Broadway Trailblazer Visits Findlay
By Victoria Hansen
hansenv@findlay.edu
Ali Ewoldt, the first Asian-American to play Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, graced the Winebrenner auditorium stage at the Fall 2025 Donnell Broadway Concert on Sunday. Her repertoire included songs from The King and I, Kiss Me Kate, and The Phantom of the Opera, along with various medleys of Disney songs, show tunes, and jazz standards.
Halfway through the concert, Findlay native Lucy Anders came on stage to perform an unexpected duet from Glee with Ewoldt.
“Allie and I met last year doing a production of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, and so when she and Phil decided that she was going to do this concert, she called me and said, ‘Do you want to come sing with me?’ And so I came out and sang,” Anders said.
Later in the show, Anders came out again to sing “No One Else” from Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. In the stage musical, based off Volume Two, Book Five of War and Peace, the song is a solo by Natasha, left alone while her fiancé is at war.
This song was reimagined for the concert, with the song now being a love duet between Natasha, played by Ewoldt, and Mary, played by Anders.
“It was kind of my fan fiction addition to it,” Ewoldt said. It totally made sense to me, this idea that they would sing this song to each other.”
Born in Pleasantville, NY, to a Filipina mother and a European-American father, Ewoldt was active in both her high school and college theater at Yale. She first saw the Phantom of the Opera at age 10 and fell in love with the Christine character. She spent 10 years auditioning for various productions of Phantom until she finally landed it in 2016, making her the first Asian-American to play the role in its 30-year run.
“I really wanted to be the first, but not to be the last, so that many other Christines of all walks of life could join the show afterwards,” Ewoldt said. “I had the amazing experience of having all these folks come up to me at the stage door and saying, ‘I never imagined that I could play this part before, but now I believe that I can.’ It wasn’t just Asian-American folk; it was all sorts of people.”
Ewoldt has also played Maria in the 50th anniversary World Tour of West Side Story, Cosette in Les Miserables on Broadway, and Tuptim in The King and I on Broadway.
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