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Two years after making his acting debut in the miniseries Once Upon a Time… But Not Anymore, Sebastián Yatra is taking a leap to Broadway, where he will close out 2024 starring in the musical Chicago. The Colombian star will spend four weeks playing the charmingly corrupt lawyer Billy Flynn, from Monday, Nov. 25 to Sunday, Dec. 22.
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“It’s news that I’ve been eager to share for a long time,” Yatra tells Billboard Español on Wednesday (Sep. 4) from Medellín. “This is not only big for me but for Colombia, big for Latinos to keep doing these kinds of things.”
Set in the 1920s, Chicago —the longest-running American musical on Broadway after almost three decades— is a scathing satire of how show business and the media make celebrities out of criminals. With a book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse, music by John Kander and lyrics by Ebb, it includes killer songs like “All That Jazz,” “Cell Block Tango” and “Mr. Cellophane”.
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The role of Billy Flynn — famously played by Richard Gere in the 2002 film adaptation — will receive the Latin treatment from Yatra, who hopes to bring some of his contemporary and tropical flair.
“Latinos have something special even when we are speaking English, there is a lot of love within us, a lot of passion,” says the singer-songwriter, known for No. 1 hits on the Billboard Latin Airplay chart like “Tacones Rojos,” “Un Año” with Reik and “Robarte un Beso” with Carlos Vives. “I think I can offer a perspective from someone who is living in 2024 at almost 30, how he sees that world, also knowing that I could have perfectly been a lawyer and could be that person standing there. Thank God Billy and I don’t share the same values, because that would be messed up!” he adds with a laugh.
Over the years, Chicago has invited various Latin stars to join the musical for brief seasons. The list includes Colombian actress Sofia Vergara, who in 2009 played Matron “Mama” Morton, and Mexican singer and actor Jaime Camil, who in 2016 portrayed Billy Flynn.
Yatra says that he received the invitation to join the cast about six months ago via email, and, although he was very surprised, he did not hesitate to accept this new challenge immediately.
“Many times you get a proposal like this and it’s easy to get scared and say, ‘Oh no, I’m not an actor, better leave it for another time, in a couple of years’. But opportunities come when they come in life and if you don’t dare to take them, you don’t know if they’ll come again,” he says, adding that now, “it’s the right moment” as he is just starting working on his fourth studio album, whose first single, “Los Domingos,” was released last week.
The artist, who said he was fascinated 12 years ago when he saw Ricky Martin performing as Che in the Broadway musical Evita, has already received the endorsement of his Puerto Rican friend and colleague, who commented on Wednesday on Yatra’s Instagram post about his foray into the theater Mecca of New York: “That’s it 🙌 We will be there, little brother. Absolutely. Congratulations.”
Currently preparing remotely, learning his lines and taking acting classes, Yatra is due to arrive in New York City to start in-person rehearsals a month prior to his debut. It’s an experience he is really looking forward to.
“Living in New York in December, with the snow, doing Broadway, is something I really want to live very much in the present, enjoy it, learn from it,” he said. “There are a million things to learn from all these people — the actors, the crew, the directors, the production. It’s impeccable. I was watching the play in New York City recently and it really runs like clockwork, so being able to adjust to become one more piece of that clock is going to be beautiful.”
Chicago is presented at the Ambassador Theatre (219 W. 49th St.) For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.ChicagoTheMusical.com.
When Will Brill got home after winning his first Tony award, he was a little, well….spooked. “I was in bed and somebody texted me like, ‘How are you feeling?’” Brill recalls. “And I was suddenly hit with like, There’s a Tony in this house. It can’t be seen. It is lurking! So weird.”
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A week after winning best featured actor in a play for his performance in Stereophonic, Brill admits it still “feels a little weird.” His portrayal of Reg – the hilarious, endearing, and often frighteningly coke-and-booze-addled bass player in Stereophonic’s fictional 1970s rock band on the verge of mega stardom – made Brill the only cast member from the most-Tony-nominated-ever play to bring home hardware. But on Tony night, Brill made sure to give his full cast its due: in his delightfully off-the-cuff acceptance speech, he asked all his castmates to stand up for an ovation (he also, memorably, thanked his therapist).
Like his fellow Stereophonic cast members, Brill wasn’t an experienced, trained musician before joining the ensemble. But acquiring the skill to convincingly play one onstage (and perform the play’s Tony-nominated score by Will Butler there) was the kind of deep-dive experience Brill has long relished as an actor: His wide-ranging roles have included Dr. Astrov, in the hyper-intimate off-Broadway production of Uncle Vanya that took place in a private New York loft last year, as well as Roy Cohn in Showtime’s miniseries Fellow Travelers, and the peddler Ali Hakim in the 2019 Broadway reimagining of Oklahoma!.
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As Stereophonic continues its run on Broadway through Jan. 5, 2025, Brill spoke to Billboard about adding Reg to that list, as well as about his action-packed Tony night.
Have you started to come to terms with cohabitating with your Tony?Sort of… I mean, people keep like asking, “Where are you going to put it?” I don’t know…. wherever it…looks good? Wherever it fits? Like, I had to put my bike in this one corner because that’s where it fit. I don’t have a lot of art in my house, and now I have this thing I’m like, obligated to display.
You have to put it somewhere unexpected, like the bathroom.
Totally. My idea, which I believe is a step too far, was to put it in the toilet. So it’s really a surprise to anybody who is using the bathroom. I have a buddy who keeps his in the fridge. And I heard that Ian McKellen keeps his many awards on his roof so that they can “rest.” I don’t know what that means, but that’s allegedly what he does.
Before we discuss anything else, I need the story of your ensemble for Tonys night: the pleats, the jewelry… it was a look!
I was working with a stylist, Savannah White, and we had bounced around a lot of ideas of stores and designers and we were largely on the same page: Vivienne Westwood, Thom Browne, Commes des Garcons, and Issey Miyake, who I didn’t really know of until he passed. I just saw an article about him and started Googling him and was really moved by his aesthetic.
So then Savannah came back with the two looks [of Miyake’s] that I wound up wearing. I was like, “Oh my God, this is so unlike anything I’ve seen, and I have to imagine it’s going to be totally unlike what anybody else is going to be wearing.” I wanted to be wearing something that wasn’t following a gender binary, and I feel like Issey’s stuff hangs on any human body beautifully. I felt really lucky that we sort of nailed it. Everything was sort of flowy and weird and off-kilter — and few straight lines except for the pleats themselves. It was really a fun fit.
Will Brill accepts the Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play award for Stereophonic onstage during The 77th Annual Tony Awards at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on June 16, 2024 in New York City.
Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Your speech was iconic, to say the least. When you thanked your therapist, it became one of the most-memed moments of the night. How did you hear about that?
My PR person came up to me and was like, “The internet loved your speech.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s so nice. I just assumed that it was like, either the internet loves your speech or hates your speech — I had no idea that me shouting out my therapist was going to be any kind of a big deal or that shouting out the rest of my cast, for that matter, was going to be a big deal too. But they both sort of showed up everywhere. I got a really sweet text from my therapist that at first was all caps, “HOLY S–T, YOU WON! F–K YEAH!” And then, two minutes later, “Oh my God Will, this is so sweet,” which really made me happy.
