(upbeat pop music)
- Hello everybody, welcome to broadway.com's Live at Five.
It is January 28th, it really is.
- Is it?
- I'm Beth Stevens.
- I'm Paul Wontorek.
- And we're here with Caitlin Moynihan.
- Hello.
- Hey Beth, who's here today?
- Matthew Amendt is here from Dracula and guess what?
He plays Dracula.
- Prince of Dark?
Prince of Darkness?
- We'll find out.
- Sure, sure.
(laughter)
- We know a lot about this.
Yes, yes.
- Cool.
- We will get to him shortly,
but first our top five.
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- It seems like everyday we're getting
closer and closer to seeing "Tick, Tick... Boom!"
And I'm okay with it.
- [Paul] It's stressing me out Caitlin
because I'm so excited to see "Tick, Tick...Boom!"
- [Caitlin] On screen.
- On screen, Lin-Manuel Miranda
is directing a movie version of "Tick, Tick...Boom!"
We talk about it all the time for Netflix.
Lin, get to work, get it done.
Like, can we just see it already?
- Stop watching us Lin and go to work.
- I feel like it's not gonna come out,
"In the Heights" is gonna come out way before,
this is like a year away but it's exciting.
So, we found out some new cast members,
of course I like always reminding people
that Andrew Garfield is playing John a.k.a. Jonathan Larson.
Vanessa Hudgens is Karessa.
Karessa, Karessa, she's gonna sing "Come to your Senses,"
'cause like the character because of her, anyway.
Don't worry about it.
Robin de Jesus is Michael
and Alexandra Shipp is Susan, the girlfriend.
So now, we found out, check this out.
So Josh Henry, three time Tony nominee Josh Henry,
will play Roger.
The show only had three actors in it.
So these are all additional things
and he of course is known for
"Carousel," "Violet," "The Scottsboro Boys,"
Tony nominations for those things.
Judith Light.
- Broadway's got with her.
- Judith Light is playing Rosa Stevens
and she of course won two Tony awards
for some fancy plays.
- But we don't know who Rosa Stevens in the show.
- And made my day last year.
And check this out, Bradley Whitford,
who you probably know from the "West Wing,"
and "Handmaid's Tale," and "Transparent,"
he's playing Stephen Sondheim,
who of course is like a mentor to Jonathan Larson.
- Correct.
- So this is great, just get it done Lin,
just get it done, thank you.
- I love this.
- And the stars are coming out
to Carnegie Hall this season.
- All right, I'm gonna do this rundown for you
because it's a lot of people we love,
and I wanna give them all their due.
So six Broadway favorites have been announced
for the 2020-21 New York Pops season at Carnegie Hall.
- This didn't used to happen.
- It happens now because it's the Broadway people,
so we love them.
- It's so great but I feel like Broadway people
didn't get to always sing at Carnegie Hall years ago,
but it happens so much now, I love it.
- I can tell a joke now, okay, good.
So Norm Lewis, Tony-nominated Norm Lewis,
will open the season on October 16,
singing selections from his vast career.
- Does it say that?
- No, I made that up.
Denee Benton, who we all know from "The Great Comet"
will join Corey Cott and "Hamilton" of course,
and Judith Clurman's Essential Voices USA
for the name of this, the concert is called
"This Land is Made For You and Me."
- Oh I know that song.
- You've heard of it.
On November 13th, 2020, and that of course
will salute the songs that have defined America,
and you can define that any way you want,
so it could be quite interesting.
Laura Osnes, Broadway sweetheart,
will bring in the holiday season.
- Always at Carnegie Hall,
she has like a dressing room there.
She has the gowns, they're all ready.
- She fits in the season.
She will ring in the holiday season
with her concert "Merry and Bright."
- Fun.
- On December 18th and 19th,
together with Essential Voices USA,
she will perform traditional carols,
you know holiday stuff,
and then current "West Side Story" star,
Isaac Powell and Tony winner Ali Stroker
will team up for March 5th,
for the New York Pops Variety Hour.
I mean, I think we're just gonna have to
move into Carnegie Hall.
- They might. - By the time that happens.
