#richard rodgers theatre

[tomorrowusa]

The Donald "Dozy Donny" Trump trial has been pushing other items out of the news. But it is not the only news story making history in New York.

Zeita Merchant just became the first woman of color to reach the rank of admiral in the US Coast Guard.

Her promotion ceremony took place at the NYC theater which hosts the play Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton happens to be the father of the Coast Guard.

Adm. Merchant decided to join the Coast Guard at the last minute. It turned out to be a good choice and she became a career officer, rising through the ranks to admiral.

By coincidence, I visited Alexander Hamilton after the solar eclipse earlier this month. He probably would have been pleased by this connection to him in the 21st century.

[wewriteletters]

Music by Richard Rodgers, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Lido Lady postcard by totallymystified Via Flickr: Lido Lady was a musical by Rodgers and Hart. The 1926 Gaiety production starred Phyllis Dare, Cicely Courtneidge, Jack Hulbert and Billy Arlington.

[oh-great-authoress]

Nadia Sings no. 3

Link to last week’s song

Today we have a musical theater classic: “My Favorite Things” from the musical The Sound of Music (music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II)

Initially, I was going to do a completely different song this week, but that… didn’t pan out, and I was considering not posting a song this week at all, because I couldn’t think of what to sing, and because I wasn’t sure if I’d have time to record once I realized the first song wasn’t going to work.

(Life is challenging and hectic when your parents are in the hospital [dad got life-saving gallbladder surgery, mom is there to keep him company], and it’s literally your birthday…)

Anyway…

This song comes to you courtesy of the beautiful, and ever-inspirational @valmare, actually.

She mentioned Rodgers & Hammerstein in her lovely and wonderful reblog of last week’s song, and that unconsciously got tucked away in my head.

Then, today, while I was sitting at the dining table, before I was about to write a post saying that Nadia Sings was going to take a week off, I realized I was humming something.

And that something was this song.

So once again using the dining room as my recording studio, I recorded and mastered this song in BandLab (again, not an advertisement, I just love that app—it’s like ProTools on your phone) in about three hours, and I’m so happy with how it turned out.

Again, while I put a little reverb effect on the backing track I used, as well as on my vocal track, this is otherwise as unadulterated a track as the one I posted last week, just my voice, with no pitch correction, recorded into my iPhone.

Note: it is part of my training to have a British/transatlantic accent when I sing particular things, this musical included.

I hope you enjoy!!

(Headphones recommended to hear the reverb)

Tagging the same people I tagged last week, as well as those who enjoyed last week’s offering:

@welsharcher

@valmare

@batmantaking-hobbits2gallifrey

@justhereforfandomandfriends

@musewrangler

@oh-nostalgiia

@sakar-rad

@randomfoggytiger

@radical-sky

@agentfaust

@two-microscopes

@canmking

If you would like to be taken off the taglist, just send me a message, no hard feelings, and if you’d like to be added to the taglist, just interact with/reblog this post or send me an ask!

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Sound of Music (1965, Robert Wise)

12/09/2024

[unwelcome-ephestion]

Here’s a forgotten woman of musical theatre - Joan McCracken. She’s now mainly remembered as the first wife of Bob Fosse, but her contributions to musical theatre are much greater than that.

Image ID: publicity shot of Joan McCracken

McCracken shot to fame in Oklahoma!, credited in the programme as The Girl Who Falls Down because of her pratfall during ‘Many A New Day���. This might sound silly, but it would take until West Side Story for all individual chorus members to be assigned characters. The individual standing out from the chorus was a great surprise and added to the humour of the moment, and was a key innovation of choreographer Agnes De Mille. Joan McCracken went on to have a good Broadway career and appear in several films, although her work was hampered by diabetes, which she hid from her colleagues despite fainting spells, and which ultimately killed her aged only 43.

McCracken’s impact in Oklahoma! should not be underestimated - putting character before aesthetic was the show’s revolution, and her role was a huge part of that. She is also said to have encouraged Fosse to be a choreographer - whether that is true or not, it’s interesting that, like Gwen Verdon (Fosse’s second wife and Broadway legend), she was trained by George Balanchine, whose influence is evident in Fosse’s work. She is also said to be the inspiration for Holly Golightly, at least in part, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, whose author, Truman Capote, had an affair with her first husband, Jack Dunphy. However, we should recognise her influence as an acting dancer and comedienne just as much as her influence on male creatives!

