Playing Richard Sherman in "The Seven Year Itch"I had the lead in the first show of Novato Theater Company's 2007-2008 season: "The Seven Year Itch." If you're not familiar with the movie, (made famous by the famous image of Marilyn Monroe with her skirt blowing in the breeze of a subway grate) it's about a New York City family man, Richard Sherman, and set in the early 1950s. His family travels north for the summer, leaving him alone to work in the city over the summer. He bounces off the walls of his apartment in boredom, and no time at all he drops all of his good habits: taking up smoking, drinking and is tempted by the actress that sublets the apartment upstairs. It's typical of 1950s screwball comedies, very out-of-date in our times with its old fashioned look at societal mores.
It's hard to talk to that younger generation...This was by far the biggest part I've ever had. For the entire length of the show I was onstage, a lot of it all by myself, where my character would talk to himself for pages and pages (75 pages of memorized dialogue - I have no idea how I managed it!) The critics mostly welcomed our efforts and we had good sized audiences for our weekends. Lots of fun performing in this part, which veered from subtlety to super-broad physical comedy. I was fairly beaten up by the end of the show, with giant collections of bruises to demonstrate my dedication to my art. My art consisting primarily of details like falling backwards off a piano bench to get a laugh out of the audience...
Richard in a fantasy about his wife, just before she plugs him with the pistol in the bowl.
Daydreams don't always work out perfectly for Richard