You also gave a shoutout to your bass teacher. What was the process of learning the instrument like for you? You really get the physicality and personality of a bass player down, as well as the technical aspects, which seems uniquely challenging.
It was really important for me to look authentic. I had experience learning an instrument for a [project] before — I learned to play 12 songs on the guitar for this David Chase film Not Fade Away, and that’s actually where I met Robbie Mangano, who was in The Grandmothers of Invention and is an astonishing guitar and bass player. He taught me and Jack Huston how to play guitar for the movie.
But it was a different thing; we really just needed to look like we were playing the songs, which were pre-recorded by essentially the E Street Band. We didn’t actually have to play for sound, we just had to look like we knew what we were doing, and there were all sorts of ways to cut around the fact that we didn’t know what we were doing.
So for this show, I called Robbie to help me learn the bass. But Robbie was also weirdly at the intersection of my life where I started to think about sobriety, which is like another huge part of Reg. I got really drunk at a show of Robbie’s, and he wrote me this two-page letter, where he was like, “I’ve seen too many talented people not have the life that they should because they got caught up with drugs and alcohol, and I really believe in you and I count you as a friend and I hope that that would not be something that happened to you.”
At the time I couldn’t hear it, and I actually wound up not talking to him for several years because I was so embarrassed. Years and years later, I got a divorce and then I got sober and then [Stereophonic] came back around. So by the time I called Robbie to start learning the bass again, I was two years sober and got to tell him that he was a big part of that. And he wound up saying to me, “Wow, that’s crazy. I am recently sober too.” It was really crazy and moving. So he’s been a very special touchstone in my life.
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Great bass players especially seem to have this innate comfort in your own skin. Was that natural for you to achieve or more of a journey?
It was a journey, for sure. But what was cool was, when I was a little kid, I thought I was going to be a magician. I would practice card tricks alone in my room for literally 12 hours a day. I didn’t pursue magic because it was too scary to perform in front of people these things that required incredible dexterity. But when I started learning the bass, it triggered this long dormant part of my brain, which was like the joy of doing something dexterous 1000 times alone in your bedroom and losing sleep over it and trying to perfect this one thing and getting closer and closer. So I really felt like I was practicing magic again.
You and your castmates opened for Will Butler at his own actual album release show just a few weeks after previews for Stereophonic started. What was that like?
It was insane. A lot of people took videos with their phones and sent them to me afterward, and I was so embarrassed at how stiff and terrible I was that I was like, “Okay, you don’t have to just get good at the bass, you have to look amazing, you have to be able to dance and play the bass at the same time.” It still never feels like it’s easy, but it’s cool to have audiences come now and say that it looks like it’s easy, because that’s sort of the goal.
From left: Tom Pecinka, Will Brill and Sarah Pidgeon in Stereophonic.
Julieta Cervantes
Were there particular bass players who were models for your portrayal of Reg?
I definitely watched videos of John McVie playing. Will Butler is the only frontman I can think of off the top of my head who also plays bass, and he is so dance-y in his shows — he’s so free, he’s a true wild man on stage, and he was really a big source of inspiration.
I went to see Muna recently, and the band that opened for them [Nova Twins], it was these two British girls playing kind of hardcore music and dressed up sort of like punk-style Raggedy Ann. The bassist would jump around and run around the stage, and I remember thinking like, “I want to get close to that and I want to have that freedom of movement.” Other than that, learning the instrument was so hard and learning the play was so hard that there was not really a lot of room outside your imagination to do extra research.
This seems like such a lightning in a bottle kind of experience for all of you. Has it in any fundamental ways changed what you want from the work you do going forward?
Yeah, for sure — but I think every role I play, to a certain extent, is a reassessment of what I want to do going forward. The ultimate thing that I love about performing and exploring characters is exploring the different the levels of myself that I don’t know completely or understand and by extrapolation exploring the human condition more and more deeply.
I was just talking about this in therapy today, actually. Like, I’m constantly straddling a line: Am I doing justice to myself and the role that I’m playing by putting in an amount of effort that actually does meaningful excavation for myself and for the people coming? Or should I be resting a little bit more, and can the process be easier and more joyful?
I would say the peddler in Oklahoma! was a more joyful than difficult experience for me; probably A Case For The Existence of God was too and probably Fellow Travelers was a little more joyful than it was difficult. And then Uncle Vanya and this have both really ridden on the cusp of joy and difficulty. They have been the most challenging experiences of my life, but also deeply, deeply gratifying.
Devonté Hynes is well-known as a musical collaborator, songwriter and producer who’s worked with a diverse and ever-expanding group of artists (Solange, Mariah Carey, Harry Styles and Carly Rae Jepsen, to name a few) and a composer for film, television, dance and classical ensembles. Now, Billboard can exclusively reveal that the artist also known as […]
In a community of multitaskers, Shaina Taub is still most likely one of the busiest people on Broadway. Taub wrote the music, lyrics and book for Suffs, her musical bringing the women who fomented the women’s suffrage movement vividly back to life and firmly out of the history books to which they’ve long been relegated; she’s also one of the show’s stars, playing the central role of movement instigator Alice Paul.
At last week’s Tony Awards, Taub took home the prizes for both original score and book of a musical, and gave a moving televised speech calling out some of the pioneering women who paved the way for her – including both fellow composers and one of her lead producers, Sec. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Shaina Taub as Alice Paul in Suffs.
Joan Marcus
Sitting in her dressing room a little over an hour from showtime on a recent night, the 35-year old Taub is clearly still absorbing her wins, though she admits that the ongoing routine of performing onstage each night has helped keep her grounded. “To have the tangible act of doing the show,” she says, “brings me back to reality in a beautiful way.” (The show’s original Broadway cast recording is currently out on Atlantic Records).
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Below, she speaks to Billboard about Suffs’ long road to Broadway (including its run at New York’s Public Theater in spring of 2022), the status of her next project – writing the lyrics for Elton John’s music in the The Devil Wears Prada musical (set to open at London’s Dominion theater in July prior to a West End transfer in October) – and more.
The world of theater often feels like a more progressive one than TV or film — but as you pointed out in your acceptance speech it’s still a fairly small group of women composers who are getting recognition of this level. What’s been your experience?
I’ve been so blessed to have been taught well for so long by so many brilliant women. Elizabeth Swados — who’s a legend of theater, composer, educator — I got to be in her class [at NYU], and she was the first person who pushed me off the cliff to write a song before that was something I thought I could even do. And Jeanine [Tesori] especially is just a titan of composing in our field for any gender. She’s been so generous — she just let me come and play crappy first drafts, and gave me essential devastating feedback, tough love and real-talk in moments when I’ve had questions about the business and about the craft. Georgia Stitt too, who put together Maestra, which is such an amazing community for women and non-binary folks making theater. Kristen Anderson-Lopez has been so kind.
