[Only IN Hollywood] Show goes to Hollywood Bowl with Patrick Wilson, Jon Jon Briones; returns to PH

LOS ANGELES, USA – A show starring Lea Salonga and Michael Ball that premiered in Shanghai more than a decade ago continues its international journey, landing at Los Angeles’ famed Hollywood Bowl with a new cast, including Patrick Wilson, Skylar Astin, Jon Jon Briones, and Emily Bautista.

Do You Hear the People Sing? is the brainchild of Dublin-born Enda Markey, himself an artist who performed in Ireland, London, and Australia, until he decided to become a producer.

Amid his eponymously titled production company’s successful shows, from Side By Side By Sondheim to Defying Gravity: The Songs of Stephen Schwartz (with Sutton Foster and Joanna Ampil), Enda launched Do You Hear the People Sing? at the Shanghai Grand Theatre in 2013.

The show is a celebration not only of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s most famous musicals, Les Misérables and Miss Saigon, but also of their other collaborations, Martin Guerre, The Pirate Queen, and La Revolution Francaise (their first work).

It’s the only concert of their work that the two musical theater legends, who have been working together for more than half a century, sanctioned.

Enda followed the Shanghai premiere with other iterations of the show, named after the rousing march in Les Miz, Manila, Taipei, Melbourne, and at the Sydney Opera House, no less.

Now, Do You Hear the People Sing? is poised to hit the landmark Hollywood Bowl on July 28. In addition to Patrick, Jon Jon, and Emily, spectators at Los Angeles’ popular summer concert venue will also hear Nikki Renee Daniels, Rachel Tucker, and Marie Zamora, with Kevin Stites as musical director and conductor.

Less than a week later, on August 2 and 3, Enda returns Do You Hear the People Sing? to Manila for a 10th anniversary commemoration of the first Philippine production of the show.

This time, the Newport Performing Arts Theater stage will shine with a cast led by Abigail Adriano, Nigel Huckle, Bradley Jaden, and Amy Manford, with Gerard Salonga as musical director and conductor.

But for now, Enda is especially thrilled that his well-received production is hitting the Hollywood Bowl, which has hosted many of the world’s greatest artists, from The Beatles to Billie Holiday, since it opened in 1922.

“It’s a milestone in anybody’s career,” a smiling Enda said about his show’s debut at the Bowl in our Zoom chat. He called from Sydney where he is based (his company also has an office in London). “It’s not something that I think you’ll ever take off your resume. It’s a big deal for anybody.”

“I was there a couple of weeks ago and there was a marquee for the show outside the venue. I wanted to go and take a picture of it.”

“I was a bit embarrassed so I was talking to the security guard and he said no, no, the biggest stars in the world walk down and take that picture with their name on the marquee at the Hollywood Bowl box office. It is a big deal for everybody. It is a world icon.”

Bringing the concert showcasing the musical theater genius of Alain and Claude-Michel to the amphitheater known for its distinctive bandshell is a big step. “It’s exciting,” Enda stressed.

“I first met with Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg 12 years ago in New York and pitched the idea of adapting the concert which had been touring with symphony orchestras in the States but adapting it and having my own version of it.”

“I was a fairly new producer at that time so they were supportive and kind to let me have a go at it. For 10 years, we tried to do it in Australia and there was always something that was delaying it, COVID being one of the major things.”

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“But during that time, we had the option to do it in China so that was the first one we did with Michael Ball, Lea Salonga, Australian theater stars Amanda Harrison and David Harris, and Marie Zamora, who is in the Hollywood Bowl and she was the original Cosette in Paris. She sings all the beautiful French songs.”

“And from there, the show was very well received, and obviously, they’re the best songs in the world. So, it’s gone from strength to strength and now it feels like we’ve hit another milestone playing at the Hollywood Bowl.”

Enda elaborated on the Bowl show as his ode to the musical pair. “I think it’s a personal and professional milestone of seeing a show that I co-created with my musical idols. A show that I am very, very proud to have been able to build with them over these years.”

“And also, being able to pay tribute to them as well. They are my musical idols and it’s a great way to celebrate them because they should be celebrated. What they’ve created in their lives will live on beyond all of us. Les Misérables will be the show that in a hundred years, people will still be performing it.”

On how he came up with the list of soloists led by Patrick Wilson, the actor who is blessed with a rich baritone voice, Enda answered, “I’ve been a huge fan of Patrick Wilson’s for a long time, three decades probably.”