- You never know, you never know, good stuff.
- In a crazy turn of events,
we got Fun and Dr. Seuss coming together for a musical.
- [Paul] Yeah, so I'm a big Dr. Seuss fan.
- [Beth] I thought you were gonna say
you're a big Fun fan.
- I'm a big Fun fan
and also big Joe DiPietro fan
so all these things are coming together,
so "If I Ran the Circus" is a new musical
based on the Dr. Seuss book of the same name,
and so Joe DiPietro, who of course won a Tony for "Memphis"
and his new musical "Diana," about the princess,
is starting on Broadway very soon.
He's collaborating with Nate Ruess,
the front man of the Indie group, Fun,
on this new musical.
They did a reading last week, nobody invited us.
(laughter)
Darko Tresnjak, who did "Anastasia."
- And won a Tony for "Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder."
- Thank you, he's directing and what else?
Joe co-wrote the lyrics with pop songwriter, Jeff Bhaske,
who wrote the music with Ruess,
so he's the third member of this team,
and this is a book about a little boy named Morris McGurk.
- Seussy name.
- Who tries to recreate his father's favorite circus
in an attempt to bring his fragmented family back together.
- Oh it's heart warming.
And Andy left with our news editor talked to Joe,
and he said it's not gonna be rhyming couplets,
it's not gonna be like your Seussicals or your Grinches.
- "Seussical," I saw that.
- We saw that but it's not gonna be like that,
it's gonna be a little bit different,
a little bit more mature maybe.
Even though there's an 11 year old at the center of it.
- I think it's gonna make us cry.
- Probably.
- So anyway, next time you do a reading let us know,
and if not, just come right to Broadway.
- Yes, and we're giving you guys the scoop
on what Beth Leavel really thinks about Meryl Streep.
- [Beth] All right we've said this before so Beth Leavel.
- [Paul] That sounds intriguing.
- Tony winner, Beth Leavel is going to be
the star of the new upcoming musical
of "The Devil Wears Prada"
and Meryl Streep has taken on Beth Leavel's
role in "The Prom" film version.
- Yes, which is filming right now,
it's like wrapping soon.
- She's playing Dee Dee Allen,
so we talked to Beth and she said quote,
"If you're going to give your child to someone,
"I think Meryl's probably the best person,"
because she developed that character from the ground up,
so she has a lot of emotional attachment to it,
and she also said, just want to quote her
'cause she's so, I mean come on, it's Beth Leavel,
are we all not Beth Leavel heads?
Leavel fans, Leavel superfans?
She said, "Now Meryl and I are two degrees of separation.
"I do hope I get to meet her.
"If she's in Midtown I would like a cup of tea,
"or if she has to go to the bathroom, please call me."
- So Meryl Streep is in the Times Square area
and has to go the bathroom.
- Call Beth Leavel.
She'll work it out for you.
- I love that.
- That's really helpful.
What a sweet thing to say.
- It is very sweet.
I really appreciate the camaraderie, it's lovely.
- She's a lovely person.
- And happy first performance Jordan Fisher.
- [Paul] Well that's it,
happy first performance Jordan Fisher,
you're now in "Dear Evan Hansen"
and you're playing Evan Hansen, I hope you know your lines,
I'm sure he does, he's a pro,
he won "Dancing with the Stars."
He's at the Musicbox Theater tonight
and of course Andrew Barth Feldman,
ended his run over the weekend and Jordan Fisher
made his Broadway debut in "Hamilton" in 2016.
I first met him on the set of "Grease Live."
I got to drive in a golf cart
with Aaron Teveit and Jordan Fisher, that was fun.
And he was also in "Rent Live"
which was a year ago yesterday, correct?
Year ago yesterday he played Mark Cohen in that.
He's fantastic and a really nice guy.
He's gonna be there for at least 16 weeks,
he starts tonight, break a leg.
Or an arm or that's the thing right?
Wears the cast.
You'll be found.
- You will be found Jordan Fisher.
Also on the site, we have a club boradway.com
with a Les Mis Tour Javert Preston Truman Boyd
♪ Stars ♪
He sings that but a little bit different.
