By Tom Nondorf
08 Jun 2010
Marc Kudisch, who plays your character's father in the show, has appeared in The Leading Men column in the past. What's it like working with him?
Marc Kudisch and Tony Yazbeck in Sycamore Trees. photo by Scott Suchman
Marc is a very generous actor. He comes off larger than life, and I think he is. He has a lot to say and a lot that he feels, and he's very creative onstage. What's great working with him: he loves to collaborate. Whenever you can work with an actor who is ready to create and is never set in any way, you can get so much done. With the seven of us in the cast, we really lucked out. The seven of us are completely giving. Everyone is very courageous. We're ready for anything. It starts with our director. From day one of rehearsals, it was Tina Landau setting the standard. She was the ringleader for all of us to be brave enough to be ourselves and to give to each other as a whole and to not ever sit back. Just to go forward with everything. Marc is great. We share a dressing room, and we have a lot to talk about.
What is next for Sycamore Trees?
You know, I don't know. I know we got some great reviews here, my manager told me. I think that this is the first step. We have an awesome cast with a great director. When I got this job, I walk in the room for the first time, I'm working with Judy Kuhn, Jessica Molaskey and Farah Alvin and Marc Kudisch and Diane Sutherland and Matthew Risch, who is awesome. And I'm sitting there going, "Okay, if this cast and this director and this music writer can't make something happen, I don't know what can." We really do have a successful show here. I think it is the beginning stages still, I think we need to move somewhere else and make it even better.
As for what you have coming up next — a wedding — congratulations!
Thank you. I'm so focused on that more than anything. We're so happy, we almost feel like it is overdue, and we've been waiting a couple years to do it because of this job or that job and we're like, "You know what? No matter what, we're getting married." That's what you have to do in this business, decide that your personal life is way more important than any job could be. We're getting married, then going to Germany for a couple weeks.
[Sycamore Trees, directed by Tina Landau, runs to June 13. Signature Theatre is nine minutes from downtown Washington, DC, in Arlington's Shirlington Village. Tickets for Sycamore Trees are available by calling Ticketmaster at (703) 573-SEAT (7328) or visiting www.signature-theatre.org.]
"NOW" VOYAGER
News from the world of divas was big this week with the announcement that Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch would step into Broadway's A Little Night Music this summer, revitalizing a show that was announced to close in June. Let's not miss the fact that British leading man Alexander Hanson — a major reason for the success of this Trevor Nunn-directed revival — will continue in the role of Fredrik Egerman, which he created in the Broadway staging after playing it in London (he was the only West End cast member to cross the pond). Here's my Leading Men conversation with him from a column earlier this year.
PURPLE MEN (AND WOMEN) IN BROOKLYN
|  | |
| Michael Bianco of The Purple Plays |
| photo by Matt Staib |
Tom Nondorf can be reached at tnondorf@playbill.com
