Originally published in the Bay Area Reporter
Aaron Tveit in Moulin Rouge
Catch him if you can.
Broadway heartthrob Aaron Tveit originated the roles of emo-boy Gabe in the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Next to Normal” and Frank Abagnale, Jr., a part played on film by Leonardo DiCaprio, in the musical version of “Catch Me If You Can.”
After his San Francisco concert debut at the Marine’s Memorial Theater on Sept. 27, Tveit is unlikely to make it back to the Bay Area for quite some time.
That’s because Tveit (rhymes with “straight”) is committed to a long, likely career-making run in the lead role of Christian in the Broadway adaptation of Baz Luhrman’s “Moulin Rouge.” Reviewing that show’s out-of-town tryout in Boston, New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley wrote with unusual fanboy mooniness, describing Tveit’s turn as the love-wrenched Christian as “a role he was born to play.”
“We don’t have our Broadway theater or date quite locked down,” Tveit said in a phone call just days after closing in Boston last month, “but it’s definitely happening.
“My music director and I are debating about whether to include anything from ‘Moulin Rouge’ in San Francisco,” said Tveit, who’s currently leaning toward the possibility. A video of Tveit performing “Come What May,” one of the musical’s few original songs, has already been released.
For the most part, like the movie, the stage version of “Moulin Rouge” is a particularly hectic sort of jukebox musical, with fragments of pop songs stitched into kaleidoscopic medleys. Updated from the film, the stage version now includes snippets of Gaga, Adele and Lorde, among others. In some sense, it’s an ideal production to elevate Tveit’s already rising star.
“I was not a theater kid,” he said of growing up in Middletown, New York. “I was a pop music guy. I listened to a lot of 90s R&B. I was huge into Boys to Men. Then later, I went through a period of Nirvana and Soundgarden. My parents listened to a lot of Eagles and Paul Simon, who I think really influenced my voice and the way I sing.”
But while Tveit has performed pop songs in concert before – his live album “The Radio in My Head” includes covers of Taylor Swift and Billy Joel – he’s planning a showtune-focused set for his San Francisco debut.
“It’s based on a concert I did at Lincoln Center earlier this year,” said Tveit, who was a music major at Ithaca College before dropping out to join a national tour of “Rent.” At college and on tour, Tveit suddenly found himself in the thick of the theater community.
“When I got to Ithaca I really only knew the few musicals I’d done in high school,” he recalled. But Tveit has since become a Broadway aficionado. “I think when I’m older, I’d like to play Sweeney Todd and Valjean.” Tveit played Enjoiras in the film version of “Les Miserables,” alongside Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman.
He’s already tackled two Sondheims, playing Bobby in a production of “Company,” and John Wilkes Booth in a London run of “Assassins.” Despite such serious aspirations, the musical role Tveit is most widely recognized for by his female fans, who call themselves Tveiter Tots, is Danny Zuko, from Fox TV’s 2016 “Grease Live.”
“It’s inevitable with TV shows that are seen by millions of people,” he said. In New York, he’s also frequently identified as Trip van der Bilt, a recurring role he played on “Gossip Girl” for three years. “It’s weird, because the character was kind of an asshole.”
The handsome Tveit, who maintains a strict policy of keeping his personal life private, also has also won a contingent of gay fans, not only for his musicals and “Gossip Girl,” but also for his role in the 2010 film “Howl,” in which he played Peter Orlovsky, the lover of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and had a makeout scene with James Franco, as Ginsberg.
“I like maintaining some mystery,” said Tveit. “It lets me move from role to role without being typecast.”
