Post by eugenie on May 21, 2009 22:58:41 GMT -5
I didn't see this posted. I found this on Broadway.com.
www.broadway.com/David-Hyde-Pierce/broadway_news/5025946#
By Smith Galtney
David Hyde Pierce still refers to himself as a “character actor,” but he’s just being (typically) modest. Born in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1959, he studied piano at Yale and amassed a couple of Broadway credits before landing the role of fussy, phobia-ridden Dr. Niles Crane on Frasier, the sitcom that turned him into a pop-culture immortal (and a four-time Emmy Award winner) during its 11 hit seasons. Returning to Broadway in 2005, Pierce played the comic role of Sir Robin in Spamalot before graduating to “leading man” status two years later in Curtains, the Kander & Ebb musical whodunit that won the actor his first Tony, thanks in no small part to a dance sequence that showcased his newly acquired soft-shoe skills. Now he’s leading again as aging playwright Steven Gaye in the first Broadway revival of Samson Raphaelson’s 1934 romantic comedy Accent on Youth. A week before the show’s premiere, Broadway.com checked in with Pierce, who was as laid-back and affable as ever while opening up about his recent 50th birthday, what he thinks about when watching Frasier reruns and how selling ties at Bloomingdale’s is more dangerous than being a security guard at a Guns n’ Roses concert.
How are you enjoying Accent on Youth so far?
We’re having a great time, actually. It’s a very rewarding show to do.
In what sense?
It’s complicated and quirky. It’s got more substance than I would’ve expected from a 1934 comedy. I knew that going in. Back when we started rehearsal, the playwright’s son sent us reviews from 1934, and they all talked about how the play is very funny but also wistful and thought-provoking and hits on some interesting issues. That’s been interesting to explore in rehearsal, but it’ll makes for a nice run, too, since there’s a lot of different places to go. It’s not just a wacky comedy.
Given the period in which it was written, one half-expects the cast to be talking a mile a minute onstage.
That’s what you’d expect: Carole Lombard and William Powell and everyone talking fast in the sort of Noel Coward banter. But it’s not meant to be played that way; it even says so in the stage directions. During rehearsals, I had a revelation while watching My Man Godfrey, with Powell and Lombard, which is a quintessential piece in that machine-gun style. The DVD has outtakes that show Carole Lombard doing one of her rapid-fire speeches but she gets halfway through and screws up some lines and curses [laughs]. I’d just assumed that’s the way she talked.
After Spamalot and Curtains, what’s it like to be doing a straight play again?
Those were faily large musicals, and you had a big orchestra underneath you, which is the engine that carries you and the audience along. In a play, the actors onstage are the engine, so I end up less physically tired, but slightly more brain fried.
Which can be like six of one, half-dozen of the other. You still…
…you need a drink [laughs]. Another thing is how in a musical, there’s a lot of effort that goes into keeping your body and voice in shape in order to perform the show eight times a week. With Accent on Youth, I’ll actually have a life during the day, which I find intriguing.
You also get to play piano onstage.
But I have to play badly. I had to really work at that.
And how does one learn to play badly?
I thought of all the kids I’ve heard play and tried to remember what it was like to be at early piano lessons. I also tried to balance out that this is an adult, but he’s not an idiot. I just tried to mix it up a little bit and make it believably awkward.
Have you ever been asked to record an album?
Oh, no. People talk to me about doing a cabaret thing, but… [makes grimace-like noise] I like to work with people. I did this thing with Rob Fisher and Victoria Clark, “An Evening of Cole Porter,” this past winter at the Allen Room in Time Warner, and that was cool. I played the piano some, and we both sang, and that was lovely. But I don’t have that, “Hey, listen, I’m going to do a whole evening of just me, come watch.” I wouldn’t go to see that, so I wouldn’t expect anyone else to.
Do you enjoy playing live?
No, but I play all the time in private. Mostly I play classical. Malcolm Gets has a great gift to perform and sing; he’s a great pianist and can do it all. Michael Feinstein, too, but that’s not me at all. I do not have that talent.
Who are your favorite composers?
Always Beethoven. I continually play through the Beethoven sonatas. And I’ve been working on Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which is a set of pieces you can go back to again and again and again. You always find something new, especially when you’re as bad as I am.
Did you see 33 Variations?
Oh, absolutely. I went to opening night and they sat me next to the pianist, and I couldn’t have been happier. I loved the performances and, of course, the music is stunning. I found it to be a really interesting and often moving evening.
