THE LEADING MEN: World Wide Wicked
By Wayman Wong
01 Nov 2003
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Norbert Leo Butz
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| photo by Ben Strothmann | Howdy, Pilgrims! November brings Thanksgiving, but you won't find any turkeys among this month's "Leading Men": Norbert Leo Butz (Wicked), Michael Hunsaker (Listen to My Heart) and Tom Andersen ("Who Knows?").
ANOTHER BOY FROM OZ
In Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman's Wicked at the Gershwin, Norbert Leo Butz plays Fiyero, a fun-loving fella who falls Oz-struck for two spellbinding witches: Glinda (Kristin Chenoweth) and Elphaba (Idina Menzel). But in this topsy-turvy prequel to "The Wizard of Oz," Fiyero learns to look at love "in another way." It's all a matter of perspective, right? One TV listing for that MGM classic once described its plot like this: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets, and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again."
But no matter how you look at it, the Tony-nominated Butz, 35, has wowed critics and audiences on Broadway and Off-Broadway, especially in Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years. Brown raves, "Norbert was spectacular as Jamie [in my show], and I'm always honored and overjoyed whenever he interprets my material." Schwartz, the Wicked-ly wonderful composer, adds, "I've wanted to work with Norbert since I saw him in Thou Shalt Not and particularly in The Last Five Years. He's a lyricist's dream. In Wicked, I wrote ‘Dancing Through Life' especially for him to take advantage of both his voice and charisma."
Born in St. Louis to a working-class Catholic family of 11 kids, Butz grew up a "theatre dork" obsessed with Rodgers & Hart ("I'd love to do Pal Joey!"). And now this 5-foot-7 actor has two adorable daughters of his own: Clara, 6, and Maggie, 3.
Question: Congrats on Wicked! How would you describe Fiyero?
Norbert Leo Butz: He's sort of a party boy. He's attracted to Glinda, who's beautiful and fashionable. But then he falls madly in love with Elphaba, this mysterious and passionate girl with green skin. And that experience transforms him.
Q: Had you read Gregory Maguire's original book of "Wicked"?
Butz: Yes, years ago when I was doing Roger in Rent. Marcy Harriell, who was Mimi, recommended it to me. At first, I couldn't get into it, but then I fell in love with it. It was this tough, political and social satire about repression and fascism. But it was also this entertaining fantasy that uses language so creatively.
Q: In the book, Fiyero is a prince who's married with three kids and has an affair with Elphaba, but in the musical, he's a good-time single guy.
Butz: Fiyero is quite different in the book, and that was a challenge. He's also got these blue-diamond tattoos down his face, and we actually worked with that in San Francisco (during our tryouts). They looked great for the first ten rows of the audience, but once you got further back, it just looked like I had bruises.
Q: Now in Wicked, you have not one leading lady but two.
Butz: Yes. Poor me. Kristin and Idina. A couple of dogs, aren't they? (Laughs.)
Q: So what's it like working with Kristin?
Butz: She's such a bitch. What a cow! (Laughs.) Kristin's a gem. A friend of mine called her "heaven in a ponytail." My daughters are huge "Annie" fans, and Kristin played Lily St. Regis [in the TV movie], so she's like Madonna in our house. We've watched "Annie" 70,000 times. She's a comic genius, and she just makes me laugh.
Q: Any funny incidents or accidents with Kristin?
Butz: I have this Errol Flynn moment where I swing in on this rope. One night in San Francisco, I let go of the rope and the rest of the actors started cracking up. I turned around and the rope had literally tied around Kristin's head and got caught on her crown and was pulling her off stage. It was like watching Barbie get hung.
Q: As for Idina, didn't you do Rent with her?
Butz: Yeah. And Idina is hands-down my favorite singer in New York. People are going to be blown away by her singing and her acting in Wicked. She's a complete artist. She writes and arranges. She has so many gifts.
Q: You've said you got into theatre to meet girls. Is that a good strategy?
Butz: The theatre part has been a good strategy. The girls' part is still really confusing. (Laughs.) I haven't figured them out, but I'm figuring out theatre.
Q: Every actor has a real pet peeve. What's yours?
Butz: Cell phones. A couple of months ago, I went to see Vanessa Redgrave, one of the greatest living actors, in Long Day's Journey Into Night, and a f---ing cell phone goes off. It's so depressing. Anyway, at our first New York preview, a cell phone went off just as Idina said, "Can you believe there's a world where animals are kept in cages?" And I said, "I think people with cell phones should be kept in cages." It got a great reaction, but the producers told me never to extemporize again.
Q: In December, you're doing a reading of a new musical of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Do you recall who directed the movie? Frank Oz!
Butz: That's funny. Yes, it's very exciting. It's got a fantastic script by Jeffrey Lane. Brian Stokes Mitchell is playing the Michael Caine part, and I'm doing the Steve Martin role. We play these con men, and from the demo tape I've heard, David Yazbek's songs sound like pop-rock meets Sondheim. It's a great part and a great cast.
Q: You usually don't get cast to do comedy, do you?
Butz: NO! And I'm funny, damn it. I'm hilarious!
Q: Speaking of hilarious, we asked Jason Robert Brown for a funny story about you, and he remembers the time you were stuck in traffic.
Butz: (Laughs.) I was coming [from New Jersey] to do the matinee of The Last Five Years. But I was caught in terrible traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel. I had to relieve myself, so I pulled into an abandoned parking lot. Just at the moment of release, a policeman showed up and slapped me with a $75 summons for indecent exposure. So I missed my show because I was caught with my pants down, literally.
Ain't that a pisser? For more info about Butz, visit www.wickedthemusical.com. Continued...
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