Thanks. He definitely had fun with it.
My favorite story from the show involved Joey landing the part despite a vocal/dance/acting audition for which he was totally unprepared, then almost declining it after it was offered.
The director is a young guy in his first year of teaching. He's got a lot of of stage experience - from school (he attended the 'Fame' high school in NYC, then became one of the first Americans to attend and graduate from a 4-year program at MXAT in Moscow, Russia.) and from touring in both Europe and North America. He's directed many plays but never a musical. So he admitted to being fairly nervous about it, especially when the actor who he said 'blew everyone away' with his singing was given the lead role and then almost declined it.
On day one of rehearsals, this director still had no idea that Joey could also play. One of the others who knew Joey told him, though, so he off-handedly gave Joey the score and asked him to 'see what he could do with the opening number.' It was 'Pure Imagination,' which the director later said was a favorite of his ever since childhood. (He's a huge fan of Gene Wilder. 'Willy Wonka' was actually chosen this year as the director's way of paying tribute to Wilder.) Half an hour after giving the song to Joey, he walked to the practice room and listened from outside. "I started to cry," he said at the cast party after the show had ended. "The boy couldn't just play, he could REALLY play. It was beautiful." He said that it was the moment when he first knew that the production would be really good.
That night, when he'd just heard Joey play for the first time, the director posted to Facebook about what a talent he'd found. Joey's choir teacher from the school read it and laughed. "Well, of course," she said. "Where the heck have you been???"
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