“He’s one of those people who’s got one of the finest musical theater voices around but because of his huge success in movies, people are always a bit surprised. I don’t know why because he was in The Phantom of the Opera movie, he was around with that. And he’s an absolutely beautiful singer but a really, really lovely person and a great star, which is a rare combination.”

“And then we’ve also got Skylar Astin,” Enda said.  “It’s an amazing cast for an amazing venue.”

“We’ve got Skylar, Emily Bautista, Jon Jon Briones, and Rachel Tucker who also did the show in Australia. She’s a force of nature as well and a great West End star. She just finished playing Norma Desmond in the famous new Sunset Boulevard with Nicole Scherzinger. She was Nicole’s alternate.”

“And yeah, we can’t quite believe our luck and it’s gonna fill this glorious venue with these amazing songs.” The surrounding Hollywood Hills will also reverberate with the thrilling voice of Nikki Renee.

Asked what made him decide to feature Jon Jon and Emily, the Irish impresario replied: “I saw Emily on Broadway as Kim in Miss Saigon. She then took over the role on the US tour and played Eponine on the US tour of Les Misérables, and just finished playing Eponine in The Muny.”

“Jon Jon is one of the most famous and best engineers that Miss Saigon has ever had. I saw him in London and on Broadway and on the DVD. There’s nobody like him. He’s incredible. He completely reimagined the role and made it his own. He has been involved with Miss Saigon since 1989, since the very first London production. So, he’s got form with this show.”

On bringing back Do You Hear the People Sing? to Manila a decade later, Enda enthused, “We had such success the last time that when Newport World Resorts, as they’re now called – they used to be Resorts World Manila – asked if we could do a 10th anniversary concert, I jumped on the idea because I had so much fun the last time.”

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Then Enda declared: “The greatest singers in the world are in the Philippines. I’m Irish, we’re supposed to have great singers but the Filipinos are pretty amazing. So, we’ve been working on it for almost a year now.”

“It comes up five days after we are in LA. Timing could have been better but it’s going to be pretty great. We have a completely different cast. Gerard Salonga is conducting it. Eddie Grey, our director will be there. We have Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo, Michael Williams, Carla Guevara Laforteza who sang in the Les Misérables tour.”

“So, lots of great people, some people I’m meeting for the first time, some people I’m looking forward to reconnecting with and catching up. It’s a great team there. They run a really good professional high-quality business. So I’m looking forward to going back.”

“This was one of the easiest ones to cast,” Enda continued. “It just worked out really well.”

“Abigail Adriano, who’s a Filipino-Australian, and Nigel Huckle, who’s an American-Australian. Both are currently starring in Miss Saigon and both had huge success in Manila fairly recently, a couple of months ago. And so, it was great to be able to ask them back.”

“Bradley Jaden is the hottest young star in the West End at the moment. We’ve been looking for a project and I managed to find this one slot between his recent international solo concert tour and his upcoming Les Misérables tour. We found this minute in the schedule that he was free so that worked.”

“And Amy Manford, who’s an Australian-American soprano. It was phenomenal. Same thing; we found a slot in her schedule. So, they’re the international artists but we’ve also got 10 Filipino artists who are the best in the country. People who have been involved with Miss Saigon from the original London production, like Michael Williams.”

“Menchu was in the Manila cast in 2000. Carla was Gigi and Kim cover in London in the 90s. And then we’ve got Joreen Bautista who just played Kim on the international tour.”

“And people who have never been in the show but who are phenomenal singers like Arman Ferrer, Jep Go, David Ezra, Bituin Escalante, who’s never been in the show but is a force of nature and she’s going to be a new take on The American Dream, which I’m pretty excited about.”

The Manila cast includes Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante and Esang de Torres. Theater veteran Bobby Garcia serves as the casting consultant.

Enda beamed when I asked him about presenting Do You Hear the People Sing? at the then-named Resorts World Manila with Lea Salonga, David Harris, and Marie Zamora in 2013.

“That’s probably one of the proudest moments of my career – that week in Manila,” he shared. “We raised three-quarters of a million Australian dollars, a little over half a million US dollars to build 200 homes and a school room, for those devastated after Typhoon Yolanda.”

“So, from that side, it was a wonderful achievement. But I also got to be in Manila with Lea, where she is an absolute cultural icon – actually she is, everywhere – and all these great Filipino artists who have been involved with Miss Saigon since the very first day.”

