For Sharon D Clarke, a ‘Big Sing’ and a Big Broadway Moment
The New York Times
The Olivier Award winner stars in “Caroline, or Change” in a role that pays tribute to “all Black women trying to make their way through this life.”
Fifty floors above street level, in her temporary Manhattan apartment with its panoramic views, the West End theater star Sharon D Clarke was missing her wife.
Clarke has, it’s true, an enviably glamorous career. Exhibit A at the moment is her title role in Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s musical, “Caroline, or Change,” at Studio 54. But that’s no buffer against waking alone too early in a strange bed, not yet adjusted to the time difference between New York and London, or making your Broadway debut without the love of your life in the audience, her perfect two-decade record of being there on your shows’ first night ruined by a Covid travel ban.
“To be on Broadway and to not have my wife, and to not be able to share that with her, was hard,” Clarke said the day after the first preview of “Caroline,” her eyes welling above a chic purple mask. “Because there’s so much joy in that, you know?”
