SHOW-MANCE MEETS REAL LIFE
With Broadway shut down, stage couples navigate an uncertain future
Matt Doyle had just finished a preview performance for the highly anticipated new staging of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, when the news arrived on March 12 — Broadway was shutting down.
The gender-flipped revival, in which Doyle plays the role of Jamie alongside the venerable Patti Lupone, was set to open March 22, coinciding with Sondheim’s 90th birthday.
Less than a block away inside, his boyfriend of almost five years, Max Clayton, and the company of the box office hit Moulin Rouge had received troubling news of their own hours earlier. That musical, in which Clayton is part of the ensemble, voluntarily cancelled its performances after a cast member showed coronavirus-like symptoms. More than a dozen of those involved with Moulin Rouge would later test positive for the coronavirus, Clayton said, himself included. Doyle also contracted the virus.
Both men recovered from their mild cases, but Moulin Rouge never returned and Company never opened. Instead, Broadway toasted Sondheim with a virtual birthday tribute on Youtube, and the 2020 Tony Awards, for which both shows were likely to receive nominations, were postponed indefinitely.
For the past three months, Doyle, 33, and Clayton, 28, have spent most nights binge-watching TV in their Jersey City apartment.
It’s a strange time to be a Broadway star dating another Broadway star. Accustomed to strenuous schedules and eight shows a week, couples now find themselves out of work indefinitely. Two big personalities cooped up without their usual creative outlets or incomes.
“I can hear Matt singing from all the way down the hall when I get off the elevator,” Clayton says. “I’m shocked the neighbours haven’t said anything, but I think they know we’re going through something.”
Theatres reopened just two days after the 9/11 attacks. But in this global pandemic, tickets to shows at Broadway’s 41 theatres are being refunded or exchanged through Sept. 6.
While the Actors’ Equity Association paid performers for the first two weeks of the shutdown, those payments and any health insurance benefits have since run out for most.
So, how are theatre actor couples navigating life without a stage?
As Cady Heron and Aaron Samuels in the musical Mean Girls, actors Erika Henningsen and Kyle Selig flirted, fought and kissed in front of more than 1,200 people multiple times a week. Offstage, their chemistry quickly led to a real-life romance.
The duo began dating two years ago, when dinner meant grabbing Chipotle as they ran to rehearsals. Now, the 27-year-olds make homemade fajitas in their Hamilton Heights apartment in Manhattan.
“There are actors who are like, ‘I will never date another actor,’” Selig says.
“For me, it’s such a weird industry and it’s so emotional that you need to be with somebody who understands what you’re going through at all times. Quarantine and COVID-19 are kind of an extension of that because we’re all in this crisis mode.”
Henningsen left Mean Girls in February and was slated to co-star in a limited run musical, Flying Over Sunset in April. The morning of the shutdown announcement, she’d had a callback for the upcoming musical adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook.
In the Woodside neighbourhood of Queens, L. Steven Taylor, who plays Mufasa in The Lion King, and Holly Ann Butler, who was in previews playing Princess Diana’s sister in the new musical Diana ahead of its intended March 31 opening, are spending more time together than ever.
Between watching Making the Cut and Rupaul’s Drag Race with their Yorkshire terrier, they have sewn more than 200 face masks to donate to residents in nearby public housing and filmed a coronavirus-themed video spoofing the Tango: Maureen duet from Rent.
“One of the things that I’m realizing is how much of performing was for us as it was for the audience,” says Taylor, 40. “I’ve been trying to do as many online concerts as possible to figure out ways to not feel useless. My voice hasn’t been in this good shape in a very, very long time because we never get to let our voices reset.”
Physical fitness is equally important. Both Taylor and Butler, who have been together since 2017, became ill with what they think was the coronavirus before testing was readily available, but they’ve since recovered and are intent on staying in shape for their eventual return to the stage.
“Diana is a shockingly physical show,” says Butler. “I’ve been trying to work out to the best of my ability on my equipment and go on runs, so that when I get back I’m not like, ‘Oh, my God, I (don’t have the stamina to) read or sing.’ ”
Jenn Colella earned a Tony nomination in 2017 for her role as the pilot Beverley Bass in Come From Away, a musical about the kindness of strangers in Gander, N.L., on 9/11. Now, the 45-year-old is sheltering north of the border, living with her Canadian girlfriend, actress Chilina Kennedy, and Kennedy’s five-year-old son in Kingston, Ont.
“Part of what has made our relationship work is that we’re both crazy busy,” Colella says of the couple’s three-year romance. “We had two separate homes. We enjoyed living apart. We had just started talking about maybe moving in together this fall. And then boom, all of a sudden we’re not only living together, but we’re with her son and her baby’s father is across the street.”
For some, the Cameo app, in which users purchase personalized video messages from celebrities, has provided a source of income and fan connection.
Zoom dance lessons and college audition coaching have also proliferated as side hustles, and many performers are raising money for Broadway Cares, the Actors Fund, and Broadway for Racial Justice, a new initiative founded by Cats actor Brandon Michael Nase in the wake of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Through everything, the desire to connect with audiences remains.
Henningsen and Selig teamed with some of their Mean Girls co-stars for a virtual reading of a Grade 1 class’s cancelled spring musical.
But such efforts also have highlighted the aching absence of a live audience.
“I think we’re all seeing that, as lovely as it is to be online and to be able to do things from your own home, it’s definitely not the same,” Kennedy says.
The Washington Post