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.
On this day in 1964 Martin Sheen originated the role
of Timmy Cleary in the play The Subject was Roses for
which he was nominated for a Tony Award (he went on
to recreated the role in the 1968 movie version). Sheen
had made his Broadway debut earlier that year in the
short-lived farce Never Live Over a Pretzel Factory.
He was born Ramón Estévez on August 3,
1940 in Dayton, OH. His father disapproved of his desire
to be an actor and Sheen is purported to have intentionally
flunked his entrance exam to the University of Dayton
so that he could move to New York to pursue his acting
career instead.
The gamble paid off. Sheen’s stage appearances
have been limited but he has enjoyed enormous successes
on the big and small screens. Perhaps two of his most
well know performances are that of Captain Benjamin
Willard in Apocalypse Now(1979) and President Josiah
Bartlet in the TV series The West Wing (1999 – 2006).
Now to connect him to the Phantom:
1) Martin Sheen starred in the ’91 revival of
The Crucible with Danielle Ferland
2) Danielle Ferland did Sunday in the Park with George
with Cris Groenendaal.
3) Cris Groenendaal was the original “Monsieur
André” in The Phantom of the Opera with
Michael Crawford.
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.
