Len Cariou, Broadway's Original Sweeney Todd, Reveals His Canadian Roots

(L-R) Len Cariou, actor Tom Selleck, Leonard Goldberg and actor
Donnie Wahlberg attend the "Blue Bloods" Screening at The Paley
Center for Media on September 22, 2010 in New York City

By: Myra Chanin @ The Huffington Post
Len Cariou may well be the most persistently employed performer on the planet. Just printing his credits takes up a half ream of multipurpose paper. Len leaps fleetly from role to role, format to format and venue to venue -- theater, film, television, recordings, narration, voiceovers, documentaries and audio books. He can dance, sing, weep, laugh, direct and what-have-you. Police procedural TV fans adore him in the current CBS hit show, Blue Bloods, as Henry Regan, the always-in-the-kitchen-cooking-something-delicious retired former New York City Police Commissioner, granddad of the clan that always dines together and father of the present Blue Bloods police commissioner played by Tom Selleck. Len is actually only five years older than Tom Selleck but Tom is more devoted to Grecian formula.

Len's roles have run the gamut from cabbages to kings. The two biggest cabbages? Louis Tobin, the Bernie Madoff-ish third-season-of-Damages no-goodnick Ponzi schemer, and Iago, Shakespeare's immortal manipulative villain. As for kings, Len's portrayed Coriolanus, Darius, Oedipus, Henry V, Lear, Macbeth and Oberon -- everyone but Richard III, which gives him a gig to look forward to. Len also thinks he might be ready to take a crack at Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Len grew up near Winnipeg in modest circumstances, with music always around the house: "I was a boy soprano with a natural kind of voice. My mother made sure it was trained it after it changed." By 10th grade Len was directing/starring in school plays at Miles MacDonnell Collegiate, and made his theatrical debut there playing Ralph Rackstraw in HMS Pinafore. A few years later he turned professional in the chorus of Damn Yankees at Rainbow Stage, an outdoor venue where the weather and the audience were co-dependent. Performing in local nightclubs and theaters kept him solvent until theatrical visionary John Hirsch established the Manitoba Theater Center and supplied Len with employment during its October to January season, augmented by performing the Classics at the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival between February and October until Len joined the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

Then Broadway beckoned. As Bill Sampson, Lauren Bacall/Margo Channing's director/lover in Applause, a hit musical based on All About Eve, Len received his first Tony nomination and enjoyed a yearlong run. Then it was back to Guthrie for a double feature -- playing Oedipus and also replacing Frank Langella, who'd left the company, as Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

When Hal Prince asked Len to audition for a featured role in a new Stephen Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music, Len grabbed the opportunity to sing for Sondheim, who Len considers a genius, even though Len wasn't keen about playing Count Carl-Magnus. Instead Prince offered him the leading male role -- Fredrik Egerman, a succesfull widowed middle-aged lawyer married to an 18-year-old who wanted-to-remain-a-perpetual-virgin. Len was on Cloud Nine until he realized that rehearsals for Night Music would interfere with his prior obligations to perform at Guthrie and leave the company in the lurch.

He called Prince personally to explain why he was unable to accept his offer and so impressed Prince with his integrity that Prince postponed the rehearsal start date to one that worked for Len, albeit with tricky logistics. Len flew to New York on Monday morning, rehearsed until Thursday afternoon when he flew back to Minneapolis to play Oedipus. The upside? Len received his second Tony nomination. Also, a phrase in Bring in the Clowns -- "me as King Lear" -- inspired Guthrie director Michael Langdon to star Len in King Lear. The downside? Probably because no Hollywood hunk could deliver Sondheim's clever lyrics as crisply as Len did, Len co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky in the now-not-even-available-for-streaming-on-Netflix film version of A Little Night Music.

Best of all, Steven Sondheim wrote his next masterpiece, Sweeney Todd for Len and Len finally took home a Tony for Todd.

Len's show at 54 Below reprises his original nightclub act. Why? "It gave me a reason to get my singing voice back in shape." Also 54 Below was a perfect place to return to his roots, he adds, "because 54 below was the usual winter temperature in central Canada." Len arrives on stage to great applause, a relaxed pro, attired in elegant but casual black, and opens this show with the same upbeat opening numbers he sang 55 years ago. He talks about his life, his Broadway years, his meetings with great composers, pays homage to them by singing their songs, before he blows everyone away with spectacular renditions of Sondheim's Now, with Egerman deciding whether to (a) once again attempt to ravish/seduce his bride or (b) take a nap, and the exquisitely lyrical Pretty Women, both difficult songs which Len delivers with mind bogglingly perfect dramatic passion. Even though Glynis Johns was awarded the 11 o'clock number Len had been promised, Len takes this opportunity to sing it, Send In the Clowns at 54 Below at 11 pm.

Remember, pretty much everyone at 54 Below is a class act, including the upcoming Maurice Hines, Charles Busch, Maureen McGovern, Linda Eder, Patti LuPone and in mid-January, the incomparable Linda Lavin -- my personal favorite.
Originally Posted: 12/21/2012 @ 11:02am

Rigorous Grant Park High School training set students on route to Broadway shows

Hugh Panaro as The Phantom with
Samantha Hill as Christine Daae.

