As usual, Porchlight Music Theatre’s New Faces event showcased a host of talent, and a host with talent, Cory Goodrich, five-time Jeff Award nominee, and two-time winner, who is soon to star in Porchlight’s production of Freaky Friday, opening April 10th.

There were songs from recent arrivals and entrenched hits, including four of the five longest-running shows in Broadway history – The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, The Lion King, and Wicked – but none from non-musicals.

One song was from a show that just opened on Broadway, but is familiar to Chicago audiences – Six. Six’s Porchlight connection is strong, as four of the six stars of the show have been featured in the past in the New Faces series.

What’s more, four of the six women in the cast have first names that start with the letter A, and the two who don’t replaced two from the original West End cast who did. Coincidence, or enemy action?

New Faces makes me think of people who literally have a new face, say for example the characters played by John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in the movie Face/Off. I wonder if they would have titled the 1997 movie Trading Faces if not for the 1983 movie Trading Places.

Speaking of John Travolta, he appeared on Broadway in 1974’s Over Here, in the role of Misfit, singing a two-song medley with the Andrews Sisters. Over Here, which I never heard of before despite it having been nominated for best musical, also included the song Don’t Shoot the Hooey to Me, Louie (gotta love the title), sung by Samuel E. Wright, who sang Under the Sea in the animated film The Little Mermaid. With that kind of trivia, Over Here sounds like a candidate for a Porchlight Revisits production.