Broadway-level musical ‘Joseph’ highlights homegrown Kentucky theater talent

Sunday evening, July 13, Darien Sanders was sitting in the front row of the Lexington Opera House mezzanine watching Broadway star Ron Bohmer bring the Lexington Theatre Company’s production of “42nd Street” to a rousing finale, and he was overwhelmed.

Throughout the performance thoughts washed over him about friends he was watching taking their craft to the next level and the company he has been with since the beginning continuing to grow and prosper.

“I was just sitting there, like, oh my word, I get to sit and see this Broadway show that is New York-caliber in my home city,” Sanders said. “Also, I’m just so proud, because they’re talking about this next show is going to be ‘Joseph,’ and I’m Joseph.’”

Sanders was indeed just hours away from starting rehearsals for The Lexington Theatre Company’s second show of the summer, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” playing the title role. And while Bohmer represented one of the hallmarks of The Lex in bringing veteran Broadway talent to Lexington, Sanders represents one of its other goals: Helping Lexington artists grow and giving them a local, professional stage to perform on, whether they live here or have gone on to national stage careers.

“Joseph,” which has six performances July 31 to Aug. 3 at the Opera House, illustrates that point with homegrown talent topping the cast. Artistic director Lyndy Franklin Smith says that was intentional this year, as The Lex celebrates its 10th anniversary.

“We wanted to bring back as many alumni as we could,” said the Lexington native and Broadway veteran who founded The Lex with her husband, producing director Jeromy Smith. “That was the whole dream, was to be able to give all of our fabulous local professionals the experience of what it would be like if they flew to New York City and stepped into rehearsals for a Broadway show or tour, but they don’t have to leave their home, and Lexington is all the richer for it.”

Sanders’ career quickly developed from non-existent to several roles in local productions to sharing the stage with Broadway star Jonathan Groff at The Lex’s very first show in 2015. After more experiences with the company, he went on to spend five years on the national tour of “The Lion King,” which just wrapped up earlier this year. Louisville native Audrey Belle Adams had a more traditional theater education, studying voice at the University of Kentucky, which helped connect her with the Smiths and The Lex for the company’s second full production, “Mary Poppins” in 2016.

Adams, who plays the Narrator in “Joseph,” recalled her best friend was in the first Lex production, “42nd Street” in 2015, and wasn’t quite sure what he was getting into. 

“I get a call from him, and he is like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is the next new summer stock theater that everyone’s gonna work at,’” Adams recalled. And that was, “after a day of rehearsing with them.”

Now Adams, who was last on the Opera House stage with the national tour of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” is based in New York and enjoys hearing The Lex come up unprompted in conversations with students and fellow actors.

“Everybody’s talking about how they want to come work here,” Adams said.

The Lex, she and Sanders said, has a reputation for nurturing excellence in artists at any stage in their career and paying it forward. Sanders recalls the encouragement he got from Groff in 2015 and said when he starts a new production, his wife asks him who he’s going to “be Jonathan Groff to.”

Tim X. Davis, the founding director of the theater program at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, auditioned for The Lex last year looking to get his acting career back on track after the Covid-19 pandemic. He played Lazar Wolfe in the 2024 production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

“It’s great as an educator to have those kinds of opportunities, to have the opportunity to work on a big production like this, with such great production values, such wonderful production team members,” Davis said. “I just can’t say enough about the talent that gets brought into these shows.”

Having Davis in the show started a relationship between The Lex and BCTC, as Lyndy is now on the college theater program’s advisory board and students have a tangible connection to the theater. This year, Davis was cast as Abner Dillon, the automobile tycoon financing the musical within “42nd Street,” and Jacob and Potiphar in “Joseph.”

The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice show, based on the Biblical tale of a dream interpreter and favorite son sold into slavery by his brothers, is a beloved show with cross-generational appeal that is a mainstay of community and student theaters. Adams has formative memories of being in a Louisville-area production with her father when she was a child. This is a chance to see a fully professional production of the show.

“This is maybe one of the dance-iest ‘Joseph’s you’ll ever see,” said Lyndy, who is directing the show, which she last directed at Music Theatre Wichita the year before she and Jeromy formed The Lex. “Like it’s choreographed within an inch of its life. And then for me, it’s also the nuance of it, and it’s understanding how we fill every moment with all of the beats of the story, so that it lands beautifully for the audience to understand it, and how it marries to the orchestration.”

Jeromy said both of this summer’s shows have reflected The Lex’s core values of family, forgiveness, nurturing, and paying it forward.

Adams said, “It’s so special to be able to put on this show at the caliber that it is, and the fact that half of the people here are from Kentucky and are true products of The Lex, it’s pretty cool. People are gonna be pleased.”

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

When: July 31-Aug. 3

Where: Lexington Opera House, 401 W. Short St. 

Tickets: lexingtontheatrecompany.org, 859-233-3535.