It’s got a lot in common with Accent on Youth, in the sense they’re both about artists creating something. Do you ever write?
No, whatever writing I do is mostly letter writing.
Perhaps writing would be easier if you had a full-time secretary who took dictation, as Steven Gaye does.
We were just talking about that! But that is how Raphaelson wrote his plays. They were all dictated. For me, it seems like the physical act of writing is tied into the creative act of writing. I can’t imagine talking it out into the air. Words just seem more tactile to me than that.
Your big dance number in the second act of Curtains was a wonderful moment. Why do you think it worked so well?
Just the structure of it, the way it fit into the story, the way it was built. And honestly, I will say, it worked because I’m not a dancer, and the guy I was playing was a detective who’s having a fantasy. Sure, Rob [Ashford, the choreographer] had me doing some serious dance moves up there. But anyone who was in the ensemble could’ve done that ten times better than me. That’s part of the reason it worked. It was all about a guy fulfilling this fantasy of being Fred Astaire, and people in the audience knew that I wasn’t some trained dancer. They could identify.
How do you look back on winning the Tony for that show?
Those things, for me, are always kind of mixed. The actual winning and talking and all of that stuff was... [pause] paralyzing. It was a very confusing moment. However, long after, at about one in the morning when I finally got to the Curtains cast party at Carmine’s, everybody went nuts. They told me of how the roof blew off that restaurant when they announced my name. We were up for a bunch of awards, and it was the only one we got. It felt like an award that everyone sort of shared in. And let me be clear, because I’m not saying that as some oozy, emotional thing. The truth is, there wasn’t a person in that company who didn’t help me at some point in the rehearsal process, whether it was with my singing, my dancing…you learn something standing on a stage with Jason Danieley and having him sing at you. You just absorb it. Even the fact that I had gotten to the point that I was eligible for Tony Awards as a lead in a musical was tied into our work together. So I’m not just being sentimental when I say it was an award for everyone.
It’s interesting that you found accepting the award paralyzing, given that you’ve been in that situation many times over.
The weird thing is that, yes, I am used to doing that. I get up in front of people all the time. I had all those years in Frasier at awards ceremonies, where I’d gotten up because I’d won or stayed sitting because I didn’t. I’m used to all sides of that. But at the Tonys, there was just… Being back in the theater means so much to me, because Broadway means so much to me, because of the experience of doing that show and what we all had together. All that combined was overwhelming. And I was surprised to be overwhelmed because I thought I was an old hand at this stuff.
Speaking of Frasier, how often do people see you and shout, “Hey, it’s Niles”?
Not so much. People are really nice. They come up a lot on the streets of New York, and of course, more when there are tourists in town. But regardless, there’s such affection for the show. Now it’s in reruns, and people really appreciate it. So it’s not about screaming. More often, it’s a nice quiet conversation on the street. I’ve had a million of those, and I love it.
Do you come across the reruns often?
Oh sure, it’s on at midnight or one in the morning, sometime around when I get home from the show. If I’m not doing anything else, I’ll sit and watch it.
With 11 years of episodes, do ever see one you’d forgotten?
It’s not like I see it and say, “When did we do that?” But there are ones I’ll have forgotten about and go, “Oh yeah, that one.” Or I’ll forget how it ends. Mainly it brings back memories of things that happened on the shoot day. One was just on from late in the series where Frasier and I went to a health spa called Silver Door. In one scene, I got wheeled in on a gurney, wrapped in towels with cucumbers on my eyes. Watching it, I immediately remembered when we did the run-through. I was on the gurney and was doing some bit of physical business. I was completely wrapped, so I couldn’t move my arms, and the gurney upended and sent me down, headfirst, onto the concrete floor. I was knocked unconscious and had to go to the emergency room. Now I’m watching the episode years later, going ‘ha-ha-ha-ha,’ then suddenly I’m like “oh, ow.” Every episode has a little backstory that’s fun, or painful, to remember.
Now let’s take a moment and review some of your pre-Frasier occupations. You were once a security guard?
Not the first thing you think of, is it? Yes, I was a security guard at the Performing Arts Center in Saratoga, which is this big outdoor venue. Technically, that was my title, but the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York City Ballet were its main performing institutions, so there weren’t a lot of bikers. Some days, they did feature acts like the Charlie Daniels Band and Guns n’ Roses. That’s when I’d try to keep a low profile, sit in my shack and read.
