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THE LEADING MEN: Sarich, David and Evan
By Tom Nondorf
04 Sep 2007
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Drew Sarich as Jean Valjean in the current revival of Les Misérables.
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SUMMER CLOSE-OUT. . . Labor Day has come and gone, but I am a big believer in holding on to summer until it officially ends on the calendar, so one more hot summer column for you with three cool cats: Drew Sarich, Keith David and Rob Evan.
IF I WERE SARICH, MAN
My cousin from Indiana was in town a couple weeks back, and she came out of Les Misérables just raving about the current Jean Valjean, Drew Sarich, who was so dynamic as Armand in Lestat. I thought I oughta snag him for the column so I can say "I talked to him when…"
Question: Are you having fun as Jean Valjean?
Drew Sarich: I'm having a blast, man. It's one of those things where you're just given such an unbelievable part to make your own, and I've been given the chance to sort of build the character the way I wanted to build it. I wasn't given a prefabricated form, and that was the best gift anyone has given me. It's real easy to fall into, "This is what a Valjean looks like, and this is what a Valjean does and this is what a Valjean sings." I was given a chance to sort of build it from the ground up, which was great.
Q: That's interesting because people might assume that Les Miz has a formula, and you are just supposed to step into that.
Sarich: That was business as usual, and when I got the gig, I started to sweat because I'm not the Valjean that people are expecting. I'm actually too young, and for some reason, Valjeans were always a whole lot stockier than I am at the moment. Our associate director, Shaun Kerrison said, "Look, you're not what anyone is expecting, which is one of the reasons we wanted you to do it." So I played around with ideas and thought what it could be. Victor Hugo wrote ["Les Misérables"] in installments for a magazine, so every chapter was a cliffhanger. So I was like, how would it be if Valjean was like a guy from a Frank Miller comic like "Sin City" or something?
Q: Over time, you've played so many parts in this show. Have you thought of doing a solo Les Miz?
Sarich: That's right! [Laughs.] Les Miz Times One. . . . I was given a chance to play all the fun parts. Grantaire was kind of a blast to play. It was like, go out there and be kind of annoying as possible and tell a story and watch someone's transformation. Enjolras was another great experiment where I knew what people expect in an Enjolras. I watched it with Aaron Lazar. Aaron was our Enjolras, and he was magnificent in what he did, but I said, "I'm not going to be that. I can't." That's what makes Aaron Lazar the fantastic Aaron Lazar that he is. So I started going, "What if I could see Enjolras sort of like a Kennedy? Somebody who has all the right materials…and somebody who is a great planner, but really doesn't know what he's doing when it comes to the practice and execution of his plan." And that made it incredibly fun. And Javert! Who doesn't want to play Javert? Everybody says he's a bad guy, but he's not. He's just a dark guy. I always like playing parts that are misunderstood.
Q: You also seem to like going against the grain.
Sarich: I figure that's the reason I got into this business. I grew up in a city [St. Louis] where there was a big touring house, where you got all the big tours. You saw all these productions of these shows where someone had created a part in the original Broadway company . . . I got the feeling as a kid that [the actors] were told, "This is what you have to do because somebody else built it." Growing up in the theatre, in high school, the kids that were in the theatre and in the thespian society and all that stuff were the dangerous kids that were doing weird, crazy stuff. And, what's the point of going to the theatre if you're not going to be challenged? Nobody wants to be spoon-fed a story. I always like to be avidly loved or lividly hated, but I don't want to be complacent and have everybody go, "Well, he was alright."
Q: Who are your heroes as actors?
Sarich: I love Gary Oldman. I've loved Gary Oldman since I saw him in "Sid and Nancy." As far as musicals are concerned, people like George Hearn or Ben Vereen or John Cameron Mitchell or Michael Cerveris — these are guys that did what they did, made huge choices, and you had no other choice but to go with it, and you believed, you bought every second of it, but it's bigger than life. Johnny Depp is one of those people as well. He paints with broad strokes, but you can't wait to see what he does next. And he has hits and misses. All these guys have had their share of missteps, but I feel like that's the whole point of what we're doing. I'd rather mess up and mess up big than take careful steps and do alright.
Q: Do you classify Lestat in that way?
Sarich:I feel like I'm still incredibly proud of Lestat. I think it was a whole lot better than anyone gave it credit for. It wasn't perfect. It was far from perfect. I may be so bold as to say it was just as good or better than a lot of things that ran longer, but it wasn't perfect. At the same time, I was given a chance to step up and create a part that I was told from the beginning that I was the wrong type for. To then step into something and have a chance to create something that went almost 180 degrees against that which was their original intent…And I was given a chance to make some fantastic friends. I'd been in Europe for the past eight years. I knew nobody in the city anymore, I really didn't. And to suddenly be put in the situation where I'm hanging out with Hugh Panaro and Carolee Carmello, who I had a just a horrible crush on, because she's fantastic in everything she does—and completely beautiful!
