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[0:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: Welcome to Closing Night, a theater history podcast celebrating famous and forgotten Broadway shows that close too soon.

[0:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: I'm your host, Patrick Oliver Jones, and in the previous episode, we explored the 2013 Broadway revival of Jekyll and Hyde, along with Frank Wildhorn's reimagining of Alice's adventures in Wonderland.

[0:23] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, to take you further behind the scenes, I'm sharing my conversation with E. Clayton Cornelious, who played the Caterpillar in the Broadway production of Wonderland, as well as its pre-Broadway run in Tampa.

[0:36] E. Clayton Cornelious: So there's a lot of the music on the cast recording that it's not even in the Broadway show that we actually settled on. And we ended up getting a new director, got a new writer, so we were dealing with just a whole different theme when we got to New York.

[0:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: He provides such a unique cast perspective on all the changes that kept happening to this musical, which were a great help as I put the Wonderland episode together. And now you'll get our full interview and learn even more about what was going on backstage.

[1:04] Patrick Oliver Jones: We start with his audition story and how he landed the role of Caterpillar, and then chronicle the show's journey from its fourth and final out-of-town tryout to its very short run on Broadway.

[1:30] E. Clayton Cornelious: The show was Wonderland, the role of the Caterpillar.

[1:34] E. Clayton Cornelious: Frank Wildhorn. You know, we love the Frank Wildhorn show. And I was doing the Broadway production of Scottsboro Boys.

[1:44] E. Clayton Cornelious: Um, and I was the swing on that show, and I swung 13 people. I swung everybody in the show.

[1:51] E. Clayton Cornelious: Oh, yeah. Even the woman in the show. I swung every single person. I think I was the most stressed out at that point in my life when it came to swinging.

[2:02] E. Clayton Cornelious: Um, it was great to be a part of the show. What a phenomenal show. But Susan Stroman did her job on that show. And I mean, you had what nine boys, but yet two other the two comedy guys, and you had 13 chairs on stage, and these chairs made up the set.

[2:23] E. Clayton Cornelious: They had pegs and that's all the show was, was the chairs made up the set every time the scene changed. So you had to know what chair to go to, what pegs to put in and who to pass it off to. It was a nightmare. The extreme nightmare. But what a great show to be a part of.

[2:44] E. Clayton Cornelious: And I was lucky, luckily never went on on the Broadway stage, but I actually did do it for the Tony Awards. Uh, there was one guy who couldn't make it back because we closed early and he couldn't make it back. So I actually played Olin on the pre-performance on the Tony Awards with the glasses.

[3:03] E. Clayton Cornelious: So that is me up there. Uh, so I actually did get to do it for the bigger stage, so that was a blessing. Um, but I'm so happy I didn't have to go on on the Broadway stage because I would have been wrecked.

[3:16] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, it sounds exhausting just learning all that.

[3:19] E. Clayton Cornelious: Yeah, yeah. But I got this audition for Wonderland during that time, you know, I went in and I've gone for so many leads before, you know. I was always the age of the role, but I always looked younger, and I still do to this day look younger than I feel.

[3:39] E. Clayton Cornelious: And um, I went in just not really thinking that I had it in the bag. So, uh, I went in with that mindset of, you know, this will be fun. And I'm doing this Broadway show anyways. I really don't care. And I think you have to kind of go in to audition with that mindset of like, this is gonna be fun, and I'm not gonna really care if I get this or not. I'm just gonna have fun.

[4:04] E. Clayton Cornelious: Because I went into the room and I gave 100% of myself, and there was a guy who I worked with who we would do all these different characters. So I went in there and separated all of the stuff because the caterpillar is supposed to like switch characters. I just went into all these different characters. Cowboy, uh, a preacher man. I just started just doing anything in the room, and they were loving it, and they kept asking me to go out and sit in the hallway.

[4:32] E. Clayton Cornelious: I'm thinking, why did they keep having me sit in this hallway? And other guys are going in and coming out and leaving, and then they have me coming in again. And I'm like, okay, at this point I'm getting kind of scared. There's only two of us there. I'm still going in reading a different version of the script. Then I would come in, sit out, sit in the hallway. Then the other guy went in there who was a friend of mine and auditioned, and he came out, and then he left.

[5:00] E. Clayton Cornelious: And I said, Well, are you done? And he goes, Yeah, I am. And he leaves, and it's just me sitting in the hallway. And so they come out and they go, Hey, we want you to come in again. And I go in, and at this point I'm frightened. They go, We want you to read the script again. We have a different version of it. I'm like, Oh my god.

