It would have, purely on the basis that people will flock to see him read the phone book. And not just "people." Enough people to float that massive boat. It also would have been a very different show, but Leap of Faith had many, many problems that were completely unrelated to its cast. The difference is with a name that big, nobody would've cared. It would've sold, but it still would have been a mess. And even people like LuPone and Peters aren't up there on the recognition scale in the way that someone like Hugh Jackman is.
It's people like Scott Waara, Jere Shea and Jarrod Emick going MIA that mystify me. Janie Sell too. You're nominated for or -- even more bizarrely -- win a Tony...then disappear. Obviously one's life has many twists and turns, but to have your career peter off after such notoriety...Of course it could be by choice, but still...
Lucy - I am also mystified amout Jarrod Emick. Wikipidia has this as the last entry on his Wiki Page
"Emick played the roles of the Doctors in Next to Normal at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater through January 2012"
I remember seeing him in a preview of DAMN YANKEES and my partner and I just about fell over - he was so brilliant - and won that Tony deservedly. I actually think we spoke a little bit once because we ran into him and my partner and he are both from South Dakota or thereabouts. Nice guy. I guess he still acts (but the doctors in Next to Normal!!!???)
Kathy Chalfant works constantly. If you "miss" her, you're not looking hard enough.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Am I allowed to say Essie Davis? She's been on Broadway once in Jumpers and was nominated for a Tony. I'm a 90 year old woman in a 23 year old girls body and have been obsessing over Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on Netfix. She's one of those actresses that I went "Wow! I bet she'd be great on stage!" and then Googled her and found out how successful she's been on the West End and in Australia.