. But a lot of the things we’ve experienced have been out of the ordinary.”
“Especially since we never knew Broadway was in our cards,” adds Schoenfeld. “And now that we’ve experienced working in theater, I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Originally published on September 12, 2004
~Playbill~
Creating “Once Upon a Time”
By Andrew Gans and Morgan Allen
23 Sep 2004
Brooklyn, the new musical by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson about a group of street-corner singers and storytellers, begins performances at Broadway’s Plymouth Theatre Sept. 23.
Directed and choreographed by Big River’s Jeff Calhoun, the musical will officially open Oct. 21. Eden Espinosa, who portrays the title character Brooklyn, is featured in a company that also includes Kevin Anderson, Cleavant Derricks, Ramona Keller and Karen Olivo with Manoel Felciano, Caren Lyn Manuel, Julie Reiber, Horace V. Rogers and Haneefah Wood.
John McDaniel provides music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations, and the remainder of the creative team comprises Ray Klausen (sets), Tobin Ost (costumes), Michael Gilliam (lights), Jonathan Deans and Peter Hylenski (sound). Song titles include “Heart Behind These Hands,” “Christmas Makes Me Cry,” “Not a Sound,” “Brooklyn Grew Up,” “Creating Once Upon a Time,” “Once Upon a Time,” “Superlover,” “Brooklyn in the Blood,” “Magic Man,” “Love Was a Song,” “I Never Knew His Name,” “The Truth,” “Raven,” “Sometimes,” “Love Me Where I Live,” “Love Fell Like Rain” and “Streetsinger.”
Brooklyn, according to production notes, concerns a band of performers, who “tell a wondrous sidewalk fairy tale about a young girl searching for fame and the father she never knew. With just one clue to lead her, she lands in the city that bears her name, Brooklyn.”
The show, in fact, echoes the experiences of composer Mark Schoenfeld, who once lived on the streets of New York. He scraped by singing on the corners of its famous avenues, using what little money his talents collected him to buy food and life’s other necessities. And, he and his collaborator, Barri McPherson, share far more than the theatre piece they have created.
The pair worked together briefly years ago when Schoenfeld, after hearing McPherson sing at a Big Band concert in New England, asked her to record one of his songs. They worked in a recording studio for a single day, promising each other they would work together again in the future.
Nine years later — as McPherson was on her way to a private party she was to perform at in Brooklyn Heights — the sounds of a street singer caught the wind and, more importantly, her ear. It was Mark Schoenfeld, whose song she had recorded years ago.
McPherson swept Schoenfeld up and brought him to her home and welcomed him into her family. The songs they began writing together during that time, initially intended for McPherson to perform, have become the framework for Brooklyn.
The Plymouth Theatre is located at 236 West 45th Street. During previews Brooklyn will play Monday-Saturday evenings at 8 PM, with Saturday matinees at 2 PM. After opening, show times are Tuesdays at 7 PM, Wednesday-Saturday nights at 8 PM, with Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 2 PM, and Sundays at 3 PM. Tickets are priced $25-$95.
~Theatermania 2004~
BROOKLYN'S BOYS
Kevin Anderson is most familiar to Broadway audiences for his work in such hard-hitting dramas as Orpheus Descending and Death of a Salesman, but theatergoers familiar with his entire career won’t be completely surprised that he’s back on the Rialto in Brooklyn The Musical. “I did a lot of musicals early in my career,” says Anderson — “and since I looked liked a kid, I played roles like The Boy in The Fantasticks. I even played a singing JFK in something called One Shining Moment. But once I hooked up with Steppenwolf, musicals kind of fell by the wayside.” (Indeed, his last big musical was the London production of Sunset Boulevard, opposite Patti LuPone.)
Anderson, who plays the heroine's long-lost father in Brooklyn's show-within-the-show, says that he was raring to go on the project as soon as he heard the musical's score more than two years ago. "I was living in Los Angeles and the producers sent me the CD," he says. "I put it on in my car and every song really affected me; this was music I loved listening to. So I called my manager, and I've been with the show ever since the first workshop. I think even audiences who know that I sing won't be familiar with the kind of voice that I get to use here; the music is a little more soulful than most Broadway shows." Happy as he is to sing this score, Anderson is even more thrilled to be working with his fellow castmates: Cleavant Derricks, Eden Espinosa, Ramona Keller, and Karen Olivo. "Pound for pound," he tells me, "this is the most talented cast I've ever worked with."
Unlike Anderson, Derricks only joined the show in the role of the Street Singer a couple of months ago as a last-minute replacement for the ailing David Jennings. Amazingly, Brooklyn marks his first Broadway outing since his Tony-winning turn in Dreamgirls and his first New York appearance since Romance in Hard Times in 1989. As much as he loves his new hometown, Los Angeles, Derricks is thrilled to be back in the Big Apple. “One of the things I love about New York is that you can come back 15 or 20 years later and people remember you and welcome you back,” he says. “I really miss the energy here. But when I left, we had lost so many great people — like Michael Bennett — that it was just too hard to stay.”
With talk of a revival of Dreamgirls on the horizon, would Derricks consider recreating his signature role? “I am through with James Thunder Early,” he says with a chuckle. “I did that part for three years, and it was so physically and vocally demanding. But it’s a good show with a lot of substance and heart. So I hope they do it again.”
