On 1 June, Lauren Worsham won the 2014 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical!
Lotte Lenya Competition prizewinner Lauren Worsham (2nd Prize, 2009) continues to go from strength to strength as her theater career burgeons. Just announced: a Tony nomination for Featured Actress–for her Broadway debut, no less–as Phoebe D’Ysquith in the new musical, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. The nomination comes on the heels of a Drama Desk Award nomination for the same role. Two well-deserved boosts for an up-and-coming star!
A terrific singer-actress equally capable of handling Broadway and opera roles, Lauren (shown at right taking a curtain call) exemplifies the values and high standards of the Lenya Competition. Her career highlights include: Cunegonde in Candide and Flora in Turn of the Screw (New York City Opera); Amy in Where’s Charley? (New York City Center Encores!); Olive in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (first national tour); Lili in Carnival (Goodspeed Opera House); Cinderella in Into the Woods (Kansas City Rep); Sophie in Master Class (Paper Mill Playhouse); and Clara in The Light in the Piazza (Weston Playhouse).
A Gentleman’s Guide garnered a remarkable ten Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Original Score, making it one of the biggest surprises of this year’s award season. The show features music by Steven Lutvak, lyrics by Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman, and a book by Freedman. It opened on Broadway on 17 November 2013 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, with Worsham in the original cast, along with Bryce Pinkham and Jefferson Mays, directed by Darko Tresnjak (all three also nominated for Tonys).
The cast recording of A Gentleman’s Guide is now available on Ghostlight Records. You can also hear Lauren Worsham in the brand-new recording of Weill’s One Touch of Venus, with Melissa Errico, Brent Barrett, and Ron Raines, just released by Jay Records in London.
Congratulations to Lauren and everyone involved in A Gentleman’s Guide!
A few selections from the critics:
“The wonderful Lauren Worsham . . . plays Phoebe D’Ysquith . . . with a demure sweetness that never cloys” (New York Times); “Worsham in particular is in gorgeous lyric voice” (New York Post); “adorably perky and also lovely sopranoed” (Broadway World); a “crystalline soprano with sharp comic instincts” (Hollywood Reporter).
