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THE LEADING MEN: Jbara and Young
By Tom Nondorf
01 Nov 2008
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Gregory Jbara
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| photo by Bill Kiefer | Chats with Billy Elliot: The Musical's Greg Jbara and Grease's Ace Young.
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I reached out to the McCain and Obama campaigns to get their theatrical thoughts for this month's column, but they were perhaps too busy. So instead we have two candidates for coolest dude on Broadway stumping in the final column before the big election: Greg Jbara of the remarkable Billy Elliot: The Musical, and Ace Young, "Idol" gone Greaser.
Lucky Jbara
Greg Jbara didn't mean to be back in New York so soon. The actor, so memorable as John Lithgow's enabling police-chief Andre in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, finished that role and planned to stay in L.A. doing the TV and ad work that has made him a recognizable face. With two young sons in a public school, the Jbara clan was pleased out West, and he promised his wife he'd stay clear of long-term projects in New York until the boys were in high school. Then came the industry-crippling writer's strike last winter and the pending Screen Actor's Guild strike, and Jbara realized he needed to be a little more open to a Broadway return. Enter Billy Elliot, and now Jbara is ironically part of one of the bitterest labor disputes in British history. He plays Billy's dad, the emotionally stunted striking coal miner who finds out his kid is a heck of a hoofer. Jbara stars opposite three rotating Billys: David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik, and Kiril Kulish, each of whom blows away audiences with the magnitude of his young skills. Jbara recalls asking conductor David Chase at one point during rehearsals, "And I get paid to sit up here and experience this from the stage? How lucky am I?"
Question: Congratulations. You made it back to Broadway after all.
Gregory Jbara: Thank you. My agents, when they did the first wave of Billy auditions, didn't call me. They knew I'd said no more theatre in New York for many years. When they called and said, "Here's what they're looking for," my wife and I agreed that we didn't need to be sitting around spending our savings, so that was the reason for considering it, and now that I'm in it, I'm grateful because it seems like this show is what people want and need right now, and it could really survive whatever may happen in the United States in the coming years or months, in terms of our failed economy. I think the show is that strong and that special that it can be around for a long time. So I'm grateful that I lucked out. I really feel like I won the lottery, I kid you not.
Q: How about on an artistic level?
Jbara: Artistically, I've managed to play some roles onstage that I think are equal in emotional gravitas. I got to do the West Coast premiere of Precious Sons when I first moved back to L.A., but the idea that a role like this is going to a Greg Jbara was inconceivable. As an artist, I consider myself truly blessed that I am able to play this character in this show on a Broadway stage for such a wide audience. I just fall in love every night with those amazing boys
Q: With Billy, do you have the sense that, "Hey, I am in something unbelievable"?
Jbara: When I got the call that the part was definitely mine, I definitely had that feeling. And then every day in rehearsal, we would learn the next new thing that they had for us to do. Every day was a pinching day. We couldn't believe it. Even now, with the audiences, it is compounded. You get to the point after three months of rehearsal, you start forgetting about the big picture, and there's so much micromanaging going on that you lose sight of the piece as a whole, so that when the audience finally came into play, we were reminded of how absolutely spectacular the entire experience is. Constantly, you are going, "Okay. I can die and go to heaven now."
Q: I happened to see David Alvarez as Billy, and he was astounding. Are you amazed by the amount of things the Billys are able to do onstage?
Jbara: Yes. It really makes the part of Dad easy to play. I'm standing in the wings, watching the Swan Lake dream ballet before I have to come out, and it is sort of the pivotal turning point for Dad, so it is easy to infuse the performance with emotions that are needed just from watching the boys do that number. And, of course, it makes perfect sense why you can't have one Billy doing eight performances a week. I don't think there is an adult performer who could withstand an eight-show schedule with the demands that that role has. As an actor, it makes you feel like you're gum on their shoe [laughs]. I am humbled. I wish I had that much focus and professionalism and grace, and they just unconditionally rise to the occasion every single time they get up on that stage. They help put things into perspective as well. If anyone ever hears me complain for any reason about this job, just slap me, because I have no reason.
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Gregory Jbara with David Alvarez in Billy Elliot
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| photo by David Scheinmann |
Q: Is it challenging for you to adjust to each of the different Billy actors?
