Anika Noni Rose To Become A Connecticut Hall Of Famer
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.
