Lewis Cleale

A graduate of the University of Miami's Frost School of Music (where he has been named Distinguished Alumnus) and of the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre,[2] Cleale's big break came when he was cast in a European tour of Oklahoma!, in which he was noticed by Mary Rodgers, who recommended him for a Los Angeles production of State Fair.[2]

Cleale made his Broadway debut in the 1995 Johnny Burke revue Swinging on a Star, for which he received a Drama Desk Award nomination as Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical. Additional Broadway credits include the 1996 revival of Once Upon a Mattress with Sarah Jessica Parker, the ill-fated 2002 Michel Legrand musical Amour, and the 2005 hit Spamalot. Cleale also appeared in the popular revue I Love New York which was done at the Rainbows and Stars room along with Bryan Batt, Janet Metz and Heather MacRae. Off-Broadway, he has appeared in Call Me Madam opposite Tyne Daly and A New Brain[3] with Malcolm Gets and Kristin Chenoweth for Lincoln Center Theater.

From September 2008 through March 2009[4] and from June 2009 through March 2010,[5] Cleale played El Gallo in the Off-Broadway revival of The Fantasticks at the Jerry Orbach Theater on 51st Street and Broadway. Cleale left that show to be an understudy for Sondheim on Sondheim.[6] Cleale credits Sondheim as being one of the reasons he went into acting:

It's Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, and I moved to New York to work with them. I was a business major in Miami when I took an acting class, and my teacher said 'I don't think you should be a lawyer. I think you should do this [act] with your life.' He gave me the cast album of Into the Woods, and I became obsessed with it. I remember going to my final exam in the spring of '89. It was seven in the morning, and I had a tape deck in my car, and I had this tape playing. It was Robert Westenberg singing, and I got fixated on the lyrics. I'm supposed to be thinking about statistics, and all I could think about was lyrics. So it was, in fact, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine.[6]

In 2011, Cleale starred in the original Broadway cast members of The Book of Mormon, playing roles such as Elder Price's Dad, Joseph Smith and others.[7] He is still in the show as of May of 2023.

In Washington, D.C., Cleale portrayed John Adams in 1776 at Ford's Theatre[3] and Giorgio in Stephen Sondheim's Passion at the Signature Theatre, for which he won the 1997 Helen Hayes Award for "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Resident Musical". In May 2009, he played the lead in the new musical Giant, based on Edna Ferber's novel of the same name, at the Signature Theatre.[8]

Cleale has also performed leading roles at Goodspeed Opera, George Street Playhouse, Cleveland Opera, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Long Beach Civic Light Opera, and The Muny in St. Louis.

• Lewis Cleale at the Internet Broadway Database