Before Ana Maria Andricain developed a successful jewelry-making business and before she married Philip Mann, executive director of the Virginia Samford Theatre, Andricain was one of the toasts of Broadway and national tours.
Her professional resume is an extensive one: Belle in “Beauty and the Beast” and Fantine in “Les Miserables,” among others on Broadway; Lincoln Center productions including “Marie Christine” (with Audra McDonald) and “South Pacific” (with Kelli O’Hara); and national and international tours including “Annie Get Your Gun” (with Cathy Rigby) and starring in the 25th anniversary tour of “Evita.”
She also appeared in shows at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, having first spoken to Mann when he was working for ASF and auditioning actors in New York. He was surprised that she was going to audition with Stephen Schwartz’s difficult “Meadowlark.”
“’You can’t sing that at 10 in the morning,’” Andricain remembers her husband-to-be telling her. “I said, ‘I guess you know what my song is then.’”
The rest, as they say …
Andricain and Mann married in 2003, living in New York, Baton Rouge, Decatur and, when Mann started at the VST in 2023, in Birmingham.
Now, they shuttle between Birmingham and Baton Rouge, where they still have a home and where Andricain is about to appear on stage for the first time in a number of years. She’s reprising her role in the anniversary production of “Evangeline: The Musical in Concert,” which Louisiana Public Broadcasting and PBS aired 25 years ago (See video at end of story). Andricain sings the title role in the musical based on the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and written by Paul Taranto and Jamie Wax.
The show runs Aug. 22-25 at Baton Rouge’s Manship Theatre.
“It’s the story of the Acadians’ expulsion from Canada and ending up in Louisiana,” she says. “I grew up with my Cuban parents, understanding what that was like. There are a lot of parallels between the Cuban people and the Cajun people.”
After her stage career, Andricain began growing her jewelry business, Jewel of Havana. It started when she was a little girl, when her mother would pull out pieces of jewelry handed down through her family and spark family stories. Andricain designs jewelry she hopes will do the same, and she sells the pieces online and at art shows.
It took a special role – in this case, Evangeline – to draw Andricain out of her retirement and away from the successful business she has built.
“They called, and I wondered if I could get in shape enough to sing it again,” she says. “It has been so joyful and everything I hoped it would be when I took the challenge on. The project needed to be a piece I really cared about and a room full of people I wanted to be around.”
And it may have sparked something in Andricain.
“I have loved working with Paul so much that I think that this can’t be over after this production,” she says. “We need to do something else together.”
And then there’s Mann, who would love to get his wife on stage at the VST.
“Philip keeps asking me what he could produce that I could be in, and we kick around ideas,” she says. “I’ve always said if the right thing came along, I’d do it.”
