Actor turns Sidney Magal on stage and reports frenzy and even ‘silly hand’ from fans

A theater veteran, actor Marcio Louzada, 37, faces the challenge of playing Sidney Magal, 71, in the musical “Quero Vê-la Sorrir”, inspired by the artist’s biography. For 90 minutes, he sings more than 20 of the singer’s hits, rocks a lot on stage and still embodies the sensual Latin style of Magal, which has enchanted the public for 55 years.

Louzada draws attention for his resemblance, voice timbre and height similar to Magal’s – he is 1.88 tall and the singer is 1.93. “Wow, they found an actor as tall as I am and even more handsome,” Magal told his interpreter before the musical’s premiere at Teatro Claro Rio, at the end of May. The singer lives in Bahia and has not yet seen the musical.

Magal is not the only one who was surprised by Louzada. The actor says that some fans got really excited during the musical, sang along, danced and even pulled him because they saw the real singer in him. Even silly hand he had to face from the fans.

Even at lunches with the Louzada family, he has no peace and he has had to sing “Sandra Rosa Madalena” for his mother and aunts, even after they had seen the play “in the front row”, he recalls.

The actor says that he met Magal when he was six years old, in the fever of lambada, singing the hit “Me Chama Que Eu vou”, theme of the soap opera Rainha da Sucata (Globo), in 1990. “I already loved dancing at that time and participated in contests lambada”, reveals the actor, who is trained in classical ballet.

Louzada received the invitation to audition for the musical in January, after the nomination of a lyrical singer – the production could not find an actor to play the singer. The day after meeting with the production of the show, he received a call asking if he would accept to be Magal in the musical. “I accepted right away, imagine I won’t accept it”, says the actor, laughing.

With little time to prepare for his debut, the actor began to listen to the singer’s songs all the time – some he didn’t know – and to watch YouTube videos to catch the artist’s mannerisms. “I was surprised that on the first day of rehearsal I had all the songs memorized, the text was left for later.”

Born in Rio and living in São Paulo for seven years, Louzada started doing theater at the age of eight, when he was still living in the Tijuca neighborhood with his family. He studied performing arts and journalism at college and has been performing for 20 years in theatrical shows. But it was after a stint working as a model in New York and watching musicals, which he loves, that he decided to study lyrical singing when he returned to Brazil.

The first opportunity in musicals was at the hands of actor and dancer Jarbas Homem de Mello, one of the icons of musical theater and husband of Cláudia Raia. He gave Louzada the first opportunity to act and as one of the protagonists of the musical “Constellation”, which ran for several years. After that, the actor never stopped and made important musicals, such as “My Fair Lady” and “A Day on Broadway”.

“I see that a lot of what I do today at Magal comes from Jarbas, his touches with all that experience in musicals”, reveals the actor, who expects to see Cláudia Raia’s husband in the audience, but on the same day of the premiere he was in scene with Cláudia Raia with the show in “Conserto Para Dois, o Musical”, in São Paulo. “Jarbas is trying to go to Rio to see [o musical]”, cheers Louzada.