Congratulations on the Tony nominations for yourself and the show as a whole…
We're proud of the whole show and we would have been just as proud of the show without any nominations just by seeing how much fun audiences are having.
Everything came together and for this show and all of the odds were against it. And not just the terrible loss of Peter Stone and Freddie (Ebb), but the challenge of doing a murder mystery, and doing a musical and putting them together – that's just nuts.
Plus, it's a traditional musical…
Exactly, to do a more traditional kind of musical, nowadays is a hard sell on its own so we were so lucky because we got producers that looked at the show and once they did, they understood the sensibility and how the show should be and didn't want to mess it up. I think that it's a contemporary piece in the clothing of an old-fashioned show.
You look like you're having the time of your life up there…
I'm having a ball bringing the character to life, because honestly it's such a good fit because I'm playing a guy who has a job that he loves, but has always wanted to be in a Broadway musical, and has the luck to be on stage with all of these people that he so admires and gets swept up in this thing which is just what happened to me watching the show. It's a very nice synchronicity.
Certainly that's been the case both in this show and in Spamalot, which should be making you all the more comfortable on stage and even less of a "fish out of water…"
As an actor certainly… People know me from "Frasier" and that's fine for the name recognition and bringing people in to see the show which is great. But, I think that it also helps that they know me and know that this isn't my normal neighborhood, so they feel that both the actor and the character are having the same out of body experience in this show. And to get to work and to be on stage with these people is great.
