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.
Forty years ago on this day Tony Roberts took the stage for the opening of How Now, Dow Jones (1967). He would earn a Tony Award nomination for his portrayal of Charley Matson the show’s suicidal central figure who finds the key to his success is “Gawk, Tousle and Shucks”.
The tall, curly-headed actor who is currently appearing on Broadway in Xanadu (2007) has had quite a bountiful career on the stage and on the screen. In 1969 he earned a second Tony Award nomination for the part of Dick Christie in Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam (1969).
Roberts would team up with Allen again for the film version of Play It Again, Sam (1972). Roberts WASPy persona was the ultimate antagonist to Allen’s nebbishy anti-hero and the two ended up doing five more pictures together over the next decade and a half.
On stage, Roberts’ has given many original starring performances, but the length of his resume nearly doubles when you add the number of roles that he has stepped into over the years as a replacement – the replacement star of the stars. He’s currently playing a god on the Great White Way, but with 22 Broadway credits to his name you, it makes you wonder if he himself might be some sort of theatre deity.
Alright, here goes:
1) Tony Roberts starred in How Now, Dow Jones with Fran Stevens
2) Fran Stevens was in Cry for Us All with Charles Rule
3) Charles Rule was the original Policeman in The Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford.
“Will everyone here
Kindly step to the rear
And let a winner lead the way.”
…Charley Matson in How Now, Dow Jones
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.