Q: Your time in Europe was partially spent with Der Glöckner von Notre Dame, Disney's German Hunchback. What was that like?
Sarich: It was along the lines of what Lestat was. I was put into a position very suddenly of being allowed to create something. With Hunchback, I was fresh out of school, I was on my eighth Rent callback and was expecting to at some point slip into a tour of something, you know, covering somebody. To suddenly get the chance to take the ball and run with it was just unthinkable, to sit and talk character structure with James Lapine was unthinkable to me, and to sit with Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz and decide how a song was going to be put together was unthinkable to me. I think the biggest thing that Hunchback taught me, because it was in German, was that simplicity is always better. If you think simply, you'll find so many colors to paint with. Not having spoken German before, and suddenly being put into a piece that is only in German, you barely knew what you were talking about, so as long as you got the information across, you did about 95% of your work.
Q: Tell me about International Victim.
Sarich: That's the name of my band. I formed it when I was living in Vienna doing Hair. I started playing out, and I called it International Victim because I was American, married to a German, living in Vienna and my drummer was a Hungarian-Austrian, my bass player was Swedish-Austrian, my guitar player was a German. We just joked around — we called ourselves the United Nations of Loud. We finished our album, we finished mastering it two days before I left New York to start rehearsals for Lestat.
Q: What musicians inspire you?
Sarich: It has almost become too easy to say because everybody says him, especially musical theatre performers who have high voices, but Jeff Buckley has been just a god to me. He's someone that was able to mix doing Judy Garland covers, "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin, and "Kick Out the Jams" by the MC5. He was just a beautiful person who played guitar like a fiend and sang like a broken angel, and he was just it.
[You can check out tracks from Drew's CD on myspace.com/victiminternational, or, he says, if you see him on the street, just ask. For tickets to Les Miz, call (212) 239-6200 or visit www.telecharge.com.]
NAT "KEITH" COLE
I caught the delightful Midsummer Night's Dream at the Delacorte with Keith David as Oberon and was pleased to hear not only that his wonderful voice gets a couple musical moments in the Central Park show, but that this month he would be doing a Nat King Cole tribute show at Feinstein's at the Regency, making him doubly fair game for an interview. David is an actor who has been in tons of films, from "Platoon" to "There's Something About Mary." A Tony nominee in 1992 for Jelly's Last Jam, David was on Broadway last season in Hot Feet. His voiceover credits are too huge to list, but his deep mellow tones make it very easy to imagine him singing in the style of the one and only NKC.
Question: I know Nat King Cole is a hero of yours, and your dream is to play him on film. What's it like to sing songs he is known for?
Keith David: One of the things that I also liked about Nat Cole songs is they always told stories. Being an actor, I was always attracted to those stories and how you can listen to those things. I got great lessons from some of them — if I didn't know what to do in my life. . . . I say in the show, there is almost no occasion or circumstance in my life that I can't find a Nat King Cole song to fit the occasion.
Q: Do you have a Top 5 list of favorites?
David: They always fluctuate. I remember once I was in the Philippines. Whenever I go out of town, I always go to a record store. Overseas, sometimes companies do compilations that we don't get here. I found a song called "Making Believe You're Here," and I just wept. It was just a great, beautiful song, so I added it to my repertoire. I'm not going to be doing it this time, but I did do it last time.
Q: My fave is "That Sunday That Summer." Will you be doing that?
David: I have done that. I'm not doing it this time. It's a great song, isn't it? When I was about seven years old, I can remember the first time I heard it. I was living in East Elmhurst [Queens], and it just always reminded me of summertime. Just like I remember "Roll out Those Hazy, Lazy Crazy Days of Summer," which always reminds me of summertime, but also reminds me of that time of my life when I was about seven years old. We moved from East Elmhurst to Corona [Queens] when I was nine, so between seven and nine, those particular songs are red letters in my memory.
Q: He had marvelous lyrics to work with, didn't he?
David: One of the reasons I am anxious to do this show is we live in a time that with hip hop music, there's lots of music about booty calls and getting very graphic about body parts and all that — there's no romance left. The one thing I love about Nat is there's something left to the imagination. A song I do do is called "A Handful of Stars," and when he talks about, "Our hearts were madly beating, and soon two lips were meeting, and Venus seemed to melt right into Mars…" I didn't need anything more graphic than that. To me, that was the moment, I wanted to be right there! Continued...
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