Darren Criss & Helen J Shen Talk Starring In Broadway’s ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ | Billboard News

Darren Criss and Helen J Shen are headed to Broadway to star in the musical Maybe Happy Ending. The pair sits down to discuss what it’s like to work with each other, how they got the roles, the beauty of musicals and more!

Darren Criss:

This is a funny little backdrop, because before we were like in previews. We’ve done performances for audiences over 20 times, I think, or something like that. This is we’ve met for …

Helen J Shen:

Probably 48 hours, less. 

Darren Criss:

Yeah, just a couple, yeah. This is, this is so proto what we are now. The show looks very different from this. I don’t have, none of us have our wigs on, but I think the heart is there, I suppose. So I don’t want to misdirect it too much.

Rebecca Milzoff: The heart and the plant.

Darren Criss: Most importantly, the main star of our show. He couldn’t make it today. He’s already on the private yacht. Yeah, he’s partying on a yacht somewhere.

We’ll give Hua Boon his moment later on, I feel like the show is straightforward to explain, but also sort of defies description in so many ways. I would love to hear when you’re giving kind of your elevator pitch on it to friends and people considering coming. How do you describe Maybe Happy Ending?

Darren Criss: There’s what the story is, and then there is what the show is about. Those aren’t necessarily the same things. Thematically it’s kind of about, yeah, two elderly people in hospice that decide to break out of the situation, to go connect with their family. Now that is a really grim, depressing construct for a show. So why would you ever want to see a musical comedy about that? 

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