Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Stage

Brand names

Some Broadway shows are banking on American Idol's appeal, adding popular personalities from the mega-hit TV show to their casts to help boost ticket sales.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 25, 2006

NEW YORK - They stand patiently behind the metal barricades by the stage door of the Al Hirschfeld Theatre.

Nearly an hour after the curtain has come down on a Wednesday matinee performance, a gaggle of mostly young women still waits, their cell-phone cameras and autograph pens on high alert.

Suddenly, he appears. Dressed in a white T-shirt, tight black jeans and shades, good-natured Constantine Maroulis obliges his fans.

Welcome to the new world of Broadway celebrity. Maroulis, late of American Idol, is now playing Sammy, best buddy of the hero, in The Wedding Singer, a musical version of the Adam Sandler movie.

Broadway is hungry for new talent, especially new talent that might sell tickets. And what better place to find potential stage stars than American Idol.

Maroulis is the latest in a string of Idol alums to find their way to Broadway. Several are now onstage. Frenchie Davis has been wailing through Seasons of Love, the show-stopper in Rent, for several years. Diana DeGarmo has just rejoined the cast of Hairspray as the sweetly nervous Penny Pingleton after an earlier, successful run in the show. And then there's Josh Strickland, swinging on those vines as the title character in Disney's Tarzan.

Judging from the enthusiastic reception Maroulis received from his stage-door fans, his celebrity was made even though he didn't get close to the top prize on season four of the series. Viewers loved him even if most of voting America didn't.

Margo Lion, producer of The Wedding Singer and Hairspray, hoped that Maroulis' presence would lift the show's profile and give it a boost at the box office during the particularly lean month of September, when the tourists have gone home and youngsters are back in school.

"It's women who buy theater tickets, by and large. And now, it's these young women who have gotten hooked on theater," says Lion, citing the success of such shows as Wicked and Hairspray in attracting girls and young women from 10 to about 20.

Maroulis seems a natural for The Wedding Singer. The musical takes place in New Jersey, which is where the 31-year-old, Brooklyn-born Maroulis grew up. Although music has been his primary focus, he has theater training. He majored in musical theater at the Boston Conservatory of Music and studied voice at the Berklee College of Music.

"I have never been put into a show before," Maroulis says during an interview in his tiny Hirschfeld dressing room after his second performance in the musical. His only other major stage credit was an international tour of Rent.

"I welcome the challenge, but I am just trying to keep up right now," he says shyly, speaking in almost reverential tones about the considerable stage ability of his Wedding Singer co-stars, particularly Amy Spanger, who portrays his Madonna-like girlfriend.

Maroulis went into the musical with two weeks of rehearsals after observing the show for five or six days and then working with the assistant choreographer, music director and others.

The performer had been at the April opening night of The Wedding Singer with his agent and loved the musical.

"We have been actively searching for the right job for a good year now," Maroulis said. He had traveled with his band as well as with the Idol tour.

"So I was longing to get back on stage," he said. "I grew up in New Jersey as a rock 'n' roll guy. I've had dreams, and I want to keep pursuing them."

[Last modified September 25, 2006, 06:51:29]