In the end, all you have to do to win Broadway’s Masked Singer is throw on a whale costume and inflatable crown, get into a hot tub, and sing “I’ll Be Back” from Hamilton. At least that’s what audiences decided April 30 in the Season 1 finale of the digital series.
The Whale ultimately raised over $3,000 for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. The nonprofit was the beneficiary of the series, which will get a check for $11,867 when all eight contestant’s efforts are combined.
As for the finale itself, the crown-worthy puns reached new heights. After being eliminated, The Potato was saved by the skin of their spud before being unmasked and allowed to stay in the competition. They joined The Elephant, The Chicken, The Bee, and The Whale in a head-to-head, five-way round.
The Potato first sang “1, 2 Step,” with guesses ranging from Laura Benanti to Christy Altomare and Izzy McCalla. The latter picked up speed as a contender and nearly everyone was onboard with the guess as The Prom’s original Alyssa Greene popped out of the costume to much applause. “I am thrilled that I got to actualize my life as a couch potato into a real, live potato,” said McCalla.
Next up was The Elephant, who sang “Rainbow Connection.” In a twist, the trunk-tastic pachyderm was later revealed to be one of the panelists, Nic Cearly. The performer had been guessed by Melissa Rosen, but few of the other panelists agreed. “I said it, you all laughed at me,” said Rosen in a video upon the reveal. “But I know that voice like the back of your tushy, and the whole world knows the back of that tushy!” Cearly is best known as one-half of the underwear-clad cabaret act The Skivvies.
The Potato and The Elephant only performed once in the finale after coming in fourth and fifth place, respectively.
The Chicken then took the stage embodying the pop divas of today with “Call It What You Want” and later “Unconditionally.” Taking home third place—as many had correctly called—was Jessica Vosk. The feathered friend encouraged viewers to continue donating to Broadway cares before bobbing off-stage, remaining true to character in typical Vosk fashion.
The Bee flew all the way back to the 90’s with “Roll to Me” and “Because You Loved Me,” landing the winged favorite in second place. Last minute guesses included Jeremy Pope, Ephraim Sykes, and Kevin Smith Kirkwood—but in the end, Jelani Remy was hiding underneath the fuzzy costume. “I had too much fun…it was un-bee-lieveable,” said the Ain’t Too Proud star.
Last to sing was The Whale, who sang “Something to Hold Onto” from the upcoming musical Between the Lines. After their hot tub Hamilton moment, the time had come to discover who was hiding under the sea. Was it Stark Sands? James Snyder? No! The winner of Broadway’s Masked Singer Season 1 was indeed Nic Rouleau! The The Book of Mormon star thanked everyone who was on #TeamWhale. “From my blowhole to my tailfin, I really felt the love tonight,” the star said.
That’s all for Season 1 of Broadway’s Masked Singer. Stay tuned for an interview with Nic Rouleau and Jelani Remy—plus unseen performance videos from The Dalmatian, The Flamingo, and more. In the meantime, you can read the recaps for Episode 1 and Episode 2.
BroadwayWorld Events is bringing you incredible talent right into your home This week includes Jeremy Jordan and Marilyn Maye at 54 Below, and Christine Pedi on The Seth Concert Series
On this day in 1984, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s art-world masterpiece, Sunday in the Park with George, opened on Broadway starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters.
Pray Tell, Blanca, and the House of Evangelista are not going down without a fight in the third and final season of FX’s Pose, debuting May 2 at 10 PM ET. The premiere will be preceded by The Final Pose – An Exhibition Ball at 8 PM, featuring messages from the cast, guest judges, ball performances, and more.
Check out Billy Porter, Mj Rodriguez, and more in a trailer above, offering a sneak peek at Jeremy Pope’s character, looking stunned by the ballroom scene he’s stumbled upon.
Season 3 flashes-forward to 1994 after Season 2 explored the early ’90s. As AIDS becomes the leading cause of death for Americans ages 25 to 44, Pray Tell contends with unexpected health burdens. Meanwhile, Blanca struggles to balance being a mother and a nurse’s aid. Together with the House of Evangelista, they will fight to keep ballroom culture alive—and get fair treatment during the HIV/AIDS crisis.
