Video: Ellie Baker rehearses vocals for role of Fantine
By Kevin Coughlin
Seventeen-year-old Ellie Baker seems to radiate sunshine wherever she goes.
So even she was a little surprised when, after auditioning for the role of Cosette in this weekend’s youth production of Les Misérables at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, she worked up the nerve to call back and ask if she could try out for a darker character, Fantine.
In Victor Hugo’s epic story of heartbreak and redemption, set in 19th-century France, things turn out much better for the lovely Cosette than for Fantine, her troubled mother.
“Fantine falls in love with this guy, but he leaves before she can tell him she’s pregnant. She can’t keep her head above water,” explained Baker, a junior at West Morris Central High School.
The Long Valley resident likes the challenge of portraying a tragic figure.
“I’m not a sad person. It’s just one of those out-of-my-element roles,” said Baker, who screamed with joy when the callback came with news that she won the part.
‘DREAM CAST’
Director Cathy Roy is equally thrilled.
“She has a flawless voice; she can sing any part,” Roy said of Baker. And the teenager understands the role, the director said.
“It’s not easy to find someone who can sing it so well, and play it so real, and so in-character, and in the moment.”
In fact, Roy considers this her “dream cast,” in what is the Mayo Center’s most ambitious youth presentation so far, a $100,000 production.
“It’s vocally demanding, a painful story to tell, with complex characters,” she said.
The world’s longest running musical also is back on Broadway. So Roy was surprised that the Mayo Center was able to secure rights to Les Mis.
MPAC will present four performances, from May 29 through May 31, 2015. The 60-member cast ranges from age 7 to 22. There is a 14-piece orchestra, and a set rented from a Las Vegas production.
Les Misérables
Mayo Performing Arts Center, 100 South St., Morristown
Friday, May 29, 2015, at 7:30 pm
Saturday, May 30, at 2 pm and 7:30 pm
Sunday, May 31, at 2 pm
Tickets: $20-$25
Call 973- 539-8008
Almost half of the Les Mis cast appeared in Hairspray; many of the young actors attend the Mayo Center’s performing arts school.
Auditions for Les Mis were held in February in Morristown, with the exception of the male lead. Roy ventured to New York to find Jamie Westberry for the role of Jean Valjean, a French peasant who tries to right his life after spending 19 years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread.
Musical Director Kevin Lynch also is new this year, along with Assistant Director Jon Rodriguez, who studied with Roy when she taught at the John Harms Center (now the Bergen Performing Arts Center). He spent three years performing in Jersey Boys in Vegas.
The Les Mis cast has rehearsed two- and three times a week since March, with 12-hour run-throughs over the Memorial Day weekend.
“We’ve focused on telling the story,” Roy said last week. “My goal is to get so we could do this on a bare stage, and still move people.”
‘REALLY SCARY’
The prospect of singing to 1,300 people from the Community Theatre stage at MPAC is “really scary,” Baker acknowledged. “All those seats!”
But her preparation includes plenty of private lessons from voice instructors Ron and Barbara Sharpe and Maggie Callahan, and singing roles in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown at the Pax Amicus Castle Theatre on Budd Lake. She also starred as Yonah in her high school production of Children of Eden.
And Baker has at least one edge over many fellow cast members in Les Mis.
“The benefit to me is I already know every word in the show,” she said.
That’s thanks to her mom, a huge fan of the musical. While Baker enjoyed Erika Henningsen in the revival playing at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, she plans to interpret the role differently. Henningsen’s Fantine was a bit “too optimistic” for Baker’s tastes.
Fantine “is more desperate than anything else,” said Baker, who started singing in the 5th grade “but didn’t start sounding good until 8th grade. I still don’t think I sound that good.”
Still, compared to the vocal stylings of her father, a lawyer, and her mother, a school science supervisor….
“Oh my God, they’re so bad!” Baker opined, without an instant of deliberation.
Between musicals, Baker keeps busy in her school’s International Baccalaureate program–she described it as Advanced Placement courses “on steroids,” scarcely leaving time to eat and sleep–and hopes to study musical theater at the University of Cincinnati.
And what show is next? Baker doesn’t care.
“If I do Les Mis, I’m good for life!”
MORE ABOUT ‘LES MIS’ AT THE MAYO
If you don’t hire her, there’s something seriously wrong with your MUSIC BONE!