For a music guy who hasn't pursued an acting career exclusively, I haven't done badly in my stage work. After leading roles at Harvard College, I kept getting a few choice roles in professional stock – followed by my New York and Los Angeles debuts in Forbidden Broadway, complete with national television appearances. I followed this with a one-man metaphorical theatre-piece, Miss Gulch Returns!, which also garnered me national press. Regional theatre has seen me in key roles, most recently in Pat Birch's production of Cy Coleman's Lawyers, Lovers & Lunatics, in Annie at Austin Musical Theatre with Ruth Williamson, and in Tomfoolery at the Delaware Theatre Company with Michael McGrath. I maintain an active cabaret career, having co-hosted the Sydney Cabaret Convention, appeared in the New York Cabaret Convention, and I've appeared on many television and radio shows.

I originally took dance lessons from Luigi and Broadway Dance to enhance my dance-arranging skills (plus tap from Bob Audy, Pat Rico, Henry LeTang, and rhythm-tap with Bettye Morrow). Likewise, to enhance my musical directing, I took voice from Carmine Gagliardi (Patti Lupone's teacher) and Dr. David Fairchild (Tony-nominee Donna Theodore's teacher). Finally, I've taken to auditing acting classes with Milton Katselas every chance I get, to enhance my directing and writing. All of the above has proved handy when I've found myself on stage.

In last year's Lawyers, Lovers & Lunatics, directed and choreographed by Patricia Birch, I played Judge Maximilian Meltzer, one of the Lunatic contingent, as susceptible to irascibility as I was to bribes. I brought the curtain up with my opening number, "A Man Of The People," singing of my dubious integrity before assuming my place at the bench; the gimmick was the hidden keyboard built into the bench, from which I led the onstage band while controlling a chaotic courtroom (musical theatre aficionados will note that this is the second Coleman show with its musicians built into the cast and scenery - the first was I Love My Wife, in which I played a host of roles at Theatre-by-the-Sea with Michael McGrath in 1981). Act 2 of Lawyers gave me a duet ("You're Good For Me") with the divine Susan Mansur (the original Doatsey Mae in The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas) - we even did some hoofing with canes (my tap-dancing lessons paid off).

In Annie at Austin Musical Theatre, I was a last-minute replacement in the role of Bert Healy, who opens Act 2 hosting the radio show (they built a stairway, down which I could descend after the scene to resume leading the orchestra). I led the cast in "You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile" (this time the tap-dancing was simulated at the onstage sound effects table, one of the scene's running gags). The production was directed and choreographed by Producer/Director Scott Thompson (and earned three-quarters of a million).

In Tomfoolery at the Delaware Theatre Company, I held forth at the piano, devising a new professorial routine to deliver Tom Lehrer's Gilbert & Sullivan version of "The Elements," and got the eleven-o'clock spot warbling "I Hold Your Hand In Mine" (with a candelabra flown in for the occasion). I was raised on Lehrer's records, had sung his material since I was ten, and sat at his feet when he performed at a John Kerry fund-raiser at the house next door when I was thirteen, so Tomfoolery was in the cards.

See the Miss Gulch Returns! page on this site for more on my one-man show.

In the original cast of Forbidden Broadway, I had three different solo numbers in three successive editions. The first was "Too Many Sondheims," in which I sang "Too Many Mornings" from Follies, with the lyric adjusted to bemoan the proliferation of Sondheim imitators (Gerard Alessandrini's lyric is even more pertinent in 2004 than it was in 1981). In the second edition, we created "I'm Sick Of Playing Their Songs," (to Hamlisch's tune "They're Playing My Song"), based on some of my experiences with ornery actors abusing an audition pianist (actors, beware – even the many pianists deserving of scorn work for the producer!). In my last Forbidden Broadway outing, I donned the appropriate facial hair and impersonated Stephen Sondheim himself, commenting on the progress of Sunday In The Park With George, singing "Send In The Crowds" ("Thank you, Frank Rich! Aren't you a dear?")

At Theatre-by-the-Sea, I was one of producer Tommy Brent's many "discoveries" (Tovah Feldshue and Michael McGrath are among numerous others). While primarily a musical director, I also played the Wicked Witch in The Wizard Of Oz (launching my long association with the Miss Gulch persona), the mordant Master Of Ceremonies in Chicago, a series of quick-change roles in I Love My Wife with Michael McGrath, the Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland with Rebecca Spencer, and Bert in Mary Poppins with Susan Scannell (we were way ahead of the Brits on that one). My 25-year career as a cabaret performer was also born in the Cabaret Room of Theatre-by-the-Sea, where I was hailed as "Mr. Cellophane" (long before that song became well-known).

Harvard College was the last time I actually fought for the roles I played, and I got some good ones: I made my debut as Launce in an enormous outdoor production of the musical Two Gentlemen Of Verona (getting high marks from its visiting author, John Guare), played second banana in Andy Borowitz's Gars & Goyles (a parody of a musical), terrorized Superman as the Dr. Abner Sedgwick, the mad professor, in Strouse & Adams' It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman (also directed by Borowitz, future Hollywood producer and national columnist), and played the Fred Astaire role in a recreation of Lady, Be Good (that's when the tap lessons first kicked in).

I was one of the few high school students in the Seventies to have "an act" - three of them, to be exact, with a succession of high school divas, with whom I devised musical comedy routines a la Mickey & Judy (see below). I love having my own personal diva to work with, and I've been fortunate in that regard, from my high school triumvirate including Susan Scannell, to Nora Mae Lyng (we were two thirds of the original Forbidden Broadway act), Elena Bennett (at Eighty-Eights and A Wrinkle In Swingtime), and Toni DiBuono (in Forbidden Broadway and The Two Svengalis). A personal diva -- don't leave home without one. (Susan Scannell went on to become a Ford model cover-girl, television actress on Dynasty, and currently acts as Producing Director of the Astoria Performing Arts Center.)