INTERVIEW: New musical adaptation of ‘Little Women’ set for 54 Below
Photo: Little Women will be presented at 54 Below and feature Jenna Lea Rosen as Jo March. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by press agent with permission.
Little Women, the beloved novel by Louisa May Alcott, continues to be a time-honored tale that modern interpreters love to adapt for audience members around the world. There was the critically acclaimed movie from director Greta Gerwig only a few years ago, and now a new musical of the story has been created by composer Dan Redfeld and co-writers and co-lyricists Christina Harding and John Gabriel Koladziej.
The new musical adaptation of Little Women had a concert reading in Los Angeles earlier this year, and now the songs will travel to the East Coast for an exclusive concert presentation at 54 Below in Midtown Manhattan. The event is scheduled for Monday, April 24.
At the center of the new show is Jenna Lea Rosen, who plays the pivotal character of Jo March, a woman trying to become a renowned writer and “voice for her generation.”
“It’s actually kind of a funny story how it all happened,” Rosen said in a recent phone interview about her joining this project. “Dan Redfeld, the composer, actually saw a review that had been done about me. I was playing Belle in Beauty and the Beast at the time, and he came across a review and was interested in who I was. And then he saw a video of me singing from Beauty and the Beast as well and decided that he wanted to get in touch with me. Basically that night he sent a Facebook message asking if I would do this reading, basically the first reading of Little Women back in August 2021. At first, I actually was planning on being out of town, so I wasn’t going to be able to do it. But then he sent me the music, and I just had to change my plans. I was like, OK, I have to be a part of this. The music was just so spectacular. Kind of the rest is history. That’s how I got involved with the team.”
Rosen counts herself as a fan of the Little Women story, in particular the recent movie by Gerwig. She believes the tale keeps getting remade and retold because Alcott’s original vision still speaks to audiences. Fans of the March family can see themselves in the sisters at the center of the narrative. “Everybody can identify with a character in the story,” she said. “It’s just one of those universally loved stories.”
For her interpretation of the Jo character, Rosen has tried to mesh together who Jo is on the page and who Rosen is in real life. As she examined the character she was set to play, the actor realized that she had a lot of similarities with Jo.
“She knows what she wants, and she does not let anything get in the way of that,” Rosen said. “She’s extremely intelligent, and she has a fierce loyalty to her family. Her family even comes first before her work, and at the time when the character was written, there weren’t many female heroines like Jo. So I think for me I’ve just been doing a lot of research of the different adaptations and just looking deep into myself and thinking what parts of me are similar to Jo.”
Rosen said the score is challenging, but she likes the obstacles that are in front of her. What she has responded to most of all is that Redfeld’s tunes are in the style of the golden age of musical theater, when the orchestras numbered in the dozens and the sound was lush. “He’s also done some really cool things to connect the story to the song,” she said. “Certain melodies or certain motifs you’ll hear in various songs will come back later. It’s a really cool joining of the story and the music, but it’s a challenging score, for sure.”
Rosen said the New York presentation — which also features Miyuki Miyagi, Amanda Drewes, Sara Jean Ford, Kyla Stone, Julia Murney, Bruce Landry, Chris Mann and Sophie Pollono — grew out of the success of the Los Angeles engagement. Bradley Gibson, fresh out of Paper Mill Playhouse’s Hercules, will also star, along with Ann Harada of Avenue Q and Into the Woods.
“It got the team thinking we should do these songs as a presentation and kind of get them out to the public, so that started with a sold-out show at the Knitting Factory in L.A. on March 6,” Rosen said. “We did a song cycle of sorts where we presented the material with a narrator who would talk about the story, and then we would do little bits of dialogue here and there within the song. And then from that a producer at 54 Below wanted to help produce this. … This is my first time performing at 54 Below, so I’m just thrilled to get to sing at that venue.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Little Women, featuring Jenna Lea Rosen, will play Monday, April 24 at 54 Below. Click here for more information and tickets.
