AN EVENING WITH L MORGAN LEE
MCC Theater, 2023
Presented by National Queer Theatre and Musical Theater Factory
In Association with Carnegie Hall’s Women in Music Festival
“L Morgan Lee is a charming orator who tells the stories of her life with a pleasant ease that communicates that charm while showing her audience what a friendly, unassuming, and playful human being she is. It is difficult not to fall a little in love with L Morgan...Seeing this tiny titan standing on the stage singing, first, a belting torch song, and, then, a quiet lullaby, one couldn’t help but notice that L Morgan Lee doesn’t just have power as a vocalist and as a storyteller - she has power as a person, a sweet, petite woman standing on a stage and telling her tale. L Morgan Lee IS power. She is beauty, she is art.... ”
Photo by Abigail Grubb, 2023
A STRANGE LOOP
Original Broadway Cast, The Lyceum Theater
Photo by Marc J. Franklin, 2022
“One of Lee’s most memorable transformations as Thought 1 is in the song “Sympathetic Ear.” She lampoons a very specific type of Broadway tourist whom Usher encounters during intermission at “The Lion King.” Every theater industry worker in the audience howls with recognition at the character. But Lee turns the moment on its head as this patron becomes one of the only people to offer Usher encouragement to follow his dreams. “Find joy inside your life while you’re still here,” sings Lee. You can practically hear everyone’s hands reaching for their hearts.”
“Lee is a superstar in the making...I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She never once mugs for the audience or tries to call attention to herself, but instead embodies all of her characters so excellently it’s a dopamine rush every time she enters the stage. She fills the show with a playful passion that’s only accentuated by the other fantastic actors playing her co-Thoughts.
And, of course, there’s the solo number Lee knocks out of the park, “A Sympathetic Ear.”...As she was singing, I could feel the audience sitting up and taking note of the beautiful grace this woman was extending towards us. “If you’re not scared to write the truth then it’s probably not worth writing,” she says at the end of her solo. Michael R. Jackson may have written these words, but it felt like Lee had come up with them and was speaking them directly to me.””
Photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times, 2022
“The one warm voice is a “Lion King” ticket-buyer who encourages Usher to make the show he wants to make. It’s the show’s best scene.”
“L Morgan Lee is not only debuting but is also making history, becoming only the second trans woman to originate a principal role in a musical on Broadway...Lee’s presence in this show is momentous...and breaking down barriers.”
THINGS UNKNOWN
Black Trans Women at the Center: An Evening of
Short Plays, Long Wharf Theater
“In Dezi Bing’s Things Unknown, the audience jumps between the first night of the Stonewall Riots in New York City to the city’s recent past. In one world, [Marsha P.] Johnson is boarding a train to New York, fighting off the threats of onlookers. In another, it is Nov. 8, 2016, as a young couple discusses one partner’s HIV positive diagnosis amidst the noise of Donald Trump’s impending victory.
The parallel is propulsive and tight: two trans Black women separated by nearly five decades of history (both played by a nuanced, revelatory and at times gut-wrenching L Morgan Lee), both just trying to live.
Bing writes nimbly through history, interested in the people and moments that live in its interstitial spaces. Instead of watching Marsha P. Johnson (a fast-talking, wildly charismatic Lee) in the thick of the Stonewall riot, the audience watches the night that led up to the riot, from the legacy of steel-spined Black women in Johnson’s family to the box in which society attempts to place her. The audience can feel the pressure building, even as an imaginary bead of sweat rolls slowly down Lee’s face and she pays it no mind. ”
A STRANGE LOOP
Playwrights Horizons
2020 Obie Award - Special Citation, Cast/Creative Team
2020 Lucille Lortel Award Nomination (Featured Actress, Musical)
2020 Antonyo Award Nomination (Featured Performer, Musical)
“L Morgan Lee brings grace and solidity to several of the play’s kindlier parts, from the hardworking anthropomorphized neuron that supervises Usher’s “sexual ambivalence” to an elderly Broadway fan from Florida who offers our hero some encouragement between acts at The Lion King. ”
“The performers exhibit different strengths, though all are dynamic and engaging. L Morgan Lee is virtuosic in the gospel and semi-operatic moments that go to her. ”
“...the crystal-voiced L Morgan Lee.”