It’s just like HR, but the fun kind! Before Sophie Carmen-Jones takes her final bow as Nine in Moulin Rouge! this Sunday, I caught up with her to reflect on the past few years in the role. She began as the original Nini in the West End company, and now she's ready to say goodbye. 

Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Theatrely: When you think about closing up your time with Moulin Rouge! in a few days, what emotions come to mind?

Sophie: Oh gosh all the feels! I have the best memories in this show. I think there might be a lot of tears from me on Sunday!

Would love to walk down memory lane for a moment, you opened the original West End company! What would you say has been the biggest difference between performing the show over there vs. here on Broadway?

So many little things are different between West End and Broadway, like company warm ups…they don’t happen here and I kind of miss that moment to check in with everyone. Another big difference is the interchanging cast here, in London it’s usually the same cast for 1 year but here you could watch every couple months and see a totally different cast each time.

When you found out you were going to be joining the Broadway company, what was that feeling like?

As good as winning the lottery I’d say! Not that I’ve won the lottery…that would be nice too ;)

You have been with the show now for a few years, do you feel you are ready to say goodbye to Nini?

Gosh that’s a tough question because I love playing her SO much. But I think as actors we have to stay curious and stretch ourselves in order to continue growing so this felt like the right time to fly the nest.

What will you miss most about your time at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre?

The people!! I’ve made so many wonderful friends there, I’ll miss laughing with them every day. But we always say in theatre…it’s never goodbye it’s see you later!

Do you have one specific memory throughout your time with moulin Rouge! that you will always remember?

I think the first preview in London was a big one for me. That first time in front of an audience feeling is exhilarating (and petrifying) and we’d been rehearsing and tech-ing for months so we were ready and raring, and the cast was on fire! Also my Broadway debut…that’s a night I’ll never forget, my fiancé and some of my best friends were here supporting and it felt like such a huge achievement :)

What advice do you have for future Nini’s?

Always warm up thoroughly and strength train outside of the show to avoid injury.  Oh and stay playful, keep having fun!

What is the biggest thing Moulin Rouge! has taught you that you will bring to your next contract or show?

That being committed and consistent pays off and doesn’t go unnoticed. Stay that way.

If you could sum up your entire experience in one word, what would that be?

MOMENTOUS!

TUDUM! With Stranger Things: The First Shadow now officially in rehearsals here in New York as they prepare for their first preview on Friday, March 28, Sonia Friedman Productions and Netflix have completed their company. The new play will officially open Tuesday, April 22 at the Marquis Theatre. 

The production will feature the previously announced Rosie Benton (Patriots) as Virginia Creel, Alex Breaux (“Stranger Things” Season 5) as Dr. Brenner, Andrew Hovelson (Lucky Guy) as Principal Newby, Alison Jaye (“Shameless”) as Joyce Maldonado, Emmy Award nominee T.R. Knight (“Grey’s Anatomy”) as Victor Creel, Louis McCartney reprising his universally acclaimed performance as Henry Creel (Stranger Things: The First Shadow, West End), Emmy Award nominee Gabrielle Nevaeh (Nickelodeon’s “That Girl Lay Lay”) as Patty Newby and Burke Swanson (Back to the Future: The Musical) as James Hopper, Jr. The cast of 34 also includes Janie Brookshire (The Philanthropist), Kelsey Anne Brown (Broadway Debut), Malcolm Callender (Broadway Debut), Ta’Rea Campbell (The Hills of California) as Patty’s Mom, Juan Carlos (Broadway Debut) as Bob Newby - replacing Nicholas Eldridge, - Antoinette Comer (Mamma Mia!), Robert T. Cunningham (Broadway Debut) as Charles Sinclair, Ayana Cymone (Broadway Debut) as Sue Anderson, Tom D'Agustino (Apple TV+’s “Dear Edward”), Victor de Paula Rocha (Broadway Debut), Ian Dolley (The Holdovers) as Walter Henderson, Dora Dolphin (Broadway Debut) as Karen Childress, Nya Garner (Broadway Debut), Logan Gould (Netflix’s “The Corps”) as Lonny Byers, Shea Grant (Broadway Debut) as Claudia Yount, Rebecca Hurd (Broadway Debut), Ted Koch (To Kill a Mockingbird) as Chief Hopper, Timothy Lawrence (Broadway Debut), Jamie Martin Mann (Broadway Debut) as Ted Wheeler, Patrick Scott McDermott (Flying Over Sunset), Stephen Wattrus (Take Me Out), Maya West (Broadway Debut) and Eric Wiegand (Plaza Suite) as Alan Munson and Graham Winton (The Ferryman).

In 1959 Hawkins, Indiana, the Creel family seeks a fresh start, especially their teenage son Henry, who is eager to escape his troubled past. Initially, things go well — he finds friendship and joins the school play. But when a wave of shocking crimes strikes the town, Henry is forced to confront a terrifying truth: is there something inside him that connects him to the horrors unfolding around him?

As this thrilling mystery races forward, shadows of the past are unleashed, relationships are tested, and the town of Hawkins faces the ultimate question: can the power of friendship outshine the darkness within?

For tickets and more information, visit here: www.StrangerThingsBroadway.com

For the 20th consecutive year, experimental theater festival Under the Radar is presenting an array of challenging, imaginative work across New York City. The UTR slate includes developmental series “Under Construction,” where work-in-progress pieces invite audiences in to help figure out what’s working—and what’s not. 

