By Andrew Gans
01 Jun 2007
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| Jay Johnson with Bob in The Two and Only. |
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| photo by Carol Rosegg |
Jay Johnson, whose solo show Jay Johnson: The Two and Only! was nominated for a 2007 Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event, hopes to eventually bring his acclaimed production back to New York.
The show, which celebrates the art of ventriloquism, will kick off a national tour in Ithaca, NY, in October. "We're going to start in the fall, start small, work up," Johnson told Playbill.com at the annual Tony nominees press reception. "I hope someday to come back and play New York again for some time."
Johnson, who is perhaps best known for his several-year stint on the award-winning ABC series "Soap," says his Broadway run was something he never really expected. "It seemed to be out of my reach, just as a Tony nomination might have been at the time," he says. "I just wanted to perform in theatres rather than clubs. I wanted that theatrical experience rather than the supper-club experience. So that was my goal, [but] to get to perform at the apex of that venue was great.
"Just to walk on [to a Broadway] stage and to know how many people have walked on that stage [before you]," he adds, "there's nothing like that feeling, and you are absolutely a part of it."
The Two and Only!, which opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre in September 2006 after an acclaimed Off-Broadway run, featured several "co-stars": Amigo, Darwin, Long John La Feat, Nethernore — the Bird of Death, Spaulding, Arthur Drew, Jackie and Ga Ga, Squeaky and Bob. The latter, the infamous sidekick of the famed ventriloquist, was recently acquired by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
