Mama Mia! Jen Perry Going From Kinky Boots to Idaho!

Tuesday, July 5, 2016.

Jen Perry, locally known for starring in Mamma Mia! at Mandalay Bay and performing in Kinky Boots on Broadway, will return to her Las Vegas roots in IDAHO! The Comedy Musical. The Smith Center production, presented in Reynolds Hall through July 6-17, is written by Buddy Sheffield with music by Sheffield and Keith Thompson.

Her roots with the show run deep, going back 12 years. “Keith had asked me to do this little project that he was working on, called ‘Idaho,’ with his friend, Buddy. We had different songs back then, the script was different. I thought it was hysterical.”

IDAHO! The Comedy Musical is a hilarious new love story with eight featured players and a total cast of 18. Perry’s character, Aunt Pearlie, “is the matriarch of the whole town and she’s married to Uncle Fate, and he has a problem in the male department.”

The Livonia, Michigan native, whose previous credits include The Wizard Of Oz and off-Broadway productions of Bonnie And Clyde, Revolution and Nunsense, knows how to make a role her own. Complementing her role in IDAHO! The Comedy Musical are “big Broadway show-stopping numbers and a lot of comedy, physical comedy.”

When Perry was first introduced to the songs and script, she knew it was funny; and its evolution has only heightened her enthusiasm: “The show is hysterical, it’s touching, it’s moving, it’s just really fun, and it’s fun to do.  People are going to laugh.”

The gestation period for Broadway-bound shows (and for potatoes) varies, and Perry is used to the waiting period. “I’ve been with Kinky Boots also from the very beginning and did every reading with that. And, it took us about five years to get it to Broadway. And, we did an out-of-town in Chicago.”

Clearly, the key to Perry’s success is patience. It brought her to the Broadway stage in Kinky Boots and to The Smith Center stage in IDAHO! The Comedy Musical.

This talented performer, returning from The Great White Way, is now featured in a production in Las Vegas that is also Broadway bound. Who says you can never go home again?