Brendan Fraser Debuts On Broadway in Elling

By Benjamin Nockles

"The moment before the curtain went up," says Brendan Fraser on the opening night of his Broadway debut, "I thought, 'Well, it's too late to turn back now."

Fraser, who plays Kjell Bjarne in Elling, the recent arrival to Broadway after a triumphant run on the West End, is just one of several highly anticipated star appearances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on November 21st.

Dennis O'Hare plays opposite Brendan Fraser as the title character, Elling. "He's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, and I'm really excited to see him." says actress Leslie Bibb "I think it's going to be great. I think every actor should go see other actors work […] especially with someone like him, you can only learn great things."

Also appearing are Jennifer Coolidge, (Reidun Nordsletten,) Richard Easton (Alfons Jorgensen) and Jeremy Shamos (Frank Asli , Poet.) The play, which is touted as "the funniest play on Broadway," is about two unlikely roommates who met in an institution, one sheltered poet (O'Hare) and one sex-crazed forty-year-old virgin (Fraser,) living together in a state-funded apartment, learning how to take-on the real world. True to its claims, Shamos reports after opening night, "The audience went crazy. It's a beautiful show which has a lot of huge laughs and the opening night, in particular, was a major laugh fest."

Coolidge, playing the romantic interest of Fraser's character jokes, "The ultimate acting experience is to have Brendan Fraser carry you around. He's the big handsome guy and you want to be opposite someone like that. And I'm sorry that all the sex scenes take place off-stage. "

The story of Elling, which originated as a series of four Novels by Ingvar Ambjornsen in 1993, has come a long way. Petter Nass, standing on the red carpet explains, "I made the first performance of the stage version ten years ago and I made a movie […] We never expected this journey. This play has been staged more than two hundred [times] around the world." The movie was nominated for an Oscar n 2002 for Best Foreign Language Film and has been brought to Broadway as a new English adaptation by Simon Bent.

The actors accredit their shared excitement for this Broadway manifestation of Elling to director Doug Hughes. Shamos exclaims, "He's just one of my favorite directors in the world and I think he adapted beautifully to how much stage experience everyone had and worked really beautifully putting together this group from disparate worlds."