Broadway’s Brightest Escape: Inside Schmigadoon! With Stars Alex Brightman and Sara Chase

In the season of April showers, Alex Brightman and Sara Chase find themselves trapped in Schmigadoon!—a place where “the sun shines bright from July to June.” The duo sat down with The Broadway Show host Tamsen Fadal at The Skylark back in the real world to talk about the TV-to-stage adaptation, pretending to hate musicals and finally bowing on Broadway together.

Brightman and Chase first worked together 16 years ago in Spidermusical., the unauthorized parody of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark happening just two blocks away. The two played “Peter Partker” and “Mary Joan” (which Chase insists was “for copyright reasons”), so it was definitely not a rickety-rackety retelling and also obviously very legal. The two did School of Rock off-Broadway together with Chase filling in temporarily for the role of Principal Rosalie Mullins and Brightman as leading man Dewey Finn, who he would go on to play on Broadway. Schmigadoon! marks the pair's long-awaited Broadway bow.

"I had done a reading, and then when they said that we were going to do a full production I just was saying like, 'Oh God, I hope it's Alex Brightman. I hope it's Alex Brightman,'" Chase recalls. Once Brightman found out he would be working with Chase, he jokingly texted her, “Hey, do you want to work together?” On a more sincere note, Brightman says that “the joy of this is the show, but the real joy of it is doing it with Sara. The chemistry is already set, and it's a fantasy camp to get to work with the best people you know.”

Unfortunately for Brightman, his character Josh doesn’t experience much joy throughout Schmigadoon! The show follows New York doctors Josh and Melissa (Chase), who are on a couples’ backpacking retreat in an attempt to rekindle the flame in their relationship when they suddenly find themselves trapped in a town where everyone behaves as though they’re in a Golden Age musical. The only escape? Finding true love. To add insult to injury, Josh hates musicals. Not very joyful, right?

”I play a surgeon, Dr. Josh Skinner, whose biggest quality is his absolute abhorrence of musical theater. Which is counter to kind of my entire life,” says Brightman. He has nine Broadway credits to his name (10 if you count Beetlejuice, again) and spent most of his adolescence performing. Whatever there is to understand about musical theater as an art form, Brightman just gets it. “As such a lover of musical theater, there is something very difficult about being in the show, watching this happening and trying to remember that I have to hate what I'm watching.”

Not Chase, though. In a real “na-na na-na boo-boo” way, Chase gets free reign to marvel at the glorious performances that happen in front of her live each night. “My character, and myself as a person, loves musical theater and I love Golden Age musicals,” Chase says. “I sit there and watch the most talented people on Broadway dance and sing and I just react naturally like I normally would.” Brightman, jealous, says: “I have to be like, ‘Boring!’ as I'm watching Ana Gasteyer—someone who I've dreamed to work with—I have to be like, ‘Nah, don't care.’”

Despite the true acting challenge Brightman must take on night after night, he still describes the environment as a “joy bomb.” Might that have something to do with Brightman and Chase getting to improvise insults at each other for every show? Perhaps. But in reality, Chase puts it best: “It's like watching a warm hug if you love musical theater. And even if you don't, you've got Josh as your guide to sort of poke fun at it.” However, once fun is poked and corn puddin’ is had, “it ultimately wins you over.”

Watch the full interview below.

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