He's quite a character on stage
By Christine Dolen
June 1, 2002
NEW YORK - Marc Kudisch is tall, good-looking and possessed of a booming baritone that's one of the best on Broadway.
But don't call him a leading man.
''I'm a character actor,'' says Kudisch, who proves his contention eight times a week with his Tony Award-nominated performance in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie.
``I learned that at Florida Atlantic University. They gave me characters. I am a character. I'm larger than life sometimes. Especially when I'm on the stage.''
And Kudisch has been on many stages since he moved to New York after graduating from FAU in 1989. On Broadway last season, he played opposite Tony-winner Faith Prince in the revival of Bells Are Ringing. He was part of a stellar cast -- one that included Toni Collette, Mandy Patinkin and Eartha Kitt -- in the Broadway version of The Wild Party. He was the bad guy in The Scarlet Pimpernel, the self-adoring Gaston in Beauty and the Beast and Elvis clone Conrad Birdie in the national tour of Bye Bye Birdie.
Sunday, he'll be one of five nominees vying for the Tony as best featured actor in a musical. It's one of the toughest categories to call, because all five -- Kudisch, Brian d'Arcy James from Sweet Smell of Success, Gregg Edelman of Into the Woods, Shuler Hensley of Oklahoma! and Norbert Leo Butz of the now-shuttered Thou Shalt Not -- are clearly standouts in their shows.
''Brian is my buddy, part of my peer group and my generation,'' Kudisch says. ``Gregg is a friend. In this case, being nominated is winning.''
Kudisch has come a long way for a man who never intended to be an actor. Growing up in Plantation, he was a cheerleader and gifted student at South Plantation High School. He was in just one show there, playing snooty Freddy in My Fair Lady -- and he concedes he was ``terrible.''
He intended to major in political science at FAU, but switched to theater at the urging of professor J. Robert Dietz, who believed he had a future on the stage. He studied there with visiting scholars and stellar theater legends such as Zoe Caldwell, Edward Albee and Hume Cronyn, worked in local community and professional theaters, and got his Actors' Equity card working for Michael Hall in Another Antigone at Boca Raton's Caldwell Theatre Company.
Kudisch, whose girlfriend Felicia Finley is playing Amneris in Aida on Broadway, acknowledges that he brings a lot to the table when he's cast in a show. He has been working on Millie for three years, through workshops and out-of-town tryouts, and is one of the few actors who have made the journey with the show from the beginning.
''I am a smart man, a creative man, a collaborator,'' he says. ``If you hiring me, you're hiring me for this [he taps his forehead] and for this [he touches his heart].''
Playing the square boss whom the title character hopes to bag as a mate in Millie, Kudisch has his most dazzling moment when he performs a patter song called The Speed Test. The inside joke is that the music sounds like something Sir Arthur Sullivan would have written for a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Which he did. Kudisch is actually performing new lyrics to Ruddigore.
And as difficult as it seems -- the song gets fast, faster, then supersonic -- Kudisch swears that it really isn't that hard.
''When I tried to slow it down, my mind was still going faster,'' he says. ``It's completely logical, so it was easy to learn. If someone writes a list-style song, that's what's hard. I'd always screw up the lines in Gaston's song in Beauty and the Beast.''