We have a new episode of our phantom vlog face off.
- Which side is it?
It's this side, okay.
- With Ben Crawford and we got
to meet the stars of "Six" the musical.
- How many are there?
Sorry.
- "The Ex Wives Club."
(laughter)
You are so silly today.
- It's been a long day back
and you know what, Dracula's here.
The Prince of Darkness, they call him.
- So thank you Paul.
- I'm out of here.
- Caitlin, please tell us about our guest.
- Gladly, yes guys we got Matt Amendt here today with us.
He is currently, you know, the titular role in "Dracula"
at the Classic Stage Company,
this has been adapted Kate Hamill,
so it's got a really got a lot of fun, new stuff happening.
He made his Broadway debut in "Bernhardt/Hamlet,"
you guys may have seen him on the boards there,
and he's previously been seen on stage in "Hollywood,"
"Much Ado About Nothing," and a lot of other great things.
You guys can follow him on social media @matthewamendt
and leave all of your questions in comments down below.
Please welcome Matt and Beth.
(applause)
- [Beth] Oh, lots of applause today, thank you Caitlin.
- Hey everybody.
- [Beth] Hello, Prince of Darkness.
- Thank you yes, I prefer Lord of the Realm of Hell,
but Prince of Darkness is all right.
- [Beth] There are a lot of options, aren't there?
- It's true, there's so many.
- Now this is not,
look, I'm not that familiar with "Dracula,"
I read it in high school, I've seen some movies,
but there's a whole vampire genre out there in the world,
sort of sparked by "Dracula."
- Did you've a favorite, did you have a favorite vampire?
- I don't personally,
but I'm sure all of you do, I know you do.
But this is a gothic horror novel,
it's written in the Victoria Era by Bram Stoker.
- Yeah, you know what's funny,
I read it again for the first time maybe,
again for the first time,
I think I had peeked through it in high school,
but it's really like the Blair Witch Project
of like Takenz in England sort of,
it's all written in diaries and newspaper articles.
- [Beth] Right, and letters?
- Letters back and forth so it has
this really creepy feeling that you're sort of like.
- [Beth] Spying?
- Spying on the story
that it had just happened that afternoon,
which I found really interesting,
and then Kate Hamill sort of took it
and put her spin on it,
which is such a wonderful.
- Right, so that's what makes this version really different
is they're calling it a feminist revenge story.
So that's not the original at all.
- Yeah they needed some dudes to take revenge on,
and they found me,
and there's lots of revenge being had,
but yeah I think, you know the story's so.
- [Beth] Refresh us about the story, refresh us.
- Well you know, so I'm Dracula living in Transylvania,
deciding that I need to get some fresh blood,
that times are changing a little bit
and I need to move to London,
and I become sort of involved
with a family called the Harker's,
and in the original story,
that's really a kind of really creepy misogynist story
of kind of getting these young women,
and they misbehave with me which kills them.
Kate's put her twist on that and changed all that,
which is the great fun of her work
to figure out how can we kind of reclaim these stories
and take em back a little bit
and still have a really good time.
- Do you wanna tell us a little more about the twist?
- Ooh I think you should
come down and see us at Classic Stage, have a good time.
- Now you're kind of the go-to classic guy,
you've done so much Shakespeare.
- That's very nice of you to say, thank you.
- And you also sort of like to play the title role.
(laughter)
You played Hamlet.
- I have played Hamlet twice, Henry five,
yeah a lot of those guys.
- It's in your contract?
- I do only do title roles, yes.
I won't, yeah, yeah, I'll have nothing but that, thank you.
- But in this version it's modernized,
you're not speaking in, tell me how the language is.
- I mean Kate, the allure for me of the project
was Kate is so brilliant at taking a period piece,
maintaining a sense of period,
and then creating these like incredible
contemporary anachronisms,
and when we're in rehearsal she talks a lot about,
on this project she talked a lot
about "Ghostbusters" the film from the '80s,
where you have this kind of sense of
a kind of humor and a terror in it somehow,
and a balance of those two things
that kind of dry comedy that's mixed with
some genuinely fearful imagery,
and kind of threading this needle
of being scared pleasurably if that makes sense?
