INTERVIEW: Tony winner Beth Leavel has a prom date eight times a week
Photo: The Prom stars Beth Leavel and Michael Potts. The show is now playing on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre. Photo courtesy of Deen van Meer / Provided by Polk and Co. with permission.
Beth Leavel’s performance in this season’s much-lauded musical The Prom is turning all the right heads for possible Tony consideration in the spring. The accomplished actor, who has been gracing Broadway stages in a variety of interesting roles, plays the character of Dee Dee Allen in the comedic musical.
Dee Dee, a character written specifically for Leavel, is a Broadway performer whose ego has been crushed after bad reviews in a musical adaptation of Eleanor Roosevelt’s life. When commiserating with her costar, Barry Glickman (Brooks Ashmanskas), and friends, Trent Oliver (Christopher Sieber) and Angie (Angie Schworer), they have an original idea pop into their collective brains: Why don’t they stage a PR stunt and try to grab some good publicity, and maybe that will heal some of the wounds from the critical drubbing they received.
They search the newspapers and find their charity cause: Emma (Caitlin Kinnunen) has faced discrimination in her small town in Indiana for coming out as a lesbian. The local PTA will not let Emma attend prom with her girlfriend.
Dee Dee, Barry, Angie and Trent — supporters of the LGBTQ community — decide to travel to the heartland of the United States and stage a protest in Emma’s defense. One thing they neglected to find out before taking up this cause: Does Emma want all the attention, and what are their true motivations?
Rounding out the supporting cast are Isabelle McCalla as Emma’s love interest Alyssa Greene, Michael Potts as Dee Dee’s love interest and the local principal, and Courtenay Collins as the close-minded, bigoted head of the PTA and Alyssa’s mother.
Throughout the show, Leavel has to belt many original show tunes, featuring music by Matthew Sklar and lyrics by Chad Beguelin. The book, which offers Leavel plenty of comedic bits, is by Beguelin and Bob Martin. For fans who have tracked Leavel’s Tony-winning career, these names should be familiar (here’s another one: director Casey Nicholaw). They are the creative team behind the successful musical The Drowsy Chaperone, which won Leavel her Tony.
“When I was doing Elf, which was directed by Casey Nicholaw and written by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin, somewhere after that, we were out for dinner,” Leavel said in a recent phone interview. “I said, ‘When are we doing another show together?’ And they had this kind of knowing look behind their eyes. It’s like, ‘Hmm, hopefully soon.’ Well, cut to about five years later. Casey said, ‘Can you come sit around a table and read just this idea that we’re presenting?’ So that was seven years ago, and Brooks Ashmanskas, Chris Sieber, Angie Schworer and I had been attached through all of its developmental processes for about seven years, in all of its forms — labs, workshops, the Alliance Theatre, to another lab, and then opening on Broadway, Nov. 15, during a snowstorm.”
That snowstorm almost ruined the opening-night party. New York City was hit by a freak storm that left motorists stranded for hours on the highways, and travel across bridges was nearly impossible. But, as the old adage goes, the show must go on.
“We had to hold curtain for over an hour because bless our hearts some of the people from New Jersey couldn’t get in,” Leavel said. “My best friend couldn’t make it over the George Washington Bridge, and one of the crew members couldn’t make it. Two of the guys in the pit couldn’t make it, so it was just one heck of a good time that night. But we did it, and the audience waited. They knew what was going on. It just added to the whole celebratory atmosphere of the place. We consider it an omen.”
That omen was a good omen. The reviews for The Prom have been solid. Ditto for sales, and as of now, the musical stands as one of the best reviewed new shows in town, perhaps setting itself up for a run at the Tonys.
Leavel has seen the development of the piece and knew how special the production would be — even from day one she had these inclinations.
“There was something about it from day one, its heart and its comedy, that had such a positive impact every single time,” she said. “But the creators, because they’re so smart, had to figure out how to make it the best story, how to make it the best storytelling, and that took a while. … They literally kept refining and redefining and working it. I like to say, we just throw it up against the wall and see what sticks, and then our audience, our scene partners, tells us what works. So by the time we got to the final lab last January we knew we had something really special, and that all of that work and editing and adjustment and just changing tone had really made a difference. And then when we opened Nov. 15, we felt like we’d really achieved the perfect storytelling, as perfect as one can get in musical comedy-land.”
The show is an interesting combination of laughs and tears. The comedy is definitely there, from start to finish, but Emma’s story can be a sad one. She is an outsider in her school and receives so much unwanted attention, and, at the end of the day, all she wants to be is a teenager who has the chance to take her girlfriend to the prom.
Also, there’s depth to the four Broadway stars who bring their caravan into town. Dee Dee is vain and egotistical, in a funny way, but eventually she needs to correct this character flaw. Potts’ character, who starts out as a fan of her stage work, helps her realize she can become if she cared about others. Barry has a special connection to Emma. He wasn’t allowed to attend his own prom because there was even more discrimination against the gay community when he was in high school.
“The laughs make the heart more accessible because we get to know and care about these people even more deeply, and then the message I think even resonates more,” Leavel said. “And then we can always use a great laugh, you know what I mean. So this show does deliver that, and then it delivers this beautiful message and heart. And it’s original … not based on anything except an idea, based on facts that had been happening around the country, and it took these minds to put together and to add this component of these Broadway divas failing in their careers to go to Indiana. Who thinks of something like that?”
Leavel commands the stage at the Longacre Theatre, where the musical is playing an open-ended run, with tickets on sale through October. From the moment of her first entrance all the way to her resolution, Dee Dee demands to be seen. Leavel is comfortable in the skin of this character, perhaps because Dee Dee was written for the actor.
“She was written for me, which is a little scary,” she said with a laugh. “She was written for my comedy and the way I sing, so apparently I have an evil twin living inside of Beth Leavel some place named Dee Dee Allen. But you just love to hate her. She has one of the best, dare I say, arcs of the entire story. She really discovers some of her humanity and begins that journey thanks to the people in Indiana.”
The messages and themes of the show have struck a chord with the audience, no doubt some of them young and dealing with similar predicaments to Emma, and some of them professionals and considering some of the thoughts of Dee Dee, Barry and company.
“It’s a story that needs to be told apparently frequently, so we’re very proud to do that,” Leavel said. “We just had to be in the work, and it kind of revealed itself how important or how relevant or how affecting it was to us. We live in today’s society. We look at the headlines. We know what’s going on, so it was interesting just to be in this work and to present this information in such an entertaining way, so people maybe will hear something differently or listen differently. … There’s never a bad time for a musical or anything about listening, love and acceptance. I think we do that really well.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Prom, starring Beth Leavel, is now playing the Longacre Theatre in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
