Grace McLean

Grace McLean is an American actress, playwright, composer, and singer who has worked across Broadway, off-Broadway, and the recording industry. A graduate of the Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana, California, where she completed her studies in 2002, McLean has built a career that spans performance, composition, and music education.

McLean first took on the role of Marya Dmitriyevna in Dave Malloy's opera Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 during its original off-Broadway run in 2013. She reprised the part in the 2015 American Repertory Theatre production and again in the 2016 Broadway transfer, contributing to both of the show's official cast recordings across those productions.

In 2019, McLean originated the role of The Queen of Hearts, Red Cross Nurse, and Magpie in the off-Broadway musical Alice by Heart, which was based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. That same year, she wrote the book, music, lyrics, and orchestrations for In the Green, a musical centered on the life of Hildegard von Bingen, an eleventh-century abbess, Christian mystic, composer, and polymath. McLean also performed in the production, playing Jutta von Sponheim, Hildegard's mentor and fellow prisoner. The show ran at Lincoln Center's LCT3 Theatre from June 4 to August 14, 2019, and received six nominations at the 2020 Lucille Lortel Awards, including Outstanding Musical, with McLean winning Outstanding Lead Actress in a Musical. Its original cast recording was released on October 16, 2020, through Ghostlight Records.

McLean originated the role of Woodrow Wilson in the off-Broadway production of Suffs in 2022 and returned to the role for the show's 2024 Broadway run. In December 2022, it was announced that she would originate the role of The Queen in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bad Cinderella on Broadway, a part she played from the production's opening through its closing on June 4, 2023.

In 2017, McLean was named one of Lincoln Center's writers-in-residence, giving her access to office space and materials to develop original theatre works. Her band, Grace McLean & Them Apples, featuring Hiroyuki Matsuura and Justin Goldner, draws on swing, hip-hop, electronica, jazz, and musical theatre. The group performed in Lincoln Center's American Songbook series in both 2015 and 2016, and toured Russia and Pakistan in those same years as ambassadors for the U.S. State Department. The band released two EPs, Make Me Breakfast in 2012 and Natural Disaster in 2016. McLean's debut full-length album, My Lovely Enemy, was released on May 10, 2024, by Meridian/ECR Music Group and produced by Justin Goldner. Advance singles included "Reckless," released May 23, 2023, followed by "My Lovely Enemy" and "Albertine." McLean has also voiced Madame Sunshine in the musical podcast The Fall of the House of Sunshine.