Tituss Burgess, Adam Lambert star in 'Ratatouille' musical

Posted December 28, 2020 6:00 am

By Mark Kennedy Associated Press

NEW YORK - TikTok's crowdsourced "Ratatouille" musical has cooked up some serious talent for its one-night-only benefit concert, including roles for Tituss Burgess, Adam Lambert, Wayne Brady, Andre De Shields and Ashley Park.

"Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical" - fondly nicknamed the "Ratatousical" - will begin streaming on Friday at 7 p.m. ET for 72 hours. Tickets are on sale exclusively on TodayTix.com and are $5. Proceeds will benefit The Actors Fund, which aids entertainment industry workers.

It is the product of several minds - many musical theater fans and out-of-work performers - who collaborated on original songs, lyrics and ideas to turn an animated, non-musical film into a two-act Broadway-style show.

The story for both film and musical centers on Remy, an ambitious rat who dreams of becoming a Parisian chef. Burgess will play Remy, Lambert plays his older brother, Emile, and Brady plays his father. Tony Award-winner De Shields plays food critic Anton Ego, Kevin Chamberlin plays the great chef Gusteau and Andrew Barth Feldman plays Gusteau's "nephew" Linguini.

Other cast members will be Tony-winner Priscilla Lopez, Tony-nominee Ashley Park, Owen Tabaka and three-time Tony-nominee Mary Testa. The show will be performed with the 20-piece Broadway Sinfonietta orchestra.

The musical - based on the 2007 Disney/Pixar film - has been percolating over the past several months on TikTok and many of that social media platform's viral stars who helped contribute to the show are involved in the production.

Both Emily Jacobsen, who wrote the original 'œRemy the Ratatouille'ť song for TikTok, and composer Daniel Mertzlufft, whose arrangement of that song helped kickstart the online effort are being given writing credit, as is Blake Rouse, who wrote two of the more popular songs on TikTok, "The Rat's Way of Life" and "Ratatouille Tango."

The streamed show will be produced by Seaview Productions. It is adapted by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley, choreographed by Ellenore Scott and directed by Lucy Moss.

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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