So you were security guard at a Guns n’ Roses concert?
That is absolutely true, yes.
Did you ever witness or handle any rough altercations?
No. I do recall bikers chaining their motorcycles to a fence and trying to pull it down when the Charlie Daniels Band was playing. But like I said, I was reading a book at that point. I decided not to wield my authority.
How did that compare to selling ties at Bloomingdale’s?
That was much more dangerous. I was signed on as extra Christmas help, and as you know, buying ties on Christmas Eve is the last act of a desperate person. So you’ve got a lot of desperate people coming at you.
That may or may not make for a fitting segue into turning 50.
Yes, on April 3, I turned 50. That’s another reason I said yes to Accent on Youth. That fact that I was turning 50, and that’s what Steven Gaye is going through, made me think, “Well, maybe that means I’m supposed to do this.”
What did you do for your birthday?
Tech rehearsal! At some point during a 12-hour tech rehearsal, we had cake and champagne with the cast and crew. Actually, I can’t imagine a better way to turn 50.
Bonnie Raitt once said, “If anyone told me I’d be having this much fun in my 50s, I’d never have believed them.”
Oh, thank god. [Pause.] I’m not one of those actors who brings the character home, but I have been in weird moods lately. And I don’t think it’s been because I’ve turned 50 so much as working on this play, where the guy’s dealing constantly with the issues and insecurities about getting older—what that means, and is it real, and is it not real, and who defines it, and how you’re seen, and how you see other people. I don’t know if I’d be thinking about this stuff so much if it weren’t what the character was dealing with.
So you weren’t the type who dreaded 30, then 40?
I’ve never had one of those “decade” concerns. But 50 is different. Arbitrary number or not, you definitely feel like there’s less ahead of you than there is behind, in almost every way.
But more often than not, approaching the age is worse than arriving at it. Once it comes, it’s like, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”
I had the opposite, actually. I didn’t worry about it and wasn’t concerned at all. Then the night before my birthday, I got home from rehearsal about two minutes to midnight. I walked into my room, and there was the digital clock on the TV. So I just stood there and watched, and when it clicked onto midnight, I thought, “Ooh, well. I’m 50, and I can’t go back.”
See David Hyde Pierce in Accent on Youth at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
www.broadway.com/David-Hyde-Pierce/broadway_news/5025946#
By Smith Galtney
David Hyde Pierce still refers to himself as a “character actor,” but he’s just being (typically) modest. Born in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1959, he studied piano at Yale and amassed a couple of Broadway credits before landing the role of fussy, phobia-ridden Dr. Niles Crane on Frasier, the sitcom that turned him into a pop-culture immortal (and a four-time Emmy Award winner) during its 11 hit seasons. Returning to Broadway in 2005, Pierce played the comic role of Sir Robin in Spamalot before graduating to “leading man” status two years later in Curtains, the Kander & Ebb musical whodunit that won the actor his first Tony, thanks in no small part to a dance sequence that showcased his newly acquired soft-shoe skills. Now he’s leading again as aging playwright Steven Gaye in the first Broadway revival of Samson Raphaelson’s 1934 romantic comedy Accent on Youth. A week before the show’s premiere, Broadway.com checked in with Pierce, who was as laid-back and affable as ever while opening up about his recent 50th birthday, what he thinks about when watching Frasier reruns and how selling ties at Bloomingdale’s is more dangerous than being a security guard at a Guns n’ Roses concert.
How are you enjoying Accent on Youth so far?
We’re having a great time, actually. It’s a very rewarding show to do.
In what sense?
It’s complicated and quirky. It’s got more substance than I would’ve expected from a 1934 comedy. I knew that going in. Back when we started rehearsal, the playwright’s son sent us reviews from 1934, and they all talked about how the play is very funny but also wistful and thought-provoking and hits on some interesting issues. That’s been interesting to explore in rehearsal, but it’ll makes for a nice run, too, since there’s a lot of different places to go. It’s not just a wacky comedy.
Given the period in which it was written, one half-expects the cast to be talking a mile a minute onstage.
That’s what you’d expect: Carole Lombard and William Powell and everyone talking fast in the sort of Noel Coward banter. But it’s not meant to be played that way; it even says so in the stage directions. During rehearsals, I had a revelation while watching My Man Godfrey, with Powell and Lombard, which is a quintessential piece in that machine-gun style. The DVD has outtakes that show Carole Lombard doing one of her rapid-fire speeches but she gets halfway through and screws up some lines and curses [laughs]. I’d just assumed that’s the way she talked.
