San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Broadway stars on prettier stage: Wine Country
Two decades ago, Jacob Langfelder was a Midwestern kid who’d moved to New York with big theater dreams and a job waiting tables.
Today, his production company Broadway and Vine is bringing a bevy of stage and screen celebs to Wine Country — and all before the company’s second birthday.
Its summer outdoor concert series, announced in April, includes San Francisco native Darren Criss (FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” Fox’s “Glee” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” on Broadway) on July 28; Sutton Foster (TV Land’s “Younger,” “The Music Man” on Broadway with Hugh Jackman) on Aug. 2; and actor and model Brooke Shields on Aug. 29. It all kicks off with Tituss Burgess (Netflix’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and “Schmigadoon!” on Apple TV+) on June 27. Attendees enjoy not just a concert in a vineyard under the evening sky, but also a wine tasting and a vintner dinner.
The story of how Langfelder made his career leap draws equally on his time treading the boards and his gigs reciting menu specials.
“As most people do, I got into waiting tables as a survival job,” the Springfield, Ill., native told The Chronicle. But unlike many aspiring actors, “I fell in love with hospitality.”
In between touring with Jonathan Groff in “The Sound of Music” or performing in Stephen Sondheim musicals, he worked at Craft as Tom
Colicchio (“Top Chef”) was becoming a celebrity chef and at other haute cuisine spots including Jean-Georges and Daniel.
“Maybe it was a bit of the performer in me,” Langfelder recalled. To him, serving
meals at a hip restaurant was like acting in a hit show.
On vacations, he discovered another love — Napa Valley — finally seeing in person the wine regions he discussed with restaurant patrons.
Around 2013, his passions for hospitality and theater merged for the first time when
he started managing 54 Below, which included booking artists.
“When I started putting artists onstage, I got that same — not butterflies, but that excitement of when I was onstage,” Langfelder said. “I fought so hard to be on the stage, and to finally have
something that I could lend to other artists was really fulfilling.”
Then in 2016, he happened to be talking with friends in Bouchon Bakery Time Warner about where to take a show when Thomas Keller walked by and sat down. “I said, ‘I would really love to bring Broadway to Napa,’ ” Langfelder recounted. Keller was receptive to the idea and made some introductions with Wine Country movers and shakers.
Keller was “happy to have played a small part in something that is enriching the Napa Valley arts community,” he said in a statement to The Chronicle.
Langfelder officially moved to the region in 2018, getting to know the scene by producing events for Festival Napa Valley, the annual event blending arts performances, wine and food. It takes place this year July 8-23.
Langfelder’s Broadway and Vine, blending Wine Country’s comestibles, libations and
vineyard views with a chance to see Broadway stars without all the razzle-dazzle, debuted with Tony Award nominee Tony Yazbeck in 2021, as much of the rest of the world was reopening from the pandemic, thanks to vaccines.
But Napa had its additional wounds. When Langfelder introduced Yazbeck at Tre Posti in St. Helena, he could see the scars of 2020’s Glass Fire across the valley. “We were all just starved to do something,” Langfelder said.
He thought, “Can I just do, like, one show? And if it doesn’t work we’ll just throw in the towel?”
But it did work. Since then, Broadway and Vine has hosted Lea Michele (“Glee” and “Funny Girl” on Broadway), Fairfield native Taylor Iman Jones (“Head Over Heels”) and Abby Mueller (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”). The company adds to the Broadway offerings of Transcendence Theatre Company, which also produces in the region but specializes in large-cast revues.
Langfelder knows tourists might not associate Wine
Country with Broadway, so he especially looks for crossover talent. He also acknowledged that some of his guests are coming for the concerts and that others attend for the food and wine bigwigs.
“You get the performer saying, ‘I have no idea who these wine people are, but I love all of it,’ ” Langfelder said, “and the same with the vice versa.”
To witness top-tier musical talent in the middle of nature’s splendor? “You essentially get to be Julie Andrews on the mountaintop,” Langfelder said.