From Brecht to Shrek,
Brian d’Arcy James
Is America’s Most Versatile Actor/Singer.

By Hal Drucker

Brian d’Arcy James in the reception area of the Manhattan Theater Club, just before a performance of  Time Stands Still. Photo: Hal Drucker.

James as Shrek in Broadway’s Shrek the Musical.

It is a credit to the two of them that Brian d’Arcy James has so much in common with Jerry Orbach. I came to that conclusion long before I spent 40 minutes with James at the Manhattan Theater Club’s Biltmore (aka Samuel J. Friedman) Theater before an evening performance of Broadway’s finest new play Time Stands Still.  I knew Jerry, who died in 2004, as someone who was equally deft as dramatic actor and singer. In my more than 70 years of play viewing I cannot think of another leading man who had more hit shows than he.

After a few minutes of mental shadow-boxing, it became clear to me that James, like Orbach, apart from being equally endowed with acting and singing chops, was a total mensch.  Both actors were drama majors at Northwestern and each portrayed a famed cartoon character: Orbach, as the voice of Lumiere, the Chevalieresque candelabra in the Disney cartoon feature Beauty and the Beast and James on Broadway as The Shrek.

“Classical acting?  I didn’t get that experience until I was at Northwestern. It’s really when I fell in love with acting.  Our sophomore year, you studied Chekov, the  Greeks , Shakespeare, Pinter.  I was involved in everything from Rashomon to Berthold Brecht to Neil Simon. It’s the great thing about going to an excellent program. You learn about stage crew, costumes, hanging lights, figuring things out and how they work mechanically.“

It began for Brian d’Arcy James in 1968 in Saginaw Michigan, once a thriving lumber center, now better known as the birthplace of Stevie Wonder. “I never met him, but I’d certainly like to meet him. He’s an incredible musician.  You are the Sunshine of My Life is a classic.

“My great-grandparents were from County Cork and County Clare, Ireland. And their kids settled in the city of Calumet, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  What was significant to my ancestors was the copper, which is why they began invading America.”   

Brian's maternal grandfather was Harry F. Kelly, former Governor of the state of Michigan; his uncle was Brian Kelly, the TV actor featured in the Flipper series as Ranger Porter Ricks.  His younger sister, Kate James, is an actress and writer who performs in the Chicago-based improv comedy group, Schadenfreude. His older sister Anne, is the head administrator of the theater program  of the North Shore High School in the Boston area and is on the board of the SpeakEasy Theater Company and recently was cast in its production of Merrily We Roll Along, my favorite Stephen Sondheim musical. His younger brother, Andrew, graduates next year from Marquette University.   

“My father (Thomas F. James) passed away in 1990 at the age of 50. He was a lawyer, a fantastic guy and great supporter of all four of us. Dad was a John Wayne fan. He took me to see him as Rooster Cogborn in True Grit. He also loved George Segal and Goldie Hawn in The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox.  If I had to choose a favorite Western, it would be Clint Eastwood’s The Unforgiven. I was also a big fan of Wild, Wild West on TV. My mother Mary (Kelly) still lives there and sells children's books from her own company. I love pop music – the XTC band, a British group which  came out of the punk  movement, Elvis Costello and the music group, Squeeze.”

What is your favorite of all musicals?

“Carousel. I understudied Eddie Korbich as Enoch Snow at Lincoln Center Theater,  playing opposite Audra McDonald as Carrie Pipperidge. ”

I was surprised that his favorite song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic was not If I Loved You, nor was it When the Children are Asleep, but the obscure There’s Nothin’ So Bad For a Woman (as a man who thinks he’s good).

Eventually, James chose acting over law — decisively, after a college version of Hair which transferred to Chicago, and earned James his Equity card and warm reviews.

“Singing? My first public experience was at age 12 in the eighth grade of Catholic School Junior High. They needed someone to sing a song and it ended up being me. In a great baptism by fire. I sang Billy Joel’s The Piano Man.  In my freshman year in high school, my sister played the lead in Bye Bye Birdie and I got to play Randolph McAfee. A snotty little kid about two feet tall. Every time I talk about this I give my sister Anne total credit/blame for doing this thing I’m doing, because she was the one who paved the way and pioneered it all. She was in love with the theater.”

As Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success.

