![]() ![]() “The eclectic score is a gift to me because it means I get to sing in so many different styles,” said Slater. It feels more human because we worked really hard on making sure that everything was coming from a grounded, human, emotional place.” “My voice has to be such you can listen to it for two and a half hours and not want to pull out your hair. Vocally, Slater has dialed back on the nasal extremes actor Tom Kenny affects for the series. She said, ‘If you’re frantic on the outside, you have to be really calm on the inside-or else it’ll read labored. Basically, I’m high-energy but calm inside. How do you take this character and put him on stage without prosthetics or a square foam outfit? What we learned was it’s all about silhouettes, finding the shape of the character and then working in the acrobatics and flexibility. ![]() “Our very first step for us five years ago was, just, movement. “It’s, actually, pretty much this,” Slater said, flashing his signature grin. There are no extreme get-ups or prosthetics. Landau and her costume designer, David Zinn, peeled back the cartoony qualities to show the heart of the character. He’s 25.įor stage presentation, SpongeBob SquarePants has been rounded off at the edges with relatable humanity. He got cast in the part while a sophomore at Vassar and has performed it from Workshop One through the Chicago tryouts to Broadway-an ordeal of five years and three extreme makeovers. You could even accuse him of being over-rehearsed since they go back such a long way-to 1999 when the character first hit the airwaves and the actor first hit seven. Somehow-maybe it’s that insistently sunny optimism he seems to radiate naturally-Slater is a perfect fit for SpongeBob. It’s doubly incredible because the moment right before that moment I’m doing my last-minute warm-ups, trying to see ‘Is my voice there? Is my body ready?’ There are a lot of voices in my head, then it all begins.”īefore every show, he has to go through a regiment of vocal and physical exercises to stay loose and limber like any self-respecting cartoon. That moment, every single night is so amazing-indescribable, really. I can’t see anyone because of the lighting-just the silhouettes of 1,700 people in the Palace about to go on this journey with us. “My alarm clock goes off, I jump out of bed, and I say, ‘Good morning, World and All Who Inhabit It,’ and, as I’m doing that, I’m looking right into the audience. “I have a blast from beginning to end, but my best moment is my first one,” Slater admitted. Clearly, this is a job for SpongeBob SquarePants. Tentacles ( Mary Poppins’ Gavin Lee, who gets in some show-stopping, four-footed hoofing) and an ornery copepod named Sheldon Plankton (played just short of mustache-twirling by Wesley Taylor).Īll reside in comic chaos at the bottom of the sea in a place called Bikini Bottom, which, as the new musical begins, is menaced by Mount Humongous threatening to blow its volcanic stack-a hot-and-cold-running set-up that’s pulled off easier in broad strokes than on Broadway. In the hissible camp are a crabby octopus named Squidward Q. His best buds are a slow-witted starfish named Patrick Star (Danny Skinner) and a karate-kicking Texas squirrel named Sandy Cheeks (Lilli Cooper). SpongeBob SquarePants himself, a cockeyed optimist if ever there was one), is a sea sponge that looks like a kitchen sponge, lives in a submerged pineapple and works as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab. They certainly have their work cut out for them, turning 2-D into 3-D, breathing some identifiable depth into cartoon critters. “There are about 15 different layers of paint, each going back to whoever had this dressing room.” Their shows fade in review- An American in Paris, Holler If Ya Hear Me, Annie, all the way back to Liza’s at the Palace and beyond. “You can see it’s rubbing away,” he points out. The doorframe to the bathroom, just for instance, is done up in a grayish green-“Glenn Close’s color”-which has begun to chip since Sunset Boulevard departed. With minimal coaxing, he’ll gingerly conduct a tour of “the Garland room” and show off his archeological findings of other former Palace residents. (Probably that just masks the disbelief of a new stranger-in-paradise.) Off-stage, he also gives every impression of being an unflappable live-action cartoon, maintaining a steady, goofy grin as if he really did step out of the funny-papers. He’s the show’s chief cheerleader, a wellspring of affable silliness. But the disarming, child-believing charm that the Nickelodeon series exudes caught everyone off-guard, touched soft spots in long-calcified critics and turned into a hit. ![]() He did it the hard way, too-in the title role of SpongeBob SquarePants, the first Broadway musical to be spawned from an animated cable kids-show (which, let’s face it, is about as far from Main Stem smash material as a show can possibly get). ![]()
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