Broadway sensation Mandy Gonzalez performs at The Barclay
Mandy Gonzalez first met her friend Lin-Manuel Miranda at a reading for a musical in the basement of the Drama Book Shop in Manhattan in 2004. Such was the birth of Miranda’s debut Tony Award-winning hit, In the Heights. The musicalopened on Broadway in 2008 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre with Mandy playing Nina Rosario, a young girl chasing her dreams.
Fate intervened. In 2016, Mandy was back at the Richard Rodgers Theatre (the same dressing room, in fact) playing Angelica Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton’s sister-in-law, in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s global phenomenon, Hamilton. (Shewas even reunited with her In the Heights costar, Javier Muñoz, who took over the role of Alexander Hamilton from Lin-Manuel Miranda.)
For Mandy, singing the powerful music of Hamilton eight times a week has been an unforgettable experience. “It’s a dream role,” she says.
Mandy fell in love with singing at an early age. Before the bright lights of Broadway, she was living in California’s Santa Clarita Valley and singing along with her grandmother, who loved musical theater and the records of Judy Garland and Ethel Merman. Her grandmother drove her to singing lessons and together they rehearsed the songs for her high school musicals—the melodies of West Side Story and South Pacific filled the house.
In 2010, when Mandy was starring as Elphaba in Stephen Schwartz’s Broadway production of Wicked, her 88-year-old grandmother, who had travelled from California to see her, was in the audience cheering her on.
This October, Mandy will be back at Irvine Barclay Theatre. Her friend, Javier Muñoz, will join her on stage as they sing the music of their friends Stephen Schwartz, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and other songwriters who have inspired them throughout their lives. The musical performance by these two dynamos will make you feel like you’re on top of the world—there’s no better way to spend the night!
Mandy Gonzalez: from Stephen Schwartz to Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sunday, October 27, 2019, 7 p.m. / Irvine Barclay Theatre / TheBarclay.com