Interview: Shoshana Bean on 'Coming Home' to The Apollo Theatre For Holiday Concert

Shoshana Bean is making her way uptown from Hell's Kitchen to Harlem for her annual holiday concert at The Apollo Theater on Monday, December 4.

The Tony nominee will take the audience on a soul-filled musical joyride with her powerful vocals, magnetic stage presence and impeccable interpretations of holiday classics. Special guests will include Kristin Chenoweth, Alex Newell, and Betty Who.

Currently starring in Alicia Keys' Hell's Kitchen musical at The Public Theatre, Bean will return to The Apollo for the first time since 2021 for an unforgettable concert, featuring music direction and arrangements by David Cook.

BroadwayWorld sat down with Bean to discuss why she keeps returning to The Apollo Theater for her holiday concert, her memories to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Wicked, and working with Alicia Keys on Hell's Kitchen.

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You've had an exciting fall. How was the big Wicked 20 celebration?

It was incredible. It was truly mind blowing.

How do you look back at your time in that show?

Oh, it's such a hard question to answer because it's so long ago, but also so intertwined, personal, professional. It was such a massive moment, but I couldn't have known that back then. There was no way to understand how massive it was, nor how massive it would become and stay. So I don't know. I think I look back with a lot of pride, but I also wish that I knew then what I know now, so I could have enjoyed it a little more. I wish I could sort of whisper in that little girl's ear and be like, "You're f-ing killing it. Live. Joy. Just stop questioning yourself. Stop being afraid. Stop feeling like you're an imposter. Just live your dreams."

Well, I'm so excited that you're returning to the Apollo Theater this year. It's been a couple years since you were at the Apollo, so what are you most looking forward to in returning to that stage?

Oh man. At this point, that place feels like home, so it feels like coming home. So I think that's the most exciting part. There's the same cast of characters, the same people that I've grown to know and love and appreciate. So that's always the most exciting part, is just walking back in there and feeling like your family's thrilled to see you home and embracing you.

I also think there's just something really special about the house and the space itself. There's so much magic in those walls, so whenever I do a show there, it just feels like we can't really do any wrong. People fill those seats and they are ready for an entire experience, and I feel like I'm riding the wave of that momentum and that expectation, and so it already curates itself almost into this incredible community experience, this very connected, very engaged, very loving, raucous, exciting.

It's just such a connected thing from knowing that there's going to be moments where people are going to be on their feet losing minds to moments where they're going to be like, we'll all be silently weeping together. It's something about both the theater itself and the experience that I've built over the years that just makes it a magical night. I'm not articulating it well, but it's really special.

The theater itself has some significance in the performance too,because I know you were at Rockwood last year, which is definitely a much smaller space. So how does your relationship with the audience change going from that small space to a huge theater like the Apollo?

Well, we just couldn't make the Apollo happen last year. I really was just waiting. I mean, we didn't know Mr. Saturday Night was going to close, and by the time it did, it was just too late to get it together. Last year was a really wild, big year, and so it didn't have the capacity, but I still wanted to do something. So that's hence Rockwood.

I think that even getting ready for this year, we thought, "Is it time for us to move to a different space?" And it just didn't feel right because we've started something up there. It is a tradition now, and it's something that I feel like to be what this show is, it has to be at the Apollo.

So yes, the space absolutely is a player, is a character, is a main character. It dictates what the experience is. Obviously, Rockwood doesn't allow for anything much bigger. It was very intimate, which has a magic all its own. But we managed to achieve that at the Apollo. We managed to achieve that level of intimacy in this massive house, but the massive house allowed us to put on a bigger show with more sound and more elements and more people. But I do pride myself on no matter what the size of the house, that intimacy is still possible and is so important to me.

I saw Adele at the Staples Center multiple times, and John Mayer too, and was floored by how I could be way up in a box and feel like I'm sitting in her living room. So I know that it's really on the artist to sort of curate the type of environment and connection with their audience that makes it feel like that. So we can do that in a huge venue. We can do that at Rockwood. But I like what the Apollo allows us to do, and again, I just think that we've made it a tradition and it has to be there. It just has to.