“So, it wasn’t just David, Marie and Lea. We had Menchu Lauchengco Yulo, Michael Williams, Carla Guevara Laforteza, all these people have been involved in the show, coming with us, and Leo Valdez, of course, coming to offer their support and help us make some money for this charity.”

(In the Taipei production, Jennifer Paz, another actress who memorably played Kim, joined the cast.)

“So it was a great opportunity. And we are doing it again in August.”

This year, the two concert nights will raise funds for the Manila-based Upskills+ Foundation, a nonprofit org dedicated to helping families through livelihood programs, education, vocational and college scholarships.

I asked Enda, since Marie Zamora is in all of the show’s editions, is she the lucky charm? “She is,” he answered with a smile. “She is the obvious choice for the French songs. Like I say, she created the role of Cosette in Paris and she’s had a great career there. She was at Barnum and Kiss Me, Kate.”

“She has toured all over the world with Michel Legrand, another great composer. We get on well and we like having her as part of the company.”

As for having Gerard Salonga as the musical director, Enda said: “However gifted he is as a musician, he’s also the nicest person. Every experience that you have with him is fun and easy. He’s a really nice man. Huge talent.”

“So, again, it’s not something that we always get to work together. He’s conducted the show before. It’s been a little while since we worked together. He’s a good man. I’m looking forward to that.”

Asked I if he misses performing, the London-trained actor quickly replied, “No.” Before plunging into producing, Enda performed in shows, including Follies. “I haven’t performed since I started producing.”

“I realized that you can’t objectively do both, the way I wanted to do it, at least. I was producing a show that I was in and then I realized that if I’d been objective, I probably wouldn’t have cast myself in it.”

“The show was continuing so I took myself out and replaced myself and kept producing. And I knew that when I could watch somebody else do the show, the role that I’d created, and not have any kind of pangs of missing it, I think that it was the right decision.”

“Producing has given me so many blessings and so many gifts over the past years that I’d be mad not to think that it was the best idea I’ve ever made. Do You Hear the People Sing? absolutely is my dream. The one regret that I had when I gave up performing was that I’d never been in Les Misérables. I feel like this is a really good payoff for that.”

Looking forward, Enda revealed: “I’m doing Carousel up in Australia in September. So straight from Manila into that. And then we’re working on some new Do You Hear the People Sing? dates for 2025. And I have another concert that celebrates Stephen Schwartz called Defying Gravity that we’re looking at for 2025 as well.”

“I’ve got another show which I love called Becoming Eliza, with Anna O’Byrne who was in the DVD of Love Never Dies. She’s an Australian soprano who played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady in Australia, a few years ago now but it was directed by the original Eliza, Julie Andrews.”

“Anna has put together this show about that experience, about rehearsing with Julie’s music. And that’s been playing in Australia now for a little over two years. So that continues to tour as well. So, keeping busy but having fun at the same time.”

Jon Jon Briones

I also talked via Zoom to Jon Jon Briones, now back in Los Angeles after his triumphant Broadway run with his daughter Isa Briones on Hadestown. “I’ve seen two, or three shows there,” the Laurence Olivier Award best actor in a musical nominee for Miss Saigon in 2015 began about his coming performance in the iconic venue carved into the Hollywood Hills.

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“The first time I was there, I said, oh, wow, this is such a cool place, a very cool venue. And then the history as well. But I never thought, oh, one day, one day. I’m not that kind of performer or actor. But when it happened, when it was offered to me, I was, of course, excited because it’s the Hollywood Bowl.”

“I’m also excited because I know the people. I know Claude-Michel and Alain. I love them. I’ve known them since 1988. So, to be doing this and singing their songs again is a gift.”

For his debut on the stage where artists from the Rolling Stones, Prince, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Adele to Barbra Streisand have sung, Jon Jon “will be performing, of course, The American Dream from Miss Saigon, also Master of the House from Les Misérables, and then three other songs that the whole company is involved in.”

“So, it’s going to be great because, with a choir, the soloists, and a 60-piece orchestra, that’s going to be majestic.”

On performing again with Emily who was in the 2017 Broadway revival of Miss Saigon with him, the Quezon City-born actor said, “I have not seen Emily in a long time so I’m looking forward to seeing her.”

“She’s done well since Miss Saigon on Broadway in 2017. She is making a name for herself and I’m so proud of her. So doing this with her, it’s always great. It’s going to be fun.”