- [Beth] I love that.
- That's been great fun to work on,
so yes, ostensibly, we are in
some sort of Victorian England in this play,
but it's filled with very very contemporary jokes
and like most of her work,
a sort of deeply contemporary silliness
with those old stories that
seem so silly, frankly and dated.
- Oh you're really selling this.
Selling us on this because "Ghostbusters," yeah I'm there.
- We're having a great time
and the audiences have been cheering and booing
and hissing.
- And you're biting necks still?
- I'm biting necks, several things.
It's a bloodless "Dracula."
You know I think, one of the,
there's been so many versions of this character,
I can't tell you what my Netflix gear's been like.
- [Beth] Yeah I wanna hear about your research.
- Well, I think everybody has their version,
like for me it was Kiefer Sutherland in "The Lost Boys."
- Oh yeah, that's kind of my era.
- He bit that bald, biker head
in the beginning of that movie.
- That's a bloody version.
- Yeah, very bloody,
and you know there's been some really,
the new Netflix one is great that just came out,
although I was really annoyed that the they
actually found an actor whose last name is Bang,
to play Dracula while I'm playing it,
it's really like "Guys, it's so good,"
I mean his name is Claes Bang.
There's a ton of really great source material to pull from
so the questions is like,
what direction do you go and I think,
in terms of telling a feminist revenge story,
the thing that's most fascinating
about the vampires maybe now is that
maybe that's just something that's in all of us all the time
and are we gonna be able to solve these problems
that we have with misogyny and gender and the patriarch,
are we gonna be able to figure these things out,
or is it just something that we all inherited,
a kind of plague, that's gonna be a problem forever?
My Dracula is kind of representing that.
So it's a little more American Psycho than Monster,
if that makes any sense.
- I love that because you could do dissertations on this,
and there have been many, right?
- Yeah there absolutely have been people
writing epic epic stories about what it means,
the idea of consumption and all of those things.
- Right, sure.
- But we've kind of locked it down to
let's have a good amount of fun, let's bite some people,
let's hiss at them and let's try to leave you
with your partner in the Uber on the way home,
wondering if one of you is a vampire, yeah.
- Oh, intrigued, intrigued.
All right, we're gonna get to your questions in just a sec,
but I wanna hear more about your story,
tell me about where you're from
and when you started performing.
- Well, I grew up in a little town outside Pittsburgh.
My mom was a drama teacher in a little high school,
Jimmy Stewart's hometown actually, Indiana, Pennsylvania.
Very like "It's a Wonderful Life"
I think in its best moments,
and I was the prop baby
in all the local high school productions.
- [Beth] They passed you around.
- They would pass me around, they would set me on objects.
- What's your early work as a baby?
- I think I did a great "The King and I"
as one of 35 children,
I think every child in the borough had to be in that show.
(laughter)
I think I also did a nice
"Changeling in the Midsummer Night's Dream"
which is not actually a character that ever appears,
but they had me handy so I would run across the stage.
- They could've used a blanket but.
- I think they put me in a line cloth or something
and then I would trot it around, I did a lot of that,
and then I started kind of discovered Shakespeare
when I was in my early teens
and really just fell in love with it.
It felt like a kind of secret that I had found,
I sort of found it before you're force fed it in school,
and I just found these crazy stories about
kings and monsters and witches.
- And you understood the language enough?
- Yeah, I mean I think, the thing I love about Shakespeare
is that I don't think anybody ever knew
what the heck he was talking about.
- [Beth] Yeah, we don't know what he's saying.
- I mean if the men invented most of the English language,
nobody ever knew what the heck he was saying,
so I love that about it that
it didn't make a ton of sense sometimes.
- [Beth] And you have the stories shine through.
- Yeah, the stories shine through
and the language is so muscular and powerful and beautiful,
and that took me to University at the Guthrie Theater
in Minneapolis.
- Where you did 12 or so productions?
- Yeah, I did quite a lot of work there,
right around the time they were opening
this beautiful, new theater that they opened,
this three theater complex that they opened there,
and played Nick Carroway in "The Great Gatsby"
to open that theater, which was a great job,
and came to New York doing a production of "Henry V"
that played at the New Vic.
