CAISSIE LEVY
Hamilton-born Caissie Levy is portraying Broadway’s first Elsa, from the hit film Frozen
The ice-princess power ballad “Let It Go” would be a showstopper with or without the frost fortress assembling onstage during the Act I climax of the upcoming Frozen musical.
For Hamiltonian Caissie Levy, Broadway’s first flesh-and-blood Elsa, it could be intimidating to belt out a ballad that even her toddler son knows every note to. But Levy has found letting go during “Let It Go” surprisingly easy — she just pulls an Elsa.
“She is deciding in that moment to let go of the things that she’s been taught her whole life and find some sort of self-love and be free,” she says, calling from her home in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “If I’m doing that, then we’re staying within the story.”
The new musical based on the 2013 film — the highest-grossing animated movie of all time worldwide — begins previews on Broadway Feb. 22, following a six-week production in Denver last year. It’s been tweaked since that run: a narrator character has been axed and bits of the show’s 24 tunes have been clipped, including 12 new originals from the movie’s songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez.
The storytelling has also been streamlined for a reason some may find shocking. “Believe it or not,” Levy says, “there are some people who haven’t seen Frozen.”
If you can believe that, this is for you: Sisters (and princesses, naturally) Elsa and Anna are best friends, until Elsa accidentally injures Anna (played by Patti Murin) with her misunderstood ice magic. After another icy accident as an adult, Elsa goes into exile, leaving a wintry curse on the kingdom in her wake.
Levy is experienced in making a beloved Broadway number her own. Levy played Fantine in “Les Misérables” in 2014 and 2015 — arguably the peak “I Dreamed A Dream” burnout years following Anne Hathaway’s Oscar-winning performance. She’s also played Maureen in “Rent” and Elphaba in “Wicked,” both roles which, like Elsa, are associated with theatre legend Idina Menzel.
Levy, 36, received the original Elsa’s blessing when she crossed paths with Menzel recently. Levy recalls Menzel telling her, “I’m just the voice ... You are the first person to be playing her on stage.”
“I just thought that was an incredibly gracious thing to say,” Levy says, describing it as a humbling experience for an actor who spent her teenage years bedroom-mirror-singing to Menzel’s Maureen in “Rent.”
Levy’s been a musical-theatre star since age eight, performing in a community theatre production of the ’70s children’s feelings-fest “Free To Be ...You And Me.” When she was 19, she moved to New York after being accepted to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
“I think that when you’re young you have the benefit of being, um, stupid,” she laughs.
“Which is a great gift, because you leap with both feet and a full heart.
“I think it gets harder to do that the older you get.”
She worked under the table checking coats at a restaurant while in school, but just days before graduating she booked the role of Maureen in the touring company of “Rent.”
“I met friends for life on that show,” she says.
When “Rent” wrapped, she had a brief stint as “a terrible, terrible waitress” before joining the national touring company of “Hairspray.’
She joined the Toronto cast, which to this day remains her only Canadian credit.
“And I lived across the street from the theatre,” she says. “So I’m lousy with Toronto directions.”
While playing Penny in “Hairspray” on Broadway, she went on her first date with David Reiser, a fellow Broadway actor then starring in the Beach Boys’ jukebox musical “Good Vibrations.”
“I knew I was going to marry him on the third date,” she says.
Today, their son, Izaiah, is almost two and shares the family’s musical DNA.
“He plays a little-kid saxophone, he’s got a couple drum sets, he’s got a piano, he’s got a couple guitars,” she says. “He’s definitely in the family band.”
As for “Frozen”? He has a working knowledge of the story’s stars: “He says, ‘Anna’ and ‘Mama.’”
Levy says people often ask how she can perform the same show every night. She says it’s kind of like yoga.
“You go to class, you get on the mat and you do the same series of poses,” she says. “But it’s different every time, because you’re different every time.”
That’s been especially true since becoming a mom.
“I am stressing less about trying to please everybody and I’m embracing all of the mess,” she says.
“It’s very much like Elsa. I relate to her so much, this need to have everything be perfect and then hit a point in your life where you think, you know what? I don’t know anything. I don’t know how to do this, but I’m going to do it anyway.
“I am going to hope that people like what I do, but I can’t live my life for them. I have to live it for myself, and just give the best of myself. I am just trying to take a page out of her book and do that with this production.”