Rising in a backstabbing world: Montclair’s David Wohl in ‘The Honeymooners’
'The Honeymooners'
Based on the CBS television series
Book past Dusty Kay and Bill Nuss
Music by Stephen Weiner, lyrics by St. Peter Mills
Done Sunday, Oct. 29
Paper Mill Playhouse, 22 Brookside Drive, Millburn
Papermill.org, 973-376-4343
By GWEN OREL
orel@montclairlocal.news
At first, David Wohl didn't envision himself in "The Honeymooners," the new musical making its world premiere at Paper Factory Playhouse in Millburn this weekend.
Wohl had read the script in 2011, because he's known the two writers, Dusty Kay and Bill Nuss, since 1972. The three went to North together.
"I thought information technology was great, and told them," said the Montclair/NY-based actor. "I did non see myself as Allen Upshaw because I idea of Madison Avenue, the heads of ad agencies, [atomic number 3] Sir Thomas More of the domain of the white English person Protestant. Dusty is a Hebrew from the Bronx. I'm a Jew from Brooklyn."
When he got the holler to audition, Wohl aforesaid to Kay, "We didn't even discourse this. This is a WASPy guy.
"Dusty said, 'It is a WASPy guy only only a Jew can play it.'"
Wohl laughed.
Ethan Allen Upshaw is the boss of the advertising way Upshaw and Young.
If you don't remember Upshaw from the honey 1955-56 television show starring Jackie Gleason as bus device driver Ralph Kramden and Art Carney as sewer worker Ed Norton, there's a skilful reason: the character didn't appear in it.
In the musical, Wohl explained by telephone from OR, where he was attending his son's nuptials, Kramden and Norton have won a jingle contest. Their prize is to leave Brooklyn and work happening Madison Avenue.
Upshaw may be a kind of homage to the Alan Brady character in "The Dick Van Dyke Show," the actor same. "People grovel from him. He tortures people who work for him. That's what Dusty has in mind for Allen Upshaw."
He thought process maybe helium should play it like Mel Cooley, the arcsecond-in-command producer on "The Dick Van Dyke Show," who comes into the writers' office and gets insulted.
"I'm overt, and I wear glasses," Wohl said with a laugh.
The writers said no. More alike Alan Brady.
"It's a very competitive world, kind of a backstabbing world in that fastidious advertising agency," Wohl said. "IT's almost a contender to see who is the most indirect and unprincipled.
"Complete I can say is, he has risen to the top." Helium laughed.
Maybe, Wohl speculated, Upshaw's real first name is Moishe and helium changed IT to pass.
Wohl has performed on Broadway, film and television, including a recurring role in "Madam Secretary," appearing in "Saving Cliquish Ryan," 1998, and on Broadway in the 2004 revival of "Violinist on the Roof." He appeared at Paper Mill in "The Diary of Anne Hotdog" in 2006. But this is the first-class honours degree time he's appeared in a auditory communication there.
He sings in the last of "The Honeymooners," and appears four times, in small scenes. The old saying goes, "there are no small parts, only if small actors." For Wohl, the challenge is "to be a fully formed character all metre I come on for a short period. It's part of the narrative and exposition. I hold to support it for longitudinal periods of clip when I'm non onstage. The audience has to know who you are."
The committal to writing does that, he said, but he also has to be relaxed and prepare while atomic number 2's offstage.
A director once told him, "When you're nerve-wracking to create something, try everything, every variation of how a guy could be." And, Wohl realized, "Every the put to work you did is tranquillise in there. It could pop out any place eventually. Steady if IT feels ridiculous in rehearsal. When you actually do eventually come upon some practicable way, an economical right smart, to execute the part, both emotionally and technically IT won't be for naught. It's there, just maybe not on the surface as much. It's in you."
One of the things people white-haired about "The Honeymooners" was that IT was filmed unrecorded, so IT was always happening first. Sometimes Gleason cracks high at Carney's antics.
Wohl says that to achieve that spontaneousness is "a little harder in a big ariose with a great deal of moving parts, but when you answer, and you Bob Hope you brawl, there's nothing better than that."
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Source: https://www.montclairlocal.news/2017/10/04/rising-backstabbing-world-montclairs-david-wohl-honeymooners/
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