GYPSY OF THE MONTH: Bernard Dotson of 'Chicago'

"Ensemble Vet Subs for Superstar!" So it doesn't have the scandal-mongering ring of "They Both Reached for the Gun!" But just like Roxie Hart, Bernard Dotson had his name suddenly splashed across newspapers. This being 2006 New York and not 1920s Chicago, it was splashed across websites and TV reports as well. No jazz and liquor started it all, though, just Usher's strep throat.

When an ailing Usher had to bow out of the Billy Flynn role eight days early last month, Dotson the understudy took over the role. Chicago's box office receipts had skyrocketed as much as 50 percent during Usher's run, and excited young fans were thronging the stage door nightly to see the hip-hop star. Roxie may relish her moment in the limelight, but what would it be like for Bernard?

"All understudies have that dreaded thing if you're going on for a star that the audience doesn't know in time so they have to make that live announcement that says 'The role of Billy Flynn will be played by Bernard Dotson' and then you hear that 'AWWW!' echoing through the whole theater, and you don't know if you're going to get people throwing stuff at you," Dotson reflected two weeks after he was thrust into the showbiz headlines.

There would be no groans or projectile tomatoes. Just reaffirmation for Dotson that he's lucky to be in the Chicago family. "What I have learned is that the support of the cast, the crew, the orchestra is so incredibly strong, and when you've done something a long time you really have to go with what you know and go with your own ability and feel the love and support of the people that work in this building," says Dotson, who's appeared in four other Broadway shows and been featured, solo and close-up, in full-page ads for FedEx and NYU.

The Chicago audiences who came for Usher may have missed out on seeing a Grammy-winning heartthrob, but they still got a Billy they might know from television. Dotson has been on The View three times since Rosie O'Donnell began cohosting in September. As one of her "Broadway boys," he's sung and danced with the Keebler Elf, backed Donny Osmond and the Beauty and the Beast cast in serenading Barbara Walters on her birthday, and sang all about "SheetzuCacaPoopoo" when cohost Joy Behar's children's book with that title was published. He's also danced in commercials for Verizon and eBay and performed "Roxie" with Paige Davis on the Today show.

Neither playing Billy Flynn nor filling in for a headliner is new for Dotson. During his first few months with the show—in the Las Vegas production in mid-1999—he went on for Ben Vereen in the role. He subbed for Huey Lewis (who rejoins the Broadway cast Nov. 20) last fall. In the spring of 2005, he had the part for over a week while Brent Barrett took a break. Dotson recalls only one time he didn't feel completely welcome. "I did have one incident where I'd gone on for Wayne Brady. Made the entrance—'Is everybody here? Is everybody ready?'—and all of a sudden I hear 'That's not Wayne Brady!'"

He responded the same way he did when he had to replace Usher. "You just stay in the moment and go. If you are honest and true to what you're doing, by the end of that first number the audience is with you for the rest of the show," he says, adding, "That's been the most incredible thing to me."

Dotson's usual part in Chicago includes playing the doctor who "verifies" Roxie's pregnancy and the judge at her trial, doing the tap dance specialty in Act 1, and dancing all those great Fosse numbers like "All That Jazz." He's also played the ensemble roles of Harry and Aaron and danced the "Me and My Baby" trio during his tenure in Chicago, which started with four months in Las Vegas. He was in the Broadway cast for most of 2001, then worked on other projects for a year and a half before joining the Chicago tour in spring 2003. He came back to the Broadway company that September and has remained ever since. Dotson will been on stage Nov. 14 when Chicago celebrates its 10th anniversary with a gala reunion performance, and he has no plans to leave the show anytime soon.

He hasn't been aggressively pursuing other jobs for a number of reasons. First of all, he states, "This is a genius show." Furthermore, "Everybody [in the ensemble] has features in this show. There's moments where we all get an opportunity to stand out." Also taken into consideration are maturity ("There just comes a time when I'm not really interested in running from show to show to show") and mortgage (he bought a house two years ago in Asbury Park, N.J.)—plus his additional duties as dance captain. "I have the privilege of putting the Billys in the show. I get to rehearse with all the guys that come in," Dotson says. This has been both a personally and professionally enriching experience, as he is now friends with such former Billys as Lewis and John O'Hurley.

