Malcolm Gets has been playing the New York theater circuit for years, but is more widely known for his role as Richard in the television comedy Caroline in the City. His most recent Broadway show, Story of My Life, is a reflection on the life of two men (the only two people in the show), their childhood friendship, and how they grew up and grew apart. Right before Story of My Life opened, we spoke to Mr. Gets about childhood, his new solo CD coming out in May, and the current state of Broadway theater. Now, less than a week later and after only five regular performances, Story of My Life has closed, giving an undeniably bittersweet quality to his comments.
How have audiences been responding to Story of My LIfe? I feel as though the audiences we've had both in Connecticut (at Goodspeed) and in New York have been so open to the piece and so moved by it. Many people have said to me that they find it so refreshing to see something so unique and different, something so heartfelt, more intimate, more original, and something that's not based off of a property they already knew. Quite honestly, people have been really moved by the piece. I'm moved by the piece.
It's rare now that you see a completely new, minimalist piece with unknown writers on Broadway. Much of the Broadway theater that I saw growing up was the work of Hal Prince and Steven Sondheim. I grew up seeing shows like Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods, and Evita, so those shows had a great impact on me. Very "thinking person" musicals. And I do feel like in the last five to ten years we've really moved away from that. Don't get me wrong, I love a good solid entertainment as much as the next person, I really do, but I also think that Broadway should have a place for both kinds of shows. I've had a few people ask me, "Why is your show on Broadway as opposed to Off-Broadway?" And I said, "For heaven's sake, is Broadway only to be mammoth, multi-million dollar spectacular musicals?!" That is really, really heartbreaking. I'm really pleased to be a part of a show that's perhaps a little bit more in that vein of work that I saw growing up.
What do you foresee for Broadway? It's so easy for me to say what I think needs to happen, but I realize it's sort of like getting this country out of an economic crisis. I have felt for years that Broadway has out-priced itself. That's just my opinion. I can go see a film for $12. To go see a Broadway show my partner and I spend over $200. I imagine couples that have children either bring their children, or have to pay for babysitters. How can people afford that? It's so incredibly, exorbitantly expensive. I don't know how one starts to reverse that trend, but I do think that because the overhead has become so astronomical, people want a bang for their buck. If you are going to pay $220 to see a show, I think people want to see the swinging chandelier and they want to see lavish sets and costumes and I think that's really problematic, because it means that you only have a very specific kind of show on Broadway.
And it's not just the musicals, it's the plays as well. Now they feel like they have to bring in major movie starts to justify charging $100 to see a play, and I just think that somehow, the community has got itself stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have no clue how you start to undo that, but I do think some of the artistic integrity on Broadway has been really compromised. I'd love to say I had a suggestion on how to undo that, but I don't.
The current economic difficulties are clearly going to leave their mark as well. I have a fantasy that this will actually change Broadway for the better, forcing producers to look again to the New York audience for support, and put up some exciting new shows at more reasonable prices. I think you're right, I think if the country is in such an economic crisis, perhaps it will force the producers to come up with some more creative solutions as to how to get people in the theatre. Maybe that will mean being more imaginative. I feel like in Story of My Life we leave so much up to the audience's imagination, which is the kind of theatre I really prefer. Story of My Life could be a good example of the way that people could perhaps produce shows here on in for a while.
Since it's so expensive to put up shows on Broadway, have you noticed that creative and original new theatre is now more easily found in other cities? I think to a certain degree, yes. I really cut my teeth at a small regional theatre in Florida, where I grew up. I think in the past six years I've had the great good fortune to go and work in cities like Chicago, San Francisco, and Connecticut and work in some of the major American regional theatres. Plus, look at how many of the great new plays, like August: Osage County, have come out of places like the Goodman in Chicago, or the Steppenwolf, or the West Port Playhouse, or the Guthrie. Even in New York, Lincoln Center and the Roudabout have come up with deals where they have shows running on Broadway, but the infrastructure of those organizations, I think, is much more like the regional theatre across America. So I think absolutely that most of the more exciting creative work is being done at those places.
Then you have organizations like the Sundance Theatre Lab and the O'Neill Play Writing Center, which is where so many of these great new works are being developed, and which is where I've spent a lot of the last five years. So many of the new pieces I've worked on don't make it to New York, but I've worked on some absolutely thrilling new pieces by new writers. I mean, it's a miracle that Neil Bartram (music and lyrics) and Brian Hill's (book) show is here at all. It's a testament to Chase Mishkin (producer) and her belief in the project and those writers that the show is on Broadway. They are not well known, and Will Chase and I have substantial credits, but we're not Hugh Jackman, so the fact that our show is here and is opening on Broadway is remarkable. We are the exception, which is a shame. There should be so many more opportunities for young writers like this.
I imagine there were other projects you've worked on in these last years that you really would have loved to see come to New York. Oh man, let me tell you. You know, I don't even want to mention specific ones, because I've worked on so many amazing new works, where we've done two or three day workshops. Lots of members of the community come to see them, but the producers, for whatever reason, they're not prepared to take the gamble to try to bring them in. Understandably so, because it's so risky.
