INTERVIEW: Aubie Merrylees helps bring ‘BOOP!’ to joyous life
Photo: BOOP! The Musical stars, from left, Aubie Merrylees, Jasmine Amy Rogers, Ricky Schroeder and Colin Bradbury. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman / Provided by BBB with permission.
NEW YORK — BOOP! The Musical is winning over more and more audience members on a nightly basis. This big-musical-with-a-big-heart is on the theatrical map thanks to its star, Tony-nominated performer Jasmine Amy Rogers, who plays the title character. In this musicalized version, Betty Boop is transported from the black-and-white cartoon world of the past to the colorful environment of modern-day New York City, and adventure can be found around every corner.
Helping Rogers bring life to this joyous musical is a dedicated ensemble that includes everyone from Faith Prince to Ainsley Melham to Erich Bergen. Aubie Merrylees is part of the cast and portrays the role of Oscar. He’s a pivotal character in the cartoon days of Betty Boop, and the actor is having a blast telling this story eight times per week.
“This show is unbelievably fun, I think for all of us,” Merrylees said in a recent phone interview. “I can speak for myself and say the journey I get to go on it’s one of awakening, so by the end of the show I’m sort of living free of whatever box I was in before. I just get to have the most fun dancing in that finale, but, yeah, the whole show is fun. I get to play a cartoon!”
To prepare for this musical, which features a book by Bob Martin, music by David Foster and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, Merrylees dove deep into the world of Betty Boop. He had seen some of the old cartoons by Max Fleischer in passing, so the character was certainly known to him. But he had no idea of the cultural import of her as a symbol in today’s world.
“I saw her in little kitschy stores, but I didn’t really know the implications of her legacy and what she represented to so many people, representing freedom and authenticity and empowerment and you can be anything,” he said. “I didn’t really know any of that. I definitely watched a lot of cartoons, some Fleischer cartoons, and then I just watched cartoons in general to breathe in the world of the piece and also just because I realized I was one of the main representations of the cartoon world. I certainly pulled some of my physicality directly from the cartoons.”
Merrylees’ previous Broadway credits consist of KPOP and To Kill a Mockingbird. He’s more known for his work in plays than singing in musicals, so he needed to learn the process of training his voice for these big numbers each and every night.
“Part of my experience doing BOOP! was learning how to work on it, and I realized pretty quickly that it’s really no different,” Merrylees said. “I do a lot of plays, and the work is the same. It’s getting into who this person really is, what they really care about, what they want, and sort of grounding it in a real sense of truth. And Oscar, his whole world is Betty. His whole world is the shorts that he makes with Betty. When she starts to disappear, he doesn’t know how to function without her.”
Merrylees has a show ritual that he performs frequently with his costar Ricky Schroeder, who plays the character of Clarence. Right before entering one scene, they look at each other offstage, and they almost pretend as if they are in a real cartoon.
“I look at him before we enter one scene, and I’m like, ‘All right, we got to find her. We got to find Betty,'” the actor said. “And he says, ‘I think we will,’ and then we go out. We’re always trying to ground it in that truth.”
One of the highlights of Merrylees’ BOOP! journey has been working with director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell, a legend in the Broadway space. Merrylees said the experience has been unbelievable, and he is so thankful for the director’s “artistic eye.”
“His aesthetic is so well-developed,” Merrylees said. “He really intuits what is going to hit and what isn’t. He really shaped this whole world, and for my character, he really shaped that with me. He was right there going, ‘It needs to be more…’ I would do something crazy, and the next day I would do something maybe a little less. As actors sometimes when we do less we feel safer. It feels comfortable because it’s safer, and so I would do something a little bit safer. He’d be like, ‘No, no, no, why don’t you do that thing with your hands?’ He would say, ‘It’s a cartoon,’ and so he really set the tone of the whole world.”
One director’s note that the company received was to respect the 2D world of cartoons and almost “flatten out” their performances during the sequences set in the past.
“It was incredible watching him devise music on the spot,” Merrylees said. “I have seen directors with plays sort of like, ‘We need more text here that bridges this gap and an opportunity for this character to say X, Y and Z.’ But I’ve never seen a director do that with music. There are so many more departments involved with music, and watching Jerry sort of dance his way across the stage, counting out and singing a representation of what the music could be so that something could happen that he knows needs to happen.”
Merrylees added: “For someone with a great eye and someone with the career that he’s had, he’s quite ego-less. It really is about what works best. I watched him choreograph a number in rehearsal, spend all day choreographing a number, and then at the end of it, he watched it and was like, ‘Eh, it doesn’t tell the story as well as I’d like.’ The next day we showed up, and he re-choreographed the number. And he was right. It was a lot better. It takes real confidence to be able to take your own work and go, ‘Eh, that wasn’t it.’ That’s really thrilling to be in the room with somebody like that.”
Merrylees counts himself a lucky person to be a member of this company of actors. Joining him on stage are many talented performers, including Stephen DeRosa, Anastacia McCleskey and Angelica Hale.
“It’s an amazing company,” he said. “Everyone is so kind to each other. That’s not always the case. Jasmine, besides being such a powerhouse, she’s so grounded, so truthful on stage. Getting to look into her eyes at the end of the show every night, after she sings ‘Something to Shout About’ and have our little exchange, where she sort of lays down the law for me, I so look forward to that every night. It’s so alive every night. Behind the scenes we’re just having a great time. We’re in a musical about love, about living, about an explosion of life, and it’s really fun.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
BOOP! The Musical, featuring Aubie Merrylees, continues at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
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