[5:16] E. Clayton Cornelious: So I go and I do another one, and now I'm realizing like I'm the only one here. That's when the nerves started kicking in. And I had to tell myself, do not do that. Just have fun, like you have been. I don't know what's happening right now, but just go have fun. So I turn around. I literally calm myself down and I turn back around and I do this thing, this new script. I sing a little bit, and then they have me go back out in the room and sit down.

[5:44] E. Clayton Cornelious: And I go, Oh my God, what is happening? And they say, Okay, Clay, I know you've been wondering what's been going on, but we want you to come back. And they get a chair out and they put it in the middle of the room and they say, We want you to sit down. I go, Okay. And I'm looking at them, like the whole team, and they go, So, where are you from? And I'm like, What is this? An interview now?

[6:08] E. Clayton Cornelious: I'm from Pittsburgh, I go to school, Point Park. Like, and they're asking me all these questions and they said, Well, the reason why we kept having you coming in and out of the room is because we're very interested in you. I said, Well, thank you. I said, But I don't understand what's happening. I said, Well, how would you like it if we told you that we wanted you to be our caterpillar in Wonderland? And I said, They're like, Well, we're offering you that role right now.

[6:36] E. Clayton Cornelious: And I like went into like mid, you know, swelling eyes, tears, like, are you for real right now? Like, yeah. And they said the reason why we had you out, um, out of the room is that we wanted to call some people on your resume to check on you. And that was the first for me. Oh, they actually called some of these directors on my resume, who they knew to get the scoop on me.

[7:05] E. Clayton Cornelious: And thankfully, whoever they called said, Oh, we think Clay's a star, and um, it's just a matter of time, kind of a thing. I guess they must have said, because that's what they repeated to me. So they offered me the role in the room, and I left that audition room knowing that I was gonna play the caterpillar in Frank Wildhorn's new Wonderland.

[7:26] E. Clayton Cornelious: And I was in midtown, um, right, like you know, where the ball drops, like right in the middle there, and I was looking at all the buildings. I felt like a Mary Tyler Moore moment where I was throwing my hat in the air. But it was wonderful, it was a wonderful feeling.

[7:42] E. Clayton Cornelious: And uh, I ended up going to Red Lobster.

[7:45] Patrick Oliver Jones: Someone that was that was your celebration, Red Lobster.

[7:49] E. Clayton Cornelious: That was my celebration, and a friend came with me and I negotiated my contract as I sat at the restaurant eating Red Lobster.

[7:56] Patrick Oliver Jones: There you go. How fun now that's really rare. I mean, I've had the occasional auditions where I know leaving the audition I didn't get it. So I've had those.

[8:05] Patrick Oliver Jones: I have never ever been to an audition where I knew I had the role leaving. So that, yeah, that is not something I understand.

[8:15] E. Clayton Cornelious: That was the only time that that's ever happened to me, ever in my life.

[8:28] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, you were a part of Wonderland. Was there workshops and readings and such, or did it just go straight into rehearsal?

[8:35] E. Clayton Cornelious: Oh no, no, no, no. This has been going on for years before it even. This was for the Broadway production, so we were going out of town to Tampa to do it again.

[8:44] E. Clayton Cornelious: So there was a pre, like there was an out of town. They were one of the main producers on the show, so they had a stake in it. So we went to Tampa to do it there. Then we did the cast recording before we actually went to Broadway.

[8:57] E. Clayton Cornelious: So there's a lot of the music on the cast recording that it's not even in the Broadway show that we actually settled on. And we ended up getting a new director, uh, we got a new writer. So we were dealing with just a whole different team when we got to New York.

[9:11] E. Clayton Cornelious: It was really weird, you know. And the whole team changed. That changed from Tampa, there was one creative team, and then when you came to New York and start that process, it was a different team.

[9:21] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah.

[9:22] E. Clayton Cornelious: Yep.

[9:22] E. Clayton Cornelious: Yes. First day of rehearsals, new script.

[9:25] Patrick Oliver Jones: Wow. How would you compare the creative teams? Was one easier to work with or was it a smooth transition?

[9:31] E. Clayton Cornelious: You know, um, I try to stay out of the creative team's way. I just try to do my job the best of my ability and add my talent. And when we got to Broadway, I think there was a little bit of stress on the new director and stress on the new writer.

[9:48] E. Clayton Cornelious: And seeing that they didn't necessarily cast you, you know, you all of a sudden you have a new director and someone who didn't have that choice of choosing you. There's always that little bit of friction of like, okay, let me see what his style is and what he wants from me. But there might be a little bit of resentment of like, well, I didn't pick this actor, so I'm gonna give them a hard time, or you know, and you kind of think that you're like, oh, you know.

[10:16] E. Clayton Cornelious: But um, it was a little dicey because we didn't know who this person was, so we had to now listen to this man. We didn't know what his style was, so we just had to sort of adapt. And you know, it's Scott Ellis, who was one of the directors of Mrs. Maisel, which I ended up doing last year.