After Spamalot and Curtains, what’s it like to be doing a straight play again?
Those were faily large musicals, and you had a big orchestra underneath you, which is the engine that carries you and the audience along. In a play, the actors onstage are the engine, so I end up less physically tired, but slightly more brain fried.
Which can be like six of one, half-dozen of the other. You still…
…you need a drink [laughs]. Another thing is how in a musical, there’s a lot of effort that goes into keeping your body and voice in shape in order to perform the show eight times a week. With Accent on Youth, I’ll actually have a life during the day, which I find intriguing.
You also get to play piano onstage.
But I have to play badly. I had to really work at that.
And how does one learn to play badly?
I thought of all the kids I’ve heard play and tried to remember what it was like to be at early piano lessons. I also tried to balance out that this is an adult, but he’s not an idiot. I just tried to mix it up a little bit and make it believably awkward.
Have you ever been asked to record an album?
Oh, no. People talk to me about doing a cabaret thing, but… [makes grimace-like noise] I like to work with people. I did this thing with Rob Fisher and Victoria Clark, “An Evening of Cole Porter,” this past winter at the Allen Room in Time Warner, and that was cool. I played the piano some, and we both sang, and that was lovely. But I don’t have that, “Hey, listen, I’m going to do a whole evening of just me, come watch.” I wouldn’t go to see that, so I wouldn’t expect anyone else to.
Do you enjoy playing live?
No, but I play all the time in private. Mostly I play classical. Malcolm Gets has a great gift to perform and sing; he’s a great pianist and can do it all. Michael Feinstein, too, but that’s not me at all. I do not have that talent.
Who are your favorite composers?
Always Beethoven. I continually play through the Beethoven sonatas. And I’ve been working on Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which is a set of pieces you can go back to again and again and again. You always find something new, especially when you’re as bad as I am.
Did you see 33 Variations?
Oh, absolutely. I went to opening night and they sat me next to the pianist, and I couldn’t have been happier. I loved the performances and, of course, the music is stunning. I found it to be a really interesting and often moving evening.
It’s got a lot in common with Accent on Youth, in the sense they’re both about artists creating something. Do you ever write?
No, whatever writing I do is mostly letter writing.
Perhaps writing would be easier if you had a full-time secretary who took dictation, as Steven Gaye does.
We were just talking about that! But that is how Raphaelson wrote his plays. They were all dictated. For me, it seems like the physical act of writing is tied into the creative act of writing. I can’t imagine talking it out into the air. Words just seem more tactile to me than that.
Your big dance number in the second act of Curtains was a wonderful moment. Why do you think it worked so well?
Just the structure of it, the way it fit into the story, the way it was built. And honestly, I will say, it worked because I’m not a dancer, and the guy I was playing was a detective who’s having a fantasy. Sure, Rob [Ashford, the choreographer] had me doing some serious dance moves up there. But anyone who was in the ensemble could’ve done that ten times better than me. That’s part of the reason it worked. It was all about a guy fulfilling this fantasy of being Fred Astaire, and people in the audience knew that I wasn’t some trained dancer. They could identify.
How do you look back on winning the Tony for that show?
Those things, for me, are always kind of mixed. The actual winning and talking and all of that stuff was... [pause] paralyzing. It was a very confusing moment. However, long after, at about one in the morning when I finally got to the Curtains cast party at Carmine’s, everybody went nuts. They told me of how the roof blew off that restaurant when they announced my name. We were up for a bunch of awards, and it was the only one we got. It felt like an award that everyone sort of shared in. And let me be clear, because I’m not saying that as some oozy, emotional thing. The truth is, there wasn’t a person in that company who didn’t help me at some point in the rehearsal process, whether it was with my singing, my dancing…you learn something standing on a stage with Jason Danieley and having him sing at you. You just absorb it. Even the fact that I had gotten to the point that I was eligible for Tony Awards as a lead in a musical was tied into our work together. So I’m not just being sentimental when I say it was an award for everyone.
It’s interesting that you found accepting the award paralyzing, given that you’ve been in that situation many times over.
