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THE LEADING MEN: Evans, Morton and Minchin
By Tom Nondorf
03 Mar 2008
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Daniel Evans
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | Perhaps this installment of "The Leading Men" should be called "Leading Blokes": We chatted with a Welshman, a Scot and an Aussie, all with big plans for entertaining American audiences in March. Daniel Evans is currently shining an intense artistic light in Sunday in the Park with George, Euan Morton begins a series of solo shows at the Algonquin, and Tim Minchin brings his madcap musical comedy to New World Stages.
Putting It Together
A week into the run of Sunday in the Park with George, Daniel Evans is just learning how to pace himself, emotionally and physically for the demanding title role in the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical. Though he has performed the show before, garnering great acclaim in London, he says every venue and production has its own challenges, but the challenge of Sunday — which he likens to a "big jigsaw puzzle" — is one he wouldn't trade for all the dots in a Seurat.
Question: So what are you up to for the next couple of months?
Daniel Evans: [Laughs.] Ah, just eight shows a week.
Q: Are you grateful to finally be up and running with Sunday?
Evans: Oh, I can't tell you how relieved I am. I haven't read the reviews, but people tell me they're okay, and that's nice to know as well. We're just getting on with doing the show and having our days free, which is really nice.
Q: Are you someone who likes doing the show more than rehearsing?
Evans: I actually like both, but what was different here from how we do things back home is you have this really extended preview period. We did 32 previews. In London, you're lucky if you get seven. The last week of previews here, all the critics come, while in London they all come on one night. It was a long time of suspense.
Q: You appeared once before on Broadway in A Midsummer Night's Dream. How do you compare your experience now versus then?
Evans: So much scarier now. So much scarier. The last time I was here, the only time I was here, I was here with the Royal Shakespeare Company, something that properly, us Brits feel quite territorial about because Shakespeare, we consider ours. But coming with a musical theatre piece… You guys invented the musical theatre. And, a piece that was written by two New Yorkers and was originally created here…It was nerve-wracking. Probably the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. But probably also the most exciting thing! And getting to play this part that was created by Mandy Patinkin, such a vocal gymnast and someone I admire so much. The show has a lot to live up to because the original production was so iconic.
Q: With this production it's not like you just have to know your lines and lyrics. There are a lot of technical things required of you as well.
Evans: That's like half of it for me, being in the right place. Especially in something like "Putting it Together" where I have to interact with projected images of myself and have to pour myself a glass of champagne at exactly the right height and get the nozzle of the bottle in just the right amount. It's very, very technical. Even in Act One, when I'm painting in the second number, "Color and Light," painting to music! It's a really, really, technical show, yeah, but I love that.
Q: What happens in the event that they use your understudy? What do they do with the video-projected images of you?
Evans: We filmed it with my understudy. We did it the same day, and all that gets changed is the digital file for that night.
Q: Has it been difficult to balance those technical aspects with the emotional ones?
Evans: The thing that's great about that [is] that exact feeling of balancing those two things is exactly what the character is going through at that time. Second-Act George knows he has to behave a certain way and not let his guard down at any time, so he has to remember to move things, to be in the right place at the right time, say the right thing, get the right person to give him a commission. At the same time, he probably feels like, "Oh my God, how am I going to keep it up?" It's a sort of weird parallel where art really does imitate life in that scene.
Q: You mentioned territoriality with Shakespeare. Of course, there is a lot of that with Stephen Sondheim as well. The die-hard Sondheim people out there — did you have to come to terms with them at all?
Evans: I understand feeling territorial, and indeed, I feel territorial about this piece, especially, this production because I've been with it since the beginning, and I feel that when you originate the part, even if it's in a revival, you do get to feel very territorial about it. The thing about mad Sondheim fans, or mad anything fans really, is you can only listen so much to [them], and especially coming to this town to do this piece, which made two iconic actors very famous and vice-versa. They made the piece very famous: Mandy and Bernadette. It's obviously going to inevitably invite huge comparisons with them, and if I think for a moment that I am trying to compete with Mandy Patinkin or am somehow going to live up to him, it makes me so nervous that I sort of lose my bottle, really. I have to just think, we're doing a new version. In rehearsals, we have this mantra that we have to behave like this piece has never been done before.
Q: You had worked closely with Sondheim on Merrily We Roll Along in the past, yes?
Evans: That's right. He came over to London to work with us on [Merrily] previews, and indeed he came over to work with us on Sunday in the Park, too, and again here. When he was here, he filtered some notes through our director [Sam Buntrock]. It's a very privileged position to be in. I always feel that working with living writers, especially when you admire their work so much, it doesn't get any better than that.
Q: What performers inspired you before you had your first big break?
Evans: When I was younger, my favorite actors were Mark Rylance and Ian McKellen, two very different actors. In fact, I got to work with Ian McKellen about 20 years later, which was really amazing. I remember seeing Mark Rylance as Hamlet, and he spent most of the play in his pajamas, and did a "moonie" at one point. He showed his mother his bum. I know that made a really deep, deep impression on me.