[10:34] E. Clayton Cornelious: So, you know, I got to meet another director, I got to befriend somebody new, and he's brilliant in his own way, but it was just trying to hop on board to his gravy train. Like, okay, I don't know exactly what a style is. Let me hop on be what this is. And having no time to do it because you had to get this up on a stage on a Broadway stage with the other people watching you. You know, so it's a little frustrating.

[10:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: I bet. I bet. But of course Frank Wildhorn was with it the whole time. How was it working with him?

[11:03] E. Clayton Cornelious: Oh, like he's amazing. Um, the way my song came about so Titus Burgess played my role before and I guess the negotiations like he just didn't do it. I don't know what happened, but that's when they were looking for Caterpillar and when I ended up getting the role, you know, I was just very nervous obviously it's my first lead on Broadway, you know, and I was doing Scottsboro at the same time but I got to close Scottsboro and go into Wonderland so it was a nice smooth transition.

[11:34] E. Clayton Cornelious: But when we started doing it in rehearsals it was Titus's song. Like who can really sing like Titus? Like Titus is his own unique person. And I just couldn't do the Titus version and I said, you know, I just don't feel comfortable this is not good in my voice because I was having problems with this song. And finally, my agent had to call them and say listen my client is stressed out I don't think you're using him to his best ability how can we make this happy on both sides so finally the writer and Frank came up with the writer wrote words on a page and they came up with a melody and they just kept doing the bumpa deepy bump bum over again and they said, Clay, we want you to come into this room.

They sat me down and they said, Here are the lyrics. We want you to just start singing. And they were like, This is what we're thinking, and they gave me a little bit of like what they were thinking as far as like the melody. I started singing that, and what became that song is everything that I did in that room at that time, just singing the words. And I came up with the actual song with Frank Wildhorn and the writer, Jack. Identity is a tricky, tricky business. You think somebody tells suddenly nice.

[13:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: But I assume the show was changing throughout the rehearsal process.

[13:13] E. Clayton Cornelious: Yeah, you know, not just in Tampa, but then once it came to New York as well. Yeah, I mean, the whole show just changed. I mean, uh all the time. All the time. Uh I mean, we uh in previews, we were getting full written, like newly written scripts, like newly written scenes. There was one time where like right before one of our big songs that ended the first act, all the characters are on stage, and it was about like going through the looking glass, and it was a big, big finishing number of the first act. We got a whole brand new scene where she had a monologue, and I can't couldn't believe that she even did it. Like, we were just so nervous every single night because we were getting just different stuff every single day.

So, you know, some of those previews is literally previews of a new scene or a new song or a new something or other, which changed almost every single day. That was like one of the most insane processes of my lifetime, but it was very, you know, I learned a lot from that.

[14:12] Patrick Oliver Jones: Would you say that as it changed, it got better? Did you get a sense that the show was getting better and finding its way?

[14:19] E. Clayton Cornelious: I thought that some of it got better and some of it didn't. I think because of the platform we were on and the schedule we were on, they never took it upon themselves to say, you know what, let's stop and let's go back and let's see what we have here. I feel like they just sort of threw us on stage trying to figure it out rather than us having some time to figure it out to put it on stage. I think that was the problem. And um I think nowadays, shows do take their time now. Um they want to make sure that they have the right product before they hit stage sometime. But obviously, this was the time way before pandemic, uh, way before, you know, shows were sort of suffering financially, that you know, people actually took time and and trying to get shows right.

This was one of the things where I think everyone wanted to see it happen, but no one wanted to take the time to really correct what was wrong. So we got some things right, we got some things wrong, and it didn't seem like anybody wanted to take the responsibility for it.

[15:30] Patrick Oliver Jones: Did the cast overall feel like the show was good though, despite all these changes?

[15:35] E. Clayton Cornelious: Yeah, I mean, we had a talented cast and we just tried to do as best as we could to, you know, to make sure that the show was successful. But you know, we can't do anything more than what our director or choreographer wants us to do. And if we don't have the support even coming from the producers, you know, we kind of just have to do our just do our job. And if the fault's in the writing or in the direction or in something else, that's you know, that's we we can't do anything about that.

[16:12] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, despite all these changes, did you feel like as the rehearsal process was going, the preview process, by the time you got to opening, did you feel like you had the best version of the show?

