Life

Jim Becker
Dec. 22, 2025

A Broadway ‘star’ you’ve never heard of has resurfaced to sing “It Only Takes A Moment” to Michael Crawford at the (formerly) Kennedy Center Honors.

And we’re supposed to think she’s the same as a get like Adam Lambert or Cyndi Lauper? As if the nation collectively sighed, “Do you think Carrie’s available?” “Underwood?” “No, Mana- uhhh- Manolakos.”

Let’s start with the obvious issue: Kennedy Center Honors used to be where the room itself told us what America valued - an evening with real cultural gravity and gravitas.  So when the Honors’ tribute to Michael Crawford reaches for Carrie Manolakos, the question writes itself in lipstick on the mirror: why her? Could they not get anyone whose name has ever been printed on the front of a Playbill rather than alphabetically in the back behind the stars’? Could they not get Barbra Streisand; a former Honoree herself (who was serenaded by Beyonce and Idina Menzel) and actually shared top billing with Crawford in the film Hello, Dolly!? Streisand could have strolled in, lifted an eyebrow, and turned “It Only Takes a Moment” into an international event of unity.

We didn’t get Streisand, Lauper, or Menzel. We got Manolakos.

Manolakos’ cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” has over four million YouTube streams and I must make up over 500 of those streams (my neighbors will confirm; they’ve heard me sing along). For a second, I was shocked and delighted to see her name in my newsfeed - genuinely delighted. I’ve listened to and adored this woman’s voice for nearly two decades. I’ve bought the albums. I’ve cheered after 11 o’clock numbers. I have risen to my feet to applaud Ms. Manolakos. I have played her album “Echo” in cool-down sections of my dance and fitness classes - each time mentioning her to my class-goers! I have been foolish enough to think her song “All Eyes On Us” was as much of a nice bipartisan warning song as Barbra Streisand's “Walls.”

How can you keep clapping for an artist who - to you - is clapping for your right not to exist?

That’s what this feels like: an artist I supported turning around and lending her god-given instrument to an administration whose politics, rhetoric, and movement have made a sport out of targeting LGBTQ people, especially trans people, thus shrinking the very world that helped get Manolakos started: the theatre world. I didn’t buy those records and tickets thinking I was funding someone’s slow pivot to Washington pageantry. I bought them believing I was supporting my community - you know, like how you go to your friends’ craft or jewelry shows and buy something. It’s why we all place one order from a friend in a multi-level marketing scheme. I feel like I just found out that that jewelry was being worn by an executioner and my friend, the ‘almost-a-star’ Broadway singer, is standing there clapping for the execution. I didn’t sign up to sponsor the guillotine... or the trumpllotine.

Before anyone tries to frame this as “the Curmudgeon hates a working performer,” let me be clear: I love her voice. I love her ability to make the audience feel a song.  I remember the day I met Carrie Manolakos. I believe it was the day before she went on for Elphaba for the first time. I think she was nervous, but I remember her being scheduled. She was, hands down, incredible. I’d seen Shoshana Bean on Broadway (coincidentally, the same night Hillary Clinton came) and Ms. Manolakos definitely gives Ms. Bean a run for her money.

A dear friend of mine was in the Munchkinland Wicked tour with Manolakos. Back in the day, big Broadway shows had multiple touring productions criss-crossing the United States at the same time. Nowadays, I think the only tour that’s pulled that off recently is Hamilton. I had a few weeks free between regional gigs that summer and I flew out to visit my buddy in Austin, Texas. We hung out, cooked, went to the gym, and I caught the show a couple times. If memory serves, I saw the show twice. The second time was when Carrie went on, for a matinee.

We just hung out. There was a cast backyard luau my buddy and his housemates were throwing. I helped slice the amuse-bouches. I got some face to face time with Miss Manolakos. Some real human interaction. Nothing about that day gripped me as some kind of political litmus test. This was 2009 - Bush (43) was the recent ghost at The White House. I had actually just hung out with the Bushes (41, Barbara, Jeb and family) at my recent summer triumph as the Pickpocket in Guys & Dolls. SAG Award Winner Richard Kind (who performed at the Honors when Mel Brooks was honored) was our Nathan Detroit. As Elaine Stritch would say “this was big time stuff.”

Back at Kennedy Center, can you imagine an alternate reality where casting for the Crawford tribute could have included the likes of Betty Buckley (who performed at the Honors when Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber was honored) who premiered Dolly in the recent first national tour, or Sarah Brightman (who sang with Buckley at the 2006 Honors) who famously originated the role of Christine opposite Crawford’s Phantom? One envisions a brief pause on the retirement of Marianne McAndrews, who played Irene Molloy in Hello, Dolly! and Crawford’s love interest and sang “It Only Takes a Moment” with him in the film, which could have possibly yielded an extraordinary moment. Side note: McAndrews won a Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year!

But, alas. No Betty. No Sarah. No Marianne. See the pattern forming in Trump’s Kennedy Center?

I heard illusionist Criss Angel (Mind Freak) was in attendance. As were the Village People (thank God Randy and Felipe stayed home). I heard Cheap Trick’s appearance didn’t go over well with some fans.

