It’s late August, and the show opens in less than two months, a short window that Gad acknowledges has him feeling anxious, particularly because he and Rannells don’t leave the stage for the entirety of the production. It feels about as comfortable as marking time in a communal shower. As I wait for them to break for lunch, dancers from the troupe that gives the space its name walk by in flesh-colored unitards that leave little to the imagination. That’s where the two are spending eight hours a day working out the production’s intricate routines and dances. ![]() They can laugh at all of that now, and they do - a lot - frequently cracking each other up when we meet at a rehearsal space at Ailey Extension. “We said, ‘Let’s wait for the other half of our industry to shut down before we do this,’” Gad jokes before Rannells chimes in: “We’re not necessarily good planners when it comes to global timing.” Now that they’re finally mounting “Gutenberg!,” they’re doing so against a similarly chaotic backdrop - the actors and writers strikes that have ground Hollywood to a standstill. It was March 2020, and a week after the pair read the script and felt good about the prospects of doing the show, COVID upended everything, shutting down the Great White Way for more than a year. There isn’t any cynicism in it, and I wanted to live in that space for two hours every night.”īut the journey back to Broadway took unexpected turns. “It’s about two guys who are blindly following a dream. And yet the characters’ “Let’s put on a show!” brio was irresistible to the actors. The catch is that the central duo know shockingly little about Gutenberg beyond the most cursory of Google searches. Nothing appealed to the pair until Alex Timbers, the director of “Beetlejuice” and “Here Lies Love,” pitched them on “ Gutenberg! The Musical!”įirst conceived at the Upright Citizens Brigade and later produced Off Broadway, the play follows two writers trying to attract backers for a musical about Johannes Gutenberg, the creator of a movable-type printing press. Ideas for a grand reunion, such as reviving “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” or “The Producers,” were proposed and then abandoned. “But you have to realize that you’re not going to be able to follow something like ‘Book of Mormon’ with another ‘Book of Mormon’-type hit. “You can’t anticipate what becomes a phenomenon,” Gad says. Every night, the actors would look out at an audience of luminaries like Bono and Oprah, who had scored the hottest ticket in town. It played to sold-out crowds, won the Tony for best musical and propelled Rannells and Gad to stardom. Plus, when the actors first appeared together as hapless missionaries preaching the gospel of Joseph Smith in Uganda in 2011’s “The Book of Mormon,” the result was the kind of Broadway sensation that’s lucky to come around once in a decade. There aren’t many shows out there that can fully spotlight and support the pair’s prodigious gift for singing, dancing and delivering punchlines with a zip and a zing. ![]() We have got to find something to do together.” And after the curtain went down, Gad would be there backstage to greet Rannells with the same refrain: “I miss this,” he’d say. Every time his close friend and former co-star Andrew Rannells performed onstage, Josh Gad would make the pilgrimage to see him.
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