Bells Are Ringing for Comden and Green -- and Marc Kudisch
By Michael Buckley
March 30, 2001
Note: Taken from a longer article featuring an interview with Comden & Green before a separate interview with Marc.
PRESENT: Bells Are Ringing "has a great book," says leading man Marc Kudisch, over coffee at a Dean and Deluca’s. "It’s like a Neil Simon [play] with music."
Kudisch plays Jeffrey Moss, a.k.a. “Plaza O-double four, double three,” with whom heroine Ella Peterson (Faith Prince) falls in love. Right from the start, the answering-service operator and playwright have “A Perfect Relationship” (“I can’t see him,/ He can’t see me,/ He calls me Mom,/ He thinks I’m 63”). However, the plot thickens when Ella/Mom actually meets Moss and pretends to be someone named Melisande Scott.
Moss is the first good-guy character that Kudisch has created on Broadway. “I always play forceful, big personalities, always on edge. Jeff is a good guy, but he’s still on edge.
“I usually play people that seem to have their shit together to start with, and by the end of the show, they’re a mess. Gaston (Beauty and the Beast), Kittredge (High Society), Chauvelin (The Scarlet Pimpernel, in what Kudisch terms the 3.0 version), Jackie (Michael John LaChiusa’s The Wild Party) -– they’re all that way.
“I just finished doing Thoroughly Modern Millie, out in La Jolla. [His character] Trevor’s a good guy, but even he ends up a mess at the end of the show.
“[In Bells], Jeff starts off as a mess, and by the end, he’s so together, because of Ella. The first act, basically, is about Ella saving Jeff. In the second act, Jeff saves Ella.
“The first act ends with ‘Long Before I Knew You.’ We fall in a huge embrace and kiss. You think: Where can you go from this? Boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl. But the first act is just the beginning of Ella’s journey to find her self-identity.”
Kudisch is convinced that Bells will have appeal for audiences more familiar with cell phones than answering services. “It doesn’t matter that it’s an operator on a switchboard,” he insists. “She’s someone who utilizes different covers of personality to communicate with people [Ella assumes different identities to suit her clients]. She has a fear of being accepted for who she truly is. Well, c’mon, what’s the Internet? What are these chat rooms?
“We’ve gone from a show that some people might consider dated to a period piece. It’s kitschy-cool, retro-neat. Even though it’s a period piece, it’s very much today.
“But the style of performing from 1956 to now is incredibly different. We’re a lot more realistic today. We’re approaching this [production] with real truth. Certain things have been trimmed to keep the story moving. We’re keeping the meat, trimming the fat.
“If you can say something in a minute and a half, don’t say it in three minutes. ‘Hello, Hello There’ is a big song in the subway that goes on for eight minutes. You really get the gist of it in a minute and a half. More than that is gilding the lily. Now, ‘I Met a Girl’ [which follows] starts in the subway, rather than on the street. Action begets action begets action. Go from moment to moment to moment. It’s discovery the whole way.
“The song ‘Is It a Crime?’ [sung by Prince] has been moved to much later in the first act. Instead of it commenting on what you’re going to see, it becomes a reaction to what you’ve already seen –- which is far more effective. We know the characters [Ella and the two detectives] better; it will be more heightened. Ella meets Jeff much quicker now, and that’s what [the show’s] really about.”
One wonders if a song such as “Drop That Name” –- in which most of the celebrities mentioned are either deceased or forgotten –- works in 2001. “People will know most of them from Turner Classics, or American Movie Classics,” says Kudisch. “You can see old movies any day of the week.
“That song is the emotional fulcrum of the second act,” claims Kudisch. “Something happens at that party [where the number’s done] that progresses us to ‘The Party’s Over’ [Ella’s ballad], and you can’t take that journey with Ella [sans the song]. In ‘Drop That Name,’ Ella is Cinderella at the ball. If you take it away, how do you tell the story? Ella needs the right springboard to get into ‘The Party’s Over.’
"It’s the same thing with 'Hello, Hello There.' If you take it away, it removes the emotional groundwork for Jeff to sing 'I Met a Girl.'"
Ella, he says, is “the heart of the show,” while his character “is the grounding of the show. It’s always fun to try to play your role the best you can. In Scarlet Pimpernel, Percy [the hero] gets all the laughs. It’s not the role of Chauvelin to get laughs. That is craft. I do think that what we do is craftsmanship, and I think -– to a certain degree –- we’re losing the craft of the theatre.
“I’m very analytical. Sorry. I don’t think a lot of people think the way I do.”
Does he find it difficult to play a role in a musical, where the character may not have much subtext? “In my opinion,” he says, “there’s no difference between a play and a musical. The only thing is, [in the latter] emotions are heightened. You’re singing, which is obviously surrealistic. No one in daily life truly breaks into song. I find [musicals] more exciting.