Dotson's staying put with Chicago contrasts sharply with his globe-trotting early days as a performer, when he was a Disney go-to guy for international special events, costarred in a European tour of Sophisticated Ladies and played Richie in A Chorus Line in Korea. Before he got to do all that, he had to jump off the corporate ladder and redirect his life. Dotson received a business degree from Long Beach State and worked five years for retailer Robinsons-May (now Macy's). At age 25, he was employed as an executive in their credit department when the movie A Chorus Line came out. "I went to see it, and all of a sudden something hit me, touched me a great deal," he says. "That was when I decided I was going to give this a shot. I decided: Okay, I'm going to go out and be a dancer. I had some friends that were involved in show business, and they encouraged me because I was so excited about them." One of his friends lent him money to get by on a reduced salary (he switched to a non-executive job so he'd have a regular 9-to-5 schedule) and pay for the 12 dance classes he was taking every week. Until that point, Dotson's only dance training had been imitating the moves he saw on Soul Train and his performing had been limited to school and church choirs and a few musicals in high school.

Six months after he started studying dance, he tried out for Disney—and was one of 10 performers chosen from 700 auditionees. The gig was "American Music Express," a promotional revue presented at travel industry functions throughout Europe. Dotson, who'd never been outside U.S. before, traveled to nine countries, performing in 22 cities. When he returned to the States, he was cast in a Christmas show at Disneyland. A year after he'd embarked on his dance career, he was able to pay back his friend in full.

Dotson continued to work for Disney on and off for over a decade. He spent two summers at Tokyo Disneyland but mostly did shows created for corporate events. He was thrilled he got to sing Sebastian the crab's songs "Kiss the Girl" and "Under the Sea" on stage just as the movie The Little Mermaid soared in popularity. During this time, his home base was Los Angeles, where he'd been born and raised, and his theater work included Jesus Christ Superstar at Long Beach Civic Light Opera, Five Guys Named Moe at La Mirada Theatre (he was No Moe), the tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat ("one of my favorite shows to do") starring Sam Harris, and the musical Lunch at several regional theaters. Then he was in the world premiere of Ragtime in Toronto.

It turned out to be the show that brought him to New York. He arrived the day after Thanksgiving in 1997, in advance of Ragtime's Broadway opening a couple of months later. He still vividly recalls the day of his Broadway debut—a wintry day he'd never have seen in L.A. "I remember waking up and flurries had started to drop out of the sky and the branches were just getting filled," he says. "I remember sitting on the telephone on my window sill talking to one of my best friends. I said, 'I'm so incredibly emotional right now.' It was so unbelievably exciting for me that day."

There would be many more highlights in the years to come. He was both dance and fight captain for the 2000 Jesus Christ Superstar revival, performed in the all-star 20th-anniversary benefit concert of Dreamgirls in 2001 and had a solo in 2002's Sweet Smell of Success. Marvin Hamlisch and Craig Carnelia, the show's composer and lyricist, crafted the song ("Laughin' All the Way to the Bank") especially for him to sing in a nightclub scene. "I remember being in the room with them and sort of looking around and going, 'Wow! This is un-be-lievable.' Meeting these people for the very first time, and being in the room with them, and them tailoring the song for you was…crazy," Dotson says. He still has a cassette tape recording of the workshop session.

He reunited with Hamlisch and Carnelia for Imaginary Friends, the play with music starring Swoosie Kurtz and Cherry Jones as Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. Unfortunately, both Sweet Smell and Imaginary Friends had very brief Broadway runs. To Dotson, the failures were both unpredictable and unwarranted. Of Sweet Smell of Success, he says: "I believe in that show, I just don't think that at the time it came out it was really given the fair chance that it should have. We were working with some top-notch people…we just worked so hard and felt so incredibly passionate about it—and the passion was about the workshop. So when the full-blown production started to happen and there were changes being made, more characters were added, all kinds of things going on, you just feel amazing that you're part of something new. In the midst of it, you become attached because you think the material is so great. So when the reviews came out, it was a bit devastating."

Nonetheless, helping to create new shows has brought lasting pride and pleasure. "You get those CDs with your name on them, all those souvenir programs and you're the ones that are in the pictures…," Dotson says. Ragtime audiences may also remember him from some personal interaction. He hosted the educational program before Wednesday matinees that gave school groups a behind-the-scenes look at the show's development, from book adaptation to costume design. Because of that gig, he was invited to do the opening announce for a Rosie O'Donnell Show episode in March 1998. During his on-air chitchat with Rosie, he told her, "You're my Barbra Streisand."

Through the years, Dotson has continued to feel such awed enthusiasm when working with Chicago's parade of stars or famous artists in other productions. "I'm a kid in a candy store," he confesses. "I'm literally wide-eyed and like, 'Omigod!' and starstruck."

Bernard with a couple of Billys and a Roxie: Huey Lewis, Wayne Brady, Rita Wilson. [Photo of Bernard in Chicago by Paul Kolnik.]