Seriously, where do we line up for a ticket? Since it’s next to impossible to snag a seat for Broadway darling Hamilton for at least the next eight months — unless, of course, you want to remortgage your house to do so — take advantage of the next best thing: a Broadway-themed edition of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the hit musical, and other top theater (and television) talent.
Miranda, who wrote the book and music — in addition to starring in — the Broadway show, sits in the passenger seat with Corden for the latest installment of the recurring segment from The Late Late Show. But it’s really when three other Broadway stars hop in the back seat that things become literally, and beautifully, theatrical.
After belting out a few rapid-fire, lyric-spitting hit tunes from Hamilton, Corden and Miranda stop on the busy streets of New York to pick up a trio of other stars: Audra McDonald (Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, Porgy and Bess), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (one-man-show Fully Committed), and Jane Krakowski (She Loves Me).
The five stars then take us on a journey through several Broadway tunes – from Frankie Valli’s Cant Take My Eyes Off Of You (Jersey Boys) to Rent’s Seasons of Love — ending with an amazing, harmonized (and fully performed) version of a passionate tune from the classic Les Miserables. It will give you goosebumps and have you wanting to jump on the next plane to the Big Apple to buy a ticket to a Broadway performance — any performance.
The timing was no accident: the Tony Awards, hosted by Corden, will air this Sunday. Krakowski, who also currently appears in the Netflix original series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, is nominated for her role in She Loves Me. She already has a Tony award to her credit for the 2003 Broadway revival of Nine. McDonald has won six Tony Awards, the most performance-related of any actor. She is also the only person to have ever won in all four categories of acting. As for Hamilton, that show has a record-breaking 16 nominations at this year’s Tony Awards: 2001’s The Producers and 2009’s Billy Elliot previously held the record with 15 nods each.
