Interview: David Burtka Gets Personal with BURTKA, DAVID at 54 Below

You may recognize David Burtka from his work in theatre, including his Broadway debut in the 2003 revival of Gypsy and his breakthrough performance off-Broadway in Edward Albee’s The Play About the Baby. Perhaps you’ve seen him mentoring the queens of Hulu’s “Drag Me to Dinner” or tried some of the recipes from his bestselling book Life is a Party. But you may never have seen him like this – turning the conventions of the cabaret structure upside down.

Directed by his husband Neil Patrick Harris, with musical direction by Seth Rudetsky, this show is something special and unique. Funny yet emotional, energetic yet raw – Burtka, David promises to be to be a head spinning night to remember at 54 Below. The show plays nightly from Wednesday November 20 to Saturday November 23 at 7 pm. Tickets are available on 54 Below’s website.

Read a conversation with David about the show.

[This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity]

What are you most looking forward to about your upcoming show at 54 Below?

I did this show 12 years ago. It was right before I did It Should Have Been You. It was kind of right when we got back from Los Angeles. I’d just moved back from L.A., and I was just getting back into the business, and I had little kids, they were three or four, and I did It Should Have Been You and I just realized, like, I can't raise kids and do eight shows a week or do this business. Neil wasn’t gonna stop working, and someone had to stay home with the kids. Like, I couldn't go take a job in Atlanta or go to Vancouver. So I took a big break from acting.

So this is like, really exciting for me. It's my big return to the stage for a while. I did some small things here and there, but this seems like it's a big jump for me. And I’m really excited because it's a really fun show. Neil’s directing. I've got some really great.. Seth Rudetsky  is my musical director and Kate Reinders and Nicholas Ward are doing backup.

It's not necessarily your typical cabaret where you just tell a story, sing a song, tell a story, sing a song. It's much more of a theater piece because it has a narrative that is sort of turned up on its head.

And I go into deep details about some really personal stuff in my life and how I've been affected by the change that's happened in the last 12 years. So, I'm excited. My kids are going to be in it. My son Gideon is going to be doing a little acting thing in it, and my daughter and I sing a duet together, so that's great. I'm really looking forward to it.

What was it like returning to that piece and revising it?

Well, you know, I threw out, like, six songs. I'm doing like, six or eight new songs or something like that. Maybe not that many, but I'm doing a lot of new material. I'm in a much different place. It really follows my journey to sobriety, and it's a real commentary on how drugs and alcohol sort of affect your life, and how they can deal with your downfall. I've been eight years sober, and this was 12 years ago, so I’m in a very different place than I was before. We changed the title. It's called Burtka, David: Wearily We Roll Along. So if you know much about theater, there's a little hint in there for you about what the show is about.

Can you tell us a little about what’s on the song setlist?
Well, I'm doing a food medley, which is fun because I ended up becoming, full-fledged trained chef and I had a catering company, so I do a whole fun food medley with a song called “Growing Boy” from, a flop of a musical by Alan Menken called Babe, and that's paired with “Come On-A My House,” an old Rosemary Clooney standard. And “I Can Cook Too” from On the Town. And then, I do “All I Need Is the Girl,” and I do some fun Frank Sinatra standards, some Dean Martin. And I do some of the old stuff too, that I used to do. So, it's fun. A little bit of rock and roll. And  my daughter and I are singing on the Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra song “Somethin' Stupid” which I think is a sweet moment in the show.

How does it feel to be doing this as kind of like a family production with your kids in it and your husband directing?
Working with my husband is great. He's the smartest person I know. So, it's nice. We have a rapport, and we finish each other's sentences, so we know what we're thinking. Doing scene work and stuff has been interesting because we know each other so well, so I get where he's coming from and he gets where I'm coming from.

And my kids are interesting, you know, we'll see how they do. This is their first real live performance, so I don’t want to put too much pressure on them, but they said they’d do it. My son is in the Lee Strasberg acting school for after-school stuff, and my daughter really likes to sing, and she works with a private lesson coach but, you know, the last time she sang was at Mariska Hargitay’s birthday party a while back, but that that was about it. [laughs] Her best friend Amaya Hermann
is Mariska’s daughter. But, other than that, she hasn't she hasn't done anything to this caliber.

What was the impetus for doing this at this moment? What made you decide now is the time to bring this back?

Well, you know, it was like Covid when, you know, I had a Food Network show ready to be signed, like the contract was ready to be signed for me to do. And Covid hit and I realized, like, what am I doing with my life? I just don't want to be cooking anymore. I don't want to be doing stuff on TV, cooking. I enjoy it as a hobby but once it became a vocation and this is like, what I'm going to be doing... I didn't like the “David” persona of the cooking world.

So, I really wanted to go back to my first love, theater and musical theater and acting, you know, telling stories and affecting people and moving people and being able to pass on service in terms of helping people through things. So it really was yearning for what I love to do and what really makes me happy.

And so, I started writing a couple of TV shows and then I started getting myself back out there and auditioning. I've been doing some benefits and things like this, but the business is really tough right now. There's not much going on after Covid and the strike happened. I think we're in a really odd place in the business for TV and film. No one’s buying much of anything in the business right now, no one’s really making really new content. There's some stuff, of course, going on, but few and far between.

So I thought, let's just do something. Let's just be creative and get myself back out there and do 54 again and see where I’m at.

Is there anything else that you'd like to add about the show?
I'm just super excited. It's very non-conventional. Like I said before, it sort of takes the genre and sort of flips it on its end. It's funny, but it's also got a lot of really serious moments. And it's just a great space. 54 Below I think has some of the best acoustics in the city. They get the best sound. They really do. And it's a really fun night. I hope people enjoy themselves.

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Tickets to Burtka, David are available on 54 Below’s website.

Follow David Burtka on Instagram @DBelicious.

Header photo credit: David Urbanke

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