A lot has been made this season of me being the second woman to write and star in a musical but the first one is Micki Grant, an incredible artist I sadly never got to meet whose legacy should be given a lot more attention. We’ve always been here, and so many women are my peers on Broadway right now: Rebekah Greer Melocik is a good friend, and her work for How to Dance in Ohio was so gorgeous; Kate Kerrigan with The Great Gatsby, she and I have come up together; Bekah [Brunstetter] and Ingrid [Michaelson] for The Notebook. Anais Mitchell – whose Hadestown I was in off-Broadway — we’re both Vermont girls and she’s such a confidante. Everyone is just so forthcoming; it’s a real sisterhood.
You clearly did work on Suffs between the Public and Broadway runs. How did you come to terms with what needed editing? Was there a moment between the runs of reset for you?
There really wasn’t a lot of a moment of reset. There was no back in the saddle – we kinda stayed in the saddle. I had demos of new ideas for songs from May 2022 that are now in the show on Broadway. I knew that it wasn’t finished, and there’s just that intel you get from a first production that you can’t get in a workshop or reading because the audience tells you everything and they tell you fast. It took a lot of willpower to keep going; I’m so proud of what we did downtown, and we had so much love for the show and also a lot of critique of the show. There were times that got me down, but any sense of feeling down pretty quickly transformed into almost this adrenaline, this sense of being underestimated that put me on fire to be like, we’re gonna finish this show, dammit!
From left: Jenn Colella, Kim Blanck, Shaina Taub, Nikki M James and Ally Bonino at Suffs‘ first preview performance.
Jenny Anderson / @jennyandersonphoto
What kind of changes did you know you had to make?
There were two driving principles to my revision. More humanity, less history: just making sure everything was as character- and emotion-forward as possible, with all the historical detail I fell in love with taking a bit more of a backseat. And then I kind of made a promise to myself that I was gonna spend more time sitting at the piano than the computer, trying to let my impulses be visceral, let me pull from my musical heart first and see where that would lead.
Did you always intend to perform in Suffs?
I always wanted to perform in it. I’ve always performed in my work — I find writing and performing feed each other. But I initially thought I’d play Doris, the young intern type character who documents everything. It sort of felt like the Mark in Rent character and I’ve always wanted to play Mark in a gender-flipped Rent. [Laughs.] But Alice was a difficult nut to crack, finding her inner life. She didn’t leave that much of a paper trail in terms of her emotional life.
And it was also about finding Alice’s sense of humor. I got a great note from our orchestrator, Michael Starobin, who came to see me play at Joe’s Pub early last year and was like, “I wish there as more of that girl in Alice – that self-deprecation and humor.” It was such a great note, and I think it helped me make her come alive.
What has Sec. Clinton been like as a producer?
She’s just been such a cheerleader and a warm, supportive presence — how vocal she’s been in her support of us before reviews, nominations, awards, just her vote of confidence in us and that we could see through this thing we started at the Public, that gave me faith in the dark and hard moments of tech and previews and the “Oh boy, we’re gonna go face the music again [on Broadway], what are people gonna say…” Knowing she believed in us so wholeheartedly that she was willing to attach her name and her legacy to this piece of art, that gave me confidence I needed in really vulnerable moments.
Suffs producers Rachel Sussman, Sec. Clinton, and Jill Furman, and co-producer Morgan Steward.
Jenny Anderson / @jennyandersonphoto
Can we please discuss her amazing Tony night caftan? It was definitely one of the biggest stories of the night…
I loved it. She looked gorgeous as always, and she seemed to me to be so liberated. And to see her be so celebrated by the theater community with that standing ovation — it was great to see her given her due. She’s a theater lover, and beyond just being an enthusiast I think she understands the importance of theater to the public discourse. She gets that it matters beyond just entertainment; it’s a public common good that should be funded, that should be championed, and that’s rare in a leader of her stature. New York theater loves HRC!
Have you been juggling Devil Wears Prada work with all this too? Are there lessons you’ve learned in the editing process for Suffs that you’re finding are applicable there?
I mean, that’s another long and winding road — we’re going through a lot of changes, and it’s exciting. I was actually just texting with the creative team right now! I’ve been working on that show for six years, it’s gone through so many permutations, and yet we keep trying to figure it out. It’s such a fundamentally different experience [from Suffs] in that I’m collaborating so much, writing lyrics for a composer who’s worked lyrics-first for his whole 50-plus-years songwriting career. That’s really strengthened me as a songwriter, to write lyrics first and lyrics only. It’s gotten me excited for my projects after this to be a little more in the music seat, after this lyric-honing time.
It’s crazy with theater, you can never plan these things in advance. I never imagined it would be this insane overlapping season, but luckily we got to do a lot of amazing work last year. Elton and I wrote a few new songs, so it’s on its way.
When Aaron Tveit meets fans at a Broadway stage door, or at the concerts he’s performed at rock clubs and symphony halls alike, it’s always a surprise where they know the actor from.
They might have seen him in his career-making role in the acclaimed modern musical Next to Normal, or perhaps from his more recent Tony-winning turn in Moulin Rouge! They might remember him as Nate’s hot cousin Tripp van der Bilt on the original Gossip Girl, or as a hilarious send-up of numerous musical theater hero tropes on the late, great Apple TV+ comedy Schmigadoon! Or maybe they recall his scene-stealing turn as Enjolras, leading “Do You Hear the People Sing?” in the feature film of Les Misèrables.
Sufficed to say, Tveit has range – as he most recently proved when he replaced Josh Groban in the acclaimed Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece Sweeney Todd, playing the Demon Barber of Fleet Street opposite Sutton Foster’s Mrs. Lovett (the two just co-hosted the Drama Desk Awards together). Now, he’s moving to a smaller but no less prestigious stage as he kicks off his first Café Carlyle residency in New York City. The run of shows at the storied cabaret venue was extended practically as soon as it was announced (running through June 29). Prior to its kick-off Tuesday night (June 11), Tveit spoke to Billboard about his bucket-list Sondheim roles, the possible future of Schmigadoon!, and why his Carlyle audiences could hear a little Taylor Swift in his set.
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The degree of deafening audience screaming for both you and Sutton the night I went to see Sweeney was truly at boy-band hysteria levels. What was your experience on the other end of that?
Honestly, it was fascinating and very unexpected. I went back to Moulin Rouge! for 12 weeks about a year ago, and there were similar responses at that time, and I thought it was a product of that show and how it encourages the audience to be kind of participatory. But I really did not expect that type of audience to carry over at Sweeney. When it started, we looked around and said, “Well, this will go away,” but it didn’t. A lot of younger people seeing Sweeney take in Broadway shows in a different way – they like to feel like they’re a part of it and they get excited. But the thing we took away from it that I think was the most amazing was: What would Steve Sondheim think, to hear his material being appreciated and taken in in that way by a very young audience? I think a similar thing is happening at Merrily [We Roll Along, also on Broadway now], and I just felt so thrilled to be a small part of his material being taken in by this new audience.
When you were first announced for Sweeney, there was a lot of chatter about the idea of a tenor playing the role (which is traditionally sung by a baritone or bass-baritone). When you were offered the role, was it an immediate yes for you?
