ROAR OF THE GREASEPAINT: A 'Ragtime' Reunion

Quentin Earl Darrington and Marcia Milgrom Dodge were all set to become the new toasts of Broadway last year. A production of Ragtime directed by Dodge and starring Darrington as Coalhouse Walker Jr. had received rave reviews when it was produced by the Kennedy Center in Washington in the spring of 2009. New York critics loved it too when it opened on Broadway in mid-November.

Within weeks of Ragtime’s Broadway opening, however, the theater community was shocked by buzz that the acclaimed revival was filling less than two thirds of its seats and would close soon. Even more shocking was the subsequent confirmation that the show would indeed shutter right after the holidays. Despite its abbreviated run, the Ragtime revival was not forgotten months later and garnered a slew of nominations from the Tonys, Drama Desk and Drama League. (In D.C., Dodge had won one of Ragtime’s four Helen Hayes Awards and Darrington was nominated.)

The director and actor—who both made their Broadway debuts with Ragtime—are reuniting this week for a concert staging off-Broadway of The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd, Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse’s 1965 allegorical musical skewering social and economic injustice. Dodge is directing Roar of the Greasepaint for the York Theatre Company’s Musicals in Mufti series, with Darrington in a supporting role. The lead roles of Sir and Cocky are played, respectively, by Jim Brochu (Drama Desk Award winner for Zero Hour) and Josh Grisetti.

I interviewed Darrington, a.k.a. “Q,” and Dodge at York’s theater on Monday afternoon. It was their first day of rehearsals for a show that will have five performances starting Friday. Click here for tickets to Roar of the Greasepaint and more about the Mufti series.

So, how is it to be working together again?
QUENTIN: It’s something I was looking forward to, whether it was this project or any other. It’s a pleasure and a joy. It already feels like home, just from our talks over the phone as we prepared for the first rehearsal. It felt like we were back in the same old socks again with the holes—the good socks, not the smelly ones. 

MARCIA: I’m in love with Quentin. And my husband knows, and I think my husband’s a little in love with him too, so it’s okay.

QUENTIN: She’s extremely funny, and extremely wise, and extremely skilled at what she does. Those three things are powerful, but on top of that, she has a charisma and an openness with people that invites you to do your best. It’s something she exudes when she speaks with you, when she embraces you, when she directs you—whatever she’s doing—there’s a brilliance about the way she invites you in. You feel and know you’re welcome and you can do anything, and you will be at your best. There’s a confidence and a strength that’s there in Marcia, and it really does make me feel at peace. It just feels like home.

Marcia, how did you discover Quentin?
Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens knew him because he had done Paper Mill Playhouse’s production of Ragtime. So when we were casting and looking for Coalhouse, they said, “You gotta hear this guy, you gotta hear this guy. You won’t believe his voice—he’s amazing.” And the great thing about it is he had done the show when he was really young, and when I got him, he was a father of three, so his growth as a man as well as a performer was fantastic, and the right fit for Ragtime.

And what about casting him in Roar of the Greasepaint?
This is a no-brainer. I knew Quentin would be game and get to sing an amazing song. He will bring soul and beauty to this song, “Feeling Good,” which is a declaration of independence.
It’s one of my all-time favorite shows. It was the first musical I ever did in college; I played an urchin. My husband did it in high school—he played Sir—and when we met, it was a little strange to find a soul mate who shared your love of Newley-Bricusse musicals. This was the ’70s in Ann Arbor, but we were Anthony Newley fans! So I have great affection [for the show]. 

Quentin, were you familiar with the show?
No, I wasn’t. I’d heard of the show, of course, and the writers, and I knew a lot of the songs, but I didn’t really know what was going on in the script. I took a look at it and saw that there were some parallels to Waiting for Godot, and just an old, different style that we don’t see a lot now in theater. So I was thrilled to jump in and see what Marcia’s vision was going to be for it.

