Young man wearing a gray sweater with yellow trim grins widely and gives two thumbs up while performing on stage. Behind him, several other actors in capes and costumes react with animated expressions during a theatrical scene set against a backdrop of stone walls and wooden beams. — Ben Sutherland in a tech rehearsal for ‘Puffs’ at Jobsite Theater in Tampa, Florida on Credit: James Zambon Productions. / Jobsite Theater/Flickr

You might say this rising star has already risen, since local audiences have seen him on stage a lot. But here’s the thing: Though he has booked multiple shows at area professional companies, he’s not even out of college yet.

Now entering his senior year as a musical theater BFA candidate at the University of Tampa, Ben Sutherland, 21, is hard to miss on stage—he’s very tall (six-feet, four-inches) and lanky—but he’s so talented that he can transform himself from one role to the next. And boy, can he sing!

In Tampa Rep’s 2024 production of “Next to Normal,” he gave a searing performance as the imaginary son who invades his mother’s consciousness, capturing the character’s “dashing, playful but complicated presence,” said Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s Jon Palmer Claridge. Then this year, with the same company in “The Bridges of Madison County,” he showed he could blend with an ensemble.

And as he proved in Stageworks’ “The Great American Trailer Park Musical” in 2023 and Jobsite’s “Puffs” this summer, he is that rare creature, a ridiculously handsome man who isn’t afraid of looking ridiculous. Not many actors could so joyously embody roles as disparate as the tatted-up trailer trash Duke and the star student/athlete of Hufflepuff House, Cedric Diggory, for whom he found the perfect balance of suave and self-involved. (His nose-guarded Voldemort-ish villain was also a hoot.)

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A native of Taunton, Massachusetts, he moved down to Florida with his parents right before entering Newsome High School in Lithia. He didn’t do shows in high school, where choir was his main interest, but he did get extensive community-theater experience at the Florida Academy of Performing Arts in Brandon. He says he got to play “a lot of my dream roles at a young age” there—like the villainous leads in Sweeney Todd and Jekyll and Hyde.

Puffs wasn’t his first turn as the Dark Lord, either: He played Voldemort in “A Very Potter Musical” at UT. (A big Potter fan, he spoke with me on the phone during his third visit to Epic Universe, home of HP’s Wizarding World.)

A guitarist as well as a singer/actor, he lists some more specialized skills on his resume, including… “Can shake eyes very fast.”

This not being a skill I was familiar with, I asked him to explain. “It’s this thing, it looks like my eyes are vibrating,” he replied. “Hugh Jackman can do this, too, funnily enough.”

His idols (other than Jackman) include Jim Carrey (“he goes against the grain”) and fellow former “theater kids” Josh Groban and David Corenswet (the current Superman).

Sutherland hopes to move to NYC next fall, so it may not be long before he follows in his idols’ footsteps. Before that, though, he’s got another local gig coming up: He’ll be playing Ash Williams, the chainsaw-wielding hero of Stageworks’ “Evil Dead: The Musical” opening Oct. 24. He’s looking forward to the role, which will take advantage of his flair for physical comedy as well as his baritone/tenor vocal range.

But, he warns, there will be blood. And some of it may splash onto the first few rows.

He’ll have to give a heads-up to his parents: “They like to sit in the front row.”

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