Lorin Latarro is a Juilliard graduate who's been in 11 Broadway shows, choreographed for stage and screen and already had one musical she's written produced. Perhaps the only place that wouldn't instantly impress everyone is at her family's dinner table.
Her two older brothers are both surgeons: Brian specializes in pediatric ophthalmology, Steven does maxillofacial and gum surgery. Her younger sister, Kristen, is a Harvard alumna about to get her MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Dad's a retired dentist, mom a schoolteacher.
Lorin would have gone into medicine too had she not gotten into Juilliard. But as soon as she read of Juilliard auditions in Back Stage, she rushed into the city from her New Jersey hometown. "I hand-wrote my application on the bus," she recalls. The first part of the audition was ballet, and she later found out she was "crossed off the list" in that first round. "I was butting up against these girls who could have been in a company already," says Latarro, who'd trained at the New Jersey School of Ballet. Lucky for her, though, the school didn't make any cuts until the modern dance audition. "I really think it was my passion that got me in," says Latarro. "They saw how much I loved movement, and then they saw my solo that I'd choreographed myself. Then I got called back." Another day and a half of auditions and an anxious wait for a letter later, and she was in.
After she graduated from the Juilliard dance program in 1997, Latarro joined the MOMIX company. When she was in NYC between MOMIX's international engagements, she'd go to Broadway auditions—most frequently for Swing! "Every time, I'd get further along," she says. "I could see they had their eye on me, but it took, like, five times." And a hairline fracture of Jenny Thomas' heel shortly after Swing! opened. With less than a week's notice, Latarro was called in to replace Thomas, a swing dance champion who performed (in competitions and in the show) with her husband, Ryan Francois. Latarro also understudied Laura Benanti. "I grew up coming to see shows," she says, "and to be able to walk down 44th Street, past Shubert Alley, to go to my stage door at the St. James, it was a dream come true. It still is exhilarating, but I'll never forget what it felt like at 22."
Latarro did not have her Equity card the entire year she was in Swing!, since she was new to theater and the book-less show operated under an AGMA contract. On closing night, she remembers, "I was literally hanging onto a pole crying 'cause I was so scared I was never going to get to dance on Broadway again." But AGMA/Equity reciprocal membership kicked in and Latarro never went back to the world of concert dance. She's been working almost nonstop on Broadway ever since. She went straight from Swing to Fosse to Kiss Me, Kate, and later added the revivals of Man of La Mancha, Wonderful Town, A Chorus Line and The Apple Tree to her résumé. She's also been in Curtains and Spamalot, and she's become an audience favorite in the Broadway by the Year and Summer Broadway Festival concerts at Town Hall. Twice—in 2001 and 2007—Latarro was in three different Broadway shows within a calendar year.
The latest stop in this remarkable run is Des McAnuff's revival of Guys and Dolls, which opened March 1 at the Nederlander Theatre. Latarro is a Hot Box girl, a dancer in Havana and, in the opening ballet "Runyonland" (a new addition for this revival), a mink-wearing, cigar-smoking poker player. She also understudies Lauren Graham as Adelaide and is scheduled to go on in the role April 7-9 and 14-16.
Latarro's longest stretch in a Broadway show was Movin' Out, which she did for almost two years until it closed in December '05. She danced the lead role of Brenda at Wednesday matinees (to give Elizabeth Parkinson a break), opposite Michael Balderrama as Tony. "It was amazing," Latarro says of Movin' Out, which was directed and choreographed by Twyla Tharp. "The dancing was like flying—that's the only way I can describe it. Everybody who was in that show sort of dances differently now, because of Twyla. I learned so much [and] found everything she had to say was so smart and interesting.
