Who needs a geezer to play Ebenezer?
In the gnarled, knobby hands of 42-year-old Broadway veteran Davis Gaines—who starred in The Phantom of the Opera more than 2,000 times and succeeded Michael Crawford in Los Angeles—the miserly misanthrope is a Sin City slam dunk.
Arising out of a previous association with Ari Levin, director of the Starbright Theatre Company's upcoming Scrooge (the musical version of A Christmas Carol), the well-traveled cabaret performer and stage and TV actor from Hollywood Hills agreed to assume the title role of the humbugging ol' sourpuss, lending Summerlin's rookie theater troupe a Great White Way vibe in its debut production.
So cue the band, hit the lights, curtain up:
Was performing on Broadway everything it's hyped to be?
You have this very romantic, idealistic notion of it. But when you're backstage, it's like any show anywhere, just a theater. Very cramped quarters and very small wing space and small dressing rooms. But it's still a very special feeling to walk through a stage door into a Broadway theater.
With all your work on Broadway and on television, why do a community theater production?
It intrigued me because it was a role I never thought I was ready to play before. It's actually quite a great musical. It was a [1970] film with Albert Finney, and they didn't include a lot of the music. There's much more original music by Leslie Bricusse, so all that intrigued me. Plus, being in on the ground floor of a fledgling theater company they wanted to start in Las Vegas, I just wanted to help out.
How would Scrooge spend his time in Vegas—stuffing bills into G-strings at Glitter Gulch?
He would hate Las Vegas. Too expensive. He would hate gambling, he would not throw away his money like that, just ridiculous, too frivolous, too silly.
We can bah-humbug that. You appeared in Camelot with Richard Burton. What role did you play?
I was 34th spear-carrier from the left.
Impressive. Burton was a notorious drinker. Did he ever do a performance sober?
I saw him inebriated only once, on the road in New Orleans. We were all in a club on Bourbon Street, and he got a little bit tipsy and had to be taken home. He apologized the next day. He was the sweetest man. We had a party once in Dallas, in my hotel room. I opened the door and he was standing there with a turkey in one arm and a six-pack of Tab in the other. He told stories till the wee hours of the morning.
And now, from a Shakespearean titan to Felix Ungar. Tell a tale on Tony Randall, who you worked with in the play Two Into One. Was he as snappish as he seems to be?
He wasn't the director of the piece, but he would take it upon himself to give us notes after each performance. Or he would try to, anyway. By the time we realized what he was doing, the curtain would come down and we would all go the opposite way toward our dressing rooms so he couldn't find us. Only he knew what was funny, basically.
You've met and/or performed for five presidents—Clinton, Reagan, Ford and both Bushes. What kind of encounter did you have with our current president?
I went to their house [after performing at Barbara Bush's 75th birthday party] and I had a long conversation with George W. It was the June before the 2000 election. He said, "Well, I don't know shit about singing, but you probably got the best voice in America." Then he invited me to lunch. I said, "Well, I feel I'm overstepping my bounds." He said, "If you're going to pick a day to eat here, this is the day, 'cause we're having tacos." I said, "OK, but I think you should probably go ask your mom." I made George W. Bush go in and ask his mother if I could stay for lunch.