What about casting the leads, Marcia?
I met Jim Brochu because we kept showing up at all the awards events. We didn’t get to meet in Washington, D.C., but we saw each other—we both won Helen Hayes Awards. Then we found each other at the Drama Desks. I just went over to him and said, “Hi, I wanted to meet you.” And he said, “Do you want to direct if I could put together a reading of The Roar of the Greasepaint?” Brochu has so much history, with his having watched the show when he was a young man selling concessions in the lobby [during the show’s Broadway run in 1965]. And his Zero Mostel portrayal, which is full-bodied and bigger than life...Sir is certainly that.
Josh and I have known each other—I directed him in Grease several years ago at Music Circus in California. He and I just got to do How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying together out in Los Angeles. We had a two-week rehearsal process for that. Grisetti is quite a special talent. He’s a remarkable comic actor, very schooled in the techniques that are exploited in this show. 

What’s it like getting a show ready on four days’ rehearsal?
MARCIA: “Sweet are the uses of adversity...” I’m not intimidated by the process at all. Music Circus is a theater that I’ve worked at for about 10 years, and we start on a Wednesday, do a run-through on Monday, tickets are up on Tuesday, and we open the following Tuesday. So I’m used to working fast. I like to work fast, I like to get things up fast—and then be able to go back. So that’ll be the challenge, if we ever get to go back. 

Some people think this show became unproduceable. Do you consider it dated?
MARCIA: The score is fantastic and very much worth hearing and presenting. The book is a product of its time, and it’s like the absurdist writers of the day, like Ionesco and Beckett, who wrote about the human condition. I’m treating it that way. What’s fun about it is the vaudeville quality—how it highlights our faults through comedy and satire. I’m one of the people who think we have a class system, that we’re made up of haves and have-nots, so the story to me is very relevant considering the times we’re living in now. On some levels it’s dated, and on some levels it could have been written today because, unfortunately, we’re dealing with the same issues. Mr. Bricusse explained to me that it comes on the heels of a postapocalyptic event, and that the characters are starting life again. They’ve survived, but they’ve survived with these differences, represented by Sir and Cocky. And the urchins are sort of like the rubble, they’re just scrambling around, and they obviously are going to migrate to the guy who’s feeding them and taking care of them. So they’re aligned with Sir in the beginning, and then the book nicely shifts. It is a parable, it is a morality tale, and I think it’s all very worth looking at in 2010.
[Dodge met Leslie Bricusse through Ian Fraser, the original arranger/music director of Newley-Bricusse musicals, whom she worked with on Simeon’s Gift—a musical based on a children’s book by Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, for which Fraser composed the score.]

What about your character, Quentin, who’s just named “The Negro”?
That term may be dated. “Negro” was used more often then that it is now, even though it’s still a legit term. We took some liberties with that. It’s quite interesting that he was given the name “The Negro” in the original book, but it’s never referenced in the play at all. He’s never called or referred to as The Negro; it’s just in the cast list and stage directions. It adds a level of mystery and importance to the show altogether. 

MARCIA: He’s treated as a have-not, he’s treated as a second-class citizen. But, because of the plot and the events of the play, there is a moment of victory for this character. When I read it, I was very trepidacious, like, “Oh, no, here comes the scene with ‘The N’... Oh, please, let it not be horrible.” And then I was like, “Ta-da! There’s a victory in there.” So that’s great.

QUENTIN: I love it. It is very similar to what’s still going on—the fact that life can be allegorical to a game board, and [there are] moves that you make for position, goals that you want, things that are in the way of getting what you want, and you have a system that is devised either to help you or to break you, to stop you.

MARCIA: Absolutely. Well-put.

Quentin, is this character at all a kindred spirit of Coalhouse Walker?
Hmm... When I was first offered the piece and started to read through and think about it, Coalhouse never came to mind. I think it was due to my process in approaching new work: I try to come in neutral. I’m inspired by Tom Hanks’ acceptance speech when he won the Oscar for Philadelphia. I watched it and was in tears, and I revisit it quite often. He said his high school teacher taught him years ago to “act well the part, for therein lies the glory.” That has resonated with me since day one. That is my stamp: I want to do good work. I don’t care about the glitz and glamour, or anything that comes along with it. I just care about the work. So coming in neutrally and open and ready to receive is my approach. As we go forward and investigate the character and jump into staging, I’m sure there will be some references pulled from Coalhouse to create this character.

