Performer | Producer | Teacher | Creator
Mac-Haydn Announces 2024
James is excited to report that The Mac-Haydn Theatre has announced its 2024 season schedule. The lineup includes West Side Story, Sister Act, Rent, All Shook Up and Something Rotten. There is one more title yet to be announced.
Mac-Haydn Announces 2023
As Managing Director, James is excited to report that The Mac-Haydn Theatre has announced its 2023 season schedule, composing the theatre’s 54th summer season. The lineup of hit musicals includes 42nd Street, Footloose, The Sound of Music, Godspell, Jersey Boys and The Marvelous Wonderettes.
Reviewer Shows Admiration
“The very talented James Benjamin Rodgers and pianist Jillian Zack take the audience on a journey charting Weill’s musical evolution…a perfect collection of songs not well known and avoids the easy trap of big hits and overly familiar pieces. I would venture to guess that Rodgers, like me, favors Weill and wants to share his adoration of the composer who changed the American musical forever.”
J. Peter Bergmam Oklahoma! Review
“Go prepared to be stunned into applause by this stellar production. James Benjamin Rodgers is a superb Curly, dynamic in the dramatic scenes, chilling in the fight scenes, romantic in the love scenes and the not-quite love scenes and sweet in the charming scenes with Aunt Eller.”
J. Peter Bergman applauds Camelot
“James Benjamin Rodgers has created a world of his own imagination out of the elements provided by the authors. His work is stylized and precise and leaves glorious room for the choreography of Lizzie McGuire.”
Lisa Jarisch Praises Hunchback
“Rodgers plays Quasimodo with just the right amount of servility, becoming the classic Tragic Hero as he develops self-awareness. His vocals are true and strong and manage to express both his recognition of his own deformity in the eyes of the world, and his frustration with the world that cannot see the man under them…”
William Dart Sees Sparkle Aplenty
“James Benjamin Rodgers, in the title role, sung with unforced lyricism, calling on his considerable vocal heft when Bernstein stirs up a full operatic climax.”
Tony Ryan praises “near-perfect” Tosca in Christchurch.
“The opening night of New Zealand Opera’s Tosca certainly fulfilled the promise of the company’s advertising hype.”
“The performances of all three principals, supporting roles, chorus and orchestra are superb, and Stuart Maunder’s direction is imaginative and, in the main, sympathetic.”
William Ferrall of the Inquirer and Mirror has given The Sound of Music a stellar review, describing James’ Captain as “an upright and virtuous patriot, without an overdose of stoicism.”
He also writes: “Like many great creative works, ‘The Sound of Music’ proves to be as relevant now as ever. With authoritarian impulses seemingly all around us, few things soothe our worries as much as music.”
James talks to the Regional News with a close-up ahead of New Zealand Opera’s Kátya Kabanová opening in Wellington.