[mthguy]

Laura Osnes and Santino Fontana in Cinderella (2013)

"In the arms of my love I'm flying Over mountain and meadow and glen, And I like it so well That for all I can tell I may never come down again! I may never come down to earth again!"

[tfblovesmusic]

35 years ago this day, 94 souls went to eternal rest during a soccer match between the Liverpool and Nottingham Forest Football Clubs at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, North Yorkshire, England. 1 more went to eternal rest days later, another went there in 1993, and another went there in 2021.

May Sts. Mary the Blessed Mother and George pray for the repose of them and the consolation of their families. I pray that those victims will be in our memories. From this Isabeleña to their families:

[willstafford]

Siam what I am

THE KING AND I Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, Wednesday 1st March 2023 There is no king on the poster, only the I, selling the show on its female lead, Call The Midwife’s Helen George.  Unfortunately, for this press night performance, Ms George is indisposed (perhaps a midwife crisis) and so there are more than a few disgruntled childbirth fans in the auditorium tonight.  To my mind, the show…

[d-criss-news]

See an exclusive first look at Darren Criss’ return to Broadway in Maybe Happy Ending

The "Glee" actor stars as a Helperbot named Oliver, opposite Helen J. Shen making their Broadway debut as Claire.

There’s nothing new about an awkward meet-cute turning into a love story… But what if that love story is between two robots?

That’s the question posed by Maybe Happy Ending, a new musical coming to Broadway this fall, starring Emmy-winning Glee and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story actor Darren Criss. The show also marks the Broadway debut of Helen J. Shen (The Lonely Few) and Dez Duron (The Voice). Featuring a book by Will Aronson and Hue Park, with music by Aronson and lyrics by Park, Maybe Happy Ending is helmed by Tony Award winner Michael Arden (Parade, Once on This Island), with scenic design by Dane Laffrey (A Christmas Carol).

Ahead of its debut, Entertainment Weekly has your exclusive first listen to the show, with a music video of Criss and Chen’s emotional duet, "When You’re in Love.”

Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen in "Maybe Happy Ending". MAYBE HAPPY ENDING THE MUSICAL/YOUTUBE

The musical — a big hit in its native South Korea, winning six 2016 Korean Musical Awards and the Richard Rodgers Production Award for the English-language version — made its American debut at Atlanta’s Alliance theater in 2019. Now the show is coming to the Great White Way with Criss and Shen as Oliver and Claire, two outcast HelperBots whose initial awkward encounter evolves into an unexpected relationship.

“There's a real pathos that kind of snuck up on me with these two,” Criss told EW of the HelperBot romance. “You think, 'Oh, cute, like androids falling in love, that sounds sweet.' But there's a lot more to that when you start to examine what it is to not only love something or someone, but the inexorable, unavoidable back end of love, which is loss.” Oliver is living the simple life of an outdated HelperBot when the story begins, tending to plants and listening to jazz in his one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Seoul. Then Claire comes by to borrow a charger, and changes everything. The video finds the HelperBots united by emotion, yet far apart as they process the swirling feelings of being in love for the first time. “When you’re in love, you’re never satisfied,” they lament. “The thing you want is always out of reach.”

By the end, they’re piecing together both the joys and painful realities of their newfound feelings. They sing, “Now I’m hoping that you feel all the things I feel / Wishing that you want me to sit beside you /Wanting now to learn all the things you are / Waiting for a chance to invite you in my heart.” If the prospect of seeing two bots find love isn’t enticing enough, Criss jokes that empathizing with the characters will at least give audiences a leg up in the AI apocalypse. “If there's any incentive to come see the show — other than a wonderful theatrical experience with a lot of beautiful universal themes and all that great stuff and fantastic music, and hopefully good performances — if not that, it's at least to soften the punishment and wrath of the AI takeover,” he laughed. Maybe Happy Ending begins previews at the Belasco Theatre on Wednesday, September 18. Tickets will go on sale to the general public beginning on Thursday, June 6 at 10AM.