Now that nearly a year has passed, does Ragtime’s quick closing still hurt?
MARCIA: We’re all a bit reeling still. I mean, the Broadway on Broadway event, the Broadway Flea Market [which both just took place]—last year at this time we were all involved...it’s hard. We feel very sad, because we feel that we deserve to be running. I will never understand what happened. I don’t want to blame it on “no stars," because everybody in my production should be stars—I think stars are made.
The bottom line is, I’m incredibly grateful. The response from the Broadway community was thrilling, and then to be recognized with so many award nominations. I will be forever grateful to the producers for taking a risky venture and bringing us in, and I will be forever sad that we didn’t get to enjoy a long run.
I had a student ask me about 10 years ago, Have I ever had to adjust my dreams? I had adjusted my dream of going to Broadway many years ago, and I was content. I have a very busy career as a regional director and choreographer; I’ve gotten to work with some of the great people of the theater, including Stephen Sondheim; I make a living in the theater. To me, that was my success barometer. I’ve always wished it from afar, but I just never was invited to work on Broadway. So when it actually did happen, I was floating, just sort of hovering above the ground and enjoying the experience. And not for a moment did I think we would open and close so fast. The response in the audience was unlike anything I’ve witnessed in a theater. It was a collective experience between the audience and the performers.  

QUENTIN: I was absolutely devastated. We had done, I believe, some life-changing work, and that to me was gold. Getting the chance to just do it at the Kennedy Center was unbelievable—we had no idea we were going to Broadway. We went to Broadway, and when we found out we were closing, I didn’t want to believe it. There were rumors about it at first, and then there was caution. I just wouldn’t believe it: “No way, this show is too good, too phenomenal. It will not close.” Lo and behold, the producer came in and gathered us up and gave us the message, and my heart sunk. And all I knew from that point on is that every performance I wanted to give 100,000 percent. Something at that moment switched inside of me. I didn’t know if I would ever get the chance to tell the story again. Ragtime was always my favorite musical, since I was a student. I just wanted to give it everything that I had, and leaving it, my head was held high. But very, very sad—even now. I think it was one of the greatest shows, if not the greatest, on Broadway at the time.

Have you gotten to know Brian Stokes Mitchell, the original Coalhouse?
We met a few times. He was so generous and so wonderful. We first met at the Broadway Flea Market last year. He looked at me and said, “How you doing, Coalhouse?!” Calling me Coalhouse. It was an honor. And then, during tech rehearsals, he came to the theater and kind of snuck in and left a letter for me in my dressing room. He was congratulating me on the part and wishing me the best in my career. It was so humbling. And then of course I saw him opening night. 

You recently met Martin Luther King’s daughter Bernice, his sister and other relatives when you were playing Dr. King in the new musical I Dream in Atlanta. What was that like?
Meeting the King family was one of the greatest experiences I’ve had. It’s one thing knowing the beautiful legacy of Dr. King—reading books and seeing him speak on television and hearing recordings—but it’s another thing to be face to face with humans that were deeply connected to him that talk to you, hug you, feel you. Initially, we had a showcase, and the family was there. After that first showing, all of them stayed to speak with us. We sat in a big circle, and they allowed us to ask any question we wanted to—about Dr. King himself, about the times, about the experiences, about the death, about anything in the family. We learned so much that you’ll never read in history books, that no one’s known before.

Such as...?
One is that Dr. King loved to sing, and he sang all the time. Dr. King loved to play practical jokes on people. He called his wife Cory. He would go up behind her and grab her while she was cooking or cleaning dishes or something and kiss her on the cheek. He always played with her; Cory was his pet name for her. And the family said that if anyone called him Martin—like, if anyone came up to you and said, “I knew Martin when blah blah blah...”—they never knew him. Because only the outside called him Martin, or Dr. King. His friends and family called him ML. 

