8 Of The Most Amazing, Breakout Musical Performances on Broadway EVER

(For nearly 30 years, Susan Haskins-Doloff was co-host and executive producer of the classic PBS TV show “Theater Talk,” featuring fascinating and witty interviews with the leading stars and other creators of Broadway’s greatest shows.)

Anyone who has ever seen “The Music Man”  knows act 1 ends with the citizens of River City, Iowa anticipating and then celebrating in song the arrival of the Wells Fargo wagon, which is bringing to town musical instruments for the kids that Professor Harold Hill has conned their parents into buying. After the townspeople have sung two verses expressing their excitement, Winthrop Paroo, the younger brother of the show’s heroine, Marian Paroo, steps forward and sings a third verse of the song. The audience knows that Winthrop has a lisp which has made him hesitant to talk, but here he is so joyful, that he is sufficiently unselfconscious to express himself in song. As composer/lyricist Meredith Willson wrote Winthrop’s lyrics:

“O-ho the Wellth Fargo Wagon ith a-comin’ now,
I don’t know how I can ever wait to thee.
It could be thumpin’ for thumone who is
No relation, but it could bethump’n thpethyul.
Just for me!”

In the revival now at the Winter Garden Theatre, Winthrop is played by newcomer Benjamin Payjak in his Broadway debut. The 10-year-old actor’s contagious enthusiasm and talent steal the number. Later in the show, after the concluding scene and before the curtain call, Benjamin, in his band uniform (spoiler alert), steps in front of the curtain and skillfully plays a solo on the coronet. The audience cheers, the rest of the cast has had time to change their costumes for the curtain call, and a star is born. More than anything else in the production, Benjamin genuinely embodies the lively spirit of Wilson’s show.

So, as I think back on how taken I was with Benjamin, I am remembering some performers in Broadway musicals of years gone by who similarly wowed me with my first exposure to their talent. When seeing already well-knowns like Merman, Rylance, Stritch or Langella, etc., on stage, I trusted in advance that they were going to be great; I was delighted, but this wasn’t news. Here, however, are some actors, who I’d never seen on stage before and whose Broadway performances were wonderful surprises.

Jennifer Holliday in “Dreamgirls” (1981)
The top one in this category for me (and many, many others) is Jennifer Holliday. The 21-year-old’s moving portrayal of the scorned entertainer, Effie, won her a Tony and remains so revered (thanks, in part, to YouTube clips) as an immortal, musical theater performance, that when Broadway came back in 2021 after the Covid shut-down, Holliday was invited to perform “And I am Telling You I’m Not Going,” on the Tony Awards broadcast, 40 years after she had done it there for the first time. Nothing epitomizes the power of theater the way her forcefully interpreting this Henry Krieger/Tom Eyen song does, concluding with, “You’re gonna luuuhhh-hu-uhuve (gasp) MEEEEEEE!”   Having given Jennifer first prize, here’s a list of other performers (in no particular order) from Broadway musicals that were new to me and instantly made me their fan.

Lea DeLaria in “On the Town” (1998)
Long before Lea DeLaria and Jesse Tyler Ferguson found fame in their LGBTQIA roles on “Orange is the New Black” and “Modern Family” respectively, they were cast as a visually incongruous, comic supporting couple in George C. Wolfe’s 1998 revival of the Leonard Bernstein/Betty Comden & Adolph Green 1944 classic. In both actors’ Broadway debuts, Lea played Hildy Esterhazy, a female cabdriver during World War II. Jesse, then 23 years-old, was Chip, a sailor on leave in New York City who took Lea’s taxi to get a sight-seeing tour. None of the places Chip wanted to see still existed, however, so Lea lured him home to her place, instead.

There Lea attempted to seduce the lanky Jesse by singing a big band swing-type Bernstein (music and lyrics) number, “I Can Cook Too.” In this production, a verse of the original of the song is replaced by Lea scat singing, one of her many musical talents along with her dynamic voice. To quote Ben Brantley in his New York Times review: “When she opens her mouth to sing, the notes come stomping out like a cocky, all-brass band, bringing to mind an Ethel Merman with attitude.” The number ended with tall, slim Jesse dancing around the shorter, sturdier Lea. They then jumped up and down for joy and embraced. Along with the couple, the audience fell in love.

I was convinced that Lea with all her talent, boundless energy and audience adulation would be a shoo-in for a Tony nomination (if not the award). She didn’t get one. I’ll confess that back then I wondered if some of the  Tony nominators in 1999 weren’t ready for this brash, out gay performer’s style. Fortunately, the culture has evolved to some extent, and Lea is now the LGBTQIA icon and star that she deserves to be. (and, BTW, Jesse, who was not a 1999 nominee either, is a 2022 Featured Actor/ Play Tony nominee for “Take Me Out”).

Gary Beach in “The Producers” (2000).
When Mel Brooks announced that he was going to make a musical out of his 1967 film, I wondered how he was going to cast the role of the actor playing Hitler in the show-within-the-show, “Springtime for Hitler.” In the movie, director Brooks had Hitler played by an imaginary actor “L.S.D.,” created by the great Dick Shawn, doing a period-appropriate stoner Hitler, a character so specific to Shawn, it might have been difficult to duplicate. Wisely, Mel Brooks and his co-writer, Thomas Meehan, went in another direction for the Broadway show. In its musical-within-the-musical, the flamboyantly gay director character “Roger De Bris” cast himself as Hitler. This was a brilliant choice by Brooks and Meehan and gave us the great Gary Beach in a Tony-winning performance.

