By Michael Buckley
12 Mar 2006
Multi-talented Malcolm Gets co-stars in "Adam & Steve," a title that may sound familiar, but which is actually a new movie comedy. Some, of course, might already have seen it at the Tribeca Film Festival (last April) or at various festivals around the world. "Making the film was as much fun as I've ever had," says Gets. "It was an ideal situation. The script was very good, and everyone involved in a major capacity is a friend."
Craig Chester, who also wrote and directed the film, plays Adam to Gets' Steve. The title characters are gay men who meet in an ER and develop a relationship. Adam's a birdwatcher-tour guide in Central Park; Steve's a shrink. Their respective best friends are a formerly obese comic (Parker Posey) and a ladies man (Chris Kattan). Some time later, Adam and Steve realize that they had met years before during a traumatic one-night stand.
Filmed in a month's time at the end of 2004, the comedy includes "one major dance number, a sort of parody of the gym dance from West Side Story. It's a gay two-stepping sequence, very flamboyant. In another scene, I'm a go-go boy. Pretty early in the film, it's revealed that my character started out as a dancer, but couldn't deal with the instability." For the flashback, Gets had to have hair-extensions added. "It took hours. It's sort of Jon Bon Jovi, very long hair that's below my hips."
One morning, while Gets was having the extensions attached in a hair-and-makeup trailer, an elderly female extra in the picture came in and sat silently for about 45 minutes. "I'm there in my Daisy Dukes [the extremely brief cut-offs named after Catherine Bach's character on "The Dukes of Hazard"], basically wearing nothing," he remembers. "When I left, the lady asked someone, 'Is this a porno film?' [Laughs.]"
Gets' directorial debut occurred in 2004 at NYU (where he occasionally teaches). "I co-directed She Loves Me, a perfect show, with Deborah Lapidus. Deb is a dear friend, and one of the best teachers I've ever known. I loved the [1993] Roundabout production, and we didn't want to recreate that. We did it with the graduate program, which is not a musical program. Emily Swallow, who's in Measure for Pleasure, played Amalia, and Manoel Felciano, who's now in Sweeney Todd, was Kodaly. I wondered if it would be the point at which I fell into directing and performed less, but the opposite happened — it made me want to perform. [Laughs.]"
Among his recent credits: He played Og, the leprechaun, in a 2004 production of Finian's Rainbow at the Irish Rep, and later at the Westport Country Playhouse. "Charlotte Moore [who directed] asked me to do it. I said, 'You know, I'm six-feet tall.' She said, 'That's okay; he's growing.' 'And I'm 40 years old,' I told her. Charlotte answered, 'Og is 649.' [Laughs.] Only an actor would know how to talk to another actor. It was a fantastic experience!"
And it reunited him with Amour co-star Melissa Errico. "We first met in Yale Drama School. I was in graduate school; Melissa was an undergrad. Later, we did one of the big workshops for Triumph of Love. I adore Melissa!" Last August, he played Mordred and Melissa, Guenevere, in a one-night gala performance of Camelot at the Hollywood Bowl.
"Melissa's a good friend, and she was staying at my house in L.A. Her parents came out from New York. At a rehearsal, her father said, 'She sounds fantastic,' and her mother said, 'I bet she's pregnant.' I thought that was an amazing mother-daughter bond. It turns out she was. Melissa's daughter [with husband Patrick McEnroe] is due very soon.
"Recently, I played piano for one of the numbers at a concert that Melissa did, and we're talking about doing some concerts in the future. We keep getting jobs together. I love it! She's one of my favorite people."
Barbara Cook is another close friend, as was the late Wally Harper. Gets met the singer "in a workshop of Sondheim songs, directed by James Lapine. It was his idea, but then Putting It Together came to Broadway, and it just wasn't the time to do it."
Gets knew Harper even before that. "Wally was so funny, so saucy." He spoke at Harper's memorial -- "really a celebration of his life. It was for an invited audience, and we could barely get everyone in.
"I told a really filthy story. I had some reservations about telling it, but a friend said afterwards, 'Wally wouldn't have had it any other way.' He touched so many lives. He was a great friend, a brilliant man. I've lost other friends, but Wally is someone I think about every day. He loved life, and I loved him."
In February 2001, Gets performed at Carnegie Hall with Cook and Harper for a "Mostly Sondheim" concert, later released as a two-CD set on DRG. He says, "I'm a very lucky man."
Last season, Gets co-starred with Kristin Chenoweth and Michael Cerveris in The Apple Tree at Encores! "Producers are ready to move it to Broadway," he reveals. "It was delayed because Kristin was on 'West Wing,' but now that's canceled. They're talking about how many players they need in the orchestra. We should be on Broadway in the fall, or next spring."
Born in Chicago, he was raised in Gainesville, FL. His parents, Terence and Lispeth Gets (who have been married 54 years), were born in London. The third of four children (his siblings are Eric, Allison, and Adrienne), the actor's name was Hugh Malcolm Gerard Gets. He dropped the Hugh in third grade because kids made fun of the name. "Now I love it." Growing up, he studied classical piano. "When I was in a talent show in second grade, everyone sang John Denver, or rock and roll; I played 'If Ever I Would Leave You.'
“All of us in my family were involved in music,” he tells me. “The record cabinet was chock-full of Broadway shows. I grew up listening to Carousel, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady. It had an impact on my life. There was a community theatre at the end of our street and one day, when I was 13, some friends got me into the cast of Annie Get Your Gun. That was it; I was hooked.” Skipping the eighth and twelfth grades, Gets began college at 16. In addition to acting, singing, dancing and playing piano, he’s a choreographer, vocal director, conductor and composer.
Thanks to "Caroline in the City" (the 1995-99 NBC sitcom on which he played caustic colorist Richard Karinsky), Gets has achieved the financial security to pursue theatre work with greater freedom. "It's a much different experience now. I loved working on television, but I knew I wanted to come back to the stage."
His favorite musical is Sunday in the Park with George. "I haven't done much Sondheim. When I was 18, I played Hero [in Forum]. I was Franklin Shepard in [the 1994 York Theatre Company production of] Merrily We Roll Along [for which he won an Obie], and Bobby in Company [a 2001 Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera production]. Most of the Sondheim parts I want to play I have to grow into. [The Sondheim roles will still be around as Gets gets older.] I really want to do Frederik in [A Little] Night Music in a few more years."
Other credits include Hello Again and A New Brain at Lincoln Center, Boys and Girls at Playwrights Horizons, Two Gentlemen of Verona (for which he also won an Obie) at the Delacorte, and a Roundabout production of The Moliere Comedies, with Brian Bedford, "the best Molière actor I've ever seen."
Theatre fans can look forward to Malcolm Gets as Adam, opposite Kristin Chenoweth's Eve, in The Apple Tree, while moviegoers enjoy him in "Adam & Steve," wherein he's Steve to Craig Chester's Adam. "It's a romantic comedy, and in a sly way, addresses a lot of issues. It's about two men trying to overcome their fears of whatever — commitment, intimacy — and have a relationship. In this day and age, that's a tall order." A happy Malcolm Gets exclaims, "Finally, I'm the lead in a movie!"
***
Michael Buckley also writes for TheaterMania.com.
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