It was a role I’ve always looked at and said, “Wow, if I ever get the chance, I’ll jump at the challenge and also be terrified.” And when they did call, I was very surprised … and immediately terrified and excited. For me, vocally, I knew it would be a challenge – it’s definitely a different type of vocal part than I’ve traditionally done. But I started my training in classical voice before I switched to theater; I was confident that with enough work I could [do it], and I’m proud of where it landed.
And the little bit of backlash, if you want to call it that, I understand there are a lot of tenor roles in musical theater and I think for people who aren’t tenors, they might have thought [the role] would be changed in some way, but I tried to keep everything as is. That show is such an acting piece, to me, and I felt it more as a play, so once I realized I could do the singing, everything I was concerned about was acting the show.
Aaron Tveit during his first curtain call in Sweeney Todd on Broadway at The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Feb. 9, 2024 in New York City.
Bruce Glikas/WireImage
You’ve done some bucket-list Sondheim roles now, including Bobby in Company, Booth in Assassins and Sweeney. What’s next on your wish list?
The big one I’d love to do still is Sunday in the Park With George — I’d really love to play George. That vocal part may fit me better on paper than this one did, but I think it’s equally such a complicated and wonderful story. I bow down to Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette [Peters, the original stars of the show] – she came to see Sweeney toward the end, which was really special for me. I also sometimes feel like I missed Tony in West Side Story in my professional life, and now maybe I’ve aged out, but that’s OK.
You can also be very funny, as we saw on Schmigadoon! What stood out about that experience for you?
When the first season of Schmigadoon! came up, I got to live out my Billy Bigelow [from Carousel] dreams as well as a bit of Annie Get Your Gun … and those are very traditional musical theater roles, which is not something I’ve gotten to do a lot of. I’d never done a revival at that point or a traditional musical, so I was very excited to jump in. We all felt so grateful to be part of that first season – it was 2020, Broadway was still a year out from being back. And then we got to go back [for season 2], and Cinco [Paul, the show’s composer] played “Doorway to Where” for me and I was like, “Oh, that’s ‘Corner of the Sky.’” And he was like, “Yeah, this season you’re gonna be a weird version of Pippin and Claude [from Hair] and Jesus from Godspell and Jesus and Judas from [Jesus Christ] Superstar.” And I thought well, I’ve not played any of those roles either!
The thing that was so fun was the tongue-in-cheek nature of it — but at the same time, we were never making fun of the musicals because we all love them so much. My friends know I’m a very silly person, so it was nice to bring a lot of aspects of myself to the work in a way I don’t ever get to.
It’s so tragic that it’s over!
We’ll see. I know Cinco has hopes; season 3 is completely written, so someone could pick it up. It’s available!
Aaron Tveit in Schmigadoon!
Courtesy of Apple TV+
Your upcoming shows at the Café Carlyle mark your debut there. How did you conceive of the setlist?
I’ve done a lot of concerts in the last 10 or so years, and I have running lists of the shows I’ve done, and a note in my Notes app of running lists of dream songs, and I’m always sending myself emails about songs I hear. But for this, it just feels very fancy, you know? [Laughs] I talked abut that a lot with my music director: how could we do our version of fancy? I’ve done pop-rock cover shows at lots of House of Blues across the country and Irving Plaza and Webster Hall, and a lot of more traditional cabaret sets, and the venue usually dictates the setlist. So it’s like, “OK, what does the Carlyle say to me?”
I immediately thought “old New York,” standards, jazz – but also, New York is my theater world and career, more contemporary and traditional musical theater. So the show seems to have three sections. I try to not take myself seriously, but I take the music seriously.
You’re a big pop fan too. Who are you listening to right now?
I’m very into Billie Eilish the last couple years. The songwriting she and her brother are doing is just incredible. Hozier is a really inspirational artist for me; he keeps having moments because the music he makes is just incredible and clearly meaningful to him. Same thing with Noah Kahan — I’ve listened to him a lot, and his songs are clearly really personal as well. This young guy Sam Fender is a great guitar player and songwriter and vocalist. And then there are the things I’m just always listening to, like Bon Iver and Donny Hathaway.
Years ago, you were very well known for covering Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” at your more pop-rock concerts. I have to ask if it’ll be part of the set – or if any other Taylor might be…
On New Year’s last year, I did a concert with a bit of a medley, and “Anti-Hero” made it in. We have our setlist, but I have an idea to have a rotating song that changes every night or couple nights, a slot for something. … I’d be remiss to say one of those wouldn’t slot in.
That’s a very Eras Tour move for you.
Exactly! I’m just taking cues from the greats.
Will Butler’s first meeting with playwright David Adjmi was fairly open-ended: a friend had told Butler that Adjmi — a fan of Arcade Fire, the band Butler was in at the time — was working on a play about a band and that Butler could “write the music or just consult or whatever.”
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But from their first sit-down at a diner near New York’s theatre district, Adjmi’s vision was “instantly recognizable” to Butler: “Like, oh, it’s a demo — it’s like a transcendental thing that they can never recapture. You have things falling apart because the headphones sound bad, you have people yelling at each other over music but it’s because of how their dad treated them,” he recalls with a laugh.
A decade after Butler first sent his song demos to Adjmi, their collaboration, Stereophonic, is the most Tony-nominated production not just of 2024, but of all time. A true musical-play hybrid, Stereophonic immerses the audience in a fictional band’s recording process in 1976, as they make the pivotal album that will launch them to superstardom. Snippets of takes along with stunning full songs punctuate the band’s alternately hilarious and gutting drama in and outside the booth, playing out over around three intimate hours. Incredibly, the actors who sing and play their own instruments as a very credible rock band onstage were at best proficient before Stereophonic rehearsals began.
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Will Butler
Nina Westervelt
Though the fictional band and narrative have drawn comparisons to Fleetwood Mac and its storied process of making its classic 1977 Rumours album, Stereophonic (which was just extended through January 5, 2025 at the Golden Theatre) never feels like a retread of rock history. That’s a testament to Adjmi’s writing and the cast’s talent and chemistry — but also in large part to Butler’s songs, which blend a genuine ‘70s rock sound with his own unique sensibility into songs that sound like anything but pastiche. (The original cast album, including songs both in the show and heard only partially in it, is out now on Sony Masterworks Broadway.)
Butler, who parted ways with Arcade Fire in late 2021 and now performs in Will Butler + Sister Squares, is himself up for two Tony Awards on June 16 — for best original score and best orchestrations — and is finding fertile new creative ground (and demand for his composing skills) in the theater world. He spoke to Billboard about the singular “jigsaw puzzle” of Stereophonic and creating a believable band onstage.
Did David give you any specific guidelines for what he wanted the music in Stereophonic to be like — or did you have total free rein to write some songs and see how they turned out?
Total free rein. And then once the script existed, it was like… a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with 200 pieces missing [Laughs], and figuring out fitting those pieces in. There were a number of songs, like this one on the album called “In Your Arms,” that David really loved and that felt like the band, but didn’t make sense in any of the scenes. We’re showing these moments of music — and they all have to have a purpose, they all have to emerge from the characters at the right time and in the right way, and it still has to feel a little bit mystical.