Q: What was it like working with McKellen?
Evans: Oh gosh, he's so naughty. He's such a generous man. He's one of my friends now. I'm privileged to call him one of my friends. I couldn't get over it. I was Peter Pan, he was Captain Hook, and you're sort of pinching yourself every day, and it takes you awhile to get rid of your feelings of being stage struck — that he's just a guy like you're a guy, he's an actor like you're an actor. Because you just think that he's an icon. But he's so generous and so cheeky, and his sense of humor is so naughty.
Q: The Welsh are known for their singing. Did you come out of the womb with a song on your lips?
Evans: [Laughs.] I always sang in choirs and stuff at school, but I trained as a classical theatre actor. I never ever thought that I would be doing musicals, and I've only done four, ever. But I was asked to audition for a production of Candide at the National Theatre in London, which Trevor Nunn and John Caird were putting on. They gave me the part, and they gave me singing lessons, and I discovered I'm a tenor, and I found that I absolutely love singing. I was a huge fan of Sondheim even before then but never thought I'd get to do this stuff and especially never thought that I'd get to play George. It's kind of strange to me that I've ended up singing for a living. I still have singing lessons, and I still work on my voice, and I find it such a joyful thing.
Q: How are you enjoying the day-to-day of life in New York City?
Evans: Oh! I'm loving it! I'm loving it! I'm especially loving when it's a typical New York winter morning when it's really cold and it's really bright. I go for long walks in the park, and I love that weather. It's so bracing. I'm loving New York. It's like nowhere on Earth.
[Sunday in the Park with George plays Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street; for tickets call (212) 719-1300 or visit www.roundabouttheatre.org.]
Safe in the City
Tony-nominated for Taboo in 2004 and most recently on Broadway in Cyrano de Bergerac, 30-year-old Scotsman Euan Morton is starting the longest music engagement of his life at the storied Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room. His solo show with jazz combo, entitled Here and Now, runs March 4-29.
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Euan Morton
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| photo by Linda Lenzi |
Question: How are you feeling about the show?
Euan Morton: I'm a bit nervous actually. When I first started going to see stuff at the Oak Room, people would almost curtsy when they said "The Oak Room." I'm really excited. I've done a couple of gigs there, and I love the room. The audience seems very friendly, and it's a chance for me to try some new stuff, which is always great.
Q: What is the significance of Here and Now?
Morton: It's funny, when I came up with a title, I never noticed that Betty Buckley, I think, has a show called Then and Now. I realized that had there not been a writer's strike, maybe I would have been able to come up with a better title [laughs]. I also realized that Betty Buckley [and I] are on completely the same wavelength! I wanted to sort of tell my story — not some boring "I was born in Scotland and when I was five, I did this" — but why on earth I'm here, how I got here and stayed here and what Taboo was and how it opened doors. It's kind of that part of my life story and the music that affected me over the last ten years of my life.
Q: So Taboo is not taboo?
Morton: Certainly it's part of the story. It's part of the story of why I'm here, so it's to some degree involved in the storytelling at the Algonquin, although I'm not actually singing songs from Taboo. I want to tell the full story, and of course that's involved, but there's other stuff I'm doing: "Paper Moon" and "Pure Imagination" from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory."
Q: After Taboo, you once told this column that you weren't sure you belonged on Broadway. I imagine you are reinvigorated now.
Morton: I don't remember what the impetus was for saying that. If this was during the Taboo time, I was probably a little bitter [laughs]. Taboo was an exciting but also quite scathing experience, even though it was very good for me. There were remnants of shock after we closed, but I've just come off a short Broadway run with Cyrano, and it was great to get back to Broadway. I think I was interviewed at a time when Taboo was still fresh. It took a good two years for me to stop saying, "I hate them for what they did to Taboo! And by "them," I don't even know who "they" are anymore. Was it us? Was it Rosie? Was it the press? Who knows or even cares? It was four years ago now, but at the time it was pretty hard to get through, and I guess that was where that came from. But no, I am excited! And, I've been working on this workshop of a new musical called Behind the Limelight about the life story of Charlie Chaplin. Goodness knows where things go. There's a million workshops every week. 999,999 of them go nowhere, but it's exciting to be working on a piece of work that could be on Broadway, that may go out of town for three months. Even though it's only maybes, it does excite me, so I can safely say that I love Broadway.
Q: How engaged do you like to be with an audience?
Morton: Well, it's pretty unavoidable at the Algonquin. People are right there. But I like that. I like to be able to see people and relate to people. Most singers love the sound of their own voice [laughs]. There's nothing better than getting to sing to someone and know that they are enjoying it. It's a great feeling. It's great to share that with someone. It's horrible if the audience is hating it. You can't really hide in the Algonquin if they're not enjoying it, and they can't hide either. And if they are, then I like being up close to them. Places like Joe's Pub and the Metropolitan Room, those other sort of cabaret-type venues I've played before, they're also really close and really involved. You're really there with the audience. Continued...
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