Jbara: No. Oddly, the interaction that Dad and Billy have in the show is so fraught with a lack of communication skills and dysfunction that it is free to find whatever it is. The boys are really well-rehearsed. There isn't a single moment in the show, even before performances, that every Billy didn't have an opportunity to run with everybody. Beyond the individuality of each Billy's essence, there's still the structure of knowing comic timing, several nuances, things that seem like they are organic. And these kids are great actors. There are individual nights when they completely surprise you as they become more comfortable with the role and their impulses onstage. At the very end, when the miners are all coming down in that elevator, there are evenings where we're looking at Billy, and he's standing there with tears streaming down his face, and we realize he's committed to that reality he's created, and it's not even for the audience! He's looking upstage. And 15 grown men are on that elevator, and we're reduced to a puddle of sentimentality.
Q: David Bologna, who played Billy's friend Michael the night I saw the show, was also remarkably comfortable onstage.
Jbara: We all say, we need David Bologna to hold a class in comedy. That kid, we think he is actually an 80-year-old Borscht Belt veteran trapped in a 12-year old body. That kid blows us away every single night.
Q: Did you have that level of stage comfort at that age?
Jbara: There has always been a certain level of performance comfort for me. I don't think I was ever shy or embarrassed to be onstage. But having 25 years as a working actor and then to encounter someone like him, you just go, "Okay, that's extraordinary." Underneath it is not this precocious child. There's this cool confidence that he has offstage. The great professionals, you meet offstage, and they just know, and this kid knows, and he's comfortable with it, and he's humble.
Q: Coming from suburban Detroit, did you relate to the working-class elements of the miners in the story?
Jbara: The first time I saw "Billy Elliot," it was before I became a parent. The movie had resonance for me, and I really identified with Billy's dream as most artists do. I never experienced adversity from my parents; they were always very supportive, and I was fortunate enough to grow up in a public school system where the arts were well supported by tax dollars, so there were many opportunities for me growing up. But I remember when it was time for college and I went to the University of Michigan. I really wanted to be a theatre major, but of course, my family said, "You can't." Now I have a career as an actor, but I can remember when the decision to be a communications major and have a background in television production was about as far as my parents were willing to let me go into the entertainment field. The idea of coming from a world where life as an entertainer was inconceivable, I identify with that. When I began doing this role and then went back and watched the film, now that I have two sons myself, it had a different resonance for me, identifying with the struggle the father has. The middle class/working class thing, most everybody I grew up with worked for Ford Motor Company at the truck plant in Wayne, Michigan.
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Gregory Jbara with Joanna Gleason in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
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| photo by Craig Schwartz |
Q: I read an interview with you from a few years back where you said you wanted to leave Broadway, make your name in TV, and return when you could be cast in leading roles. Did that gambit pay off for you?
Jbara: I think it has been helpful, especially, when I think back to doing Scoundrels. It helped keep me in strong consideration [with producers] because I had so many credits in TV and film. I know for a fact, that on this job, when [Billy director] Stephen Daldry was shopping with Shubert Theatres for Billy's Broadway destination, it was right after they had opened Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. When I first went in and auditioned for him, he said he had remembered me from Scoundrels, so I have to say my stage work didn't hurt me either. I do believe that it helped tremendously having my face show up, even though it is for a pharmaceutical commercial touting Caduet, which to this day, I think people recognize me more on the street for than anything else.
Q: I was gonna ask…
Jbara: It used to be as the brother in the film "In and Out." But I'm a spokesperson for Caduet, which is this high blood pressure, high cholesterol medication, and the ad runs like nobody's business. I've never had a commercial campaign like this before where it's TV, print, internet, and it's my face and me talking all the time. So I can be anywhere, it doesn't have to be Hollywood or New York City, and people will go, "Uh, do I know you?" And I will say, "I don't know. Are you a creditor?" We'll finally get around to, "Oh yeah! You're from that erectile dysfunction commercial!" [laughs], and I think, that's good advertising. Everybody thinks because the couple in the ad is tango dancing, that the poor guy's got an erectile problem, but in fact it's high blood pressure medication. Because there's so much advertising for Viagra and Cialis, people will come to the stage door and say, "Oh, and I've seen your erectile dysfunction commercial." And I'll say, "Good, good. I'm glad you saw that."
[Billy Elliot: The Musical is in previews at The Imperial Theatre, opening Nov. 13. Tickets are available by calling (212) 239-6200 or by visiting www.TeleCharge.com. The Imperial Theatre is located at 249 West 45th Street in Manhattan. For more information on Billy Elliot: The Musical, go to billyelliotbroadway.com.] Continued...
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