#hedwig on broadway

[na-page]

2024 ‣‣ Maybe Happy Ending 2024 ‣‣ Little Shop of Horrors 2022 ‣‣ American Buffalo 2015 ‣‣ Hedwig and the Angry Inch 2012 ‣‣ How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

DARREN CRISS - Broadway | Through the years | 2024 ‣‣ 2012

[d-criss-news]

From Hedwig to Helperbot: Darren Criss Looks Back on His Stage Journey

It’s nap time for Darren Criss’s newborn son, Brother, when the Glee star hops on our video chat. The camera’s off, but he quickly turns it on to say hello face-to-face dressed in workout clothes — a green sleeveless top and a ball cap — as he tries to do some chores at the same time.

Criss has a limited window at home as he prepares to star in the new musical Maybe Happy Ending, now playing at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre. The story, with book, music, and lyrics by Will Aronson and Hue Park, takes place 100 years in the future in Seoul, South Korea. Criss plays Oliver, an obsolete Belperbot along the lines of Siri or Google, “except more human-like, who is definitely past his prime and has been just waiting [in a Helperbot retirement facility] for his owner to pick him up,” Criss describes to Broadway Direct of the role. He stars opposite rising star Helen J Shen, who plays Oliver’s retired Helperbot neighbor. “It almost feels like two people in an old-folks’ home trying to connect with a family member.”

The plot sounds dramatic, but “make no mistake: This is a musical. It’s a musical comedy,” says Criss. “It has a lot of heart and a lot of joy and a lot of humor and amazing music, and it’s a hell of a spectacle.”

His friend Michael Arden, who won a Tony Award for his direction of Parade, was a big reason for Criss to sign on to the project — and serve as an executive producer as well. Arden brought the show to Criss’s attention many years ago, and again recently when Criss was starring in Little Shop of Horrors Off-Broadway.

“This had been kind of percolating for a while, and between the pandemic and strikes and just a lot of other things, that really comes down to timing. So the stars just kind of aligned,” Criss says.

Criss, a figure on Broadway for well over a decade, started to gather a following while at University of Michigan as a founding member of Team StarKid, the student-run theater company behind the viral Harry Potter musical parody A Very Potter Musical. His big break came on the hit Fox TV show Glee back in 2010. The show had already aired for a full season before he was cast as Warbler Blaine Anderson and future love interest to Chris Colfer’s Kurt Hummel. If not for Glee, he believes his career would not have had the same trajectory.

“I felt like this was my master’s in performance of music on camera,” Criss says, admitting that, until Glee, he didn’t consider himself a singer — rather, a musician who acted. “I have that show to thank for giving me any headway in the musical-theater space.”

In the middle of filming Glee in 2012, his Broadway debut called. Criss was asked to succeed Daniel Radcliffe in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying for three weeks during a winter break from filming Glee. “I left on, like, a Friday night from my last day of shooting. I started rehearsal on a Saturday. Within 10 days, I was on a Broadway stage. I left my Sunday matinee, got on the plane, and went to work [at Glee] Monday morning as if nothing had happened. So it was a bit of a fever dream. It goes by as quickly as it came, like all other moments in life.”

Three years later, Criss stepped into his next Broadway role. This time, he played Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch for about two and half months, succeeding John Cameron Mitchell. “People always ask me, ‘What’s your dream role?’ I’m like, ‘I kind of did it,’” he says of the opportunity. “Hedwig was a role I always loved so much when I was a teenager, and getting to jump into it was so special to me and my wife. We both love Hedwig so much. It’s a big part of our relationship.”

More recently on Broadway, Criss starred in the play American Buffalo with Laurence Fishburne and Sam Rockwell in 2022 for a three-month limited run. “I completely idolized them,” he says of his scene partners. “I mean, if you see a pattern here, I recommend this to everybody, to just chase their heroes. I’ve just been chasing my heroes my whole life, and I’m not being bashful about it at all.”

Getting Rachel Evan Wood to play Audrey opposite Criss’s Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theatre earlier this year was something that he says was his idea.