Watch the "When You're In Love" music video above and read more of Criss' thoughts on the HelperBot romance below.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Can you start by telling me a little bit about Oliver and what's at the core of this character for you? Well, I'll tell you what, this is the first time I'm ever really doing any kind of talking about a show that I haven't had much familiarity with yet. And I'm not saying that to avoid talking about it so much as to highlight the unique nature of my involvement in this show because, at least if we're talking about the theater, specifically Broadway Theater, every show that I've ever done came with something of a legacy and was a show that I would have been very familiar with, and I think audiences at large, for the most part would've had a history with it.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was my Broadway debut, massively popular, classic Broadway show, people knew it. Second one was, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I grew up as a teenager loving that show. And then the revival of American Buffalo, that's now a standard contemporary American classic and studied that in drama school and yada yada yada. So when talking about the show, I had a really good handle because the show had lived with me for most of my life. [Maybe Happy Ending] is a brand new show, which is wildly exciting. But I have yet to figure out that answer. I can tell you what his core is on paper, which is that Oliver is a Helperbot, something like a hundred years in the future where our technology helpers — in the way that we have our Alexas, and our Siris, and our digital systems, and our smart assistants — have evolved into more humanoid representations. He is a Model 3 in the world of Model 5's and is very much outdated, and kind of running the last of his powered up life in the world that we're watching him and coming to grips with the things that left him behind.

We got a little taste of it in the music video, but what do you think it is about the Oliver and Claire relationship that people will respond to? Or what did you respond to? There's nothing like being able to look at ourselves by looking through the eyes of things that aren't us. I find the most I'm ever moved about the human experience comes from animated films where you have non-human characters trying to figure out human emotions. It's a really great way for audiences to subconsciously look at their own experience objectively. It's funny that it takes inhuman characters to examine humanity in a way that feels somehow accessible. If you see yourself up there, it maybe hits too close to home. But you might think about it a little differently if you're suddenly looking at things through the objective lens of a true outsider — be it a cartoon fox or a mermaid wanting to be human.

So having said that, this is a story about two HelperBots, two robots “falling in love." Of course, they're not human, so they can't physically, literally intimately actually fall in love, but they have to sort of figure out what that means by way of how they've experienced human beings themselves, by cues they've gotten from their own owners and from the world around them. And when you start examining things like love, things like loss through the eyes of non-humanoid things that are trying to computationally analyze and synthesize those things, you sort of start to look at them in a different way. There are many things about the show — the premise was very interesting, and I think the design is exquisite, it's a wonderful theatrical experience. Getting to work with a longtime friend, Michael Arden is such a joy, and there's so many things about that that make this appealing to me. And of course the music is fun, and it's cute, and funny, and charming. But there's a real pathos that kind of snuck up on me with these two. You think, 'Oh, cute, like androids falling in love, that sounds sweet.' But there's a lot more to that when you start to examine what it is to not only love something or someone, but the inexorable, unavoidable back end of love, which is loss. And how do we deal with that? How and why do human beings willingly enter this contract if we know that on the other side of it, there is something that will hurt and that can hurt because love does come with loss, whether it's loss of self, loss of wholeness.

And this show really shows a really beautiful balance of these beings trying to suss out thousands of years of human meditation — of all the hundred thousand songs and poems and stories that have tried to help us understand this balance of love and loss, and the highs and the lows of it are pretty profound. er. In “When You’re In Love” there's the sentiment that being in love is the loneliest you can be. Is that something that you immediately connected with, or was that surprising?

I think that song's very interesting because it's them putting the pieces together. Many lines in the song that talk about how being loved does just constantly leave you with a sense of longing. Which I think goes back into the main thesis, which is love in many ways is loss. They kind of coexist in this yin-yang. It's just one's much more fun and more accessible to talk about, but they kind of come hand in hand. Again, the systematic exploration of all of the ones and zeros of what love is — it's a lot of ones, but it is also a lot of zeros, and one of those things is being lonely and the feeling of not being whole without a certain thing. Which I think is a really good connector to what this show talks about, which is the function of the things in our life that we lose. It is funny that we are getting closer and closer to the realities of what this show presents and suggests. The idea that Siri could be a person in a hundred years isn't absurd, it's not a crazy idea. Even talking about things like robots or artificial intelligence, it's an immediate thing that is part of the cultural fabric and a continual discussion about how and where and why it's going to be part of our life.

But even without talking about those sort of more sci-fi leaning things, technology is in many ways, like people in our life. I mean, people treat their phones like babies. We have attachments to our phones and the way that we need them in our lives and the way we care for them and the reliance we have on them. And the idea of shelf life and things being outdated, we're pretty comfortable with. It's more comprehensible with tech and objects. But it's funny that we have this cognitive dissonance between that and the idea of things being outdated and out of its prime is harder to grasp and a harder pill to swallow with people, and it's a harder journey to go on with people. But what happens when our objects become closer in likeness and experience to people? How are we going to wrap our brains around that and how will they wrap their brains or their programming around that? And how will they feel? Will they feel at all? How will they feel about their impermanence as it relates to ours and vice versa? So there's a lot of really, really nice questions being asked in this show.