The cast of Stereophonic
Julieta Cervantes
Your music is so evocative of great bands of the ‘70s yet never feels like it’s copying that style; it really feels timeless. How did you arrive at that kind of balance?
I mean, I kind of lucked into not really knowing the great rock and great pop groups of that period of the ‘70s. Like, I just didn’t really know Tom Petty besides the hits, I didn’t really know Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, early Bruce Springsteen — I didn’t really know all these touchstones for David. But I knew the stuff around it and I knew where it was leading. Like, Bruce Springsteen wasn’t listening to Bruce Springsteen; Bruce Springsteen grew up listening to ‘50s groups and then in the ‘70s he was going to Suicide shows in like, tiny basement clubs in New York. And I was like, “Oh, well, I know ‘50s girl groups, and I know Wall of Sound and I know Suicide. So instead of copying Bruce Springsteen, why don’t I just pretend like I’m Bruce Springsteen, and listen to Suicide, and listen to girl groups and like, see what happens?” [Laughs.]
That’s crazy! “Masquerade” especially feels like it could be a perfect Fleetwood Mac song…
I get it, because there’s this speed up in the second half, but I was kind of just ripping off an Arcade Fire move. Like, I thought people were gonna call me out for ripping off Arcade Fire.
Even with the direct influences being so loose, were there certain sonic elements that you wanted all the songs to share?
I knew I wanted really tight, beautiful harmonies, especially for [singer] Diana and [singer and guitarist] Peter. When you hear two people in harmony you’re like, “Oh, this is why they’re together, this is why this is compelling.” And then when you add a third voice to it you realize why they’re a band just intrinsically. There’s so many different kinds of ‘70s harmony — there’s the Eagles, The Byrds, Richard and Linda Hamilton, Fleetwood Mac — but they all have this beautiful harmony, particularly if you’re in California [where Stereophonic takes place]. And then Peter is a guitar player, so there had to be some guitar riffs in the show.
Will Butler (center) in the studio during the recording of Stereophonic‘s original cast recording.
Andy Henderson
How involved were you in the casting process?
I was there for the whole ride. And wow, I truly hated being behind the table and judging them — what a horrible thing for a musician to do. We wanted to cast people that were expert musicians and amazing actors and were right for the roles, but I was very cavalier about the musician aspect — where I was like, anyone can be in a band, we don’t need technical wizards, they just need to be musical and have some sort of charisma and it’ll work out. We did know we needed a drummer, we knew we couldn’t teach drums in a short amount of time. But everyone else we just wanted to have a baseline [level of ability]. They needed to have the right personality, to be able to learn music, and they needed to be able to dance a little bit. And it was a little heavier lift than I thought, but in the end my naïve self was right.Another part of it is that [actors] Tom [Pecinka] and Juliana [Canfield] and Sarah [Pidgeon] are just such beautiful singers — they sang so well together day one, like unmannered, beautiful, idiosyncratic and they blended perfectly. That was incredibly moving. When they were just running through the songs, there was such deep emotion there that I was like, okay, we’ll be fine.
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In theater, it can be so obvious when someone is fake-playing an instrument — and these actors aren’t just proficient players, they totally embody what someone playing their instrument would be like. What was it like to witness them evolving like that?It was really wild. Sarah Pidgeon, who doesn’t play an instrument — I mean, she plays a tambourine, she plays it great — but even standing at a microphone took her about eight weeks to feel. It was really interesting to watch someone learn how to stand at a microphone in a way that just feels natural. It feels like she’s supposed to be there and supposed to be singing. Tom Pecinka didn’t have a ton of guitar, but when he first put on a guitar in the audition room, I was like, “Oh, I actually can’t tell if he’s a good guitar player or a bad guitar player.” He looks the part, and his physicality was so natural.
A lot of it is also really great directing, the building of the band and the orchestrations. We spent a lot of time in practice rooms, me and Justin Craig, the music director, building a vibe as much as anything else. I had [the cast] open for a show of mine in the fall, and I think the physicality of playing one club show kind of gave them a sense of how powerful they were.
We hear many little snippets of songs before we hear full versions, and we don’t hear full versions of all of them. How did you and David decide how that would play out?
Honestly, we didn’t talk about it that much, because it just felt so naturally right to both of us. It just felt to me like the process of making a record — someone plays a demo off a cassette, and you go work on it, and things fall apart, and finally you start to lose your mind and you’re cutting things that are good, and then you’re dong the final details and everyone’s losing their minds. The arc of the play honestly just felt so accurate to my life.
Some songs in the show, like “Bright,” we hear multiple different versions of as they’re being worked on. How did that writing process — creating partial songs — work?
The hard thing is just writing a really good song. When I was working on Everything Now with Arcade Fire, Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk was producing it, and he’s like a philosopher. He was saying how a great song can support infinite cover versions; like, a truly great song, the production is not the thing. And there’s nothing wrong with the production being the thing — but if it’s a great song, you can produce it 1000 different ways and you can have 100 different cover versions, and they all speak in some sense. So I was like, “Okay, I’ve just got to write this song, and if it’s good enough, then we can do it 100 different ways and it’ll be compelling.”
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Having had this experience, are you interested in doing more theater work?
Yeah, me and David Adjmi are working on a more traditional musical, or I guess more of a rock opera or something. It’s early days, but it would be silly for us not to do something else — and I think it’d be really fun to make it. And I’m good friends with Lucas Hnath, who is such a brilliant playwright — we’ll slowly work on a couple things.
One of my own takeaways from the play was how, as a fan, it can be easy to romanticize and mythologize the internal drama of a famous band — but really, a band is made up of humans who are dealing with very human-sized joys and tragedies. As someone who has been in a much-adored big band and has probably had that projected on them as well, what is it like seeing how Stereophonic plays out?
I think there’s a folk sense that relationships predate art, where it’s like, “Oh, they had this stormy relationship, and they wrote a song about it.” And the play is really showing that it’s all just one mess — if you’re creating, if you’re collaborating with someone, the relationship is the art and you’re making it with the person and it’s just a human mess. It’s all fundamentally emerging from the same place, and oftentimes, that place is quite broken. I appreciate just how true [the show] feels. It just shows the tangled web of trying to make art with with four of your friends, which is really powerful.
I was in a band with my brother and his wife, and now I’m in a band with my own wife and her sister. So I’ve been in bands with these long, deep relationships. I consulted with David a bit on the technical side, but I didn’t tell him what it was like being in a band with family — and because he’s so observant or maybe just that he is a very good playwright, the humanity of it is very accurate to me. And it’s a credit to the humanity of the actors, too, because it’s one thing to read the words and it’s another thing to like, make them happen in real life and put real flesh and bones on it.
This year’s CMA Fest in Nashville launched with music icon Dolly Parton spilling the details on several projects she has in the works — namely, a Broadway musical as well as a hotel.
“It’s true, I’m going to have a hotel right here in Nashville, and a museum too,” Parton told the crowd.
The country icon officially revealed her upcoming Songteller Hotel in Nashville, which will be located on 3rd and Commerce in downtown Nashville. The hotel will also include a Dolly Parton museum that will feature memorabilia from her career and many of her fashionable outfits, including a replica of Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors,” which inspired her signature song of the same name.
