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"Beauty" gets new Belle Ashley Brown joins cast by Bud Wilkinson

Source: BroadwayBiggestHits.com

NEW YORK (October 23, 2005) - Broadway's newest "Belle" started singing at the age of six in church. She performed in high school musicals in her native Florida, graduated from the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music just last year, and quickly was cast in the national tour of Disney's On the Record."

Now, at age 23, she's making her Broadway debut by starring in "Beauty and the Beast," replacing Brooke Tansley in the musical hit that has been running for more than 11 years.

"I'm getting nervous. I think I might have peaked a little early," responded Ashley Brown, laughing aloud when the subject of paying one's dues, of diligently building a career role by role, came up during an interview last week. "If you would have asked me 10 years ago how it would have panned out - my future - it's actually ended up better than I could have planned it."

No kidding. It was less than a year ago that "On the Record," a musical revue crammed with 50 or so songs from the Disney catalogue, hit the road. She got the job thanks to a "senior showcase" she participated in with her college classmates in New York. "I was in New York for a little less than a week and I found out that got the national tour," Brown recalled. "Then, from that show, they flew me in twice to New York to audition for Belle and then I got Belle."

If her professional life sounds like a fairy tale, you can bet there was a lot of "Mirror, Mirror, on the wall" worrying in the days leading up to her September 20th debut as Belle as well as after it. "I'm actually still learning the show," she confided, recalling that the night of her debut was "the first time with orchestra, the first time with lights, the first time with sound. It was basically my dress rehearsal."

That's the way it works on Broadway. Actors routinely rotate in and out of long-running shows. There's neither the time nor the budget for a newcomer to work with the cast before actually going on. For the newcomer, it's baptism by spotlight. "It's a very weird situation because you don't know where you are - Am I ahead? Am I behind? - because you're doing this whole rehearsal process by yourself, with the dance captain and the assistant director."

Brown credits a supportive cast, which includes Steve Blanchard as the Beast and Grant Norman as Gaston, for making her debut as painless as possible. "They basically catch all my falls. There (were) a few times when I skipped some lines," she said.

And what was her opening night like? "Everybody that I've ever known in my entire life was there - from Pensacola, my New York friends, my cast from 'On the Record,' my directors from 'On the Record,' all the Disney executives - everybody was there to watch my Broadway debut," Brown related.

"It was very intimidating considering I had done less than half of the show once. I had never run the whole show on stage with lights and everything. I was really nervous but I think my survival instincts kicked in. All of a sudden I got so calm because if I didn't, I would have fainted. It ended up being one of the most memorable evenings of my entire life."

Brown has quickly learned that there's a responsibility to playing Belle, the girl who gets the Beast. After every performance, little girls, many dressed up as Belle, greet her at the stage door when she leaves the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

"They look up to me so much. It makes everything worth it - to see that little twinkle in their eye. They're like, 'Where's your gown? What don't you have your gown on?' I'm like, 'I'm on the street and Belle doesn't wear her gown on the street.' They don't get that there's somebody actually playing Belle."

Brown herself is just starting to get how her swift leap to a starring role on Broadway is, if not remarkable, then at least a storybook beginning to a career.

"I don't think it's sunk in yet," she said, before adding, "If you think about it, a stage is a stage, so when I'm performing, it could be anywhere."

Except that it's not.