Tony Award winner Santino Fontana will return to 54 Below in New York’s theater district Sunday night after a sold-out engagement there last fall.
NEW YORK, NY – MAY 01: Santino Fontana during The 73rd Annual Tony Awards Meet The Nominees Press … [+]
As the club says, his show will be “a spontaneous, intimate and bespoke evening of his and your favorite songs, intermixed with hilarious showbiz tales about everything from James Earl Jones to Ryan Gosling.”
As he did last fall, Fontana will have audience members choose the songs he will perform, among some several dozen he has preselected.
In a recent interview, he said “a great acting teacher” once told him, “Whatever is actually happening is always more interesting than what you’ve planned. I try to do that on the stage, on camera, it also keeps me on my toes. The audience is aware we don’t know what’s going to happen, how it’s going to go. I think it adds spontaneity, which I try to find wherever I can.”
He also said that until last fall, he had been hesitant to do a solo show for years, but “it’s grown on me and last year the audiences were fantastic.”
Fontana, who will perform on Sept. 10, 12, 13 and 14, will be joined by other performers each night; including Rebecca Naomi Jones (Oklahoma!, Passing Strange, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) on Sept. 10; Sarah Steele (“The Good Wife,” The Humans, The Country House) on Sept. 12; Julia Lester (Into the Woods, The Secret Garden, “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series”) on Sept. 13; and Greg Hildreth (Company, Disney’s Frozen, Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella) on Sept. 14.
Fontana last starred on Broadway in Tootsie, for which he received the 2019 Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Tony Awards.
He was also the voice of Prince Hans in the Academy Award-winning film, Frozen, and appeared on television in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” “Shades of Blue,” “Mozart In The Jungle,” “Fosse/Verdon,” “Royal Pains” and “Nurse Jackie.”
His other Broadway credits include Hello, Dolly!, Act One, Cinderella, The Importance of Being Earnest, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Billy Elliot and Sunday in the Park with George.
He appeared in the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival at 18 and has sung with major orchestras, big bands and smaller ensembles across the U.S.
Fontana recently made an as yet unreleased comedy film, Lost and Found in Cleveland, described by IMDb as “a new American fable about the post-industrial American dream in the industrial Midwest.” He is also appearing this fall in a revival at the Classic State Company in New York of the musical, I Can Get It For You Wholesale, with a revision of Jerome Weidman’s book by his son, John.