It's A Wonderful Town - SU Alumna Takes Broadway By Storm

SU Today (cover story) - Salisbury MD

Winter 2005

For the Salisbury University alumna, the reviews have been glorious.

"Eileen (is played by) the truly luscious, honey-voiced Jennifer Hope Wills," wrote Ben Brantley in The New York Times, "When this Eileen sings, 'mmm...I'm a little bit in love,' with the contentment of a cat in mid-stretch, it's unlikely that anyone in the audience doesn't feel the same about Ms. Wills."

[deleted section with more reviews...all can be seen on the Press page]

For Wills, New York truly has been a Wonderful Town since making her Broadway debut in spring 2004. That was in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, going on as the title character Belle while understudying Christy Carlson Romano. Then Wills was tapped to play Shield's winsome younger sister, Eileen, in the award-winning revival of Leonard Bernstein's Wonderful Town. Shields and Wills surprised and delighted New York audiences as the two naive sisters from the Midwest trying to make it big in unpredictable hardscrabble Manhattan.

Although they only had two weeks of rehearsal before facing Broadway audiences, Wills had been preparing for this moment all her life. Her family ran a summer theatre in Ocean City, MD, where she performed as a child. She attended SU where she starred in such musicals as West Side Story and The Secret Garden. She polished her beautiful soprano voice at Indiana University's famed School of Music, earning a Masters in Vocal Performance. She then honed her talents at regional theatres across the country including New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse.

Wills' lovely soprano also can be heard on the new CD of the Wonderful Town revival with Brooke Shields.