Interview: Where I Was Meant To Be: Chatting with Matt Farcher

On a stage, of course! You only have to watch the twenty-five year-old actor inhabit a character, take possession of a story, and let loose with his emotive voice to understand his assertion. Matt Farcher is currently poised to make his debut at Maine State Music Theatre on June 29 as Che in Andrew Lloyd-Webber-Tim Rice's epic musical Evita, but in the short time since he has performed professionally, he already boasts a resume replete with challenging and diverse leading roles and a career that has taken him off-Broadway and to leading regional theatres across America.

His appearance at MSMT marks a series of firsts for the actor - debuts in the role and at the theatre, his first opportunity to work with director Marc Robin, and it is, he adds with delight, also his first stay in Brunswick - "a beautiful little town and a beautiful state." He is finding the entire experience stimulating. Of Robin's rehearsal process for the mammoth forty-six person cast, he says, " I have never experienced the speed of blocking that we did for this show. On the first day Marc had booklets for everyone with all our movement mapped out, and we plunged right in."

Farcher finds Evita a fascinating assignment and a show that he views as especially relevant with America's current political climate. "There is a kind of irony in the fact that this is a year when we have a woman running for the Presidency, and there are also the elements of the fanatic fanfare that attached itself to Eva in the current electoral politics. It's not our job to point to these things; we are here to tell a particular story, but it just happens to correlate, and whatever your own political philosophy, you can find some relationship to the show. The current context also gives us another source of learning and helps us better understand the characters."

Playing Che, who serves the play as a kind of Greek chorus, as well as a series of individual characters, makes a complex challenge. Farcher explains: "Marc told me that everytime I am on stage, I have one of three perspectives. I can be Che, the narrator, giving information from his perspective; I have an activist side, and then I portray several different characters like the waiter, each of whom has his own view point. So I am dealing with both ambiguity and strong opinions, and it is interesting for me to go in and out of these masks."

Asked about how this production will handle the character of Che - as a reference to Che Guevara as it had been in Hal Prince's production or simply as an anonymous figure as it was in the film version - Farcher replies: "I think this will bring it back toward the original. Marc is a firm believer that they got it right the first time, so he is going to stay true to the script and then let Che go in and out of the other minor characters he plays to tell the rest of the story. Our production is not super showy or extravagant; every moment propels the story forward and is true to the book. Che Guevara and Eva Peron actually never interacted in real life, but I think it is a smart choice to use him as the narrator because he was such an activist and voice of the people, and he truly contrasted to Eva, who claims to be, but is also driven by her desire for power."

Farcher continues, saying that throughout the rehearsal process, "I have been finding my own opinion on Eva. Sometimes I catch myself staring as I watch Kate [Fahrner] perform. She gets invested so quickly, and it is very powerful. But then I have to remember that I am Che and think of how he would see her."

The role not only contains these subtle layers of perspective, but it poses a big vocal challenge as well. "There is a great deal of music - difficult music with lots of recits. You sometimes have to pick a note out of the air and sing a crazy melody line. Every word Che sings is said with a reason and furthers the plot, so you have to convey that meaning. What he sounds like is less important than telling the story. And then, too, my music is less well-known than hers, so I have to make it count."

Farcher need not worry on that score. He possesses a remarkably powerful, expressive instrument capable of shading, nuance, and sheer visceral ring. It was a talent he first discovered in high school, and one he cherishes with care. "A singing voice is a gift, and I thought it would be a big disservice not to explore it. My first love had been baseball, and I had trained all my life to be good at the sport. But vocals came naturally to me, and so I thought I was meant to find this."

The actual discovery took place in his junior year at a private Catholic school in the small Upstate New York town of Saugerties. "My brother and sister had always been involved in the school musicals, and my brother volunteered me. I was cast as the Ziegfield tenor in Follies, and that's when I realized I could sing. In my senior year we did LES MISERABLES, and I played Valjean. [There is a You Tube video from that production in which seventeen-year-old Farcher gives such a polished and moving account of "Bring Him Home" that would make any older, professional proud to call his own.] That's when I decided to go for a B.F.A. in college."