“I pitched her pretty hard,” he said of getting casting directors to choose the Westworld actress as his costar. “When they heard her sing, I think it was very clear that this wasn’t like a favor to anybody. She was doing us a favor. The fact that she said yes just blew my mind.” The role of the nerdy floral shop worker wasn’t something Criss thought he’d get the opportunity to add to his résumé “because it just was never something that I thought anybody would let me do. … I wasn’t sprinting to that in the way that I was the other things in my life.”

Criss welcomed Brother, his second baby, this past June with his wife Mia. The timing couldn’t be more coincidental, since their first, Bluesy, was born during his run of American Buffalo.

As our conversation comes to a close, Criss says he kind of got all of his chores done and haphazardly put things away and folded laundry. The next project he wants to pursue is his writing, something he hasn’t tackled much in five years. Until then, he’s reveling in Maybe Happy Ending.

“I do find myself at a loss for words, trying to truly put into words how special this experience has been,” he adds. “I think it really is a thing of beauty that can really add quite a bit of ornamentation in perhaps a grim world.”

[datshitrandom]

Darren Criss | Belasco Theatre Marquee 2015 ⇢ 2024 | 📷 by Walter McBride & Jacob Stuckelman

[rogebug]

in an alternate universe tommy credited her on his album and they went on a world tour together

[axoltex]

:3

[alebanana]

My musicals ranking (from fav to least fav)

Thought it would be fun to get this out of my notes and post this so.... Heres every musical i have ever watched/remmember watching ranked!! (psst i kept the bootleg for most pf these so if you need any im so willing to gift/trade!!)

Legally Blonde

Falsettos

Little Shop of Horrors

Book Of Mormon

Gutenberg!

Into the Woods

Some Like It Hot

Me and My Girl

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Sunday in the Park with George

Newsies

In Trousers

Something Rotten

Spamalot

Ride the Cyclone

Six

Heathers

Hairspray 

Hamilton

Rent

SpongeBob The Musical

Be More Chill

Mary Poppins

Les miserables

Gypsy

Beetlejuice

21 Chump Street

Avenue Q

How to Succeed in Business (without really trying)

Matilda

In the Heights

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Waitress (I hated it so much sorry waitress fans i cant explain it)

Shrek The Musical

So bad its good

POKEMON LIVE

[someprincecalledarthur]

take my uquiz please and thank you

[areinca]

There’s something so eerie yet perfect about the way Lena Hall sings the song Angry Inch

On one hand, unlike to AMAB actors who have played Hedwig, she doesn’t have the experience of having a dick so one could assume it would be harder to imagine it being taken away. But the thing that’s so strange is that there’s something about the way she sings that song that makes it feel like she truly gets Hedwig.

She plays the song with a burning anger rather than the usual choice by Hedwig actors to be making light of the situation (I laugh, because I will cry if I don’t), it’s like she’s tapping into all the frustration of Being A Woman and weaving THAT into the performance instead. That’s just a theory: idk what part of herself tapping into but it’s SO, SO working.

in conclusion lena hall has made it to my top 3 Hedwig portrayals.

[thedeakyamp]

Hey I did the broadway tier list and I’m afraid I’m gonna get crucified about the placement of Hamilton…

ALSO THE BLOODY LOGO COVERS SPRING AWAKENING WHICH IS SO GOOFY

(Also Matilda was lower but I thought since I was in a production of it I couldn’t give it musical hell)

[justasimp4darrencriss]

Knew him from Starkid 💕💕💕

[na-page]

DARREN CRISS - Broadway Opening Night | 2024 ‣‣ 2022 ‣‣ 2015 ‣‣ 2012

[datshitrandom]

Darren Criss | Belasco Theatre Marquee 2015 ⇢ 2024 | 📷 by Walter McBride, Jacob Stuckelman & MHE

[rogebug]

i loved her hair in this scene

[phierecycled]

ok does anyone know if bway actors are allowed to/often keep accessories or costume pieces after shows because a few days back andrew was wearing a beanie outside the stage door that looked exactly like the one he wore in late act two falsettos