“I was trained in the classics. A modern play was [Tennessee] Williams, [Eugene] O’Neill, Lanford Wilson. [David] Mamet was too modern. That’s not to say I don’t like Mamet. Tennessee Williams’ words are like lyrics. He wrote with a rhythm; it was musical. Anyone can walk out on the street and hear someone scream, ‘Fuck you,’ to somebody else. If I’m going to go see something theatrical, I want truth, I want reality -– something a little more heightened. That’s why I’m going to the theatre.
“As an actor, I work from a place of logic. If I understand logically what’s going on, I can do anything –- move here, move there, do this, do a cartwheel, whatever. It doesn’t matter. I know what’s going on up here. [Touches temple]
“It’s always the why. Chauvelin is the bad guy, but why does he do the things he does? That’s subtext. There’s always subtext. If it’s on the page, it’s easier to find.
“In Wild Party, there was a whole lot of subtext. Jackie was a freak. I would defend that character; I wouldn’t defend his actions. It was a very fine line. As dark as he was, there is an innocence there. That’s what made him interesting.”
Well, rather than a freak like Jackie, is it easier playing Jeff Moss eight times a week? “Playing Jackie was emotionally more draining. By the end of the show, I was really tired. Truly, I don’t know if there’s another role like that in musical theatre. It was fun; I loved playing him. Jeff is fun in different ways. He’s a whole human being. He has the greatest arc in the show; he and Ella have the greatest arc.
“We get to do fun, campy stuff, as well as play real scenes. It’s very audience-pleasing. You get energy back from the audience. While playing Jackie was incredibly fulfilling, you don’t get as much response.”
While he enjoyed playing George Kittredge, the fiance of Tracy Lord (Melissa Errico), in High Society, Kudisch found it “a really hard process. They kept cutting and cutting to get [the show] down to a particular running time. I always thought that there was great humor in Kittredge. The first director didn’t understand the character. I don’t think that Des [McAnuff, who took over the direction] understood him either. I always said, ‘Des, [Kittredge] is funny, just because of who he is. Most of the time the funny things that we see in life are dead serious.”
Thoroughly Modern Millie, he says, “was the most energetic show I’ve ever done. The response to the character I played was enormous. I always had a blast, because I knew how much fun the audience was having all the time. But I wouldn’t put one [character] over the other. Each of them is a very individual experience.
“My favorite role, to date, was Birdie.” Kudisch played the title role in Bye Bye Birdie, both on tour with Tommy Tune and Ann Reinking, and in the TV-movie with Jason Alexander and Vanessa Williams. “I love Birdie. I got hired because of the way I acted the role. I wasn’t a singer. I didn’t start taking voice lessons until I got home from the tour. What a great character. I found him incredibly innocent.
“I always thought of Birdie as Mike Tyson. He’s this young guy with a raw force, who was the best at what he did –- instinctively, naturally. Stick him in the ring and let him go. But God, don’t let him speak. They wouldn’t let Birdie speak. Then, people would find out he was white trash, and make fun of him.”
Born in Hackensack, New Jersey, Kudisch was the second child of four. He has an older brother and two sisters (“all related, in some way, to the medical profession”). As a senior in high school -- “I was a gifted student, a real nerd” -- he enjoyed playing Freddie in My Fair Lady. “I was truly awful, but I discovered I was a ham.” In college, he decided to give acting a try. “Knock on wood, it’s worked. I find the older I get, it’s what I love doing.”
His Broadway debut was as Reuben, the oldest brother, in Joseph and His [sic] Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, with Michael Damian in the title role. “That was fun. I’m Jewish. I grew up with Joseph, before I knew what musicals were. When I was 10, this rabbi in my temple gave me this wicked, cool shirt. All the other kids in Sunday class got p.o.’d. He was a good friend of the family, and he always called me his Joseph. So, when I got [the role in the show], I was so excited!
“I’m not really interested in television, or film. I really like the Broadway stage. I’m very interested in the structure and the future of musical theatre. I believe in the medium. I want to keep working and, if I can, be some force in it.”
Does he have a dream role? “There are two roles that I’d like to play, but they need to be written. I think The Count of Monte Cristo would make a great musical. Talk about subtext, talk about an arc. What a guy, what a character. It’s such a great story.
“And I know it sounds stupid, but I’d love to be Batman, when they get that thing on the stage. Again, whoa, what a freak! Boy, to get into that guy’s head. What’s the difference between him and The Joker -– except the side of the law Batman says he’s on. Who the hell is this guy? There’s the possibility of something really intense.”
However, before anyone dials the Bat-phone, Marc Kudisch has to contend with Gotham, a la Comden and Green, and “Ella, Mella, or Mom” on the stage of the Plymouth, where Bells Are Ringing.