Yeah, which was a great time.
- Lots of Shakespeare,
but now you're a monster.
All right we're gonna take your questions.
- Yes, great.
All right, so first question is Marty wants to know
what has surprised you the most
about this "Dracula" journey for you so far?
- Oh what's interesting you know,
to be a little ticky tacky actor about it,
you know the real thing for a character
is always sort of figuring what they're afraid of.
So when you're playing an immortal monster
that eats all the people around him
and he's really really kind of unassailable,
it becomes a challenge to figure out
like what am I, what am I afraid of
in this moment and in this story,
and that's been really really fun,
it's a secret, I'm not gonna tell you.
- [Beth] I was gonna ask.
(laughter)
- But it's great.
Those characters are so much fun to play,
those weird sort of supernatural huge, huge people,
and how much you can
stretch your imagination to find it, super fun.
- Amazing, all right so, Jack say that
they notice that both "Dracula" and "Frankenstein"
are playing in rep.
So people would like some clarity on what that means.
- [Beth] Yeah what does that mean?
- Well it's a great, Classic Stage
made a great decision for their season,
which is really cool which was to pair these two stories
and try to get at what they might mean for us today.
How can we reinvent both of these sort of iconic monsters?
So there's a wonderful company doing "Frankenstein"
of two actors directed by Timothy Douglas,
who's a really hero of mine,
and our company doing "Frankenstein"
with the amazing Kate Hamill and Sarna Lapine,
who is an incredible director
and Jessica Frances Dukes and Kelly Curran,
and so we're appearing sort of on alternate nights,
we have a little bit of a complicated schedule,
but we're on the same set.
- [Beth] And the set is by John Doyle.
- The set is John Doyle.
- Artistic director.
- Who is a genius,
it's so much fun to be sitting in a room with him.
So you can come, take in one, take in both
and come and spend the day with us,
and sort of see what these great minds are thinking about
what these iconic monsters might mean today.
- Double, double creature feature.
- Double creature feature.
"Monster Squad," my other favorite movie when I was a kid.
- I think we have time for one more question.
- Yeah, all right so one last question,
and a lot of people wanna know,
especially Alec wants to know,
do you have any dream roles that you would like to do?
- Oh my gosh, you know it would've been Dracula probably.
- [Beth] Really?
- Maybe the Mummy, I don't know.
"Creature from the Black Lagoon,"
we can bring them all on.
No, you know I'm having a lot of fun
at this point in my career,
kind of releasing that a little bit.
I mean I've been so lucky to have played
the parts in Shakespeare that I dreamed about
when I was a little nugget in the hills of Pennsylvania,
and so right now it's really a dream
just to be around good people.
I do like the monster stuff, the villains are really fun.
- Is there a Shakespeare villain
you'd like to do in the future?
- Oh you know, I suppose everybody wants to do Iago,
I guess maybe Richard II I still wanna play,
who's a little bit of a devious sort of character,
very heartbreaking but kind of devious.
Iago would be really fun,
I mean there's so many really.
The serial killers were just great,
I have an old friend in the show, Kelly Curran,
who I've know for 12 years,
and I chase her around the stage,
and she looks at me with such terror,
and it's just the dream.
Yes, it's fantastic, poor Mina Harker.
Yeah, it's great.
- All right, well guys,
if that didn't sell you on this "Dracula,"
I don't know what would!
Go to Classic Stage Company to see "Dracula,"
see "Frankenstein," see Matthew Amendt.
- Yeah.
- Amendt, I gotta say your name right.
Let's school the people.
- Amen, with a "T."
- Amen with a "T."
Thank you for coming.
- Thank you guys so much it was a blast.
- Cait will you take us on that please?
- Yes, thank you guys so much for tuning in today.
We are live at five every single weekday here on Facebook
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and hitting that subscribe button.
Be sure to tune in tomorrow,
we talk to Thomas Schumacher of Disney Theatricals
all about his newest edition of his book,
"How Does the Show Go On?"
(upbeat pop music)