By: Kevin Prokosh @ Winnipeg Free Press
NEW YORK CITY-- In 2003, Grant Park High School presented what was then the largest student production ever produced on a Manitoba stage.

The school's cramped gym could no longer contain the mass of electronic equipment, booming talent pool and expanding audiences required of an ambitious musical, so artistic director George Budoloski relocated to the 1,600-seat Burton Cummings Theatre. The idea was to give his triple threats, teens who could sing, dance and act, an experience they would not ever forget -- the opportunity to perform one of the great theatre works on a historic stage where the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Harry Houdini, Bob Hope and Winston Churchill had stood.

Fast forward almost a decade and a couple of those student performers are sitting in a stylish meeting room in the office of Cameron Macintosh, the man behind the international stage hits Les Miserables, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon and Mary Poppins.

Samantha Hill and Josh Assor remember Grant Park's Les Miz as the starting point for careers that have landed them both on Broadway. Hill, 25, is the Christine Daaé alternate in The Phantom of the Opera, while Assor, 24, plays the featured dance role Neleus in Mary Poppins.



Josh Assor.

They are the second and third local Les Miz cast members who have debuted on Broadway this year. Jaz Sealey was a member of the Jesus Christ Superstar production that came from the Stratford Festival and closed July 1.

"We were working on the assumption that if we gave them everything we can to make them great, they will rise to that," says Budoloski in a recent interview. "We wanted them to know what it's like -- whether they went off to be lawyers -- to be in as professional a show as we could create."

After Les Miz, Hill and Assor took radically different routes to the Big White Way, never really allowing themselves to boldly dream that it was even possible. Hill, content with her thriving stage life in Canada, remembers a family trip to New York City being cancelled and her father promising her they would go when she was on Broadway.

"I got angry, saying, 'Dad, people just don't go to Broadway,' and told him I'm not going to be on Broadway," says the fresh-faced soprano from River Heights, "He said, 'Yes you will.'"

The Hill family will join her for Christmas in New York City this weekend.

Assor, who grew up in Garden City and Tuxedo, was a world champion tap dancer and was the only Canadian to win a scholarship to train in Los Angeles with top choreographers. In 2008, he left Winnipeg for Toronto and the following year scored parts in West Side Story and Cyrano de Bergerac at Stratford Festival, before returning home in 2010 to play Benjamin in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Rainbow Stage. In 2011 he won the part of Neleus in the North American tour of Mary Poppins.

"Broadway was never really part of the plan," says the diminutive, dark-haired Assor, who originally thought of a future in architecture. "It was too far-fetched."

While on the road as far south as Mexico, Assor began to contemplate the possibility, because the dancer he was replacing on tour had been promoted to Broadway. When he heard his predecessor was leaving the New York production, he knew the Mary Poppins producers might come calling. They did and six days later last February he was making his Broadway debut at the new Amsterdam Theatre.

"Opening night was a crazy blur," says Assor. "It was the most surreal moment ever, but it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. Getting the big tour in the United States was where the pressure was. The transition to Broadway was easy. They hired me to do what I had been doing."

Hill made her Broadway debut Nov. 12 as the innocent chorus girl who becomes the obsession of a mysterious disfigured musical genius in The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre.

"I was prepared but every time I stumbled, I was thinking, 'This is Broadway, people don't make mistakes,'" says Hill, who last season appeared in August: Osage Country (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre), Annie (Rainbow Stage) and Spring Awakening (Winnipeg Studio Theatre). "I'm told that's definitely not true. It was crazy, but the bow was one of the biggest thrills I'll ever get."

Hill regularly performs twice a week but has performed as many as five days in a row when needed. She is contracted through February in Broadway's longest-running show but her stay could be extended now that she has recently received the endorsement of Phantom's original director Harold Prince, a towering figure in American theatre and winner of 21 Tony Awards. Earlier this month he came to see Hill perform.

"Hal Prince came at intermission to tell us all we had done a great show," says Hill, a graduate of the universities of Winnipeg and Alberta. "Then he turned to me, kissed my hand and said I was marvellous and that he wanted the whole cast to hear it. I feel very relieved and honoured that the original director has given me his blessing so graciously."

Assor is on an open-ended contract that sees him performing eight shows a week as a statue that comes to life with a major dance routine. He needs 20 minutes in the makeup chair to get his body painted silver and his face painted with tiny cracks. The physical demands are a continuing challenge.

"It requires constant maintenance for your body," says Assor. "You have to be on top of it; you never can be lazy. You have to stay in shape because you never know when you will be out of a job and have to start auditions again."

The pair is ever grateful for the training they received from Budoloski, his wife Robin Dow, Kimberley Rampersad and others. They set the standards that students like Assor and Hill have built their careers upon.

"We had dance in the morning, singing after school," says Hill. "I worked harder in high school. It set me up for the hard work that's required in my career."