When I asked him about Enda casting him and other Filipino artists in his shows, Jon Jon answered: “It’s wonderful. For him to approach me for this, I’m very honored. It’s always a good thing when Filipinos are being represented on a big stage.”

“And to have more than one person, the two (he and Emily) of us to be doing this, it’s a big deal. There are so many Filipinos in LA. When you see performers of your race on stage, you feel seen. A lot of things become possible. No matter what it is. Like, oh my God, look at that. People who look like me. And that spurs on, in your psyche, possibilities for other things. So, this is a great honor.”

On the universal appeal and continued popularity of a concert based on Alain and Claude-Michel’s songs, Jon Jon remarked, “Beautiful music, beautiful book. The storytelling, it’s compelling. It’s on a big, big stage. It’s Les Misérables and Miss Saigon. It’s very epic.”

“That’s why Les Misérables, when they did a movie version, it showed how epic it was. I love that movie and I’m looking forward to maybe someday they can make a movie of Miss Saigon. That would be amazing.”

“Claude-Michel and Alain have been working together for a long time. They’re geniuses in their own right. It makes sense that wherever their music goes, there are followers and lovers of their work.”

Asked to pick his favorites in the Alain and Claude-Michel songbook, the former member of the acclaimed Tiples de Santo Domingo boys choir answered: “Well, I’m going to speak for the two musicals I know, Miss Saigon and Les Misérables. I’ve been listening to the Les Misérables album since 1988. I thought it was genius. It was perfect.”

“It was a great honor when we performed it in the Philippines for Repertory Philippines in ’93. And the music there is so beautiful, A Heart Full of Love. I’ve been using Empty Chairs at Empty Tables for my audition song for a long time.”

“And of course, Miss Saigon – I’d Give My Life for You is so epic. They know how to create large, epic stories. I love it.”

As for his return to Broadway as Hermes in Hadestown, made more special by his daughter Isa Briones also in the musical, and in her debut on the Great White Way, Jon Jon opened up: “As a father, you’re always proud of your kids. You watch their successes, their lesser successes but you’re always there. You’re always rooting them on.”

“But to be offered that show and they said, oh, by the way, Isa is going to be doing it as well. I was like, oh my God. It was a no-brainer. I said, yeah, I’ll do it!”

“And the whole experience for both of us was very emotional. I thought it was just me who was emotional every time I looked across the rehearsal space, watching her, listening to her. But it was her as well because she has never seen me rehearse.”

“She has seen me on stage and she was a fan because she supports her dad. But to see my process and she talked about that a lot, to see my process and how I create those scenes that people have loved watching, she experienced that firsthand. I thought I was the only one who was always crying and she would be in tears as well. And then to get to perform eight shows a week, just glorious, it was just a blessing. It was beautiful.”

The man who did study at first to become an engineer admitted that the rare time he gets nervous is when his talented family, all actors – Megan, Teo, and Isa – are in the audience: “My family watching is always a special thing. It’s nerve-wracking when I know the people I love are watching the show. I’ve performed in front of kings and queens and I’m not nervous.”

“But every time Megan, Teo, or Isa watches the show… But it’s always special because I know the people I love are there. I’m performing for them. It’s like nobody else is there. Those are special, too.”

“Just goes to show it’s never too late,” Jon Jon smiled as he replied about all these wonderful opportunities coming his way, including the latest, the Bowl debut appearance. “Even though I’m 104 (laughs) (He is 58). All these opportunities have come my way in my later years. I made my Broadway debut at the age of 51 in 2017.”

“So, this being my first at this age is like, now it makes sense. It’s like I’m just starting. It’s a reminder to myself that your life is just starting. All these things are coming your way so relax, it’s going to be good. Enjoy the ride. You have your family, you have your friends. And so, I’m enjoying myself.”

On what’s next, Jon Jon said: “I’m doing a few concerts and a few shows. I don’t think I can mention them yet. And also, I forgot to mention Megan and I have a production company. We are producers now.”

“We’re trying to bring out a couple of TV shows that we’ve been working on and we’re very proud of. So those are the things that are keeping us busy at the moment.”

Are there any dream roles that are still lurking in his mind somewhere that he wishes he could do someday?

“You know what? Anything that’s offered to me (laughs). No, I’ve been lucky that a lot of the roles that have been offered are amazing roles. The hope is it continues that way because I love telling stories, especially beautiful stories.”

“And I want to highlight Filipino stories because as you know, we have the most amazing stories that need to be told. And I’m going to try and make that happen. I will make that happen.” – Rappler.com