Are you finding that it's changing your relationship to Siri and Alexa and your technology? As of now, absolutely not. Well, maybe in the future. Maybe. I'll bite my tongue… In a few years, who knows? She's listening. I'll be nice to you Siri, I promise. As long as you're nice to me when you decide to take over the planet. Well, after you've played a Helperbot, you've got an in. Hopefully that'll soften the AI takeover, they'll let us loose. If there's any incentive to come see the show — other than a wonderful theatrical experience with a lot of beautiful universal themes and all that great stuff and fantastic music, and hopefully good performances — if not that, it's at least to soften the punishment and wrath of the AI takeover. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

[bluwavez]

WAIT FOR IT: KIM DOWON IS THE FIRST K-POP IDOL TO TAKE ON BROADWAY WITH HAMILTON.

He Wants To Be In The Room Where It Happens. The Kpop Star's Second Debut Of 2016.

When Kim Dowon ranked 7th in The New Wave, his fans deemed it a miracle. While they never doubted his talents, they knew the judges didn't favor him for his age or appearance. Kim, turning twenty-one during the show's run, had been training for five years while focusing on singing, rapping, and dancing; he had begun developing a passion for musical theatre, learning the choreography to Newsies to impress the panel of judges during his trainee evaluations.

Growing up in lower-class New York City, Dowon, English name Dylan, would often sneak into numerous Broadway shows with his friends. "I still feel this way, but I always felt the ticket prices were way too high. I wanted to see Westside Story so bad, and my friend was like, "Why don't we just sneak in?" So that's exactly what we did." Ever since then, Kim's love for musicals has only grown.

When Dowon moved to Korea at age 15 to start his K-pop training, he got to do something he never thought he would ever get to do: Take an acting class. "My mom didn't make a lot of money, and the school I went to didn't have a good arts program. So, I really felt like the closest thing I could get to acting was either sneaking into shows or watching movies. When they told me I could take acting classes as a part of my training, I was like, "Really?!" my eyes got big, and I couldn't stop smiling. It was really exciting for me." Dowon would share during an interview with Cosmopolitan.

After DeepDive's lackluster debut, Dowon would be reached out to by none other than Alexander Hamilton himself — Well, his actor, Lin-Manuel Miranda. "I still have no idea how he got my email. Not my manager's, not my company's, no, my personal Gmail account," Dowon says, "He said he saw the video of me doing an In The Heights cover and wanted me to audition for a musical he was working on. I sent him back something like, "You know I'm in South Korea right now, right?" and he went, "It's nothing we can't work out. Send in an audition tape." and I mean...The rest is history."

Lin-Manuel Miranda would confess that he had watched every performance of Dowon on YouTube. "I don't know if it was his charming good looks or his crazy vocal ability, but I knew this was the guy I needed for Aaron Burr."

Kim Dowon, listed as Dylan Kim on Hamilton's Playbill, would be cast as Aaron Burr two weeks later and head off to New York to prepare for his Broadway debut.

Hamilton premiered on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in previews on July 13, 2016, and opened on August 6, 2016. 

Despite Dowon being the first and only K-pop idol to have a successful Broadway debut, his company was rather silent about it. They announced he would be joining the Hamilton cast and taking a hiatus from the group until the show's run ended, ending their comments on Dowon's Broadway debut despite his achievements during his time in New York. Dowon would open a personal Instagram account a week after the show's massively successful opening, making him the first member of DeepDive to do so. Still, it's not like the people following him knew him for his K-pop group — Oh no, that was Aaron Burr to them.

One of his achievements during his time in Hamilton was winning the 2017 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. He was the first and only artist under Angelico to win a Tony award. However, you wouldn't know this because his company did not acknowledge the achievement. During his acceptance speech, which he did in both English and Korean, he thanked his brothers Jisung, Noah, Woobin, Kiwoo, Woojin, and Finn for remaining by his side during this journey and the entire cast of Hamilton for taking him in during this time of his life.

Dowon gave his last performance in Hamilton on July 9, 2017. Tearfully, he told the crowd he wasn't sure when he would return to the stage, but he hoped they wouldn't forget him or the rest of the cast, whom he addressed as his family.

Dowon would return to Korea and DeepDive on August 17th, 2017. He has not performed in a musical since.

[benwalkerupdates]

(hopefully tumblr doesn't kill the quality LOL)

an interview that ben did with brandon voss for a january 2012 edition of playbill while promoting his run in cat on a hot tin roof!

also, full interview transcribed under the cut for anyone who needs it!

