For 'Percy Jackson' star, Chicago-bound musical is a 'dream come true'
Chris McCarrell is happy he didn't know anything about Percy Jackson before he auditioned for the title role in “The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical,” the off-Broadway show now playing Chicago. He only read Rick Riordan's best-selling book “The Lightning Thief” after he'd landed the part.
“I started researching after I got the role and thank God I did because then I realized how big of a deal the character was,” McCarrell said. “I think I would have been nervous if I'd known what a huge opportunity it was walking in.”
The pressure came in the lead-up to the show's 2017 off-Broadway debut as McCarrell learned fans of Riordan's series about a teen who discovers he is the son of the Greek god Poseidon had a lot of expectations for how the character should be portrayed.
“I had a lot of people saying 'You really have to get this right,'” McCarrell said. “A lot of people really love the books, and they hold the character very dear to them so they were very protective. I knew if I got the heart of him right, then everything else would work out. I just really tried to connect to the essence of him and go at it from that front.”
McCarrell's method seemed to work, and the show went on to have a sold-out monthlong run. Now Chicago audiences can see “The Percy Jackson Musical” at the Oriental Theatre through Sunday, Jan. 13, as part of a tour that includes stops in Philadelphia, Seattle and Atlanta. McCarrell will be reprising his role along with much of the original cast, but the production has gotten a significant upgrade.
“There's so much more money devoted to the show,” he said. “We have more lights and (a better) sound system. We hired this really awesome puppet company to redo all the monsters in the show so now we have huge hyper-realistic monsters. For us who worked on the show from the beginning, seeing what it's already turned into has been a theater geek's dream come true.”
The original production's small budget forced the cast and crew to come up with a lot of creative solutions for bringing the mythological fantasy world to life.
“At the beginning all we really had was really good theater minds working together,” McCarrell said. “We couldn't just throw money at everything. All the actors are doing all these special effects like turning pens into swords that we just spent hours refining and coming up with maneuvers. We're basically magicians on stage. We had that creative environment that really injected this sense of play into the show and this really good scrappiness. I think it's really hard to start from that place and have it work so well that you get to this place where it becomes this huge show with all the effects. Now it's blowing up and becoming bigger than we ever thought it could be.”
Along with the special effects, another highlight of the show is its music. McCarrell said the musical gained many fans through the release of a cast recording which let people who couldn't see it in New York experience the production.
“The engine of the show is kids rebelling against the world and their parents not doing a good enough job leaving a world that they can thrive in,” he said. “I think that lends itself to a rock score. We have these awesome rock arrangements for most of the songs. When I'm in the final battle with the god of war it's just screaming guitars and synthesizers. It's so awesome. It really gets the undercurrent of that teen/preteen energy and release. It doesn't hurt that (Percy Jackson is) a demigod so when music kicks in that's when his god powers are taking over so you can get a little otherworldly.”
The show leaving New York for the Midwest is particularly meaningful to McCarrell, who moved from Cleveland to New York after college to pursue acting. Percy Jackson lives in New York, but McCarrell brings his roots into the role.
“I think what makes Percy so different than all the other young adult heroes is that it never gets too serious,” McCarrell said. “He has these incredible powers that he doesn't really understand but he never steps out of being just a normal kid trying to navigate the world. I think that's what I like most about him, He's a New Yorker, but has this Midwest sensibility to him that I'm really attached to. He stays really grounded throughout all the chaos that happens.”
“The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical”
<b>Location:</b> Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St., Chicago, (800) 775-2000 or broadwayinchicago.com
<b>Showtimes:</b> 2 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 9; 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Jan. 10-11; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 12; and 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 13
<b>Tickets:</b> $22-$77