Xanthe Elbrick
Currently: Making her New York stage debut in the Broadway production of Coram Boy as a pair of spirited 18th-century English boys: Alexander Ashbrook, the heir to a great estate Act I; and Aaron, the son Alexander never knew he had, who's raised at the famous Coram orphanage Act II.
Hometown: Ipswich, England, and Gilbertsville, New York. Elbrick grew up with loyalties on both sides of the Atlantic: Her mother is British, and her banker father is American. "I went to boarding school in London, so I think I lean more to the British side, but my heart is American," she says with a hint of an English accent. "My dad is my best friend in the world, so being an American is a large part of me."
Xanthe With a Z: Elbrick's unusual name pronounced ZAN-thy "just came from a baby name book," she says. "I'm the fourth of four children, and my parents had made their way to the back of it by then. My dad always said that if they couldn't afford to educate me, I could sign my checks with an X." As for the meaning of her name in Greek—blonde—the brunette actress says with a laugh, "You can see how much relevance it has!"
She's Got Male: In epic style, Coram Boy tells overlapping stories of the wealthy Ashbrook family and a villainous "Coram Man," who accepts payment from desperate mothers to take their infants to a nearby orphanage. Elbrick anchors the play as a boy who longs to devote his life to music against the wishes of his aristocratic father. "Alexander has everything and can't use anything," she observes of her character. "He's trapped by familial and societal constraints, a phenomenon that still exists today, especially in England." Director Melly Still got her 20 principal actors on their feet right away: "We ran the whole play the first day, and Melly said, 'Anyone should feel free to join in any scene.' The collaborative spirit got a great kickoff."
Boys' Life: "At the first performance, it suddenly hit me that I had never done anything on or off Broadway—I felt quite overwhelmed," Elbrick says with a laugh. Indeed, the young actress won her central roles in Coram Boy in one of her first professional auditions. Then she faced two daunting tasks: playing two different boys, at ages 15 Alexander and 8 Aaron, and singing the music of George Frideric Handel in a high soprano. "Usually in rehearsal you're working on your character's wants and needs, but I had to go through a different kind of transformation before even beginning that stuff," she notes. Her inspiration: The teenage boy she's been babysitting as a live-in nanny for the past few years. "I was terrified when [the family] came to see it," Elbrick says, "but he thought it was great." Performing Handel solos, she adds, "is the biggest challenge because I'm an actor who sings, not a singer. But it feels better and better every time I do it."
Broadway Baby: Before landing her current roles, Elbrick got to know New York actors through her other survival job besides nannying: taking headshot photos. "That's my bread and butter and my favorite thing to do," she says of photographing performers outdoors in natural light, often in Central Park. Now that she's actually a part of the theater community, Elbrick marvels, "There's a huge warmth from theatergoers here, and an amazing work ethic among actors that is so different from London. You can be immersed in theater in New York all the time, and that's so exciting."