The two of you have another show together immediately after Greasepaint. Tell us about it.
MARCIA: I’ve grabbed Q and Josh and Jim for a benefit I’m doing on Monday, October 4th, which is called Born for Broadway. All the proceeds go to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. We’ll be at New World Stages. Kathie Lee Gifford is our host, and I’ve corralled several of the Ragtime performers including Christiane Noll, Bobby Steggert, Robert Petkoff and four of the children, who played the little boy and the little girl and their understudies. Included in the evening will be Malcolm Gets and Christopher Sieber and John Tartaglia and Chad Kimball and Orfeh and Leigh Ann Larkin, and some up-and-comers who haven’t got Tony nominations yet! My sister Carole Lasser, a pianist, is flying in from Detroit and will be performing; she is partially paralyzed from some brain surgeries and radiation. Adrian Bailey is singing—he sang last year at the event, his first time on stage since the Little Mermaid accident—and Ali Stroker, a young performer who is confined to a wheelchair.

QUENTIN: I will be singing two songs. One is “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” by Bryan Adams, one of my favorite love songs. Marcia asked if I would do “Make Them Hear You,” and I said I would love to—if you’d let me sing another song. So we will be doing “Make Them Hear You” to close out the night, but she wanted a love song, in honor of the two of them. I remembered this song, and it’s perfect. I have some friends that play guitar, and they’re going to be there with me. I’m so excited about it.

After that, what projects are coming up for each of you?
QUENTIN: On November 15th, I’ll be in Broadway Unplugged. We don’t know the songs we’ll be singing yet. And I’ll be going back home to Florida to do some vacationing and to give back to my community. I always go back and do a show. My heart is service, and that’s my key to success. My high school teacher taught me from the very beginning that this art is to serve people, and he taught me to use my gift at hospitals, nursing homes, orphanages, shelters, everywhere. And I still do that today. I go back to Lakeland every other year now—I was going consecutively for a while—and I do a Christmas show called The Gift of the Magi. I used to see the show as a seventh and eighth grader; it was part of the arts initiative of the county, to have all the students in the county—thousands of them—come and see a live theatrical performance. Years later, the city called me and asked if I would like to be in the play. Some 4,000–5,000 seventh graders from all over the county come to see the piece. Every day they ship [them] in to the Polk Theatre. And on the weekend, we do a live public performance, and I’ll sing my cabaret after the show. 

MARCIA: I’m directing a play that my husband, Anthony Dodge, wrote called Venus Flytrap that will run in November off-off-Broadway for the Active Theater Company. It’s a film noir-style mystery that’s about sexual politics; our detective is a woman, played by Xanthe Elbrick. We’re going to turn the tables on the noir genre a little bit—kick it in the cojones, as I like to describe it.

Do you and your husband get along all right when you work together?
Tony was an actor, and I directed him in a bunch of stuff when we were starting out. Once our daughter came along—we have a 13-year-old—he turned to writing. I cowrote a play with him, we’ve cowritten the books of a couple of musicals. We get along great. I think when he was an actor and I was directing him, I was harder on him than on other actors because I didn’t want anyone to think that he could just get away with anything. I remember a cute incident when he came home and said, “I have to talk to my wife about my director.” So we just dealt with whatever was bugging him that day. But when we’re working together as writer and director, it’s incredibly collaborative, and I turn to him for clarity on stuff. 

A woman was nominated for a directing Tony last season in both the musical and play categories. Does this mean the gender inequity is starting to be rectified?
I looked it up, how many woman directors had been nominated for a Tony, and it’s sad that I was No. 12 or something. It’s such a little number in all the years of the Tonys. I was surprised when I found out that I was the first female director to direct a musical produced by the Kennedy Center. How can that be in 2009?
It’s boring that we have to be classified! Like, when Kathryn Bigelow won her Oscar and said, “Okay, now can everyone just call me a director?” I just want to work, I don’t sell myself as a female. If you apply for a job and they end up hiring a man, you have a knee-jerk reaction of “oh, it’s a boys’ club.” Broadway has those characteristics at times. But you can’t know for sure [the reasons you weren’t hired]. I of course wish there were more opportunities, and I would like to say to some women playwrights that maybe they should ask more women directors to direct their plays rather asking men to direct.

Photos, from top: Quentin and Marcia at York’s midtown theater on Monday; Quentin and the ensemble of Ragtime; Marcia and Quentin in their headshots; Q (right) as Martin Luther King, with Ben Polite as Ralph Abernathy, in I Dream.

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