[16:23] E. Clayton Cornelious: Yeah, I think that we knew that there were some problems, and but we felt I think saw it as a cast that we were doing our job, and so we were very proud of it. So I that's probably one of my favorite shows, is one of my favorite moments in my life, you know, not just as a lead, but just with the people on stage, with the with the production that we had. It I think it's one of the most successful cast recordings that I've ever been on. I know the show is very successful in Asia and in Europe. Um, so there's a lot of Wonderland fans out there. So uh I'm just proud just being part of uh a Frank Wildhorn cast album, because we all know Frank Wildhorn songs are phenomenal. But as far as the show itself, when did the crack start to come? When did you start to know, okay, maybe this show isn't gonna last so long?

[17:18] E. Clayton Cornelious: Uh, you know, I actually thought because of the fun of the show, and I just thought, oh, you know, we're gonna be sort of like that interesting children's show, and it's gonna be competition for Disney, you know, kind of a thing. And um, I thought we would actually, you know, make it a few years. So when we found out we were closing, like within four weeks, that was a shock. That was probably w one of the biggest shocks of my career. Knowing that Scottsboro Boys um had ran on Broadway for six weeks. And then I go into this, you know, uh this other Broadway show as a lead. Uh we went out of town for a while with a cast recording, but then when we came to Broadway, it only opened for four weeks.

I think I was devastated that here I am in two back to back shows that have now closed quickly. So I went back on tour actually after Wonderland and my agent thought, you need some time out of the city now. Like get you out, let's get your mind clear. And um I ended up getting the second national of Jersey Boys where I started my career with Mr. Des Mackkin.

[18:22] Patrick Oliver Jones: Having two short run shows, did you take that personally? Or did you realize no that was the shows themselves? It had nothing to do with your performance. Uh yeah, how did you process that?

[18:32] E. Clayton Cornelious: Oh, definitely. I mean, it was the shows themselves. But you know, I have done so many long running shows up to that point in my career. I did Hair Strape versus National, I did Lanking versus National, I did Lanking on Broadway, I did a course line and I was doing all of these different things um that were sort of long running, part of some big productions that when I got to those productions thinking, Well, I can never do a short running show. Well, wake up, Clay, because you're a short running show. So I I never been in productions that close back to back like that. So I think that was like, whoa, yikes, uh what um what's happening with my career? I never blamed myself because I always knew that I was around very talented people and and it was happening to all of us, you know what I mean?

So it wasn't just like, oh, what am I doing wrong? I think it was I'm picking these shows that are now sort of like going up and coming down. But great shows, I thought, as you start being seasoned in this career, you go, okay, there's always gonna be something else coming down the pike.

[19:34] Patrick Oliver Jones: Hm. How would you describe that closing night of Wonderland?

[19:39] E. Clayton Cornelious: Oh very sad. Um I actually I don't take uh grief well. I kind of just want to block it out. So I went and did I took a little vacation and did the whiz at Main State, playing the Tin Man. And uh that was sort of given to me as a gift. Once I established myself as a lead actor on that stage, uh a lot of opportunities opened up where I didn't have to audition. I was just getting an opportunity to go to, you know, said theater or do said thing. And it was a very sort of closing night of Wonderland was very sad. And it would uh when I found out that we were closing, we only had a week. So we found out um on a Tuesday that we're closing on Sunday. So that's how much time I've had to even process that.

Like now I have to do eight these eight shows and they're gonna be my last eight shows and never having that happen to me before. Like, oh now I'm out of work and I had all these hopes of collecting money over the summer or or for the year and and my first league role and now what am I gonna do kind of a thing. So you know all of those things are in my brain and and it was very frustrating and it was a very sort of, you know um bitter sweet moment. But doing this whiz in main state was it the best thing. Like best little cast. We had so much fun doing it right after that traumatic moment that I had. So it was very frustrating. That that whole thing of taking that in. So I hope that ha never happens to anybody else.

[21:11] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yeah, yeah, of course. We want our shows to last and last and keep going, especially especially when so much time and effort is put into a Broadway show. And now as a producer, you really know the time and energy and efforts that go into making a Broadway show just come to life and actually come to the stage.

[21:28] E. Clayton Cornelious: Yeah, it's a hard thing, you know, and probably more devastating to the producer because he's fighting tooth and nail at every trying to keep the show open and trying to shift money or trying to get money, and it's it's stressful. I was in that lead producing seat once with uh chicken and biscuits playing at Circle of the Square, and it was a very, very overwhelming and distressful time as a as a producer, especially we were one of the first coming out of the pandemic, and you know, our show got hit and had the close because of the pandemic, you know, uh, because of COVID, and COVID has just been that extra layer of uh frustration to all producers and to all shows.

[22:15] Patrick Oliver Jones: Thank you for listening to this bonus interview episode with E. Clay Cornelious. Be sure to follow closing night on Instagram at closing night podcast all one word. As always, thank you to my co-producers Dan Delgado as well as Maria Clara Ribeiro. Join us next time as we explore another show's journey to closing night.