Interview: Chad Doreck of 44, THE MUSICAL at Kirk Douglas Theatre

44, The unOfficial, unSanctioned Obama Musical, is a comedy starring award-winning film, theatre, and TV actor and singer Chad Doreck as Joe Biden.  You can see Chad Doreck starring on Dead Ringers (recurring opposite Rachel Weisz), HBO’s Grey Matter, Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood and the hit Netflix sitcom The Upshaws.   44 runs at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City through March 23rd.  Chad Doreck talks with Broadway World about playing former president Joe Biden.

How has 44 changed since you've come on? What has the process been for you?

It's changed enormously. I came on through our casting director, Michael Donovan, when we did the first workshop.  I was playing a character who's not in the show anymore. I was playing Mitt Romney.  And there was another man playing Joe Biden. And through some circumstance, he was no longer part of the show and they didn't know who they were gonna get for Joe. And they were like, we were thinking about you. And I was like, yeah, hey guys, come back to me in 30 years. And they were like, no, we think we can know a way to make it work. And they did. And the whole show shifted a little at that point. Because it went from being a little more literal to a little bit more, it's kind of unhinged in the best way possible.  I compare the comedy to like, South Park or Mel Brooks comedy, where like, it's like highbrow, lowbrow.  So the smarter you are, the funnier it is.

Eli [Bauman, composer, writer, and director of 44] is a genius.  I say that unabashedly and prolifically. I tell him all the time. His songwriting ability is excellent. Like in theater these days, we're lucky if you leave the show, being able to remember a song.  Not sing it, but remember it.  You sort of go like, okay, that was a nice two hours, I can't recall anything. But you'll be singing more than one song after you leave 44.  Eli’s songwriting is excellent. His lyric writing is unreal.  His rhyme schemes are at a level where it's like, Sondheim level rhymes, he's rhyming with the Battle of Antietam.  Nobody has ever rhymed Antietam with anything.  A civil war battle, and he's got a perfect rhyme for the battle of Antietam.  Delaware, he's got a perfect rhyme for Delaware that you'll never guess in a million years. You're like, how did your brain do that?

I've noticed such a trend in a lot of modern musicals for very tuneless songs. You know, they've become very  contemporary and flat and you can't remember the rhythm, there's not a powerful melody, there's not a hook. These 44 songs are super catchy.

I have people calling me up all the time, just like, “motherf*cking Obama!!!” Like six weeks later, they'll just call you up and be like, hey, I can't get this out of my head.

Were you political? Did you know a lot of this stuff going into it? Did you research stuff? How did you approach your character and the show?

How did I prepare for it? Honestly, this is gonna be so boring. I showed up to rehearsal, I had no idea what I was gonna do.  Whatsoever. I was 100% unprepared because I was like, do I just do it as me?  Yeah, because I can't do a really good impersonation.

You're infinitely younger for one thing.

And then slowly, actually what happened is the audience gave me my character. I feel like the hook into how I play him is I found his walk.

I love the shuffling you're doing.

Once I got the walk, a lot of things kind of fell into place. I came out on stage and I said my first lines and I smiled and I kind of had a blank look, a smile on my face and the audience laughed. So then I looked to the other side of the audience and they laughed again. I was like, oh, that's where the funny is, that's where the truth is.

Yeah, yeah, you come out and you do that like aw shucks, then that shuffle, it's really funny.

I just finished Biden’s first autobiography. He's not an aw shucks kind of guy.

No, he's not.

He's very ambitious. Yeah, very, very good public speaker. In fact, that's what he was criticized for mostly in his younger career, being too good. Like our governor now, people are like, you're a little too good, little too smart, you’re a little too polished.  Then as he aged, you know, as it happens to every generation, our phrases become antiquated and we start saying things like fiddlesticks and malarkey.  Then it becomes, you know, what's the word? You know, like you said, like aw shucks-y.

And I would always want him to come see the show and not feel that I was insulting him.  It's just in the most loving, satirical Saturday Night Live sort of way of saying these are your idiosyncrasies, and we're celebrating you and your idiosyncrasies.

A lot of the humor in the show is contrasting political culture with pop culture, especially urban pop culture.  Like Obama rapping, there's a dichotomy there. Joe Biden doing MC Hammer moves. So when I come out, this is a Janet Jackson move, and this is an MC Hammer move, it's all an homage to 80s, 90s, 2000s pop culture.

Your character is hilarious.

I can't wait for you to see the show.

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