How does your character in Story of My Life, young Alvin Kelby, compare with young Malcolm Gets? I think that young Malcolm Gets was probably a lot like Alvin, and it's been really moving and enlightening to play him. My given name is Hugh. Without getting too Freudian on you, by the time I was in the third or fourth grade, I think I wanted to be somebody else, so I decided to go by Malcolm, which is my middle name. Somewhere during the process of this show I thought, my aim for Alvin is to get back to who innately I probably, truly was. I had a first grade teacher just like Alvin's, who really valued me and loved me. I would stay after school and she would have me hang up paintings and things like that. I was writing short stories and I was playing the piano. Like Alvin, I was definitely, definitely picked on by a lot of kids because I was a very creative and sensitive child. We did − (laughs) − God, I don't know if I should tell you this, but we used to do plays in the neighborhood. My sisters and I and some neighbors of ours did this huge production of Cinderella. We did it at a neighbor's house because they had an electric garage door, which we could use like a curtain. My little sister was the prince, and my older sister and I were the step sisters. It's occurred to me that, in the show, Alvin talks about wearing his mother's robe, and I think my sister and I wore bathrobes.
Of course, now, I feel like I would really like to just get back to being who I was meant to be in this lifetime. The more comfortable I get in my skin, the more I give up being so concerned of what people think of me. Because I have to say, that kid that I was, that little kid, Hugh, he was a great kid. He was a really great kid.
Now, Alvin doesn't ever give up his integrity or what he thinks is important. No.
He grows up with the same goals and morals. Do you look at him as a bit of a role model? Yeah. We had an amazing Grandmother, my mother's mother, and she was all unconditional love and unconditional support, and she never lectured us. But the only thing she used to say was, "This above all, to thine own self be true." There is someone very close to me in my life, and that person is incapable of not being himself. He's really my role model. Because I think I, perhaps like a lot of actors, am perhaps a little too adept at sort of slightly shape shifting according to the people I'm with, and I really admire people like the person I'm thinking of, who are just true to themselves all the time. If somebody doesn't like it, it doesn't matter, he just stays who he is. I think that, that's really a wonderful place to be. That's how Alvin is.
Story of My Life is also about a child who has lost his mother. One of the most touching moments in the show is when Alvin sings about his mother. The song is very poignant and specific, and then the way you performed it was also so specific and honest. I'm fortunate in that I have not lost my mother, however, I am as close to my mother as I am to anybody on the planet, so I have a lot of love and affection for my mother that I bring to the number. I will say that my older sister lost her husband about two and a half years ago. It was absolutely shocking. They have a son who was seven at the time. For the past two and a half years I've seen my nephew and how his father was just literally gone in an instant. The relationship between my nephew and my sister is so strong, they have such a strong bond. They always had that, but now they have this incredible shared experience, this loss, so I would be lying if I didn't say that, that clicks inside of me a lot, and it's going to be... I haven't told my sister about it, but it's going to be hard to get to that song the night that my sister's there.
On a slightly different note, I have been working on this solo CD for ten years, and it's finally, basically done. John Daniel, my musical director, when we were putting it together said, "You have to sing something by Bill FInn," because I've done A New Brain and Falsettos. I couldn't think of what to sing. Then I remembered, when my brother-in-law passed, it all happened so quickly, and basically we had the funeral for him within 48 hours of his extremely unsuspected death. My sister kept saying, "What are you going to sing?" I ended up singing this song called "Anytime," which is by Finn, and it was the most perfect song to sing at my brother-in-law's memorial. Well, when we were making this CD I finally recorded it, and it's on the CD. I actually sent off an early rough cut of it to my sister. Acting and show business, it can be such an ego driven, very sort of vain, self serving business, but there are those moments, happily, when it feels like it's not. The day that my sister got that recording and called me... I need times like that where I feel like it's not about me.
Tell us more about your CD, The Journey Home. The inspiration for the CD is the record cabinet in my parent's living room growing up. A great deal of the album is old songs from those old shows, done in, I like to think, a new and very simple way. It's a fairly old fashioned CD. I'm not trying to compete with any pop singers. It has songs from Oliver!, King and I, Bells are Ringing, and there are a few more contemporary songs. It's about me trying to reconnect to this kid who used to stand in my parent's living room and sing at the top of his voice with these old albums.
Amazing how linked that is to Story of My Life. No coincidences, right? It really did all happen in a very natural way. It wasn't thought through. It all sort of converged at the same time.
With all of this reflection going on, do you have projects or goals for the next year? Well, I'm teaching, which I love, and I want to teach more. I have been writing again, and I'd really like to keep writing more. I took a long break from the television thing, and I admit I really enjoyed working in TV and I find myself thinking it would be fun to go back into it again. If I could pick a dream project as an actor, I would really like to work on one of those film musicals. I would really, really, really like to do that, maybe even work on a filmed musical for television. That interests me enormously. And, at this not-so-young place in my life, my partner and I are talking about finally starting a family, which is something that we've been talking about for five or six years, and I think we're finally at the point where we're really considering doing it. So it's very possible in the next year that we'll adopt and start a family, which I think I feel very strongly about now.
That's wonderful. It feels good. It feels like it's time. Time to branch out.
