Marni Raab
Hometown: Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. “There’s this joke about New Jersey that people ask you what exit you are [from], and I’m 171 off the Garden State Parkway.”
Currently: Making her Broadway debut as soprano Christine Daaé, the object of the title character’s obsession, in The Phantom of the Opera.
I Love You, Tomorrow! Raab got her first exposure to the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber as a toddler—and it did not go well. “My parents took me to see Joseph [and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat], and apparently I thought it was too loud; I sat with my hands over my ears the whole time,” she says with a laugh. Seeing Annie at age five produced a different result: “I loved the concept of kids on stage and decided that I was going to be an actress.” Raab’s supportive parents signed her up for acting and singing lessons and summers at Stagedoor Manor the theater camp that inspired the film Camp, culminating in her decision to enroll at Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music.
NYC Beginnings: Opera? Acting? “When I was in school, I was torn,” Raab says of her career path. “Oberlin was straight classical training, which was terrific, but I also wanted to study acting and there wasn’t much available.” In the end, she concluded, “My goal is storytelling—that’s what I love—and whether it’s opera or musical theater or straight acting, it’s all storytelling.” Funnily enough, one of Raab’s first post-college jobs was playing Christine in TheaterWorks USA’s kid version of Phantom of the Opera. “I ran into the composer, David Spencer, on the bus last week,” she says, “and we joked about how I’ve graduated from the little Phantom to the big one.”
Get Out of Town! Raab’s language classes at Oberlin came in handy when she snagged the role of Jellylorum in the Hamburg production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s other iconic musical, Cats, performed in German. “They taught us the songs phonetically,” she explains. Her year-long stay in Hamburg became the first of many road trips for Raab, including two stints in the national tour of Phantom and almost two years as Christine in the show’s Asian World Tour, which began in Shanghai and continued in Seoul, Taipei and Hong Kong. “Spending long chunks of time on the road is easier when you’re younger,” she observes. “But I made so many wonderful friends all around the world. It’s nice to know that my husband and I always have a place to stay, from Australia to South Africa.”
Angel of Music: After seven years playing Christine with a few breaks along the way, Raab understands what makes this quintessential ingenue tick. “She’s at that transition between childhood and adulthood, which is interesting to play, and she’s also mourning the loss of her father. There’s no mention of a mother in the script, so I just [assume] she never knew her mother. Her father, the most important figure in her life, is gone now, and she’s looking for someone to fill that void. She has the choice between this creepy Phantom who’s a madman and kills people but is also sexy and compelling, or she could be with [Raoul], the slightly boring but really good-looking and wealthy and stable aristocrat.” So, does Raab envision a happy ending for Christine? “Um, there’s a sequel coming, so I guess we’ll all have to stay tuned!” she says with a laugh.
Home Sweet Home: In the midst of her on-the-go career, Raab managed to meet a nice intellectual-property lawyer named Mike on the subway, and they’ve been married for two years. “I had 10 days off [from the Phantom tour], so we got married on Sunday, had an evening at a bed-and-breakfast, and then on Tuesday Mike went back to work and I flew to Albuquerque.” A long-distance relationship can have advantages, Raab insists: “If you don’t have the luxury of being together, you’re forced to relate to each other over the phone and have heart-to-heart conversations that mean something. It shakes up the relationship, which can be a good thing.” Not that she’s complaining about living at home and working on Broadway: “My friends and family can finally see me in something! I’ve had a 10-year career and none of it has been in New York, so I’m having a wonderful time being part of the Broadway community.”