PROMISES, PROMISES for Chenoweth?

Posted on October 14, 2009 by David Fick

Although no official announcement has been made yet, the latest name in connection with the role of Fran Kubelik in the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises is Kristen Chenoweth. It now seems very likely that it is she who will play opposite Sean Hayes as Chuck Baxter.

This entry was posted in Broadway, Musicals and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to PROMISES, PROMISES for Chenoweth?

  1. Eric HG says:
    October 15, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    But but but… She’s not all wrong but is more wrong than right for me. She’s too old. She also strikes me as too high strung for the role. Though she would do fine with the quirkiness, it’s more of a lower intensity quirkiness than I’m used to from Cheno…

    Reply
  2. David Fick says:
    October 16, 2009 at 10:29 am

    But she is more age appropriate than many musical theatre actress/role combinations: Mary Martin/Nellie, Mary Martin/Maria, Ethel Merman/Annie in 1967, Patti LuPone/Annie in 2010 and so on. And Cheno doesn’t look nearly as old as she actually is.

    Reply
  3. Eric HG says:
    October 16, 2009 at 10:40 am

    But it doesn’t matter as much with those roles at all (well Maria aside). Here it really does – a 40 something year old makes Fran completely different. It would probably make many audiences see her as more pathetic first of all – for having so many affairs with men when she’s not really any younger than their wives; now she’s no younger than Marge (the famous featured role Marianne Mercer won the Tony for) which makes that character largely pointless since in many ways she’s meant to represent what Fran could become in her 40s. I dunno. It really doesn’t work for me (though I agree that Cheno looks and plays younger than she is, though I’m getting sick of it, one reason I loved her so much on Glee as someone trying desperately to hold on to her youth).

    Reply
  4. David Fick says:
    January 16, 2010 at 8:07 am

    It matters for Nellie too! That was proved beyond a doubt in the TV film starring Glenn Close. And I’d say it adds a great deal to Annie too.

    The point, I guess, is that even though Cheno may be 41, that doesn’t mean she will be playing 41 – and the stage will help that illusion somewhat, more so than TV or film would anyway.

    Reply

What are your thoughts?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s