Broadway’s ‘Lion King’ star was a Harlequin standout before he made it big
L. Steven Taylor is starring in Broadway’s “The Lion King,” which reopened Sept. 14 after an extended pandemic shutdown. But Taylor was a musical theater star in Olympia before he hit the big time.
While living in Seattle in the early 2000s, Taylor performed in six musicals at Harlequin Productions.
“He’s a true triple threat — actor, singer, dancer,” said Linda Whitney, the company’s co-founder. She met Taylor — then known as Steven Taylor — in 2002, when he traveled from his hometown of Indianapolis to attend the general auditions for Theater Puget Sound.
“He was among the several hundred performers we would see in rapid succession that week, and he was certainly among the brightest lights there,” Whitney told The Olympian.
These days, Taylor’s light shines brightly, indeed. When Broadway reopened, he returned to the role of Mufasa, a role he’s been playing for six years.
“Roars greeted him as he stood atop Pride Rock at Tuesday’s reopening,” Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press reported.
“I wish I had been there among them to cheer for one of my great personal theater heroes,” Whitney said. “I don’t mean Mufasa. I mean Steven himself.
“Steven Taylor holds an exceptional place in my memory and heart not only because of his tremendous work on stage but because of his genuine willingness to support and look out for those around him — sometimes at great personal expense,” she said. “Good actors play characters; great actors have character.”
Taylor once took in a homeless actor friend with substance-abuse problems and the man’s pregnant girlfriend, letting the couple move into the home he shared with his family. “He wants a better world, and he is willing to be the change he’s looking for,” Whitney added.
She cast Taylor in the 2002 musical revue “Tapestry: The Music of Carole King” the same day she saw him audition, and she and her husband, Scot Whitney, Harlequin’s co-founder, became close friends with the actor, who lived briefly in Olympia before moving to Seattle.
“ ‘Tapestry’ would turn out to be one of our biggest hits ever in no small part because of his participation in the six-person ensemble,” Linda Whitney said. “The entire cast was brilliant, but his particular talent and warmth added the kind of spark you seldom find anywhere. We were fortunate to have him in the mix until 2005 in an additional five shows.”
Taylor appeared in three of Harlequin’s “Stardust” holiday musical revues — “The Stardust Serenade 1942,” “The Stardust Cavalcade 1943” and “Phantom of the Stardust” — as well as 2003’s “A Rock ’n’ Roll Twelfth Night” and 2004’s Motown revue “Dancin’ in the Streets.” He did choreography for several Harlequin shows, too.
He also worked at The 5th Avenue Theatre and the Taproot Theatre in Seattle.
“Phantom,” his last show with Harlequin, closed in January 2005, the same year he began working in the Tony Award-winning Disney musical.