Conventional wisdom says that actors should not audition in costume. But Julia Lester did it anyway—she made a red cape out of a circle skirt—when she videotaped her audition for the role of Little Red Riding Hood in the Encores! production of “Into the Woods” this spring.
Two weeks later – without even getting a call back – she heard from her agent, “Stephen Sondheim wants you to play Little Red.”
Indeed, it was her many daring acting (as well as sartorial) choices for the legendary girl on her way to Grandmother’s house—her raised eyebrow, brassy whimsy and wry sophistication—that caught the attention of critics in May and took Lester to a Broadway debut catapulted at just 22 years old after the show transferred there this summer. (The Broadway run has just been extended through October 16.)
“In Lester, we are witnessing the emergence of a great new comedic talent,” Johnny Oleksinski told The New York Post. “All of her famous jokes feel fresh and she’s incredibly funny. My face was very red from laughing.”
DailyExpertNews called her “pert and twinkling”; The Washington Post, “uber-confident, rough-and-ready”; The Wall Street Journal, “wonderfully mischievous and knowing.”
It was her aura of worldliness and tenacity that made the show’s director, Lear deBessonet, so confident in casting Lester. “I knew she was right 10 seconds into her audition video,” deBessonet said. “Having seen a number of Little Reds over the years, I wasn’t interested in any kind of cute, girly, victim thing. As a woman, there are certain things I never want to see on stage again.
“For me, the defining quality of the character is hunger, this delicious lust for power that is so refreshing and unexpected,” deBessonet continued. “It was immediately upon seeing Julia. I was like, ‘Yeah, well, there she is.’”
Sipping water at a theater district hotel before a recent performance, in a pigtail and Doc Marten lace-ups, Lester came across as supernaturally comfortable in her own – albeit bare – skin.
Despite her cherubic face and wide eyes about sharing the stage with so many veterans (including Sara Bareilles, Gavin Creel, and Phillipa Soo), Lester shared how she’s become more and more confident in recent years.
“There’s a lot of pressure on actors to live through other people’s eyes,” she said. “Learning to live boldly and as myself has been very important to me.
“Our entire career is based on what other people think of us,” Lester continued. “It’s quite a struggle to know that other people are judging you silently or non-silently on a daily basis.”
If she seems experienced on stage after her years, it’s because she is, as she has been performing professionally since she was 5 and just completed her third season as Ashlyn Caswell on the Disney+ series “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series’, the musical drama about high school theater students. (The fourth season will begin shooting in Salt Lake City in September.)
Show business is also in Lester’s blood. Her great-grandfather and his siblings were part of a Yiddish opera company in Poland at the turn of the century. Her maternal grandparents, Helen and Peter Mark Richman, met at the summer stock theater. Her mother, Kelly, and father, Loren, continue to perform, as do her two older sisters, Jenny and Lily.
“We’re a big family performing,” Lester said. “I can’t stress enough how supportive we all are of each other.”
Her version of Take Your Daughter to Work Day went to the Universal Studios lot and went out with her father for commercial shoots. “From the moment I was born, I always knew this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” Lester said. “So it’s such a blessing to be on it on a daily basis and really learn from my family.”
Born on January 28, 2000 in Los Angeles, Lester had been in productions of “Into the Woods” twice before: first as the cow Milky White in a community theater production when she was in elementary school (her sisters played other roles) and the next time at age 18 as Little Red in a 99-seat theater in Los Angeles.
While many actors are afraid to try out roles — given their nerves and the statistical probability of rejection — Lester said she loves auditioning.
“You get the chance to do what you were put on this earth for,” she said, “that’s achievement.”
Lester is also personally attracted to Little Red’s character, who, after being rescued from the wolf’s mouth, will carry a knife to protect him, care for Jack (from the beanstalk), and grow up for the eyes of the public. . “She’s so snappy and so funny,” Lester said. “In many of the moments where the stakes are really high and there are dark themes at play, she’s a beacon of comedy and light. That’s always a lot of fun – to be able to take down the house in a quiet, serious moment.”
With her performance in these Encores! revival, which originated in downtown New York before moving to the St. James Theater on Broadway, the actress said she wanted to “reinvent the way people see Little Red.”
“When I was working on the script, I went out of my way to look at every line she says and really think about it, ‘What’s the most unexpected way to portray what it says?'” she said. .
James Lapine, who wrote the show with Sondheim (who died in November), said it was the first time he’d seen an adult play the role, which is usually played by actors under the age of 18. and more emotional shades,” he said. “She’s a more knowing Little Red Riding Hood.”
The show’s actors say they’re also struck by Lester’s sure hand in getting a lot of laughs and how she brings a modern sensibility to the role without bastardizing it. “She’s got that radar that the big ones have — they know when to put their foot on the brake or the gas,” said Brian d’Arcy James, who plays the Baker, adding that Lester’s interpretation is “totally new, but also honor to what has gone before.”
Bareilles, who plays the baker’s wife, said she was pleasantly surprised by Lester’s “natural fire” and her palpable respect for the opportunity she was given, for her fellow performers and for the live theater itself. “She feels like an old soul to me,” Bareilles said. She has no need or urgency to be seen. There is a reverence in the way she approaches the work.”
As “a real die-hard theater boy,” Lester said, there’s a pinch-yourself quality to what she goes through, as she admired from a distance the people she now sees performing offstage.
“I never expected to make my Broadway debut in a Sondheim show, let alone be surrounded by so many people I grew up loving and watching,” she said, adding, “Everyone has put me under taken their guard up. wing.”
While she’s only committed to the show until September 4, Lester said she’d love to return to this Broadway production and see it live. “I’m kind of hoping that this show becomes the new ‘Chicago’ and will last forever and that I can return to it as my home base when I’m available,” she said. “This is definitely a show I can’t say goodbye to anytime soon.”
The personal response she received from the audience members was particularly rewarding. Aware that, as a curvy young woman, she might not fit the traditional physical definition of an ingenue, Lester said she was pleased that other young women looked to her as an affirmative role model.
“It took a while to grow into myself and get comfortable with who I am, but it has to start somewhere,” she said. “If someone can say, ‘I see myself in you when you play Little Red’ — when I’m on a Broadway stage — that’s exactly why I’m an actor and a performer.”
“I’m really grateful to the people who have looked beyond what I look like,” she added, “and seen what I can offer the world.”