In the spectacular “Springtime for Hitler” number, Beach/ De Bris made his entrance, took an over-the-top effeminate pose and sang:

Heil myself
Heil to me
I’m the kraut
Who’s out to change our history

Beach continued to captivate us in the lengthy production number, including him sitting on the edge of the stage, ala Judy Garland in a “Born in a Trunk” style number:

I was just a paper hanger
No one more obscurer
Got a phone call from the Reichstag
Told me I was Fuhrer

Germany was Blue
What, oh, what to do?
Hitched up my pants
And conquered France
Now Deutschland’s smiling through!

Beach also did a hilarious in drag turn in the “Keep It Gay” number earlier in the show where Bialystok and Bloom (Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick) went to De Bris’ garish home in hopes of hiring him to direct what they needed to be a guaranteed musical flop. Actor Will Ferrell once said, “No one can upstage Nathan Lane,” but in that scene, I think, Gary Beach did.”

Lauren Patten in “Jagged Little Pill” (2019)
Having left the torment of adolescence long ago, I did not connect strongly with “Jagged Little Pill” as it began. I appreciated its darkness and could relate to many of the issues it explored, but with the complexity of Diablo Cody’s book, I still found myself somewhat removed from the characters’ sufferings. However, then came Lauren Patten who played Jo, the discarded nonbinary lover of the central family’s bi-daughter. She performed a solid character-establishing version of the Alanis Morissette standard, “One Hand in My Pocket” in act 1. But it was in act 2, when she took stage and sang “You Oughta Know,” that she went into orbit, masterfully expressing the bitterness and anguish in Morissette’s 1996 Grammy-winner for Best Rock Song

“And I’m here to remind you
of the mess you left
when you went away…”

Patten is 100% committed to communicating all the anger and vulnerability of her character, without any of the vocal grandstanding one often hears from other performers doing power ballads that are so popular in many contemporary musicals. I have rarely seen one where an actor put so much energy into conveying the gut feelings of the material. As Patten built and built “You Oughta Know,” with her raw emotion and vocal skill, I realized that I was watching one of the theater’s rarest phenomena, a genuine show-stopper. The performance won Patten the Featured Actress/Musical Tony. I was surprised, however, that the show’s producers did not choose to feature her on their segment of the Tony Awards’ broadcast. Perhaps they were trying to be fair to others in the company. I don’t know, but if so, this was a miscalculation. Alas, theater is rarely fair and this was a marketing snafu. “Jagged Little Pill” closed less than three months later.

Dan Fogler in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” (2005)
Fogler played William Barfee, a character the young actor had originally created for an improv sketch. As Fogler told New York Magazine, Barfee was, “the embodiment of the anxiety and weirdness I had in my middle-school years.” The character was comic, yet endearing, and the skit was successful enough to attract director James Lapine, composer/lyricist William Finn and librettist Rachel Sheinkin to make a major musical out of it. Two years later, their show opened on Broadway and Barfee, the quirky character with a sinus condition and a “Magic Foot,” that told him the spelling contest answers, was one key to its success (although there were many other great newcomers here, including the aforementioned Jesse Tyler Ferguson and 2019 Tony winner, Celia Keenan Bolger). Barfee won Dan a Tony and catapulted him into a substantial Hollywood career He is now giving an impressive performance as Francis Ford Coppola in the hit series “The Offer.”

Daveed Diggs in “Hamilton” (2015)
The original Broadway cast of Hamilton was filled with great performers who drew me in, most particularly, Daveed Diggs. In act 1 he played Marquis de Lafayette helping the colonists to win the war. After intermission, he transformed into Thomas Jefferson, unlike any we have seen portrayed before. When the lanky Diggs descended a flight of stairs to the stage at the beginning of act two, signifying Jefferson’s return from several years in Europe, and sang “What’d I Miss? he evoked both the magnetism and ambition in this founding father (and later the 3rd president) of our country, but added a level of cool, which we wouldn’t have expected from this famous man. Diggs’ vocabulary of physical movement and jazzy vocal styling were unique to this contemporary actor/rapper, yet still put across a version of this well-known historical figure that made a lot of sense. Daveed got the Best Featured Actor/Musical Tony for his performance and has had a great career ever since.

Cynthia Erivo in “The Color Purple” (2016)
Thus far, I have mostly discussed breakout performances in supporting roles, but Erivo’s Broadway debut was as the lead in “The Color Purple.” Her stunning voice embodied soulfulness and her acting was moving and true. This production was just over six years ago, but Cynthia was so sensational that she went straight to Hollywood where, after a Best Actress Oscar nomination for “Harriet,” she’s now about to play the beloved green, good/ bad witch, Elphaba in the much-anticipated film version of “Wicked.”

In the spring of 2016, Cynthia was a guest on our show along with director John Doyle and her costars Jennifer Hudson and Danielle Brooks. After our interview Cynthia and I were photographed in the studio with my arm reverentially around her shoulder. Less than 4 months later, Cynthia had so quickly ascended the show business ladder, that she was onstage at the Tonys, having just won the award for Best Actress/Musical, and it was Oprah embracing her. That’s how meteoric her career has been, but no matter how successful she becomes, I will most treasure my memory of “discovering” her great gift as she played Celie.

Performers and performances like these, that we just don’t see coming, but then blow us away when they do, embody the true thrill of Broadway musicals. I treasure these moments in the theater. They are what keep me coming back each new season, always hoping to find more of them.

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