This is a weekly feature on BroadwayLiving.com. It’s
just like the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. You
know how it goes…someone throws out an actor’s
name and you have to try to connect them to Kevin Bacon
in six steps or less.
I thought it might be fun to do
the same thing with the theater’s luminaries. I
will be trying to connect them to the longest running
show in Broadway
history, The Phantom of the Opera and its
very first “Phantom”, Michael Crawford.
Happy Birthday to Antonio Banderas! He was born
on this day in 1960 in Málaga, Spain.
Mainly know for his work on the
big screen, Antonio Banderas first developed his
acting skills on the stage. At
the age of 14 he began acting with a small theater
company in his home town of Málaga. During
La Movida Madrileña (The Madrid Movement), a
period of cultural awakening in Spain following the
death of Francisco Franco in 1975, Banderas moved to
Madrid and became a member of the National Theater
of Spain. It was while he was an actor there
that he was first introduced to up and coming film
director Pedro Almodóvar.
Together with Almodóvar, he made several Spanish-language
films that brought him to the attention of Hollywood,
particularly 1988’s Woman on the Verge of
a Nervous Breakdown. He made his U.S. film
debut in The Mambo Kings (1992), a film for
which he had to learn his lines phonetically, having
not yet mastered English.
In 1996 Antonio got a chance to show off his singing
voice when he took on the role of Che in the movie
version of Evita. Then after singing
at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 50th Birthday Celebration
in 1998 it was rumored that he had been cast as the
Phantom for the movie of Phantom of the Opera (2004). In
the end that role went to Gerard Butler.
Antonio returned to his roots on
the stage in 2003 when he made his Broadway debut
as Guido Contini in
Roundabout’s revival of Nine. The
show is his one and only appearance on the Great White
Way, although last year it was reported that plans
were in the works for Banderas to return to Broadway
in the title role of a musical version of the movie, Don
Juan DeMarco. Only time will tell.
1) Antonio Banderas did
the 2003 revival of Nine with
Saundra Santiago.
2) Saundra Santiago was in Chronicle of a Death Foretold with
Luis Perez.
3) Luis Perez was the original “Slave Master in Hannibal”in The
Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford.
“Find another genius,
I can’t be one or become one.
I can’t even tell how I’d begin.
…Guido
in Nine
So that’s the game. Join
me each week as I try to come up with new ways of
connecting Michael
Crawford to the entire theater community.