Manolakos has shown enthusiasm publicly about performing for political figures and events that sit in the orbit of MAGA/MAHA ecosystems. She performed at the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Inaugural Ball on January 20, 2025 - the same date she released her patriotic hit song “All Eyes On Us.” She has shared social media posts about singing for RFK Jr, and now she’s singing at the (DJT and) Kennedy Center.

Now casting the role of Broadway ‘Star.’

Carrie Manolakos joined the cast of Mamma Mia! in the role of Sophie Sheridan - a real job, a real run. She’s credited as a recording in Dear Evan Hansen and she’s on the Lizzie recordings. How many words long do Playbill bios need to be? Oh, gosh. I see why she needed the gig, maybe.

But let’s not pretend this makes her a Broadway “star” in the way the phrase is used to describe the likes of Liza or Chita. She’s a comfortable featured player on the Great White Way at best. She took over a leading role with a couple songs and scenes in a machine show: a pre-built success-driven franchise that runs on replacement cast members like cogs in a clock. In machine shows, the machine is the star. The brand is the star. The set is the star. The people are often the people who fit the last person’s costume.

Then Manolakos went to another machine show: Wicked. Standby life is parachute life. The job you do when you’re good enough to save the show with seconds’ notice. Brutal. Respectable.

Here’s the difference, my turtle doves, and it matters. Original cast who create the role in the machine show is one thing. Those names bake themselves into our collective consciousness. The replacements, no matter how talented, are still stepping into the originals’ shadows.

Of course, replacements can become stars. So many do. Shirley MacLaine famously took over for Carol Haney in The Pajama Game after Haney injured herself in a matinee. During her time filling in for Haney, MacLaine was signed to Paramount Studios which catapulted her to movie star status.

What would Elphaba think? Would Elphaba lend her voice to entertain the elite in rooms that grow smaller and smaller for the LGBTQ community? Now, of course Ms. Manolakos isn’t providing legislation. She’s simply providing the pretty soundtrack in the gold-brushed rooms getting smaller for everyone else.

Stephen Schwartz has publicly taken political positions consistent with opposing discriminatory agendas. Layer that with how much dialogue between Elphaba and Dr. Dillamond is about human rights and the right to exist, it almost makes you wish she’d take “flying high as Elphaba in the 2nd National Tour of Wicked” off her homepage.

Ms. Manolakos also teaches voice. Yes, you too can learn to sing the Manolakos way, as she is the owner and founder of The Voice Cathedral. Read more about her truth campaign through vocal education at www.carriemanolakos.com/bio.

People in the Broadway-adjacent societies have already clocked this publicly. Scott Nevins called out the current posture and criticized performers, including Manolakos, who show up to legitimize what he framed as a warped and politically rebranded institution.

When Barbra Streisand received her Kennedy Center Honors from George Bush (43), they had smiles and playful banter back and forth about the event. Streisand had publicly humiliated Bush multiple times throughout the years leading up to her ceremony date. She had at one point toured the world with a George W. Bush impersonator. She famously ejected an offended Bush-loving audience member who was audibly heckling her (with a full refund, I might add). Even those two could get along. Trump won’t dare let anyone who’s criticized him into his new performing arts complex. 

I guess I should thank Ms. Maga-locos for the lesson that by supporting an artist, we’ll never know if we’re secretly funding our own societal demise. I’m not mad she took a gig. I’m mad she took the gigs that pander to the audience becoming increasingly comfortable treating trans people as a campaign and debate topic instead of treating trans people as human beings. 

When it matters and the artists you’ve supported lend their voices to decorate rooms for the communities of power that so many queer and trans people see as targeting them, scapegoating them, shrinking their safety, and turning their lives - our lives - into punchlines, what do you do?

If Ms. Manolakos is looking for the next gig, I hear Branson is hiring. Maybe she can open for Lee Greenwood at the Hillsborough County Fair in Dover, Florida this January. He’ll be there the 16th and 17th.

If the Kennedy Center becomes the stage for partisan pageantry and nationalist pomp & circumstance (the Shakespeare kind, not the Edward Elgar songs), then we’ll continue seeing dial-down-the-line bookings like Carrie Manolakos. Maybe she’ll win her own Kennedy Center Honors one day. Awww, wouldn’t that be just adorbs. 

These performers all wiping orange praise from their face are enough to turn this calm community contributor into a right and true critic. As Streisand would say “it’s easier to criticize than to praise.”

Gigs aren’t just gigs anymore. Right now, I think we all can admit there are new rules to the same games and that most of the games have changed. We must allow ourselves the ability to evolve - but evolution of the human race can’t mean eradicating the types of humans you don’t like.

As Ms. Manolakos’ song says “America, I believe in you.” But ‘starting brand new’ doesn’t mean getting rid of the people you deem unworthy. America will never want to feel ready for that, Carrie. 

How will you use your voice? 

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AI assistance: This review was prepared with research and drafting support from an AI model. All judgements and words are my own and typed by moi.