Multi-award-winning Broadway star LILLIAS WHITE will bring two of her most popular shows to London’s Crazy Coqs this April.
The star whose Broadway credits include Cats, Fela!, Chicago, Barnum and How to Success in Business Without Really Trying will take centre stage from 14-23 April 2022 for alternate performances of Lillias White Sings Broadway and Hoagy Carmichael & Friends.
Lillias White Sings Broadway (14, 16, 19, 21 and 23 April) features a mix of music and anecdotes from a Broadway career that began with a production of Barnum in 1981.
Hoagy Carmichael & Friends (15, 18, 20 and 22 April) celebrates the work of one of the Great American Songbook’s exceptional songwriters and features performances of Carmichael classics including ‘Stardust’, Georgia On My Mind’ and ‘The Nearness of You’. The show will also include performances of other classics from Cy Coleman, Johnny Mercer and Comden and Green.
Lillias White will be accompanied by renowned American artist Billy Stritch on piano. Best known for his work accompanying Liza Minnelli, Stritch will also feature in two performances (14 and 18 April) of his own show An Evening With Billy Stritch.
Here Lillias White is in conversation with Musical Theatre Review’s Patrick Honore.
How do you feel about coming back to London, this time to perform your nightclub act at Crazy Coqs?
I feel great! I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to do what I love to do for the audiences in London.
How did the London audience feel when you first performed in the city in the Fats Waller show This Joint is Jumpin at The Other Palace in 2017?
I believe they enjoyed it, it certainly was a great show with a wonderful cast and top-notch musicians. I felt so good about being there, I wish we had been in London longer, but we are back now. I am hoping that the people who enjoyed the shows that we did as a tribute to Fats Waller will come and enjoy these shows that we are doing to honour Hoagy Carmichael and all of the songwriters and lyricists that we are celebrating.
Did you feel any difference between London and American audiences?
No, audiences are audiences. People are people!
How was it going from being in the chorus to understudying Dorothy before actually becoming Dorothy on The Wiz bus and truck tour?
Wow, that was so long ago, but it was magical! It was unexpected and it gave me artistic muscles that I still use today.
You were also in Cats. Do you have any funny stories about that time?
I have stories, but they are not so funny…
The musical The Life, for which you won a Tony, has just been revived at City Center’s Encores! Did you see it? What did you think, if so?
I did see it, and it was a very different show than the one we did.
The Life was not done in London until 2017, 20 years after the original Broadway production, in a more intimate version in the Southwark Playhouse. Did you get to see that?
I did, I LOVED it! Sharon D. Clarke was so superb and the cast was wonderful. I loved what Michael Blakemore did to enhance the story and bring the characters to life.
In 2011 you starred in a Cy Coleman revue called The Best is Yet to Come at the 59E59 Theater. Can you talk about your personal affinity with that underrated American genius?
Cy Coleman was my friend, and he understood me. He loved me and he loved my family and my family loved him. He was a taskmaster and he saw me and he saw my heart. He said “Lillias White you are a force of nature!” and I think that HE was a force of nature. I think The Life was one of his best scores ever, aside from a show that we did with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman. It was called Like Jazz and hopefully some day that music will be presented in a Broadway format with a really good book. Some of my favourite songs in the whole world were written by Cy Coleman with wonderful lyricists like the Bergmans, David Zippel and Dorothy Fields. And you will hear many of them in our shows at Crazy Coqs.
My favourite recording of Dreamgirls is the concert version you did with Audra McDonald and Heather Headley in 2001. What memories do you have of that experience and playing the iconic role of Effie?
That particular experience was awesome! The performance took place very shortly after the Twin Towers were destroyed. The city was in a panic, we were all afraid, we had all been shaken to our roots by what had happened. But people came from all around the world for that performance. I still get chills when I recall the very beginning of the show when the cowbell is beating out the rhythm, and the cheer that went up in the theatre that night was quite remarkable.
I remember being very nervous and in awe of all of my co-stars: Norm Lewis, Audra McDonald, Heather Headley and more. It was an awesome life-changing experience to be on stage with all of these fine, fine singers and dancers, and to work with Seth Rudetsky is always a joy. All of my colleagues who worked on that performance were stellar. Everyone from the cast, to the crew and musicians, volunteered their time and brought their A-game. My mother was at the performance and she was sitting in front of Luther Vandross and she said to him “That’s MY daughter”. And he was so very impressed.
How did you, primarily a live performing artist, adjust to life during these last two long years?
I kept working! I was able to have my musical director Mathis Picard come to my home, we wore masks and we socially distanced, he played piano and I sang. We found a studio to rehearse in that followed very careful protocols and was able to stay open. We did some concerts in my living room, and some in his living room.
We did a lot of work with Black Theatre United, which was founded by myself and some of my esteemed colleagues: LaChanze, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Norm Lewis, Audra McDonald, Darius de Haas, Capathia Jenkins and many more. Our mission is to secure equity, inclusion and acceptance in the theatre and all of the arts. I also did a lot of Zoom broadcasts, including Stars in The House with Seth Rudetsky. Several of us have performed on this platform during the lockdown. You can see the episode with Mathis and I for Black Theatre United HERE.
What has been your favourite Broadway show that you’ve performed in?
I really can’t pick a favourite. I enjoyed The Life immensely, I loved performing in Fela! I’ve had some Off-Broadway shows that I’ve really loved doing too. Specifically Romance in Hard Times by William Finn, which ran at The Public Theater, and Dinah Was by Oliver Goldstick which played at The Gramercy.
We are looking forward to your week’s residency at Crazy Coqs You’re doing two different shows, Lillias Sings Broadway and a tribute to Hoagy Carmichael. Why did you pick that particular composer?
Hoagy B. Carmichael is one of my best friends in the whole world, I love his father’s music, and I thought it would be a great addition to our residency at the Crazy Coqs. The Hoagy Carmichael and Friends show is not only a compilation of music by Hoagy Carmichael and the greats that he collaborated with, but it is also a showcase for songs by other ingenious songwriters like Cy Coleman who were the creators behind the golden age of Hollywood.
- Lillias White Sings Broadway and Hoagy Carmichael & Friends run from 14-23 April 2022
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FEATURE: From Cy Coleman to Barry Manilow to bossa nova –Enjoy An Evening With Billy Stritch
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