The name of the hotel takes its name from Parton’s 2020 book Songteller: My Life in Song, written with author-journalist Robert K. Oermann.
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“When we were looking at the property, you know how sometimes you feel you get a little divine sign,” Parton said during the event, which was hosted by Entertainment Tonight‘s Rachel Smith. “We were walking through and it was an empty room. There was a table and of all things, there was the book Songteller and we thought that must be a sign and we thought that would be a good name.”
Parton, of course, is no stranger to launching hotels — the singer, songwriter and business mogul’s Dollywood theme park includes the Dreammore Resort, which opened in 2015, and the Heartsong Lodge and Resort, which opened in 2023.
Parton also announced her upcoming Broadway musical, Hello, I’m Dolly: An Original Musical, set to open in 2026. Parton says she affectionately calls it “a Grand Ole Opera.”
“I tried for years, how to do my life story and make it make sense. I needed to write some original music. I’m hoping you’re gonna laugh and cry,” Parton said.
The musical will trace Parton’s life story from growing up in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee before making her way to Nashville to pursue music. The musical will chronicle her early solo hits, her work with Porter Wagoner and her rise as to becoming an internationally, Country Music Hall of Famer, with 25 No. 1 Billboard Hot Country Songs hits. as well as a multi-faceted artist through her work in movies and television.
The musical will be produced by Parton, Adam Speers (ATG Productions) and Danny Nozell (CTK Enterprises), and takes its name from Parton’s first studio album, which released in 1967. Hello, I’m Dolly will feature a score by Parton that will include some of her biggest hits as well as new songs she has written especially for the musical, and a book by Parton and Maria S. Schlatter.
In addition, Parton revealed the launch of Dolly Wines (which starts with a Dolly 2023 California chardonnay) and the cookbook Good Lookin’ Cookin’, which she created with her sister Rachel. Good Lookin’ Cookin’ releases Sept. 17.
These business ventures expand on Parton’s recent teaming with Duncan Hines to launch a line of cake and muffin mixes, as well as Parton’s recent partnership with Krispy Kreme for the limited-time Dolly Parton Southern Sweets Doughnut Collection.
Parton also recently revealed her upcoming family-oriented album Smoky Mountain DNA–Family, Faith and Fables, out in November.
In the meantime, Parton told Smith that she has no plans to slow down anytime soon.
“Not today,” Parton quipped. “Maybe someday I may have to. I’ve always said if my husband was in ill health and needed me, I would pull back — and the same with my own health. But I kind of dreamed myself into a corner and I need to be responsible for that. I may pull back a little now and then, but not today.”
As he prepares for the Friday (May 31) release of Honeymind — his third studio album (and first on Interscope) — and settles into his just-opened, 18-date run of concerts reopening Broadway‘s iconic Palace Theatre, singer-songwriter and actor Ben Platt recently sat down with Billboard News to discuss creating his new music, the relationships and artists inspiring him now, and his upcoming projects.
The Honeymind creation process occurred in Nashville, during what Platt calls a “point of transition personally and career-wise, reinvestigating my reasons for being an artist, relearning the importance of following passion and doing things that feel authentically fulfilling and not necessarily checking boxes.” It was also a happy time, Platt says, of settling into the comfort of his relationship with his now-fiancée, fellow actor Noah Galvin — and he found himself exploring, through songwriting, “that crossroads between what it feels like to arrive in your real relationship and have a partner who you feel really understands you holistically, and how do you need to work on yourself as a person to be ready for a relationship like that?”
His Honeymind collaborators include beloved Nashville writers Natalie Hemby and Hillary Lindsey, as well as executive producer Dave Cobb, who worked with Platt at his home studio in Savannah, Ga. Platt praises Cobb’s “barometer for honesty and authenticity … he’s very much no bulls–t. If something feels put-on, or like a bell or whistle, he has no problem being very forthright about that.”
Platt opens up as well about the singular experience of filming the very personal music video for single “Cherry on Top,” in which he enjoys a day out around Los Angeles with Galvin. “I was apprehensive at first — I love to keep some things sacred and private,” he explains. But he ultimately realized that, since song was written specifically about his experience with Galvin, “nothing felt as true as the actual relationship itself that brings that joy about.”
An unabashed fan of pop, Platt also gushes about his own favorite music right now, mentioning perennial favorites Maggie Rogers and Chappell Roan (he’s a vocal longtime fan: “I’ve known she was a superstar the whole time!”). He’s also big on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Kacey Musgraves’ Deeper Well (Musgraves made a surprise appearance at Platt’s opening night at the Palace to duet with him on her “Rainbow”), and Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine (“Ari is one of the greatest pop voices of this generation, and it’s such a sharp, delicious bubblegum album that is like, harkening back to Mariah….it’s always in my head”).
Additionally, Platt shares the inspiration he takes from seeing two of the biggest tours of the past year: Beyoncé’s Renaissance trek and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Swift “shares her own experiences and makes us feel like we’re in her living room … in a way that feels very off the cuff but is clearly very thought out and well-crafted,” he says; Beyoncé is “an unbelievable live singer … and on top of that the level to which she exerts and gives of herself no matter what show she’s doing? You’ve never seen her half-ass a performance in her life!”
Platt will be occupied promoting Honeymind for some time — after his Palace residency, he will embark on a tour of the U.S. and Canada (with album collaborator Brandy Clark supporting) through late July. Meanwhile, he reveals to Billboard that Richard Linklater’s twenty-years-in-the-making film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Merrily We Roll Along — announced in 2019, in which Platt stars alongside close friend Beanie Feldstein and Paul Mescal — is progressing.
Platt says two of “eight or nine” sequences have been filmed with, he adds with a laugh, just “another 16 or so years to go.” Linklater, he says, “puts a lot of emphasis on not looking too far ahead … it becomes too daunting, so I just treat it as this gift of getting to have little checkpoints in my life to check back in with Sondheim, with Paul, and obviously Beanie.” Platt praises Mescal, who makes his major musical onscreen debut in Merrily, as a “gorgeous, kind, amazing actor, beautiful voice — he’s the real deal.”
See what else Platt had to say in the video above.
Few rock albums live as long and varied a life as The Who’s Tommy. Since its release in 1969, guitarist Pete Townshend’s conceptual masterpiece — centered around the story of the titular boy who witnesses a murder, becomes a “deaf, dumb and blind” pinball wizard, then something like a rock star-savior — has been translated into various mediums, including Ken Russell’s wild 1975 film starring the likes of Tina Turner, Elton John and Jack Nicholson.
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But none have persisted quite like The Who’s Tommy, the groundbreaking 1993 stage musical directed by Des McAnuff that brought Townshend’s electrifying music and haunting story to Broadway. It was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and won five, including best original score for Townshend and best direction for McAnuff.
