If you are a Pittsburgh theater-goer, there are performers you’ve seen on stage so often, you feel like you know them.
Now, Pittsburgh CLO is helping us to know five of them a little better.
By Sharon Eberson
The Kara Spotlight Series features familiar names on consecutive weekends at the Greer Cabaret, Downtown, through Dec. 19, beginning Friday with Allan Snyder.
You may know him from his work on regional stages, but he is best known in New York for his roles in the Broadway company of Les Miserables, which he began at age 24. The California native also has toured the country as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera and has spent time as a cruise ship performer and as a featured singer in concert halls worldwide.
In the past 20 months, you may have heard his voice in another capacity — via phone, working for the Pennsylvania Department of Health as a COVID contact tracer and investigator.
His pandemic story saw the shutdown of theater and his work as a part-time educator at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center and Pittsburgh Musical Theater. He and his wife Kate, a Wexford-based esthetician and makeup artist, have a daughter Luisa, who was about to begin preschool. Like most working parents, they were faced with: What now?
Snyder’s big pivot in another direction began with a CCAC contact tracing course. Followed by then being hired by the Dept. of Health to call people who had been in contact with someone who had tested positive for COVID-19, and later, trace contacts from the source.
He also served as a member of the COVID coordination team that worked with the CLO on its Heinz Field summer shows.
Speaking on Monday, with his cabaret set to open on Friday, Snyder had “just handed in my notice” from his pandemic job, grateful to once more be a working actor.
Allan Snyder, far right, returns to Pittsburgh CLO’s annual A Musical Christmas Carol in 2021. Photo by Matt Polk
After the cabaret, he will have his fifth go-round in Pittsburgh CLO’s A Musical Christmas Carol, opening next month. In May of next year, he will “finally” get to star in the pandemic-delayed A Man of No Importance for Front Porch Theatricals.
“I learned that I have nothing but admiration for all the people who work in public health,” he said. “I haven’t met any of them in person, my job was completely remote, but everyone was really great. Those people dedicating their lives to public health, any kind of public service, it’s a thankless and important job, and they are amazing.”
While juggling his work and parenthood during the pandemic, Snyder also took time to take stock of his career. So when he got the call from Pittsburgh CLO executive producer Mark Fleischer, he was ready with the seeds of a cabaret show and its title: Les Miz-Life Crisis.
“When Mark offered us the opportunity to do this weekend of shows, it was a chance for me to be a little more personal with an audience,” said the actor. “It’s especially meaningful after the pandemic forced me to stop and slow down and sit and think about it. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. But my life is totally different than it was then.”
Among the thoughts swirling in his head was, at a very tender age, he was on Broadway, doing Les Miserables. Among other roles, he played rebel leader Enjolras.
“It’s basically the journey,” he said of his cabaret theme. ” ‘Why did I get into it? Was it worth it? If so, have the reasons changed?’ From an outside observer, you look at my career. I did Les Miz on Broadway; what most people would say is the pinnacle … it’s so easy to single out. That was almost 20 years ago. So what happens when your dreams come true at 24? Is it over if it never happens again?”
Of course, it wasn’t over.
Snyder became a go-to performer in regional theater and symphony concerts, and went on to the role he is perhaps most associated with, in the long-running national tour of Phantom of the Opera.
Since settling in Western Pennsylvania, Snyder has been on stages from the Lincoln Performing Arts Center to West Virginia Public Theatre and everything in between.
His featured roles include “Daddy Long Legs” and A Funny Thing Happened … for Pittsburgh Public Theater; Pittsburgh Musical Theater’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame; and several CLO shows, including The 39 Steps, The Full Monty and Brigadoon.
Allan Snyder in Pittsburgh CLO’s The 39 Steps. Photo by Archie Carpenter
Even with such a wide-ranging repertoire, in concert, you’d expect some Les Miserables and, of course, the Phantom.
One thing Snyder discovered while looking inward is his relationship to a fan favorite, “Music of the Night,” had changed.
He knows Andrew Lloyd Webber’s soaring composition is expected of him when he is in concert. Still, he really, really didn’t want to sing it anymore.
Then, in rehearsal for his Les Miz-Life Crisis, he found a new way in.
“Last week, I was considering not even doing it,” he said. “I think part of the problem, it’s a song that carries too much weight. People expect a certain thing, and I find myself slipping into the character, the gestures … it’s such an iconic song,
“Then,” he continued, “I told Bobby [music director Robert Neumeyer] that, ‘I’d like to just sit down in this chair right here, and I’m going to sing it as softly as I can.’ I enjoyed it for the first time in years. Doing it this way, it was getting back to the whole theme of, ‘Why am I doing this? That was transformative.”
Snyder fears that he may be sounding too serious and not in keeping with his self-deprecating side and the places that punny title will take us in his kickoff cabaret journey.
While not giving anything away about other songs on his set list, he says there will be some “gender-bending” going on and “one particular belter song” that he assigns his students.
This first cabaret in the Kara Spotlight Series paves the way for Billy Mason‘s Welcome to Motown (Nov. 26-28), and then come some of Pittsburgh CLO’s local leading ladies —
Caroline Nicolian‘s “A Leading Lady Songbook” (Dec. 3-5), Chris Laitta‘s TV Themes and Broadway Dreams (Dec. 10-12) and Drew Leigh Williams A Few of My Favorite Things (Dec. 17-19).
“There are so many great things about Mark [Fleischer]. One of the best is that he is so interested in cultivating and hiring local performers,” Snyder said of being in a cabaret lineup with his fellow artists. “It’s fantastic.”
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