As previously announced, this is the final season of the FX series, created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Steven Canals. Murphy confirmed earlier this year that the series will conclude with the arrival of AIDS medication and increased accessibility, around 1996.
In addition to Emmy and Tony winner Porter and Rodriguez, Pose stars Dominique Jackson, Indya Moore, Ryan Jamaal Swain, Hailie Sahar, Angel Bismark Curiel, Dyllón Burnside, and Sandra Bernhard.
Photos: Go Inside the Season 2 Premiere of Pose with Billy Porter, Janet Mock, and More
What I’d like to do today is chat just a little bit about the short form musical.
At New Musicals Inc, where I work, the people who come into our Core Curriculum (that’s our first year program for writers who are new to us), finish off the year with an assignment to write a 15-minute musical. And there are various other places where there are 10 minute musical contests, and there are other opportunities that would give you a reason to want to write a short musical: 15 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes. And so I wanted to talk just for a moment about the short form, and how it affects your storytelling.
The biggest issue that I see when people sit down to write a five-minute musical, as opposed to a five-minute play, is that they have a tendency immediately to think about sketch comedy. If you watch a Saturday Night Live sketch, or some other art form like that – you tend to have a little short scene that’s comic and ends with a silly punch line of some kind— so that the whole thing is sort of a joke, which is fun. I think we all love that sort of storytelling sketch comedy, and certainly the short form musical lends itself to comedy.
You don’t only have to go for comedy, but it certainly does lend itself to comedy because it’s tricky to tell a really detailed, robust story in such a short amount of time - although not impossible. So if you know that comedy does sort of reach out to you - and you’re writing a short musical - why not try a comedy? But I would urge you to try to remember that it is NOT sketch comedy. And let me talk to you for a moment about why I think that.
Sketch comedy has a tendency to end with a punch line that is meant to be a joke, and that works great for sketch comedy. The reason I think that doesn’t work well for a musical is because, generally speaking, at the end of a musical you’re going to have some kind of a musical moment. It might be a recap or a reprise of a song that you’ve done earlier in the piece; it might just be a couple of lines; it might be a whole new song; but likely, because it’s a musical, you’re probably going to end with a song.
And I don’t think that you can translate the punch line of sketch comedy into a song or a musical moment. Because by definition a punchline is short, and snappy, and funny, and you get it out of the way and everybody laughs.
A song doesn’t work that way. A song can certainly have laughs in it and can be very funny, and can have a lot going on. It’s even possible you could fashion a song where the very last line of the song is, in essence, a punchline. That would not be impossible. I personally think that would be pretty difficult to do, because the purpose of a song is to tell some kind of a truth, even if it’s a funny truth - to sum up the theme of your show - the journey of your characters. It’s fine if it’s doing it in a very comic way and totally intended to get laughs, but usually a punchline is something sort of unexpected, something that jumps in at the end and changes all of your expectations. And that’s why you laugh at it, because it’s not at all what you expected. And that’s great for sketch comedy – but tricky for musical theater because it’s hard for a song to do that.
Go ahead and prove me wrong! Go ahead and write a song that has a punch line at the end, and where that punch line ties up the story, and makes us feel like we’ve gone on a journey with the characters. I’m sure it’s not impossible, but I would urge you to consider - when you’re writing a short form musical that is intended to be a comedy - to try to get away from the idea of ending it with a punchline, and think about ending it with the culmination of your lead character’s story in a song, which can be funny without a doubt and can even be somewhat unexpected, but my guess is it’s not going to translate directly to a punchline.
Now to add on to that, I do want to encourage you to believe that you can tell a serious story - an extremely serious, heartwarming, important story. Something that really has something important to say. You can do it in 5, 10, or 15 minutes. You have to work a lot harder, I think, to make sure that you get enough depth out of your characters to be able to tell that in the short form, but you can. So there’s no reason to shy away from writing a serious short musical.
But if you’re writing a comic short musical, I beg of you: try to understand the difference between a short musical and a piece of sketch comedy with a punchline.
