It’s been a big year for Jewish singer Gracie Lawrence. On June 20, 2024, Lawrence, the pop-soul group Gracie started with her brother Clyde, released its fourth studio album “Family Business.” In the fall, she joined the cast of “Sex Lives of College Girls” as Kacey Baker, an Essex College transfer student who needs to find herself after a big break-up. And now, Gracie just made her Broadway musical debut!
On Monday, previews began for “Just in Time,” a new jukebox musical about the life of singer Bobby Darin. In it, Gracie stars alongside Tony award winner Jonathan Groff (as Darin) and Erika Henningsen (as actress Sandra Dee). Just listen to her crush in this snippet of “Mack the Knife”:
@bway.addict Replying to @mmmmiiikkkkk SHE SMASHED IT!! #gracielawrence #gracie #lawrence #jonathangroff #erikahenningsen #justintime #bobbydarin #broadway #musical #broadwaymusical #broadwaydebut #firstpreview
In the show, Gracie plays Connie Francis, the ’50s and ’60s pop singer who had a romantic fling with Bobby Darin. Though Francis was not Jewish — she was born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero to an Italian family — she had a special connection to Jewish culture. Francis grew up in a mixed Italian-Jewish neighborhood which led her to become fluent in Yiddish. In 1960, Francis released the album “Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites.” The track list includes numerous Yiddish songs like “My Yiddishe Momme” and the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila.” Throughout her career, Connie was apparently asked so many times about whether or not she was Jewish, she came up with the answer, “I’m one-tenth Jewish on my manager’s side.”
Gracie made her first Broadway debut at 12 years old in the 2009 revival of Neil Simon’s play “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” “So much of my life has been around the question, ‘Will I ever return to Broadway?’ because it was this wildly significant thing in my childhood,” Gracie told the New York Times in February. “I’m not chill about it at all. It’s one of the craziest, coolest things that’s ever happened to me — I’m just having this wild experience that I didn’t know if I’d ever have again.”
Mazel tov, Gracie!!