For composing duo The Lazours, “Under Construction” is a welcome step along the journey of new show Night Side Songs. When you’re crafting an interactive, singalong musical about illness that toys with the fourth wall and includes historical “visions” from time past alongside a modern story, a bit of development time is helpful. 

Through this Sunday you can help the whole team behind Night Side Songs, directed by Taibi Magar and presented ar Lincoln Center’s Clark Studio Theatre, discover their show.

The Lazours made a splash in New York last fall with We Live In Cairo, the pair’s acclaimed new musical about student activists caught up in the Arab Spring uprisings. After its UTR run, Night Side Songs goes on to full productions at the Philadelphia Theater Company in February, then Boston’s American Repertory Theater in March.

Broadway veterans Mary Testa, Taylor Trensch, Jordan Dobson, Brooke Ishibashi and Jonathan Ravivi perform the gentle, surprisingly joyous new work. Theatrely caught up with The Lazour siblings in between rehearsals. 

How did Night Side Songs first begin? What was the initial impetus for the piece? 

DANIEL LAZOUR: We read this book called The Death of Cancer about some of the first chemotherapy trials at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland in the 1960s. We actually met one of the authors of the book, crazily enough, Vincent T. DeVita. 

PATRICK LAZOUR: At the Yale Club. But we couldn’t go up, because we had jeans on.

DANIEL: So we set out to write a musical about the first chemotherapists. And it’s a fascinating story. But we found that, A) that wasn’t where we were at artistically; and B), that when we told people we were writing about chemo, everyone would immediately go into their personal stories. We realized that the only way to write a show about cancer is to involve everybody—patients, nurses, caregivers, doctors. That’s what led us ultimately to this communal experience.

PATRICK: It intersected with a time in our lives when people very close to us, in our family, were going through the illness journey. One after another, we experienced the closed rooms of that journey. Armed with that, and armed with the information we had, we wanted to create something that had more to do with the whole community that forms [around the ill].

How early in the process did you know that the piece would involve communal singing?

PATRICK: Back when we did the first production of We Live In Cairo at A.R.T. in 2019, one of the songs, “Genealogy of the Revolution,” was sort of outside space and time. So we were like, “What if we did it as a singalong with the audience?” It acted as a ritual, a way to bring people into the space. We got rid of that during the New York Theatre Workshop production, but it inspired us to create a communal singing experience in this show.

DANIEL: We set out to write simple music, simple folk songs that people can latch onto after one listen. That was the musical challenge of the show. [Songwriter and music director] Madeline Benson was an incredible help in that. We did a lot of development of this singalong idea on her front porch in Long Island City. We’d invite people over and just see what worked. See what it took to get people to sing along!

PATRICK: It so varies by night. You saw it last night, right Joey?

I did, yeah. 

PATRICK: I feel like last night, people were so hesitant to sing. We’re making all these changes to try and blur the fourth wall, like keeping the lights up, just to invite people in more. You’re chasing it, always. That’s part of the development. 

It would sound to me like everyone was singing, everyone was joining in—but then I’d look around and realize oh, that guy is not, that person is not…

DANIEL: And we want to create an environment where that’s okay. You’re not gonna be kicked out if you don’t want to sing. One of the missions of the piece is to make something participatory that isn’t cringeworthy. As theater people, there’s nothing we hate more than being singled out.

Especially given the subject matter, you want to be humane about it. Nearly everyone has some kind of experience with illness or death, and it can bring up a lot of intense emotions.

PATRICK: It’s such a fine line. We want to make sure the songs are speaking to very universal experiences. One of the songs is called “Let’s Go Walking.” For the audience, if they want to take that very simple idea and graft their experience onto it, they can. All of these songs came from conversations we had as part of our research. “Let’s Go Walking” was inspired by one of my mom’s very good friends, who actually passed away four months after we chatted with her. And she said, “Walking was huge, because it was a distraction for me, I’d just walk with people to distract myself.”

The illness journey isn’t something we talk about much, even though we’ve all been through some version of it. We leave it in those “closed rooms,” like you said. How did you think about delving into these tough moments while creating a joyous show, which it is?

DANIEL: There is something heart-forward about the show. This is not gonna be “cool,” we’re not trying to be cool about it. It has this plainness to it, so that you can graft your own experience and take from it what you want. It’s sort of a service-oriented piece of theater. 

PATRICK: The “visions” help when it’s a little too much, they hopefully will put up the wall for a moment. Like, oh, here’s a musical moment! It helps people be like, okay, let me take a break. While we listen to Mary Testa.

Always happy to listen to Mary Testa.

PATRICK: Exactly. But then we’ll come back, and provoke a little bit more of your experience with these singalong moments.

The visions put a context around everything our main character is going through. There’s all these other stories that inform why our illness journey today looks the way it does today.

DANIEL: We do still have this moralistic approach to illness. It’s not, “May God intercede and remove this tumor” anymore, but we do still say, “There’s a reason why this happened, there’s a reason for the universe.” And then we can continue and go on with our day once we put something in its correct box.

How will you be making changes to break down the fourth wall a little more, put people at ease?

PATRICK: There was a little bit of an arms-crossed thing last night. 

DANIEL: There was a lot of leaning in. From our workshops, we’re used to a lot of musical theater people belting their face off.

Something I found effective was, any time I stopped singing and then noticed that Mary Testa was looking right at me. That would get me to start singing again.

PATRICK: Exactly. Mary Testa is the “dom” energy of our cast.

‍Night Side Songs continues through January 19 as part of Under the Radar.