Assor dedicates a lot of his success to the teaching of Rampersad, a dance instructor who also often performs at Rainbow Stage and RMTC.

"That they are on Broadway at the same time is the fun thing, but I'm not surprised," says a proud Rampersad. "We are a city of 700,000 and I could name half a dozen people off the top of my head who are on Broadway."

Besides Hill and Assor, Jeremy Kushnier, one of Winnipeg's most successful Broadway stars, is back there in Jersey Boys. Another Grant Park performing arts grad, Sam Strasfeld, was in Mary Poppins before moving on to the Kathie Lee Gifford musical Scandalous, which closed abruptly Dec. 9 after running less than four weeks. Former Winnipegger Jayne Paterson was also a replacement in Mary Poppins.

What Assor and Hill have learned is that Broadway is just another stage, not all that different from the ones back home.

"I've tried to bring a Broadway performance to every show I've done," says Hill. "It's not like I've got to Broadway and now I'm going to work so much harder.

"I've worked with some amazing people in Winnipeg who have never been on Broadway."
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 20, 2012 C1

Jeremy Kushnier performs at the "Macy's 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular!" (1999)

Midsummer Forecast: Stars On The Rainbow Stage

Story By Frank Morriss

Pictures By Jack Ablett

Saturday, June 23, 1956 - Winnipeg Free Press

(Article below picture)

A: Paddy McIntyre rehearses a wild Indian dance for Annie Get Your Gun.

B: James Duncan, Peggy Green and Des McCalmont keep an interested eye on a rehearsal of Annie Get Your Gun.

C: Pat Armstrong, Vinie Lifchus and Jack Weremy are Annie’s brother and sisters in this rehearsal shot.

D: An arresting moment in Annie Get Your Gun.

E: Evelyne Anderson, who plays the title role, is obviously infatuated with Gordon Parker.

F: Joan Karasevich and Bob Jeffreys are giving out with one of the Irving Berlin hit numbers… this one being Who Do You Love, I Hope?

G: Arnold Spohr, Choreographer, puts the chorus through its paces.

H: Sid Perimutter is directing Ken Winters (Buffalo Bill), George Werier (hotel owner) and Murray Sennens (Chief Sitting Bull) in a comedy scene for Annie Get Your Gun.

Midsummer Forecast: Stars On The Rainbow Stage
If you see people gazing skyward these summer evenings they’re most likely connected in some way or another with The Rainbow Stage, which nestles in leafy Kildonan Park.

If the nights are balmy and rainless, it might well mean that Winnipeg has taken the first big step to rival Vancouver’s famed Theatre Under the Stars.

After a fitful and fateful beginning, during which an outdoor theatre was erected at the prodding of the Civic Music League, the Rainbow Stage is going into business with three elaborate musical comedies, each with a budget of $15,000 for a week’s showing, plus a play, concerts and dances.  Local singers, dancers and actors who have been waiting for a chance to show their stuff have been mustered into the production mill.

The Rainbow Stage officially opens June 27 with a concert, but the big, most-hoped for premiere is Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, in which Ethel Merman successfully strutted her stuff on Broadway for several seasons.  It opens July 2.  Interspersed with the concerts and dance events will be The Wizard of Oz and Kiss Me Kate, both big-time musicals, and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

It’s a varied menu, and the Summer Theatre association, operating with the blessings of the city and under the general chairmanship of Prof. J.A. Russell, hopes that it will intrigue Winnipeggers enough to keep the 3,000 seat theatre full enough to pay the bills and put away a tidy sum for bigger and even better plans in years to come.

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The summer theatre is operating in the best-posible way by getting the best possible people.  James C. Duncan is acting as production co-ordinator and director. Musical directors are Eric Wild and Filmer Hubble, choreographers are Arnold Spohr and Nenad Lhotka, dramatic directors are Mrs. Peggy Green, Sid Perimutter and John Hirsch.  Set designers are Jack McCullagh, John Graham and Ted Korol.

The Theatre is operating under the old theory that the play (or musical comedy) is the thing and instead of importing expensive stars, the leads are going to local people who have had experience on TV, radio, the Little Theatre, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet is supplying Paddy McIntyre and other dancers.

There will be, however, the return of a local girl who has made good in other spheres.  Evelyne Anderson, who has been with the Bristol Old Vic school and played the lead in the Bristol production of Oklahoma is coming here to play the Ethel Merman role in Annie Get You Gun and will also be in other productions.

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Trying to gauge public taste these days is a job that nobody can solve… least of all Hollywood, TV or the concert impresarios.  However, the summer theatre people have dug into their hats and pulled out the best that is procurable on the current entertainment market.

And, in the more flamboyant attractions of the musical comedies, don’t overlook Our Town.  For this writer’s money, the Thornton Wilder work is the loveliest and best of the modern plays.

Good luck, and good weather, for the Rainbow Stage. 

Fred Penner interview on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight

Who would have known they were watching a legend in the making when Fred Penner stepped onto our stage during the production of Fiddler on the Roof in 1977.

Fred Penner's cast bio from our 1977 Fiddler on the Roof Souvenir Program.