Broadway Divas 101: Lesson 9: Rachel York

Rachel York was born and raised in Florida. She began performing at a very young age and made her way to New York City at age 19. She made her Broadway debut as Mallory in City of Angels.  Other Broadway credits include:  Fantine in Les Miserables, Marguerite in The Scarlet Pimpernel, and Christine in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.  She also played the role of Lilli Vanessi/Katherine in the London Revival of Kiss Me, Kate, which aired on PBS and is available on DVD.  More recently, Rachel played Guenevere in a national tour of Camelot and Cruella de Vil in the national tour of 101 Dalmations (which featured a bunch of real dogs and the human actors performing on stilts so the show was seen from a dog's perspective.)

Rachel played Lucille Ball in the 2003 TV Movie Lucy.  (A must see!  She was fantastic!)

My earliest introduction to Rachel was the seeing Kiss Me, Kate on PBS.  She is INCREDIBLE in that show.  I also heard her singing "I'll Forget You" on the Encore CD of The Scarlet Pimpernel.  So when I went to NYC in early 2006 and we decided to go see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, I was very happy to see that she was playing Christine!  I'll never forget sitting there, awaiting her arrival on stage.  The first time we see Christine, she sings a great song, "Here I Am", which was one of 2 songs in the show I was familiar with prior to seeing it.  Out came Rachel and she was doing okay.  The song really raises the roof near the end, and Rachel was in rare form.  I was so excited to see her perform live and she did not disappoint!  She is a fantastic performer!

Homework:
Watch these videos:






Also, watch the PBS Kiss Me, Kate and the CBS Lucy, if you can find them!!

Sources:  http://www.rachelyork.net/Visitors.php/Home/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_York
http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=65872