As has come to be expected from Miscast, MCC’s annual gala featuring gender-bending and otherwise against-type performances, surprises ran aplenty at the 2018 installment on March 26.
Held at the Hammerstein Ballroom, prolific stars across stage and screen came out in support of MCC, as well as the year’s honoree, Tony and Emmy winner (and Oscar nominee) Laurie Metcalf.
Metcalf, now back on Broadway for the third consecutive season with “Three Tall Women,” was introduced by “Lady Bird” director and screenwriter Greta Gerwig before being surprised with a recorded video featuring messages of love from costars past and present including Nathan Lane and Alison Pill, as well as from her three children.
READ: The Unassuming Genius of Laurie Metcalf
Also honored was 25-year-old Harlem native Amy León, given the 2018 Youth Company Alumni Award, who was on hand to perform an original song from her debut play “Vaseline,” as well as lead the audience in a hall-wide “scream and release” (which is precisely what it sounds like).
But of course, the evening’s main attraction was those aforementioned performances, which kicked off in fittingly high-class fashion at 9 p.m. with triple threat Robbie Fairchild going all out on “The Music & the Mirror” from “A Chorus Line,” followed by one of Broadway’s newest divas, “Once on This Island” star Alex Newell. Bringing his unmatched vocal prowess to “Hallelujah Baby,” the little-known tuner that won Leslie Uggams a Tony, the bar was set at a meteoric high.
Thankfully for those in attendance, the 2018 class of performers was up to the challenge of meeting it. Ethan Slater, Wesley Taylor, and Gavin Lee, a trio of gents from Broadway’s “SpongeBob SquarePants,” sang a gleeful rendition of “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from the golden-hued “Company.”
“Frozen” star Caissie Levy went with “Shiksa Goddess,” sung by the male lead in Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last Five Years.” It marked an ironic selection considering Brown himself once told Levy she was “too Jewish” for the notedly non-Semitic role. “Aladdin” Tony winner and current “Hamilton” star James Monroe Iglehart sunk his teeth into a number from his own show that he has long admired from afar: Anjelica’s Act 1 showstopper, “Satisfied.”
In the lineup’s standout performance, Katrina Lenk accompanied herself on the fiddle singing “If I Were a Rich Man,” the most well-known song from “Fiddler on the Roof” and one which winkingly parallels her current role in the Israel-set musical, “The Band’s Visit.”
READ: ‘The Band’s Visit’ Star Katrina Lenk Is a New Kind of Broadway Leading Lady
Also an “only at Miscast” parallel: Tony nominee and “Supergirl” star Jeremy Jordan rattled the roof with “She Used to Be Mine,” the wrought 11 o’clock number from Sara Bareilles’ “Waitress,” which was immediately followed by Bareilles herself singing the politically charged “Make Them Hear You” from “Ragtime” to close out the show.
The evening’s most touching moment, however, was delivered by Tony winner Jayne Houdyshell, who starred opposite Metcalf in last season’s “A Doll’s House, Part 2.” Houdyshell told of the duo’s first meeting, which culminated in their shared desire to work together. “I just want to say, ultimately, she is unparallelled in my book,” she added, before Metcalf rushed to the stage for a shared embrace.
Better than the performances themselves, though, is their broader purpose: all proceeds from Miscast help to fund MCC in its continual efforts to produce some of New York’s most ambitious and original works of theater, as well as support its MCC Youth Company and in-school partnerships that serve public schools across New York City.
You can learn more about or support MCC right here.
Inspired to hit the stage? Check out Backstage's theater audition listings!