Three decades later, The Who’s Tommy is back in its first major Broadway revival — a searing production with a cast of standout vocal and acting talent led by 23-year old Ali Louis Bourzgui as Tommy. If the show still feels incredibly vital, that’s in large part because McAnuff, who returns to direct, and Townshend still are, too. And as they told Billboard in a wide-ranging conversation, this production (a likely contender for best revival of a musical when the 2024 Tony nominations are announced April 30) is anything but the end of their alchemical creative partnership.
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Back before the original Broadway production, what convinced you to turn Tommy into a musical, Pete, and why with Des?
Pete Townshend: You know, The Who were not a particularly financially successful band. We had big hits and Tommy was our biggest, but the money didn’t exactly roll in. I tended to work purely for the art. I had written a bunch of songs, all of which had done pretty well, and one was “I Can See For Miles” which I took a lot of trouble with recording and arranging harmonically. I think still to this day it’s a masterpiece, and I can’t really work out why it isn’t in the shrine of rock history as the best song ever written about anything at all.
So after it [underperformed in the U.K.], I thought, “F–k, what am I going to have to do to get the interest of the public and maintain it and also to harness this incredible machine” which the band was at that time as a performing band. It hit me that I should write a major piece, a collection of good rock songs strung together that will tell a story. At the time, I was absolutely not interested in anything to do with music, theater, movies, anything other than just providing something for my band — something that would last, that we could perform on the stage.
Whip pan forward to 1992: I haven’t performed with The Who for nearly 10 years, I had gone to work with publisher Faber & Faber as a commissioning editor for a pop culture imprint within the company, I was doing some solo work. And I had a cycling accident, fell and broke my wrist, and my surgeon told me I’d never play music again with my right hand, so I thought, well, I’ve got to make a living. As ever, every couple of years the phone would ring and my manager would say “Somebody wants to talk to you about doing a theatrical version of Tommy” — God forgive me, it was ice skating Tommy, it was ballet Tommy, brass band Tommy, there was a reggae Tommy. And I just was not interested in any of it to be honest.
But when Des flew over to New York in late summer or early fall of ’92, I daresay — I don’t want to embarrass Des — that we fell in love. We struck an immediate relationship and I knew we would be friends forever, whether or not we worked together. And that’s where it began. I think Des has been so fantastic to hang on to the integrity of the original story, all of the nuances and some of the bum notes, and I thank him for that. And you know, I’ve done what I can to help out along the way.
Ali Louis Bourzgui as Tommy in The Who’s Tommy
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
When the original Broadway run ended (and then subsequent tours and productions elsewhere, like the West End), did you feel like a chapter was closed? Or did you have a sense that there might be a reason to revisit it down the line together?
Des McAnuff: It was kind of open ended — there wasn’t a moment where we said, “Okay, well, this is over.” Ultimately what happened is, I was traveling in Costa Rica and saw that Pete had called, and he suggested that we start talking about a film project, whether it was a motion picture or a live capture, he felt that the time had come. And I was very excited by that. We did a screenplay, and as we were doing it, we kind of said, hey, you know, it’s really time to reimagine this [for Broadway].
That was several years ago, and pre-COVID we started working on this in earnest. Nothing is easy, particularly in the theater — or for that matter in rock ‘n’ roll. But this has been remarkably smooth. The great thing about Tommy is while it has evolved, it’s deepened, there are new complexities in the story — themes that are sometimes even paradoxical — but it does remain faithful to what Pete composed.
Were there elements of the original production you wanted to be sure to preserve or pay homage to? Or likewise things you dreamed of doing the first time around that you now had the ability to do — particularly on the technology front?
McAnuff: I think we basically did what we imagined the first time around. I remember the conversations: “The bed’s going to spin here, Tommy’s gonna come flying in here.” Both at La Jolla Playhouse [where Tommy premiered in 1992] and this time around at the Goodman Theater [in Chicago], they were willing to just kind of follow us into hell, so we basically got to do what we wanted.
While the new production is very ambitious, interestingly enough nothing moves on that stage that is not moved by an actor. It really is about a company of actors, storytelling. The first one had a lot of gadgetry and technology and automation, and this certainly is very ambitious, technically, and somewhat of a spectacle. But I would say it has a kind of humanity that breaks through all of that.
Townshend: A number of people who saw the original show in ‘93 have told me they think the storytelling is more solid and clearer somehow this time around. And I don’t think it’s because there’s less distraction, because the stage is still a sleigh ride, a visual feast, an onslaught of image and light and color — and also of shadow, moments when you really feel drawn into the deep pathos of many of the characters. And that was only ever inferred in the original music that I wrote.
Ali Louis Bourzgui and the cast of The Who’s Tommy
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
I think this one exposes the actors in a much bigger way, and it feels to me to be more of a play than it ever was. There’s an incredible empathy for the creatures that we’ve created here, not just to make them real, but to make them solid enough that they spark a real identification with members of the audience. Tommy is about stuff that so many of us in my generation, and the generations that followed right up to today, are all still suffering from — from the trauma of 200 years of war. So everybody in the audience has this deep desire just to have a night out where they can forget their worries and have a good time, but also feel involved in something that is deep and reflects the very reason why they want to get out and get smashed. And of course that is what rock ‘n’ roll was about, and Tommy I believe is doing that now.
You’re in the Nederlander Theater, where Rent began on Broadway in 1996; I think few people realize that Tommy actually preceded Rent! In so many ways Tommy was the parent of the next generation of rock musicals — or, well, attempts at them — that have followed. Why do you think Tommy succeeds as a rock musical, where many others have not?
Townshend: We had a human story to tell. And the way that I realized that is we would get to the end of the show — after the songs about bullying, about drugs, about sexual abuse, about family trauma, about a kid who becomes a messiah in a sense — and it ends with what was perceived to be a prayer: “Listening to you, I get the music.” Why do we need that release at that point in the show? I think it’s because we’ve been taken on a journey where we look at the best and the worst of human nature. It’s not Dostoevsky, but it ain’t far off, the function of it. Actually, I do feel a bit like Dostoevsky.
McAnuff: Very much like Dostoevsky [Laughs.] I think what distinguishes Tommy from many other theatrical enterprises is that it has authenticity. Pete is really one of the reigning princes of rock ‘n’ roll to this day, he is rock ‘n’ roll, he personifies it. And he’s also a very good storyteller, and he’s made a wonderful partner because of that. It’s not just his imagination, but it’s his appreciation of good story points that’s made my job really a delight.
McAnuff (left) and Townshend with the cast of The Who’s Tommy.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
When we did this 30 years ago, people were still very nervous about electric music. Electric music was something you made fun of in Bye Bye Birdie! It wasn’t legitimate somehow. And that’s totally changed. Now Broadway represents all of the richness of American music in all its different forms. In those days, all you could do was was, quote, “Broadway.” Well, that’s all gone.
In Tommy, there’s very little spoken dialogue — you both seem to have this inherent trust that the songs will communicate the story, that every point doesn’t need to make literal sense or feel totally linear, and that the audience will come along for the ride, which seems like something for more theater makers to internalize…
Townshend: I recently went to see the Sufjan Stevens piece at the [Park Avenue] Armory, Illinoise; I’m glad it’s moving [to Broadway]. I love his music, and I love the show, but the thing that really came across to me was, whether you got the story or not, whether you felt that the story was relevant or not, it was a poetic experience — I felt somehow moved and touched. And, wow, that’s all I want.
