Profile for Schmergo2

I saw the show on 11/8 and was fortunate to see Sayo Oni as Orpheus and Malcom Armwood as Hermes.I was a little disappointed at first to not get to see Lilias White as Hermes, but I heard a security person outside the theatre say, "Malcolm is on for Hermes. His voice is like BUTTER" and that encouraged me. She was right! He was great! Really smooth voice, super personable and energetic, clearly having fun with the role. Having never seen the show before, just listened to the cast recording, I...

When I used to work at a preschool, we all kept getting this gnarly virus that essentially caused the same symptoms as strep throat but we all tested negative for strep and therefore couldn't be treated by antibiotics, so we were each out sick for a good long time.So if she is making up an illness, viral tonsillitis would be convenient because it can cause lengthy absences, whereas regular strep, you're usually back after 2 days of antibiotics.But it could also be real, given that she recentl...

Man, I know tonsillitis might just be partially an excuse, but there's a part of me that feels like the current culture of pushing performers back onto the stage as soon as their mandatory COVID absence is over is going to start showing some cracks pretty soon.In my dinky little community theatre, about 1/3 of the actors got COVID in early June. A month and a half later, most of them still have lingering coughs or fatigue now they keep getting knocked out by colds and sinus infections and thr...

It's possible that Legally Blonde may have caused lasting effects to her voice, but she did Joseph AFTER she did Funny Girl, and that's not exactly an easy score to sing, and she's released albums and stuff, and sang as Cilla Black in a biopic about her, so I feel like people don't just think of her as "an actress who also sings," which is how I'd classify Beanie-- meanwhile, Barbra Streisand was more of "a singer who also acts really well."

The thing with Sheridan Smith is that she's considered a major star on the West End in both stage and screen, musicals and straight plays. She's played vocally demanding powerhouse roles including originating Elle in the West End production of Legally Blonde (winning the Olivier Award) and playing the Narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, so I think she's considered more of a 'singer' than Beanie was, but the West End also seems to welcome vocalists with less technically ...

Yeah, I was saying that I don't think she'd want to go to the trouble of rehearsing a new version of the show when the overlap period would be so short and she was about to leave anyway.

Also if they ARE making some tweaks to the show for the new cast, Jane Lynch would have to start attending rehearsals for the "new" version of the show with Lea while doing the show at night with Julie, which would probably be exhausting.

This is going to sound way overly nitpicky, but the one thing that always made me skeptical about Lea in the role, ever since the GLEE days, is that Fanny's is supposed to kind of be an underdog story. Lea is pretty conventionally gorgeous. Barbra Streisand is super glamorous, of course, but in kind of an unconventional way. Beanie in the role fits with current body positivity movements and has a cute 'girl next door' vibe without necessarily looking like a traditional 'star.'On the show GLEE...

Having Julie Benko officially take over for Thursdays makes me wonder even more if this was part of Beanie's wanting to leave earlier-- some people speculated that Beanie was leaving early because Lea was available to start in August (despite having her tour), but the one-month gap in between makes me wonder if the production was planning to have Beanie and Julie officially share the role until Lea came on board. I know Beanie has been absent a lot and would probably prefer not to have to do ...

I have a bit of a theory: what if when she said they were "taking the show in another direction," perhaps that meant they were planning on changing things up so that, in the 2 months leading up to Beanie's planned departure date, Julie was going to be bumped up to an official alternate? That's one of the few changes I could easily see a Broadway show making mid-run that might make Beanie upset. This is absolutely just a wild theory, though.