Interview: All the Colors of True Love: A Conversation with Coleman Cummings

“The role requires quite a range of acting; it calls for all the colors of true love, as well as grief, anger frustration, the whole spectrum playing out in the two-day time period of the show. And Bernstein’s score is groundbreaking. It’s full of so many colors that accurately express the emotions and subtexts of all the characters through these little motifs.  It stands alone; it’s unique in style.”

Actor Coleman Cummings is musing on the challenge he is undertaking in making his role debut as Tony in Maine State Music Theatre’s WEST SIDE STORY, which runs from August 6-23, 2025 at Brunswick’s Pickard Theater. For Cummings, this will be his second appearance with the company, having portrayed Dimitry in ANASTASIA earlier in the season.

Cummings grew up in Washington State, where he participated in choir and theatre programs like KidsStage all through his middle and high school years. “But it wasn’t until my freshman year of college, while I was taking a psychology class on Self and Social Identity, that I realized musical theatre could be a career path. At that point I had been doing musical theatre for eight years, but didn’t have any role models who made it their careers. I had been studying to be a music teacher, but suddenly I had a paradigm shift. I left Pacific Lutheran University at nineteen and headed to New York, where I enrolled in the American Musical & Dramatic Academy and completed their eighteen-month intense program.”

Cummings later went on to earn his BFA at the New School, all the while navigating the vast changes life as an aspiring actor in New York City threw his way. “I didn’t have an agent or any representation. The first job I booked right out of school was the Country Roads show at Hershey Park.  It paid $300 a week, and I was thrilled! I did a few more theme park shows and cruise ships, and then my big break came in the 25thanniversary tour of RENT.  I went in on an open call and did seven callbacks before finally being cast as Roger.  With that I got an agent, and we played for seven months until Covid shut us down, and then nine more months after things reopened.”

After RENT, Cummings went on to perform a number of shows he considers career milestones. “Getting to play Prince Eric in THE LITTLE MERMAID at Seattle’s Fifth Avenue Theatre on that iconic stage was a dream come true. And I did LEGALLY BLONDE at the Village Theatre, the professional company associated with KidsStage; to go back there as a professional after having performed there as a kid was a special, emotional experience.”  Cummings also got to play Jon in TICK, TICK…BOOM at Vermont Stage. “Working closely with some of the original creators of RENT and people close to Jonathan Larson and to tell the story of a struggling artist was something I could definitely relate to.” 

Cummings has also done quite a bit of new work and developmental projects in New York.  He says he enjoys “the fringe side - the less commercial side - of theatre in these workshops” and exploring facets of himself that he doesn’t always get to play. But it was his gig as Dimitry in the regional premiere of ANASTASIA at White Plains PAC that brought him into the audition for the Fulton/MSMT co-production and onto the radar of Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark, who chose him not only for Dimitry, but also for Tony in the new production of WEST SIDE STORY, slated to close MSMT’s Pickard Theater season.

When our Broadway World conversation took place, rehearsals for WEST SIDE STORY had been underway for only three days, but Cummings was already immersed in the process and excited about the challenge. “The music is very complicated and the range [for Tony] very intricate.  I have more of a contemporary musical  theatre sound, but this role allows me to tap into a part of my voice that I don’t usually get to use.  Our Music Director, Jacob Stebly, seems open to letting me bring a little contemporary flavor to the role, and I think my voice and Lauren’s [Lauren Maria Medina, who plays Maria] complement each other well.”

This is Cummings’ first time working with Director/Choreographer Marc Robin, and the actor says he is in awe.  “He is super organized! We have already blocked both acts and are ready to probe the layers of acting and storytelling. Marc has given us so many nuggets of background information about the show.  It’s amazing how well he knows the piece. And the choreography is all his own.  He is very receptive to collaboration, and he tries to showcase people’s strengths.”

Of the new visual production, Cummings hints that it will be “pretty dark, pretty New York City West Side in the 1950s,” combining constructed levels like platforms, the fire escape and working window with lots of atmospheric video.

“It’s an epic kind of musical, but it’s also an intimate story about innocent, pure, uninhibited love that is very sincere and beautiful.  Our main focus will be to make it come across as sincere as possible.”

Asked how WEST SIDE STORY, which first opened on Broadway in 1957, speaks to the present generation and contemporary audiences, Cummings replies: “The show reflects rivalries and feelings that have been around for a very long time.  These two groups from different sides of the tracks are locked in hate, but the show makes you realize that the horrible tragedy does not have to happen if people will only step back, see the bigger picture, and realize we are not all that different.”

And so despite the fact that like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, WEST SIDE STORY ends with Tony’s, Riff’s and Bernardo’s deaths, Coleman Cummings sees the work as uplifting. “It is a love story that is inspiring because it makes the audience want to do better” – to reject hate and focus on love.

Photo courtesy of MSMT

WEST SIDE STORY runs from August 6-23, 2025 at MSMT’s Pickard Theater, 1 Bath Rd., Brunswick, ME 04011   www.msmt.org   207-725-8769