I told him the first musical I had seen him in was Sweet Smell of Success in which he was cast as Sidney Falco  (portrayed by Tony Curtis in 1957 on the screen),  the sycophantic protégé of a powerful, vindictive 1950s gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker (read: Walter Winchell) played by John Lithgow. With Christopher Wheeldon as choreographer, it had a “can’t miss” tag but failed to deliver at the box office.

Yet, a distinguished critic wrote: “Any song involving Brian d'Arcy James gives thrilling proof of why he is due to become one of the great leading men of our age. This is especially true of Marvin Hamlisch’s song in Sweet Smell of Success,  At The Fountain,  which more than a little recalls Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill's  Pirate Jenny  from The Threepenny Opera in melody and structure.” At the Fountain  refers to the fanciful story of Lana Turner being discovered by columnist Sidney Skolsky at Schwab’s drugstore in LA.

With Alice Ripley in Next to Normal.

Who gave you the script of “Next to Normal?” And what was your impression when you read it?   

I spoke of the breakthrough musical, that I originally saw off-Broadway 18 months previously with James and Alice Ripley in the leads. The subject was not your typical boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-regains girl scenario, but a housewife’s bi-polarism, exacerbated by the loss of a teenage son.

“I remember having a conversation on the telephone with Michael Greif the director, whom I never worked with and also Tom Kitt, the composer, whom I had worked with just a little bit, but never fully. They were interested in having me do it. When I learned what they were trying to tackle, without little knowledge of what they had in mind, I thought it audacious. The first thing I heard was the music, which blew me away. I was totally smitten with Tom’s abundant gift for melodies. In talking to Michael about it I knew they were going to treat the bi-polarism subject responsibly. Alice Ripley, who is still playing the mother, is an incredible talent. In terms of representing her mania, she gives a glimpse, musically inside her brain as to how she was seeing the world. It’s a virtuoso performance, that didn’t surprise me, given that she actually played a Siamese twin so believably in the musical Side Show.“

Since moving to New York in 1990 James has worked onstage steadily.  Before Shrek, James was a standout in such musicals as Titanic, The Wild Party ,"Sweet Smell of Success, The Apple Tree and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

James as Dermot (left) Jim Norton as Joe (right)   and John Gallagher, Jr. as Kevin; three Dubliners in Conor McPherson’s Port Authority. Photo: Doug Hamilton.

James also captivated in such Irish plays as Conor McPherson’s  Port Authority, in which he starred with the great Irish actor, Jim Norton, whom I had the sheer delight of interviewing and Martin McDonagh's scorchingly black comedy, The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

The actor — who lives in New York with Grace 8 (“a true New Yorker”)  and his wife, actress Jennifer Prescott — has received Drama Desk award nominations, an Obie prize and a Tony Award nomination.  

But in most of the dozens of parts he has played, James' own visage, cleft chin, bushy black eyebrows, penetrating dark eyes are a given— save when he morphed into a reclusive, hulking ogre with a heavy Scottish accent and a bald, lime-green head with trumpet-like ears.

 “It's basically like putting on a skin-tight snowmobile suit," James was quoted as saying. "It kind of creates a heat-inducing experience," he suggested, after more than an hour and a half in the makeup chair with a prosthetic head mask and padded body being administered.

Laura Linney, Brian d'Arcy James and Eric Bogosian in “Time Stands Still.” Photo: Joan Marcus.

“After Shrek, Time Stands Still was a godsend for me personally, a perfect way to do something else. There are many reasons why this is extraordinary, most notably, director Dan Sullivan, author Donald Margulies. So too, is my high regard for Laura Linney , Eric Bogosian and Alicia Silverstone. We’re each of us very unique and we come from different corners of the earth in our experience.”
 
What’s your next gig?, I asked.

“There are a couple of things hovering but nothing definite. Time is standing still for me right now .. and that’s fine.”

For my review of Time Stands Still, Click here: My Kind of New York - Slice of New York - February 2010
Or Copy and Paste: http://www.mykindofnewyork.com/sliceny_feb10.html

“Persistence is something I was able to latch on to pretty early. I’m proudest of just hanging in there. If you believe in what you’re doing and you believe in yourself, you’re going to have some success and I feel grateful for that. “

Hal Drucker is a member of The Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Circle and the co-author of the book:  "From the Desk Of:  Work Styles of 43 Famous Americans.”