As Asian American men, we’re constantly asked to get rid of our sexuality completely and to be the butt of the joke and to be treated as third-class citizens. “Here’s what it costs us: Women are constantly made to play prostitutes and just sexual beings. “What does it cost me, us all of my Asian American brothers and sisters?” he recounted, his voice shaking. Reliving that moment, Ricamora turned her question on its head, and was once again overcome with the pain and anger the question had unlocked as he thought about the cast getting the still-rare opportunity to play fully human characters after so many years of stereotypical roles. One day, Tesori asked the largely Asian American cast what it had cost them to tell such a personal, emotional story in the show. It was a relief for Ricamora to be cast in David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s “Soft Power,” a deliciously acid meta-musical from 2019 that looked at mythmaking and the way American culture deals with ethnic clichés - including a whole Rodgers and Hammerstein pastiche number about correct Chinese pronunciation. 2, I thought the best way to work was to say yes to everything because then they would tell other people that you’re easy to work with.” (The financial pressure was assuaged only after he started making “TV money,” as he put it, on the show “How to Get Away with Murder,” in which he played the computer whiz Oliver Hampton for six years.) “I didn’t want to make any waves because I wanted this job - I still had debt, so much debt,” he said. “It didn’t feel great.”Įven with the production of “The King and I,” which had great resources, he talked about being frustrated by what he felt was a lack of attention to dialects. “We call it ‘ching chong’ in the Asian acting community - ‘they want you to be ching-chong-y’ ” said Ricamora, who is half-Filipino. There was, for example, the time the director of his first professional show, a production of “Anything Goes” in North Carolina, asked if he could sound more Chinese. And then there was his ardent romanticism as the doomed Burmese scholar and lover Lun Tha in the 2015 Lincoln Center production of “The King and I” - oh, those duets with Ashley Park’s Tuptim!Ĭhatting after a recent rehearsal, the actor was candid about the obstacles he had to overcome on the road to Skid Row, the derelict neighborhood where “Little Shop of Horrors” is set. ![]() This versatility won’t be news to those who have seen him onstage before - yes, Oliver stans, he can sing! There was the way Ricamora would summon a shamanic intensity as the magnetic political leader Ninoy Aquino in “Here Lies Love,” the David Byrne and Fatboy Slim hit show that opened at the Public Theater in 2013. ![]() When he sings “Someone show me a way to get outta here / ’Cause I constantly pray I’ll get outta here” in the opening number, the ache is palpable. 11, Ricamora, 42, has been taking center stage at the Westside Theater, and while he displays serious comic muscle, he also taps into the character’s painful loneliness. “I played a nerdy IT guy for six years on ‘How to Get Away With Murder’ so I don’t know if there’s a full consensus that I’m in the Jake Gyllenhaal Hall of Fame of Hot Actors,” he said. When asked about joining this, ahem, hot streak, Conrad Ricamora burst out laughing. ![]() Not many roles have been played by both Rick Moranis (in the show’s 1986 movie adaptation) and Jake Gyllenhaal (in a 2015 concert production). This reflects the casting evolution of the character, a painfully shy plant geek. Since it opened in October 2019, Michael Mayer’s well-received “Little Shop of Horrors” revival has drawn quite the handsome string of leading men: Jonathan Groff was the first to step into Seymour Krelborn’s Converse sneakers, and he was followed by Gideon Glick and Jeremy Jordan.
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