Leslie Kritzer is a well-known musical theatre actor and singer. She played Shelly in Hairspray on Broadway and Serena in Legally Blonde, for which she earned the Clarence Derwent Award. She appeared off-Broadway in Bat Boy, Godspell, and The Great American Trailer Park Musical, for which she was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical. At the Paper Mill Playhouse, she played Rizzo in Grease as Rizzo and Fanny in Funny Girl as Fanny. Kritzer won the Special Achievement MAC Award in 2007 for her performance in “Leslie Kritzer as Patti LuPone” at Les Mouches, a reproduction of Patti LuPone’s famous nightclub act.
Janey Hurley, played by Debbie Reynolds in the 1956 feature picture of the same name, was played by Kritzer in A Catered Affair. She played Hildy, the passionate and violent taxi driver, in the Encores! She played Alice Kramden in the new musical The Honeymooners. Kritzer played the angel Gabriel in Judas and Me at the 2009 New York Musical Theatre Festival. She went on to star in the Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of Pop!, a musical based on Andy Warhol’s life. She was in an all-star cast of Sondheim on Sondheim in 2010.
On Broadway, Kritzer played Delia Schlimmer and Miss Argentina in the musical version of Beetlejuice, but the run was canceled in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 epidemic. She is destined for greatness in her next part as the world of theatre reopens. She will star opposite Viola Davis as Michelle Obama in the upcoming television anthology drama series The First Lady. Follow her on Instagram, where she has over 52 thousand followers @lesliekritzer.