Broadway mainstays Alex Brightman and Sara Chase are using their two decades of kinship to unearth comedy and heart in Schmigadoon!, the stage version of the Apple TV musical theater satire.The pair star as Josh and Melissa, a couple who are dropped into the titular town where every day unfold’s like a ’40s and ’50s-era musical.
“We’re the kind of friends that could pick up where we left off after two years apart,” notes Brightman of his co-star.
“I think you just find those people with your same sense of humor and then you’re like, ‘Oh, you’re my people’ and you just cling to them,” Chase agrees in a separate interview.
The duo — who are both in the running for lead acting nods at the 2026 Tony Awards — have a long history of working together, starting with 2011’s Spidermusical, an unauthorized parody of the infamous Broadway disaster Spider-Man: Turn of the Dark. “I remember being at Brad Oscar’s holiday party when the first Spider-Man fell and had to be taken out of the theater on a stretcher,” says Chase, clocking another Schmigadoon! co-star. “The whole party was just New York, Broadway character actors. So everyone was like, ‘I’m ready to go on!’”
All it took was a small glimpse of Chase doing improv for Brightman to realize he’d found someone who could match his energy and comedic sensibilities. “How seriously she takes her comedy and how unseriously she takes herself is how I function,” he explains.
The story of Schimgadoon! finds Melissa and Josh in the midst of a rocky patch in their relationship. After getting trapped in the town, they even break up and explore what love could look like with one of the always-peppy citizens. But even in those moments of tension, Brightman and Chase are careful to include an undercurrent of care in the couple’s relationship so that the audience can root for them to succeed.
“They’re the only two like each other in that world, so they do have to rely on each other,” notes Chase.
“There are little things she says that make me grin,” adds Brightman. “There are little things that I say that make her smile and laugh even though we’re broken up, but that’s real.”
The pair want to make it impossible for the audience to choose a side, so the couple notably never snipes at each other. After all, as Brightman points out, what’s even funnier than being snarky to a person is communicating “love and joy, and the complications of love… love is scary, love is anxious.”
One of the rare moments where Melissa and Josh verbally jab each other is also the one opportunity these comedians have for improvisation; they’re allowed to choose from a handful of insults during the picnic basket auction sequence. “The other night I broke her completely,” admits Brightman proudly, boasting about a joke involving a lower back tattoo that read “Live. Laugh. Farts.”
“I generally stick to the same couple of things, but he will alternate and at least three times I’ve just completely broken because I was not expecting it,” confesses Chase.
Chase generates plenty of laughs from the audience herself, perhaps no more so than in the song “Baby Talk.” It’s a playful homage to “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music, where Melissa educates some Schmigadoon citizens on the details of human reproduction. The audience howls as she spells out sex organs with a smile plastered across her face. But the actress notes the complexity of the tune means this is a moment you should never expect her to break.
“It’s just a list,” Chase exclaims, noting the difficulty inherent in delivering the dense lyrics. “And it’s a list of words that I don’t use on a daily basis! So I try to do that while infusing just a touch of a Julie Andrews impression. But it’s a very satisfying thing to do for sure.”
Melissa might be eager to break into song alongside the townspeople, but Josh is a cynic who hates musical theater. That means Brightman — known for playing high-energy whirling dervishes in musicals like School of Rock and Beetlejuice — doesn’t partake in any singing… at least until the end of the show. In one last effort to win back Melissa’s heart, he finally breaks into son as a a symbol that he’s ready to show up in their relationship.
“I remember the sound of the first audience on Broadway, when I opened my mouth to sing, recalls Brightman, who begins his one number in the show a cappella. “It was a mix of nervous laughter, but also some gasps and a couple of ‘Awwws.’ It got me very emotional — and it continues to.
“There’s something nice about reminding myself there is that guy that’s inside me that can do that and let himself be emotional and then be vulnerable,” the actor adds. “It feels very cool that my 11 o’clock moment is so tiny, giving, and selfless.”
Ironically, Brightman and Chase are known for their work in contemporary musicals rather than Golden Age classics. But Chase says part of the “joy” of performing in Schmigadoon! is the opportunity to unleash her love of those timeless musicals. A neon sign with The Sound of Music lyrics “bloom and grow forever” hangs behind her head in her home, confirming her Rodgers and Hammerstein bona fides.
“These musicals are infectious in a positive way,” she says. “If they’re done correctly, you can’t help but be swept up in them — unless you are Alex’s character in which you actively choose to hate them. There are a lot of Josh’s out there!”
That begs the question: Would Brightman and Chase ever want to dive into ones of those classics once their stint in Schmigadoon! is up? “I really don’t know if I’m built for golden age musicals,” admits Brightman. “I don’t know. I’ve never really tried. I recently got to be in a Shakespeare show for the first time, and I think I really fit there. Shakespeare is a lot like music to me. A lot of the lines feel very musical.”
That said, Brightman thinks there could be a My Fair Lady production in his future. “I could play a great Henry Higgins at some point. I do think that foil to Eliza would be really interesting to play when I’m a little older.”
Meanwhile, Chase is content to just keep the laughs coming with her favorite co-star. “I would love to do Guys and Dolls with Alex or even Little Shop of Horrors,” she gushes, “I could just keep on doing comedy with Alex in those roles.”