Benjamin Walker: A Walk on the Dark Side

After several presidential detours, Benjamin Walker comes back to the classics in Broadway’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

By Brandon Voss

He’s played presidents in the popcorn flick Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the Broadway rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, but Benjamin Walker now faces one of his greatest challenges in leading a classic Tennessee Williams family drama. Walker, whose previous Broadway credits include revivals of Inherit the Wind and Les Liaisons Dangereuses, stars as tormented alcoholic Brick Pollitt opposite Tony winner Scarlett Johansson's Maggie in the latest revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which officially opens January 17 at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre. The 30-year-old actor-comedian discusses the perils of onstage drinking and how he's found the funny in the dysfunction.

Playbill: You became an action star in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and you’ll next appear onscreen in the HBO film Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight. As you branch out into TV and movies, how important is it for you to stay connected to the theatre?

Benjamin Walker: I started out in the theatre, and I'm never going to not be doing theatre. I love that the best literature is in the theatre, and I love the people in the theatre. I love that the theatre community is a real community, whereas the movie business is a business. I like working in that business too, and I'm inspired by people in that field, but it's the legacy of the theatre that keeps drawing me to it.

You showed tremendous loyalty to the theatre when you turned down the role of the Beast in the film X-Men: First Class in order to transfer with Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson from the Public Theater to Broadway.

That was a complicated decision, but it boiled down to the fact that I was going to regret not being a part of that show on Broadway. When you're lying there dying, those are the things you think about, and I didn't want that particular regret. I try to keep my regrets counted on one hand.

Realistically, that production may not have moved to Broadway without your involvement.

And those are my friends, man. We'd all grown with the show for so long. I was broke anyway, so I figured I could be broke a while longer. No big deal.

Unfortunately, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson closed on Broadway after only 120 performances. Any regrets there?

Absolutely not. We took that show as far as it could possibly go. For that, I could not be more proud of the cast and everyone involved. I had dinner with [composer-lyricist] Michael Friedman a few weeks ago, and he was saying that Andrew Jackson is one of the top 10 most produced shows across the country. There are, like, four productions in Texas alone. That's remarkable. That's where the show should live and probably will for a long time.

What attracted you to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Our director, Rob Ashford, was one of the first guys to give me a shot. We were going to do Brigadoon together a few years ago, but it fell apart. We've since worked together on a number of things, like opening the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas. I adore his work. He inspires me, and I knew that I could learn a lot from him. And Scarlett's not bad either! Based on those two components alone, I'd be interested in doing the play even if it were toilet paper.

Rob Ashford is an inspired choice for this revival, which marks his directorial debut of a non-musical Broadway production. He's a director-choreographer best known for his work on shows like Evita, How to Succeed, and Throughly Modern Millie.

Well, the play's very musical. It is music. It is poetry. It is dance. A trap of the play is to let the movement be worn down slow by the Southern heat, but these people really are like a cat on a hot tin roof — screaming, bouncing, constantly jumping in pain. The need for that physicality is something Rob really understands and is brilliant at pulling out of us.

One sometimes wonders why a particular play gets revived time and time again.

Oh, yeah. It's like, "Leave it alone! They got it right last time."

What is it about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that people continually want to revisit?

It's about something that's truly timeless and that, because of the human condition, we will struggle with until we're extinct: The need to communicate and our inability to do so. It's also about the need to express love and feel love and how difficult that is. It's about the complexities of sexuality and how that's perceived. And it's about the idea of legacy and the future. A lot of plays only exist in a certain time, and when you watch them you're looking back on that time as if you're going to the Museum of Natural History. But when you read this play, the play's written so well that the poetry of the writing illuminates something about your own time. It's not a pageant of another era. It sheds a new light on your own issues with love and family.

What do you think separates this revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof from others before it?

We're certainly bringing a sexuality and a vitality to the play in a way that I don't think has been done before. We're approaching it in a way that there's real potential for calamity. It's going to be a mess in the way that real life is. These people say what they mean and mean what they say with all their heart, so it's very passionate in the Shakespearean sense. There's nothing casual or lackadaisically Southern about it. These people could pop at any second. But I don't really find it productive to compare productions. I find that dangerous. It's been a long time since I've seen the 1958 movie, and I didn't see the Ashley Judd version on Broadway in 2003, so I don't really know what's different about our production. You'll have to tell me after you've seen it.

Did you not see the 2008 African-American revival with Terrence Howard either?

No, I didn't. I wish I had seen that.