The weird thing is that, yes, I am used to doing that. I get up in front of people all the time. I had all those years in Frasier at awards ceremonies, where I’d gotten up because I’d won or stayed sitting because I didn’t. I’m used to all sides of that. But at the Tonys, there was just… Being back in the theater means so much to me, because Broadway means so much to me, because of the experience of doing that show and what we all had together. All that combined was overwhelming. And I was surprised to be overwhelmed because I thought I was an old hand at this stuff.
Speaking of Frasier, how often do people see you and shout, “Hey, it’s Niles”?
Not so much. People are really nice. They come up a lot on the streets of New York, and of course, more when there are tourists in town. But regardless, there’s such affection for the show. Now it’s in reruns, and people really appreciate it. So it’s not about screaming. More often, it’s a nice quiet conversation on the street. I’ve had a million of those, and I love it.
Do you come across the reruns often?
Oh sure, it’s on at midnight or one in the morning, sometime around when I get home from the show. If I’m not doing anything else, I’ll sit and watch it.
With 11 years of episodes, do ever see one you’d forgotten?
It’s not like I see it and say, “When did we do that?” But there are ones I’ll have forgotten about and go, “Oh yeah, that one.” Or I’ll forget how it ends. Mainly it brings back memories of things that happened on the shoot day. One was just on from late in the series where Frasier and I went to a health spa called Silver Door. In one scene, I got wheeled in on a gurney, wrapped in towels with cucumbers on my eyes. Watching it, I immediately remembered when we did the run-through. I was on the gurney and was doing some bit of physical business. I was completely wrapped, so I couldn’t move my arms, and the gurney upended and sent me down, headfirst, onto the concrete floor. I was knocked unconscious and had to go to the emergency room. Now I’m watching the episode years later, going ‘ha-ha-ha-ha,’ then suddenly I’m like “oh, ow.” Every episode has a little backstory that’s fun, or painful, to remember.
Now let’s take a moment and review some of your pre-Frasier occupations. You were once a security guard?
Not the first thing you think of, is it? Yes, I was a security guard at the Performing Arts Center in Saratoga, which is this big outdoor venue. Technically, that was my title, but the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York City Ballet were its main performing institutions, so there weren’t a lot of bikers. Some days, they did feature acts like the Charlie Daniels Band and Guns n’ Roses. That’s when I’d try to keep a low profile, sit in my shack and read.
So you were security guard at a Guns n’ Roses concert?
That is absolutely true, yes.
Did you ever witness or handle any rough altercations?
No. I do recall bikers chaining their motorcycles to a fence and trying to pull it down when the Charlie Daniels Band was playing. But like I said, I was reading a book at that point. I decided not to wield my authority.
How did that compare to selling ties at Bloomingdale’s?
That was much more dangerous. I was signed on as extra Christmas help, and as you know, buying ties on Christmas Eve is the last act of a desperate person. So you’ve got a lot of desperate people coming at you.
That may or may not make for a fitting segue into turning 50.
Yes, on April 3, I turned 50. That’s another reason I said yes to Accent on Youth. That fact that I was turning 50, and that’s what Steven Gaye is going through, made me think, “Well, maybe that means I’m supposed to do this.”
What did you do for your birthday?
Tech rehearsal! At some point during a 12-hour tech rehearsal, we had cake and champagne with the cast and crew. Actually, I can’t imagine a better way to turn 50.
Bonnie Raitt once said, “If anyone told me I’d be having this much fun in my 50s, I’d never have believed them.”
Oh, thank god. [Pause.] I’m not one of those actors who brings the character home, but I have been in weird moods lately. And I don’t think it’s been because I’ve turned 50 so much as working on this play, where the guy’s dealing constantly with the issues and insecurities about getting older—what that means, and is it real, and is it not real, and who defines it, and how you’re seen, and how you see other people. I don’t know if I’d be thinking about this stuff so much if it weren’t what the character was dealing with.
So you weren’t the type who dreaded 30, then 40?
I’ve never had one of those “decade” concerns. But 50 is different. Arbitrary number or not, you definitely feel like there’s less ahead of you than there is behind, in almost every way.
But more often than not, approaching the age is worse than arriving at it. Once it comes, it’s like, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”
I had the opposite, actually. I didn’t worry about it and wasn’t concerned at all. Then the night before my birthday, I got home from rehearsal about two minutes to midnight. I walked into my room, and there was the digital clock on the TV. So I just stood there and watched, and when it clicked onto midnight, I thought, “Ooh, well. I’m 50, and I can’t go back.”
See David Hyde Pierce in Accent on Youth at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
