Dani Girl is an exciting new musical by New York writers Christopher Dimond and Michael Kooman, and it's opening in Toronto this weekend.  The writing pair have been dubbed one of the hottest duos currently on the theatre scene, and won the prestigious Jonathan Larson Award in 2010 for their work. Dani Girl enjoyed a successful run in Barrie through Talk is Free Theatre last year, and is back this month as a co-production with Show One Productions.  Gabi Epstein returns in the lead role of Dani, and she is joined by Jonathan Logan (who was also in the Barrie production), Jeff Madden and Amanda LeBlanc. The show will once again by directed by Toronto Star theatre critic Richard Ouzounian.

Dani Girl tells the story of a nine year old girl who is battling terminal cancer, and uses music, humour and imagination to show how she copes with her illness.  The intermission-less show occurs largely within Dani’s imagination, and various fictional characters and games to explore the serious themes and events that transpire as she battles cancer.  Hailed as “touching, lively and humourous” the show promises to make you laugh and cry, while providing a unique insight into the mind of a child.

BWW is thrilled to be profiling some of the people involved in this production.  On Wednesday we profiled Gabi Epstein, who plays the lead role of Dani.  Today we are talking to Jeff Madden, one of the newcomers to the production.  This is Jeff’s first performance since his award winning run as Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys, and he talks to us about the challenges associated with being the ‘new guy’ on the show, and about what it’s like tackling eleven characters in one production:

Congratulations on Dani Girl! How’s it coming so far?

It’s coming together and I think everybody is pretty happy with it. The tricky part is that you have two of the four actors who are show level because they’ve done it before, and then you have two actors who are new to it and so certain parts work perfectly and other parts still need some tweaking.

As the new guy to the production, what has the adjustment been like?

In a way it’s been really good that we are working with people who have done it before.  They know what works and what doesn’t and there is a level of shorthand there which really helps.  Technically this show is a remount despite the fact that half of us are new, so we have less time to rehearse and that knowledge comes in really handy.

It has also been an immense workload and a huge challenge.  I’ve never done a show where I’ve had to play so many different characters.  I play about eleven people in the show and so the challenge has been trying to make each one of them unique and more than just one dimensional.  It’s a fun challenge!

How do you even begin to tackle a task like that?

That’s what I said to myself before I started on it! I really had no idea how I was going to do it. That was one of the reasons I said yes to the project, because I wanted to do something very different.  I haven’t done theatre since Jersey Boys so I wanted the project to be interesting and different, and Dani Girl is both those things.

That being said, actually figuring out how you are going to make these characters up and have each one be unique is tricky.  I had some one on one rehearsals with the director and I gained a lot of insight that way.  The fun part about my characters is that they all exist in Dani’s imagination.  It’s the imagination of a nine year old girl, so they can be pretty outrageous.  I get to play this crazy French character, and then a crazy German character and they are silly and broad because they are in the mind of a nine year old. 

The show deals with some pretty mature subject matter.  Is it meant to be a tear jerker in addition to a comedy?