Tony Award-Winner Lena Hall, currently wowing crowds in NYC as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, is coming to Buffalo! She will be taking the week off from Broadway to headline Starring Buffalo’s concert production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s EVITA at Shea’s 710 Theatre November 4th and 5th. Starring Buffalo, which presents musicals featuring a mix of Broadway veterans, Buffalo professional actors and musicians, and WNY student choruses, continues to raise the bar for theatrical productions in the Queen City.
EVITA is a soaring epic musical that features some of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s greatest music, and charts the rise of Eva Peron as she becomes the most powerful woman in Latin America. Ms. Hall, who won theater’s biggest award in 2014 for her performance in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, plays Eva Peron. Robi Hager from the original company of Broadway’s Spring Awakening plays Che Guevara, and Nicholas Rodriguez, who played the title character in Disney’s Tarzan on Broadway, will play Juan Peron. They follow in the footsteps of actors like Tony Award-Winner Matt Doyle, Tony Award-Nominee Josh Young, and over twenty others who have made the trip from Broadway to Buffalo to perform in a Starring Buffalo event.
Joining the Broadway actors are Buffalo stars Anna Fernandez as The Mistress and Raphael Santos as Magaldi, with Blaise Mercedes, Victoria Perez, Mateo Rivera, Joe Russi, Madalyn Teal, and Dan Torres in the ensemble, and a full professional orchestra. The entire group will be backed up by student choruses from Buffalo’s Frederick Law Olmsted and City Honors high schools, creating a grand choral sound for the audience and giving the students opportunities to learn from and perform with Broadway and Buffalo’s best.
In addition to producing innovative collaborations between Broadway and Buffalo artists in large-scale staged concert formats, Starring Buffalo creates unique special events to augment its programming. These have included creating a pre-curtain thematic art gallery opening party in 710’s lobby to feature emerging local visual artists, producing surprise pop up concerts in venues across the city, and creating an online platform for emerging performers through their New Voices series on Instagram. This year Starring Buffalo will create the first ever “musical theater tailgate”, a Bills-Mafia style outdoor party with food, drink, and games prior to the matinee performance of EVITA on November 5.
EVITA plays November 4 at 7:30pm and November 5 at 2pm and 7:30pm. Tickets and additional information are available at www.starringbuffalo.org