For
Molly (left), performing began with piano lessons. The teacher, upon
discovering that she also sang, started giving her voice lessons too
and set up auditions at community theater and St. Louis' Muny regional
theater. For four years Molly has belonged to Muny Kids, which
entertains around the St. Louis area, and she's appeared in Muny
productions of Annie, Gypsy, Show Boat, Annie Get Your Gun and The Wizard of Oz—where
the Wicked Witch of the West was played by Jan "Grandma Who" Neuberger.
For six months last year, Molly played Duffy on the Annie tour, alongside her younger sister Lindsay as Molly.
Sky has worked in ballet and opera as well as theater. He's danced in Le Corsaire, Petrushka and Manon with the American Ballet Theatre and sung in the children's chorus of Lohengrin and Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera. In the summer of 2003 Sky played Freddy on the Will Rogers Follies tour starring country singer Larry Gatlin. He's also been in the off-Broadway children's show The People Garden and even done Dr. Seuss on stage before—playing JoJo in Seussical at the Helen Hayes Theatre in Nyack, N.Y.
Daniel,
who turns 14 next month, got involved in theater after his mother sent
him to acting camp due to his propensity for breaking out in song in
Wal-Mart and other public places. He came to The Grinch straight from playing Young Tarzan in Tarzan,
a role he's now too big for. "It was one of the most physical shows
I've worked on," he says. "I liked doing the backflips and all those
crazy things that they taught me, even martial arts," though his
loincloth costume with harness underneath was not particularly
comfortable.
Both Sky and Daniel (right) have recurring roles on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns.
Sky portrays Roy, the best friend of abductee Daniel (played by Kevin
Csolak, another Little Who), and Daniel is J.J., the adopted son of
Detective Jack Snyder (Michael Park).
On the day of our interview, Daniel said he'd just filmed a scene where he beats up
his on-screen brother—this after his adoptive mother went to jail and
his biological parents had both been killed (separately). Daniel's
dealt with calamity-stricken characters in his previous screen roles,
he points out. He was stabbed in the back and paralyzed on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, thrown off a cliff on Guiding Light and beaten by his dad in All My Children. And he recently filmed the upcoming movie The Girl Next Door, based on a real-life horrific case of child abuse and murder.
Daniel
has a few ideas in mind for his future. "I want to be a director in
Hollywood, or just be an actor, or do art, or make scene design, or be
an architect, or graphic design," he says, and the other children start
to praise the artwork they've seen him craft backstage—Grinch fingers
and a mini Mount Crumpit, for instance. Sky's adult career ambitions,
meanwhile, go outside show business. "I want to be a doctor or a
teacher or write for the New York Times—my three dream jobs," he says.
Molly, however, states: "I want to keep up my career as an actress. I
do gymnastics and tumbling, and I want to keep that up too." Jahaan
concurs. "What I'm doing right now is what I love, and I want to keep
doing it," she says. "If I have to sacrifice to help my career, I'm
going to do that. I just love it so much."
She wouldn't mind returning to The Grinch as an adult. She's so enamored of Patrick Page's
performance in the title role, she finds herself reciting his lines at
home. "If I was, like, eight feet taller and a man, I would totally
want to be the Grinch after seeing him play it," says Jahaan. "I almost
know his whole part."
The
other kids are also impressed with Page's grinchiness. "He puts so much
into this show," Molly says. "Even when we're practicing and I would
say hi to him or something, he would stay in character."
The children squeal with laughter remembering the first time Page
came to rehearsal in costume. They hadn't been warned ahead of time.
"We were amazed. We were screaming and touching him," says Sky. "He
opened the doors and just walked into rehearsal, and then the pianist
started playing his theme."
The
children have their own kooky getups to wear on stage. Molly describes
her Who hair as "Phyllis Diller style, and then they put red and yellow
streaks in it," while Daniel says, "Mine reminds me of Edward
Scissorhands…shooting up in different directions, Gothically." Jahaan
(left) wears a wig of red and black curls, and Sky also sports a
hairpiece. As for the costumes that are padded to give performers funny
Who shapes: "They're basically fat suits," says Daniel. "Then we have
different layers we put on top. I have like five layers, and it's
burning. It's like I'm in a sauna, and the lights make it even hotter."
Molly adds, "Some of us have two or three pairs of tights on." "The
basic structure is like rings around your entire body," Sky explains,
"and the boys have these tails at the end." The padded part of the
costume is called a pod. "You can stick your hand into the pod and it
will be like 100 degrees in there," says Sky. "You could cook something
in the pod!"
Of course, they're mostly having fun in Who-ville. They've seen such stars as Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kelly Ripa and Paige Davis (Patrick Page's wife) at the theater and have performed on the Today
show and at Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In addition, most of them
understudy a featured Who role: Molly covers Cindy Lou, and Daniel,
Boo. Jahaan has already played Betty Who at a few performances. "Before
I went on as her, I was kind of nervous," she says. "I just knew a half
hour before the show started. After I got the hang of it, it was a lot
better. It's a lot of fun."
These middle
schoolers have already had professional experiences that grown-ups
might envy. Asked about career highlights so far, Sky recalls the Will Rogers
tour, its "really, really nice hotels," the theater in Atlanta with
stars in the ceiling (it was the Fox) and his "favorite place of
all"—Memphis. "Who can't love Beale Street?" he says. "The culture and
the music and the lifestyle…the Southern food is so good."
Molly's favorite has been the Annie tour, which took her to 16 cities. "It wasn't the same old Annie," she explains. "The creators made it a new production, changed some of the lines, made new songs." She also got to meet Disney Channel stars Dylan and Cole Sprouse and Ashley Tisdale (from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody) and Raven when Annie was running in L.A.
Daniel, who played opposite both Antonio Banderas and John Stamos in Nine, was wowed by working with Tarzan songwriter Phil Collins:
"He'd come up with a song, and like five minutes later he'd completely
have, like, every single instrument composed." Among Jahaan's best
memories are some of her roles in The Nutcracker. As
a Polichinelle, she rode a real carousel within the hoop of Mother
Ginger's skirt. She also liked being a toy soldier "because we got to
have little plastic guns, and then they had really big rats that were
scary, and they had huge heads, and they were like seven feet and they
had to pick us up and we had to pretend to fight them."
When
the Grinch run ends Jan. 7, the youngsters can start reminiscing about
taking part in a classic story everyone knows from page and screen. "The Grinch
was my favorite book," Sky notes. "I liked the cartoon but it kind of
scared me when I was little," Molly admits. "I like the Jim Carrey
version; I've always been a fan of him, and the little girl who played
Cindy Lou Who [Taylor Momsen], she's from my hometown. I know her from
my dance studio." Daniel thinks the live-action Carrey movie "didn't
really explain the point," and the stage show is more faithful to Dr.
Seuss' message. Jahaan didn't see the animated TV special until she was in the
play. "I don't think it's as complicated [as the
stage show], because they don't have all the different things. It
doesn't have as much music," she says. And we all know how important
that Christmas singing is to every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and
the small…
Top photo: Four Little Whos from the white cast in their red jackets (from left) Sky Jarrett, Daniel Manche, Molly J. Ryan, Jahaan Amin.
