We want you to do this.” I haven’t seen the film, but in terms of playing Anton Ego, who is this snooty food critic, you learn he has turned his nose up at the ratatouille that’s served to him in the restaurant. There was no time to do any research, so I had to trust the casting director who said, “This is for you. The actor, who was in “Hadestown,” plays Anton Ego. Linguini rises to the top of his restaurant in Paris, only to be judged by the imperious critic Anton Ego.
The musical follows, more or less, the plot of the movie: Remy, who’s blessed with a refined palate, teaches the lowly kitchen worker Alfredo Linguini how to cook by hiding under his chef’s hat. It will be available to stream for three days. About 80,000 tickets have already been sold for the pre-filmed show, put on by Seaview Productions to raise money for the Actors Fund. Eastern time, “Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical” will take shape as a virtual benefit performance, with Tituss Burgess starring as Remy the rat. Many creators thought it was a long-shot before it could coalesce in real life. It was a musical conceived like no other. Without any leadership, the virtual show materialized organically from a crowdsourced jumble of content. In 60-second increments, people contributed their own songs, dances, makeup looks, set designs, puppets and Playbill programs inspired by the 2007 movie. Beginning in October, thousands of TikTok creators who were bored at home and missing Broadway created elements of a show that didn’t exist yet: a musical based on Disney Pixar’s “Ratatouille,” an animated film about a rat with culinary aspirations.