Critics raved over Anika Noni Rose’s “lava-hot” performance this summer playing the title role in the off-Broadway musical revival of “Carmen Jones,” Oscar Hammerstein’s 1943 musical-theater adaptation of Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen.”
“There’s no point trying to resist such sheer, distilled beauty” of the production,” wrote Ben Brantley in The New York Times. “Your chances would be about as good as those of our helpless hero in escaping the erotic pull of the show’s title character, thrillingly embodied here by Anika Noni Rose.”
But sensual as the Bloomfield native can be (after all, she played Maggie the Cat in the Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”), the actress can also play authoritative, ruthless, funny and, well, pretty much anything, from a university president to an evil kingpin to a Disney princess.
Rose’s range of talents and accomplishments on stage and off has this year earned her a place in the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. The 2018 ceremony honoring Rose and fellow inductees — Lucia Chase, co-founder, director and benefactor of the American Ballet Theatre, and musician and songwriter Tina Weymouth — will take place Nov. 5 at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford.
“Isn’t it amazing?” says Rose on the telephone from New Orleans where she was filming the movie “Bodycam.” “For them to say, ‘Hey, you’re somebody and we want to put you in this time capsule of achievement,’ is mind blowing to me — and I’m so grateful that someone sees me in that light.”
That time capsule would no doubt include her glowing reviews from the stage: for the musical “Caroline or Change,” for which she earned a Tony Award, and the revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which brought her another Tony nomination. There’d be many of her films, including “Dreamgirls” and “The Princess and the Frog” — in which she became the voice of Disney’s first African-American princess, Princess Tiana. There’d be countless roles in television series, including “The Good Wife,” “Private Practice,” “The Quad,” “Power,” “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” and as the slave Kizzy in the reboot of “Roots.”
The Bloomfield High School graduate (Class of ’90) is having a busy fall, too, with a cameo appearance as Princess Tiana in the film “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” and the recently released “Assassination Nation.”
But on the phone she was still savoring this summer’s run of “Carmen Jones” — shockingly there’s yet to have been made a recording of the show (#recordCarmenJones to start a movement).
“It was the most thrilling and happiest creative experience I’ve had on stage,” Rose, 46, says of the role she aspired to play for years. In 2001, she played the show’s ingenue Cindy Lou in a concert production of the musical at off-Broadway’s York Theatre, and her mother was a big fan of Dorothy Dandridge, who starred in the 1954 film of “Carmen Jones.”
But it wasn’t until Rose had “more life experience” that she felt ready for the role; the opportunity came about to play the classic femme fatale in a production directed by John Doyle, who has just staged an acclaimed Broadway revival of “The Color Purple.”
Rose says many of the roles she’s offered for film and television lately lack the richness, depth and variety that she’s played on stage, like Carmen Jones, “a woman who is very dramatic, comedic, smart, wily and very tender. [In films and television], I feel like I’ve been getting offered to play the same character over and over — and it’s exhausting.”
One of the things that gives her a lift is when she returns to her Hartford area roots, to connect with the community and spread the gospel of arts empowerment.
The daughter of Claudia and John Rose Jr., Hartford’s former corporation counsel, Rose has two organizations “that are near and dear to my heart. One is my own charity in my grandmother’s name — the Cora Lee Bentley Radcliffe Memorial Fund, which helps mentally challenged children. My mother and grandmother were special education teachers. When my grandmother passed away I thought this was the best way to honor what she did her entire life.” Rose is also a supporter of the Charter Oak Cultural Center.
Growing up, Rose attended performances by the Jazz Society and Cigna’s Concerts on the Lawn, where she saw the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. On holidays, she saw “The Nutcracker” at The Bushnell. But the arts weren’t necessarily something she felt an active part of in her life until high school.
“And then I was introduced to passion,” she says.
That’s when she was cast in the school musical, “Fame,” where she discovered her vocal power and her strength as a performer, “and I knew that was what I was going to do. And when I say I knew, I knew — immediately. The moment I did the show, I thought, ‘This is it. I’m done. I’m not going to do anything else.’ It was a phenomenal feeling.”
That passion — and her pursuit of it in college and conservatory training, on Broadway and in Hollywood — resulted in awards, fans and the opportunity to “give back,” and it’s what gives her fame resonance.
“It’s really important when you come from a small place to let people who are walking behind you know that it’s not a path with a door closed,” she says. “Everybody is able to do what it is that they want to do if they put their mind and their spirit and energy towards it.”