Behind Tommy is a performance piece, rooted in the engine of modern performance. If we look at the brilliance and massive success of somebody like Taylor Swift, it’s because she carries her audience with her, and they carry her with them. The essence of the period that Tommy came from, we were experimenting with the function and the importance and the value of the audience just showing up and listening but also contributing. How do you contribute if you’re sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a theater? You contribute in some way which is almost intangible. Yes, you can get up and you can clap along or you can smoke a joint and shout. But there’s something more going on.
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So many artists from the pop world now want to work in musical theater, and many find they prefer it to the commercial music industry. Having spent much of your life interacting with the theater world now, Pete, do you think anything is preferable about it?
Townshend: Working in music theater, you have everything that we have in rock ‘n’ roll, but you also have story. So for me, it’s been like being in a band but with extra cream. All art, all performance is play. It’s so important to play — and that’s how I feel about working in theater or going back and working with Roger Daltrey and what remains of The Who on a tour or producing other artists, as I’ve done largely for folk artists over the past few years. This is where creativity really comes alive. And remember, I’ve done this and the shows have not been successful, too. It’s just about whether or not you’ve actually spent the time in a useful way.
Tommy has had many different iterations since the album came out. Do you think of it as an eternally evolving work, or is each version of it merely a moment in time, without necessarily a “next”?
Townshend: As a songwriter and a storyteller, you create something and then you just let it go. You have to let it fly in each of its incarnations, some of which I’ve found difficult to live with and some of which I’ve enjoyed.
I have to be absolutely honest here: I think I do care about the lasting legacy of my work. I do very much. One of the reasons I’m with my current wife Rachel [Fuller], is that around 1996 The Who were struggling to get back together to help our bass player John Entwistle who was in dire straits financially, he was gonna go to prison for tax evasion. We had to tour to keep him out of jail, basically.
I decided that I wanted all of what I would call my story-based pieces to be put on paper— A Quick One While He’s Away, Rael, Tommy, Quadrophenia, Life House, my solo albums and so on — and I was looking for an orchestrator and found Rachel, and the first thing she orchestrated for me was Quadrophenia. I wanted it to be something that could be performed the way that I wanted it to be performed as a songwriter, without any bells and whistles, without the ideas of other creative people, just to be put up as a piece of music that I had personally rubber stamped.
So the legacy of Tommy is really important to me. At my age now, 79 in May, there are big decisions to make. I can’t jump out on a stage the way that I used to — some of the photographs of me jumping up in the air, it looks like I’m jumping seven feet in the air, I don’t know how it happened. I survived Keith Moon, and the fact is that Keith Moon didn’t survive Keith Moon.
On the other hand, you have to let this stuff go. You have to trust. In Chicago, I realized that time had moved under this piece, and it still worked. That’s all that matters; what you’ve done doesn’t have to be sacrosanct. For God’s sake, what AI might do to creative work might actually be good — who knows?
McAnuff: Somebody once said that musicals don’t get finished, they just get opened. And that’s true — we’re working on this even now. The theater exists, as Bob Dylan said, in the eternal present. I would have thought Tommy was more or less finished in the ‘90s for me, and then here it is. It has new life.
Townshend: In my first week at art college back in 1961, we were being told that computers were going to come within two or three years and they would change the nature of artistic and creative communication and would change the world for the better. And it took 40 years or so for those promised computers to arrive. Now we have Apple producing this great big thing like a television screen that you stick to your head and we’re supposed to be impressed by it? Give me a pill I can take that will help me to experience something more fabulous than looking at a f–king television screen!
I do think if there’s another iteration of Tommy, I probably won’t be here for it, but you could do it [using] these new media formats that are starting to rise up and maybe even be able to make something out of artificial intelligence as just a tool. Anything that makes my life as a creative easier and, incidentally, is fun to play with, I’m in.
The company of The Who’s Tommy.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
You’ve both spent so much of your creative lives with Tommy but is there another piece from Pete’s catalog that you think deserves more theatrical attention?
Townshend: Well for me, it’s Life House. Songs like “Baba O’Riley,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Pure and Easy,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” those songs all emanated from a sci-fi piece that I wrote called Life House, which had a strong spiritual backbone and a lot of ethical issues are brought up in it. This was meant to be the follow up to Tommy, and it began at the Young Vic theater in 1971, but was really a bit too ambitious, I think, to survive [Ed. note: It’s since been adapted into a graphic novel.] I would love to do something theatrical or some kind of modern production based on that — that would be my dream, I think, right now. It feels like it has potential. I’ve recently shared some of the collateral of that with Des.
McAnuff: I’m digging into the box set, Who’s Next/Life House, and I’m incredibly excited because I think that the music in Who’s Next, as with Tommy, is obviously masterful, brilliant songs that continue to bounce around in my brain all these years later. I also love Quadrophenia — an extraordinary score. But for me it’s Life House next.
Townshend: Give us another five years.
“Ever since Rent, I have made it a priority to originate roles and shine a light on new work,” Idina Menzel tells Billboard. “It takes lots of patience and fortitude, but there is truly nothing as rewarding as seeing your kernel of an idea fully realized with a group of people you love and admire so deeply.”
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The Broadway icon’s latest project in that vein is the new musical Redwood, currently playing at La Jolla Playhouse in California. For Menzel — who plays Jesse, a successful businesswoman, mother and wife who finds herself as a personal crossroads and finds unexpected answers in the forests of Northern California — the show is an especially personal creative endeavor. “The story of a woman at a turning point in her life paralleled with the resilience, wisdom and strength of the redwood tree was one that spoke to me deep in my soul,” Menzel says. “Nature’s power to heal and connect us as human beings is essential in this turbulent world we are living in.”
Idina Menzel backstage during REDWOOD at La Jolla Playhouse.
Courtesy of Idina Menzel
Menzel, who released her latest album Drama Queen in August of last year, isn’t just the star of the production. She co-conceived Redwood with director, writer and co-lyricist Tina Landau (recently of Broadway’s inventive SpongeBob SquarePants musical) over the course of many years, delving deeply into the development of Jesse as a character.
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Menzel and Landau also “knew we wanted to find a new young composer who could bring a fresh take to musical theater” for the show, bringing in Kate Diaz for a score that Menzel describes as having “a beautiful, earthy and soulful quality as well as expansive and cinematic. When I perform Kate’s music, I am able to use all the different colors in my voice. I’m not just shooting for the rafters. I’m expressing myself similarly to how I express myself in my own songwriting.” (Diaz also co-wrote the lyrics with Landau).
While the La Jolla run of Redwood ends March 31, the show has its sights set on Broadway — which certainly seems more likely than not with Menzel and her creative collaborators on board. “We knew we wanted the production to be cutting edge and unconventional,” Menzel says. “We have encouraged one another to dream big, break rules, and not compromise our creative ideas. There’s a deep sense of creative freedom and trust in how we work.”
Here, Menzel exclusively shares with Billboard a live recording of her performing “Great Escape,” recorded during a performance of Redwood.
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