As both a musician and actress, what do you enjoy the most about that difference between when you're on stage as a character and when you're singing as Shoshana in a concert?

I'm wrestling with that right now because with Hell's Kitchen, it's pop music and the sound is so different than a theatrical piece, and the band is so different that I have to, it's a fine line to walk from. Is this a concert? Is this musical? Right? Sometimes it has the feel of a concert in that way. So for me, I will always feel the most amount of freedom as me for some reason, and I've really worked constantly on undoing this because I know when I can really heal it and unravel it, that's where even more freedom lies.

But there's still something about character work that makes me feel like there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. That there's still something I need to achieve, that I'm not getting inside of it in this way, or that there's somewhere to get with character work.

With me, as long as my heart is cracked open and I am sharing honestly and connecting, there's no wrong, and so there's just more freedom for me in myself. I am fearless in my ability to share me on stage, my heart, my story. When I'm inside of a character, I have so much more fear because I'm afraid I'm going to do it wrong. But when it's me, there's no wrong, because it's me.

I love your holiday music. What makes you want to keep coming back to holiday music? What's your connection with it after all these years?

Oh gosh. I think I've always been the Jew who loves Christmas and have felt so on the outside of it for so long. Once I realized how involved I could be because of music and singing and all of the events that transpire around the time, I realized music was my way in. I get a whole three weeks of feeling like I get to immerse myself in it because someone always needed me to sing somewhere, something to be festive and celebrate.

It all shook down because when Cynthia [Erivo] was a special guest at my album release, which was my first show at the Apollo in 2018, people were so excited to see us on stage together, and one of my best friends was like, "You two together is something special. You need to do more things together." We were like, we don't know if it's a variety show, if we just started brainstorming. With our schedules, the quickest way we could do it was a Christmas variety show. It just sort of built from there.

Those first two years of us doing it together were so special and so anticipated and so exciting. Obviously, her schedule and her life has taken her in different directions, but for me that it's my favorite thing to do and it's a blessing to have it be just another responsibility on the list of things to get done. I love it so much. I think it just came from wanting to be able to participate and be inside of Christmas. Music is my way to do that.

I also am a very nostalgic person, and I also love the things that you can count on. I think things around the holidays are so built around tradition. So I always say this every year on stage, but from the same Christmas decorations,we can count on Fifth Avenue, Rockfeller Center. There's things we get to count on. It's the same Christmas music every year. Every once in a while someone comes with a new tune that breaks through, but mostly it's the same shit every year. 

In a world that is changing so fast, it truly is. When I posted those Wicked pictures, I'm like, "Oh my God, it doesn't feel like that long ago, but 20 years is Carol Shelley holding a cordless phone? 20 years is me taking a selfie, a mirror selfie with a digital camera, because that's what we had to." Things have changed so fast, and for me, I just love holding onto memories and nostalgia and Christmas really allows us to do that.

It's also a time where we put everything else aside and just celebrate and come together from cocktail parties to the company Christmas party and our annual present trade with the cousins or whatever. I just love that. Now we've created something that people count on every Christmas and it's just another tradition, another place that you know, can come and come together through and music and live performances. Nothing else can do it quite that way.

You talked about it a little bit before, but Hell's Kitchen is now playing at The Public Theater. How has it been going so far?

Oh, it's been wild. I mean, to be back in previews and rehearsals is just like... my head is spinning constantly. Again, I don't know if I'm doing any of this right, but it's fun. It's a great group of people and it's exciting for me, after 20 plus years in this business to be able to sing like I sing in a show. To really get to do it. And the music of an artist that I have who's been on my bucket list of people to work with for 20 since "Songs in A Minor" came out in 2001. It's been like 20 years that I've been dying to be in the same space as that woman. So it definitely checks a lot of the bucket list items off. It's pretty cool.

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Watch Shoshana Bean sing "All I Want For Christmas Is You" here:

Photos: Jenny Anderson and Michael Hull