‘The Potential of Life’: New Canaan High School, ABC House Alumnus Is Cast in ‘Frozen’ Musical on Broadway

Jelani Alladin nearly quit the stage after his first gig, playing the Cat in the Hat in the New Canaan High School Theatre’s production of “Seussical” in the fall of his sophomore year. An ABC House of New Canaan student from Brooklyn who had met his elective requirement the prior spring by playing lacrosse—and was, in his own words, “terrible at” it—Alladin already was active in NCHS choir and Madrigals. Yet the teen found himself unable to gauge whether musical theater was something in which he truly excelled. “I thought, ‘That was a lot of work’ and ‘I don’t know if I want to do that,’ ” Alladin, a 2010 NCHS graduate who is now 24, recalled on Tuesday evening. He said as much to his friend Brooke Singman’s mother, Roberta, as the two approached each other in the long hallway behind the NCHS auditorium after “Seussical” had closed.