When Julia Macchio learned that she was up for the role of Alex Owens, the steel welder who moonlights as a club dancer, in a new national tour of “Flashdance — The Musical,” she rented the movie on which the show is based and watched it with her father.
Julia’s dad had some special insights into the fashions, hairstyles and flashy moves of 1980s America. He’s Ralph Macchio, the car-waxing, crane-kicking “Daniel-san” LaRusso of three “Karate Kid” movies.
The original film version of “Flashdance,” directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Jennifer Beals, was released in 1983. That same year, Ralph Macchio co-starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s movie adaptation of “The Outsiders.” The first “Karate Kid” happened a year later.
“I remember seeing ‘Flashdance’ when it first came out,” Ralph Macchio recalls in a phone conversation from his Long Island home. “I remember that my woman friends loved it. I guess I preferred ‘Fame,’ which had come out a few years earlier” — and which also inspired a stage musical adaptation.
“But ‘Flashdance,'” he continues, “created a look. Any time a movie can create a fashion statement, that’s a big deal. It’s like with the crane kick in ‘The Karate Kid.’ When you think of ‘Flashdance,’ you think of sweatshirts and leg warmers. The stage show is an homage to all that.”
“It’s a very specific style,” Julia Macchio agrees. “It’s so raw and edgy.” But she says the tour, directed and choreographed by Paul Stancato with sets and projections designed by Yale School of Drama grad Christopher Ash, is much more than an ’80s nostalgia trip. “There’s a lot of heart in this show,” she says. “We’ve been trying to delve more into the plot and the characters.” Adding depth and emotion to a show that’s already a whirl of nonstop dancing is “exhausting,” the star admits. “It’s all about pacing yourself.” She is starring in “Flashdance — The Musical” Dec. 4-6 at New Haven’s Shubert Theater.
Julia Macchio received a degree in dance from Hofstra University last year, and has been studying dance, singing and acting since she was 5 years old. Besides her stage experience in school shows, a Radio City Music Hall revue and now “Flashdance,” she’s appeared in two movies, including the charming modern romance “Girl Most Likely” (which starred Kristen Wiig and Darren Criss). Asked if she has any dream roles she’d like to play sometime, it’s a musical theater part that pops into her mind first: Mimi in “Rent.”
“Flashdance” became a stage musical in 2008, 25 years after the film was made. The show had its world premiere in England, with a two-year tour and a West End run before finally coming to America. A Broadway opening was announced in 2013, then indefinitely postponed. The current tour is the show’s third on these shores, following two simultaneous road companies that crisscrossed the country last year. Those tours were produced by the Networks company; this one’s done by Touring Theatre Associates, the same company that brought Frank Wildhorn’s “Jekyll and Hyde” musical to the Garde Arts Center and Waterbury Palace last year.
Following the five-performance Shubert engagement, “Flashdance” goes on a monthlong hiatus, then starts up again in California in early January. (The tour last visited Pennsylvania, the state where its flashy story is set, in October.)
The elder Macchio’s own live stage experience includes working with Robert DeNiro and Burt Young in the world premiere of Reinaldo Povod’s drama “Cuba and His Teddy Bear” at New York’s Public Theater in 1986 and starring in the first national tour of Des McAnuff’s revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” which played Hartford’s Bushnell in 1997. Macchio recalls that Julia was 4 years old when he was on that tour, and “knew all the songs. It’s adorable to hear a 4-year-old girl sing ‘Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm.’ To remember that, and now to see her headlining her own tour …,” the proud dad gets wistful.
Ralph Macchio might return to the stage himself soon, co-starring with Mario Cantone in Charles Messina’s new play “A Room of My Own.” The script has a public reading at the Abingdon Theatre Company in New York in April.
A supportive father, Macchio’s seen his daughter in “Flashdance” twice already, and hopes to visit the show again while it’s in New Haven, despite the obvious awkwardness of the “definitely PG-13” content.
“It’s like, ‘Uh, OK, there’s Julia dancing like she’s in a nightclub…!'” He says he hasn’t dissuaded Julia from following him into show business, although he has plenty of experience with its ups and downs. “‘Do as I say, not as I do’ doesn’t work here,” he says, laughing. “She’s at the ripe old age of 23, which is the time for doing things like this. She was called back [to auditions] a zillion times. This is a perfect launch for her, like boot camp.”
…with leg warmers.
“FLASHDANCE — THE MUSICAL” plays Dec. 4 to 6 at the Shubert, 247 College St., New Haven. Performances are Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets cost $10 to $75. Information: 203-562-5666, shubert.com.
