The Reality Thing

If you think the public is anywhere near finished casting pivotal roles in musicals such as the current Broadway revival of Grease or the London production of Monty Python’s Spamalot through telephone and online voting, you’d better think again. In fact, whether it’s the public doing the choosing or producers and casting directors who watch television making the final decisions, the use of reality shows in finding musical theater stars is here to stay. As Bernard Telsey, one of New York’s most influential casting directors, points out: “This whole office watches every episode of American Idol.”

Indeed, former contestants from the blockbuster FOX-TV show have swamped the Broadway landscape recently, from Josh Strickland (Tarzan) to Frenchie Davis and Tamyra Gray (Rent) to Diana DeGarmo (Hairspray). Why? To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it’s the economics, stupid. “Yes, we do try to get people who will help the box office,” says Telsey, who’s thinking of adding a TV-based name into Legally Blonde in the not-too-distant future.

Publicist Richard Kornberg points out that Davis did wonders for the Rent revenues — even though she was primarily a member of the ensemble — and DeGarmo boosted the box office of Hairspray during her stints as Penny Pingleton. “The Hairspray producers were initially surprised at how much money Diana brought in,” he notes. “Frenchie brought a whole new audience — a less yuppified audience — to the show. It was an audience that was at least 20 to 25 percent African-American. And when you put pop-appeal people in pop-appeal shows, you get the best out of it.”

That statement has certainly been proven true since Idol‘s third season winner, Fantasia Barrino, took over the lead role of Celie in The Color Purple in April. Weekly grosses quickly began to return to the million-dollar mark and the box office advance, according to company figures, has doubled. Her spectacular reviews haven’t hurt either — nor have her appearances on Oprah and The Tony Awards, where she got to sing her big 11-o-clock number “I’m Here” to millions of people.

Still, there’s no greater proof of the appeal of this new wave of stars than the almost $15 million advance for Grease, which toplines Max Crumm and Laura Osnes, the winners of NBC’s You’re the One That I Want!, as seemingly mismatched lovebirds Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski. And producer David Ian points out that the tallies in London for his similarly-created Grease revival — where Grease is the Word contestants Danny Bayne and Susan McFadden prevailed over the Danny-Sandy sing-and-dance-off — is fast approaching $16 million.

In fact, musicals with reality television graduates have done so well at West End box offices that the producers of shows that can’t boast such crowned heads are beginning to worry plenty. The effect of reality shows on theatergoing audiences first became apparent when How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? victor Connie Fisher had to have her initial four performances per week schedule in The Sound of Music upped to six and then the full eight shows a week. Ticket buyers only wanted to see her and not Emma Williams, who was sharing lead role duties. Williams eventually withdrew from the production entirely.

However, Ian is quick to remind anyone who asks that the now-entrenched reality-show casting, happened pretty much by accident. Officials at the BBC had approached megaproducer Andrew Lloyd Webber about building a program around casting for his West End Sound of Music revival. What popped up at the meeting — where Ian was present as a co-producer — was the question: “Why not cast the show on the proposed program?”

Lord Lloyd-Webber later became so sold on the casting-by-television idea that he found his new Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat via the British reality series Any Dream Will Do. Once again, audiences have flocked to see the winner, Lee Mead (who has also earned strong reviews). Now, Lloyd-Webber has signed with William Morris to pitch a similar reality show — on which he’d appear as the host — to find a star for a stateside revival of Joseph. “Frankly, the show made theater cool, and that’s something I’d love to do in America,” he has been quoted as saying.

The situation in London has become so acute that Crispin Ollington, who heads marketing for Spamalot now talks about “two divisions” of London shows: the withs and the without. “Shows which feature television contestants are taking amounts of money nobody has ever seen in the West End before,” he says. As a result, he’s come up with West End Story, a nine-week talent search for the next Lady of the Lake. However, the series will only be shown in Sweden, where there’s a London theater-going audience that Ollington and his associates want to court. Depending on how the ploy works out, the Spamalot powers-that-be may inaugurate similar series in other European countries.

Still, no one connected with any of these tuners will declare that box office figures are the sole reason for casting these newbies. For example, Kornberg points out that You’re the One That I Want! second-place finisher Ashley Spencer, who’s now playing Amber von Tussle in Hairspray, won that coveted slot on her merits and not because the producers expect her to rake in the big bucks. Moreover, as Ian says of the four leading players in his Grease productions: “What I think is the best message is that each of the winners were trained to be in musical theater.”

Telsey, who put Idol contestant Anthony Fedorov into The Fantasticks earlier this year, actually sounds awed when he considers the preparation the final 24 American Idol hopefuls undergo. “Having to learn a new song every week — that training is definitely helpful. Anything anyone does to exercise their craft is good. I’d love to give the show half the actors I see.”

Jeremy Cohen, who’s currently directing Davis as gospel legend Mahalia Jackson in Hartford Stage’s Mahalia, is another theater cognoscento impressed by the grounding his star evidences. “I centered on who should do the role, and she seemed like the perfect fit. So I met her, we hung out, and I saw she really connected to the role,” says Cohen. Nevertheless, he adds that “the danger is people will think we cast her just because she was on Idol.”

Perhaps that’s true, and perhaps not. Judy Henderson, the head of Judy Henderson Casting, succinctly summarizes what she believes is the new attitude about television reality show incursions on theater: “I think it’s just another avenue to find actors.”