Tell me something interesting that you discovered about Brick during the rehearsal process.

There are definitely some traps for Brick, particularly in the early few pages of the play when he doesn't say very much and he's drinking a lot. So much of his life is about trying to avoid issues, avoid feelings, avoid memories. That can be a trap for an actor, because you're not engaged with anyone, so it comes off as blasé, one-note and boring. It's like watching a boiling pot: You don't know what's going on inside if there's a lid on it, but if you know that it's boiling, you know it can blow at any second. Visually, both pots are almost the same, so you have to have that internal turmoil.

Much of your audience will likely be familiar with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof from the film or from recent revivals. The great Paul Newman famously played Brick onscreen. Do audience preconceptions put any additional pressure on you?

Nah. Screw ‘em. [Laughs] I don’t understand how that's helpful to anybody. Those expectations certainly aren't helpful for the audience. If you're expecting something, looking forward to something, you're going to miss something. It seems detrimental to your experience, and it's also detrimental to our work. But I don't think as many people do that as we think. At least I hope not.

You married actress Mamie Gummer last year. Are you drawing on the new marriage, with all its ups and downs, to enrich Brick and Maggie's relationship?

Luckily, my wife and I don't have that much in common with Maggie and Brick. [Laughs] But yeah, I draw from every relationship. And Scarlett also brings so much from her own life that really creates a lovely chemistry.

Although she's primarily a film actress, Johansson won a Tony for her Broadway debut in the 2010 revival of A View From a Bridge. What’s it been like to work with her?

Oh, she's great. She's classy, she's well prepared, and she's well suited for the part. She's the whole package and the real deal for sure.

What's the greatest challenge in playing your iconic role?

Finding a pee break. I have to keep drinking, refilling my glass, and I'm onstage the whole time! I might need to hide a spittoon in the corner. Other than that, where to begin? Tennessee Williams is the best, but he's certainly the most challenging writer that I've worked on in a long time.

As far as Brick's heavy drinking goes, how method have you been in your research?

Oh, my research on that has been well done for years. I'm typecast, if nothing else.

Brick is leaning hard on the bottle following the suicide of his close friend Skipper, who had confessed his romantic feelings for Brick. There has also been much debate about Brick's sexuality. Do you see him as gay?

Oh, I can't tell you that.

Is that mystery important for the audience?

It's a strength of the play that it talks about something bigger than that question. If you're asking that question on the way out, either I've done my job really well or I haven't done my job at all — I don't know. Human connection is so much bigger than the categories we like to put it in, which almost ruins it. But I can already hear my mom — "So was he gay?"

I assume that you know Brick's sexuality one way or the other when you step onto that stage.

Of course. I can't show up if I don't know that. I can't say Tennessee Williams' words if I haven't done that work. That would be a lazy actor right there. [Laughs] Yeah, maybe I'll just figure it out as I go. Maybe Brick's really in love with Big Mama!

You're also a stand-up comic and host of a variety series called Find the Funny. Are you finding the humor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

The more time I spend with my comedian friends, the more I realize that truly funny people are ones with a really deep inner darkness. Brick is definitely stewing over some painful stuff, and oftentimes people can only release that through humor, sarcasm, or being cutting in a way that causes nervous laughter. Tennessee Williams is a funny writer in the same way as Chekhov; if the audience isn't laughing, you've probably missed the point. There's a fine line between drama and comedy that we walk, and life is like that too.

Some theatregoers may compare your performance as Brick with your performance as Andrew Jackson. It's easy to dismiss those characters as having nothing in common, but have you noticed any similarities?

Yeah, actually. They're both very conflicted men at crossroads in their lives, and they have to make huge decisions that will affect the legacy of their families. Of course, the shows are very different. When a cell phone rang during Andrew Jackson, I could just yell, "Shut off your phone, you prick!" I have to get out of that habit.

You were born and raised in Georgia. Did that come in handy when working on your Southern accent for Brick?

My Southern accent's a little different than Brick's. The Pollitts are very high class and old money, but my accent is more country than Scarlett O'Hara. Working with the wonderful Deborah Hecht as our dialect coach, we actually looked at politicians like Jimmy Carter — people who needed this grandness to their language but also had a Southern thing going.

You seem to have lost your Southern accent altogether.

I have to fight it. They beat it out of me at Juilliard. My accent only comes out if I get angry, have a couple drinks, or talk to my mother on the phone. Then you can't understand a word I say.

[citizenscreen]

Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Helen Tamiris, watching auditions on stage of the St James Theatre, New York, New York, 1948.