He auditioned for the program at PACE and spent the next four years immersed in musical theatre and reveling in the New York theatre scene. "I got lucky at school in that I was cast in quote a few of the productions. I learned how to put up a show quickly, how to dive into adult parts as a younger person, how to sing pop and legit. I became very flexible." The actor says he also appreciated the nurturing environment he found at PACE. "This is a tough business, and you learn that at school. But PACE's program was also not run as a competition; it was a family." Among his mentors to whom he is grateful, he lists Amy Rogers, Director of the B.F.A.Musical Theatre program, as being "Mom number two" and his "amazing voice teachers, Robert Sussuma and Tom Burke, who showed me what my voice could do and how malleable it could be."

That flexibility has proved an invaluable asset for Farcher as he began to audition for professional engagements in the very few years since he left university. Since 2012 he has built an impressive and eclectic resume that speaks to his performing range. "I like to bounce between different styles, and I love the way things have played themselves out. I don't feel I have been typed, and I have been able to get some cool parts." Among these in recent years have been Enjolras at Florida's Maltz Jupiter Theatre, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast on national tour, his breakout performance as the disco waiter in the off-Broadway production of Disaster, and the title role in a new Frank Wildhorn musical, The Count of Monte Cristo at Utah's Pioneer Theatre Company.

He chats about these last two experiences. "Disaster was like doing Saturday Night Live skits. Jack Plotnick, the director, gave us lots of freedom to ad lib and to work with some of the jokes, because it was already a pretty solid script when we got it. It is a very joke heavy show with puns, old references, and when you have Mary Testa - she's the queen of comedy - and Jennifer Simard, who was nominated for a Tony, you know it is going to be hilarious. Of course, as Chad, I was playing the ingénue love interest and had to stay true to the emotional conflicts of the love story, but I still had so much fun."

Of the Wildhorn musical directed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge in which he plays Edmund Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo, Farcher says he also was given a great deal of freedom and permitted to have input into the script rewrites. "It was being translated back from the German production, and naturally the U.S. audience is very different, but she told us to do whatever we needed to make the transitions believable and to be as emotionally available as we should." Farcher also says he loves Wildhorn's music. "It is stunning! There is an attempt to bring a contemporary flair to the score and the story. The music is like a pop opera; very epic like Jekyll and Hyde and The Scarlet Pimpernel [for which Wildhorn also wrote the music]. He adds that he would love to see this show go on and he would love to reprise his role, but as with so many things in the theatre business, there are no guarantees.

So what next after Evita in Maine? "I am going to go back to New York and find an agent, and I would love to work in the city again before the end of the year because I have been working regionally for a while, and it will be nice to be home and hang out with my family." New York, in fact, has played a big part in shaping his vocation as an actor. "When I was at PACE and began to wonder if I had made the right decision to pursue this career, I would take myself uptown and see a Broadway show. And then I would realize this is where I was meant to be."

Watching Matt Farcher become Che on stage in Evita only confirms that decision. He is completely invested in the character's psyche, capable of the chameleon twists, the searing intensity, the seething anger, the sardonic wit. Moving with the sinuous grace of a panther and singing with trenchant force, this is a Che to be reckoned with - a thrilling match for Kate Fahrner's mesmerizing Eva and a testament to the wish Farcher voices in concluding our conversation. " I hope," he says, "that the audience will be able to decide for itself which party they feel for the most - for Evita or for the people represented by Che. I hope they discover their own truth in the story, just as we do on stage."

Photos courtesy MSMT, Roger S. Duncan photographer, and Matt Farcher/via Facebook, and Broadway World /via Facebook (Count of Monte Cristo)

Evita runs at MSMT from June 29-July 16 at the Pickard Theatre, 1 Bath Road, Brunswick, ME. www.msmt.org 207-725-8769

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