Broadway star Julie Benko will perform “Standby, Me” in two performances today at Hotel Jerome. Benko’s critically acclaimed performance kicks off Theatre Aspen’s 2024 Summer Cabaret Series.
Life imitates art and art imitates life as actress goes from unknown understudy to Broadway star. That is the story of Julie Benko, whose meteoric rise to fame is the stuff of theater legend.
Benko is in Aspen today performing two cabaret performances as she launches Theatre Aspen’s 2024 Summer Cabaret Season at Hotel Jerome.
Benko’s show is called “Standby, Me.” The first performance is at noon and the dinner show is at 6 p.m.
Benko had been an understudy on Broadway for 14 years and was serving that function for lead actress Beanie Feldstein (“Booksmart,” “Ladybird”) in the revival of the 1964 play “Funny Girl,” that starred Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, who goes from an unknown Vaudeville performer to a Broadway star.
Feldstein’s performance as Brice was met with tepid reviews, but in fairness to Feldstein, who could possibly fill the shoes of Streisand (who won an Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Brice in the 1968 film version of “Funny Girl”)?
When Feldstein came down with COVID-19, Benko put on a pair of Cinderella slippers by stepping into Brice’s theatrical shoes and blew the proverbial roof off the August Wilson Theater.
Broadway had found its new Fanny Brice. “CBS Mornings” called Benko “Broadway’s breakout star.” Today.com wrote, “Julie Benko might be the greatest star of them all” and The New York Times named her the 2022 Breakout Star for Theatre saying, “Julie Benko is the bright eyed, dulcet-voiced soprano who went from standby to star.”
“The whole experience of breaking out from ‘standby’ to ‘star’ in ‘Funny Girl’ was so unexpected,” Benko said in an email responding to questions from the Aspen Daily News. “But what was so magical about it was that it mirrored Fanny’s character journey in the show. When Fanny starts out, she’s a total unknown and no one will give her a second thought. When I stepped out on stage as the understudy, there were always audience members who were disappointed they weren’t seeing the full-time star. But once I sang ‘The Greatest Star,’ I could feel the shift from all of them — and suddenly, they were cheering me on. By the end of the show, we’d all gone on a transformative journey together.”
The name of Benko’s cabaret show that she is performing at Hotel Jerome along with her husband Jason Yeager on piano is called “Standby, Me” and will surely include stories and songs from her experience in “Funny Girl.”
When asked to describe the art of performing cabaret, Benko said, “Cabaret is an art form that mixes music with storytelling. It’s personal and autobiographical. Cabaret requires an ease and rapport with the audience; it’s as though I’m coming into your living room. You want things to be alive and different night-to-night so nothing feels contrived. It’s different from playing a character in a theater piece. You are playing yourself which can be the hardest thing of all.”
The reviews of her cabaret show with Yeager have been glowing. “Jason Yeager and Julie Benko are adorable. Revision: they are A-DOR-ABLE,”said Broadway World Cabaret. “Both Benko and Yeager are consummate musical artists. It’s a genuine pleasure to see them operate in person. They have arrived in style, and with success supreme.” Showbiz 411 wrote, “As Benko demonstrates amply, she is a master at the cabaret genre.”
Theatre Aspen’s 2024 Summer Cabaret Series includes three more shows: “Behind the Broadway Curtain: Songs From and About the Business of Show” on July 14; “Broadway Game Night: An Evening of Music, Mayhem and More!” on Aug. 4 and “Heroes vs. Villains: A Broadway Showdown” on Aug. 11.
Theatre Aspen will open the curtain on “Legally Blonde: The Musical” on Friday at Hurst Theatre. For more information and tickets, visit theatreaspen.org.
