Theatre in Review: John Cullum: An Accidental Star

	John Cullum. Photo: Carol Rosegg

I am not young, but I never have known a time without John Cullum. At a tender age I heard him on the Camelot cast album, dallying with Julie Andrews in "Then You May Take Me to the Fair." From there, the list of indelible performances is long: As Edward Rutledge, in the film of 1776, savagely calling out the hypocrisies of the Continental Congress with "Molasses to Rum to Slaves." Channeling John Barrymore as a grandiose, egomaniacal Broadway producer in On the Twentieth Century. (Especially golden is the memory of him snarling at his two associates, "Judas Iscariot -- and his sister Sue!") Oppressing the drought-ridden citizenry with song and dance in the satiric Urinetown. He has been equally memorable in straight plays, for example as the alcoholic vanishing patriarch in August: Osage County. He caused one of the most pregnant silences I've ever experience in theatre as Bernard Cardinal Law, faced with irrefutable evidence of priestly pedophilia, in the drama Sin: A Cardinal Deposed.

Few actors have served the theatre so long and so well and the affair continues with this delightful 80 minutes of songs and stories. (Developed as an act for the nightclub Feinstein's/54 Below, it is available for streaming under the aegis of Goodspeed Musicals, Irish Repertory Theatre, and Vineyard Theatre.) it's a brisk, highly selective look at his career highlights, burnished by the actor's charm and remarkable vitality.

Cullum discourses on his early days in New York, including some amusing audition stories, climaxing with the moment when, mortifyingly, he asked Lerner and Loewe if they knew "There But For You Go I," blithely unaware that they had written it. A survivor of the musical tryout wars, he recounts some classic backstage moments -- including the night when, during the first Connecticut performance of Shenandoah, he was waylaid by the lyricist, who announced that he had just witnessed the greatest first act in the history of musical theatre. (As he gently notes, Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers might have a few things to say about that.) Especially engaging is the saga of how the male lead role in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever passed from Maximilian Schell to Louis Jourdan to him. And for collectors of musical theatre rarities, he performs, "I've Got a Girl," a lovely ballad from the ill-fated We Take the Town.

In truth, Cullum's baritone has become a bit wobbly, but his way with words -- note how lucidly he handles the opening speech of Henry V -- is as incisive as it ever was, and his charisma remains undimmed. And he has been well-served by a top-shelf list of pros, including writer David Thompson, musical supervisor Georgia Stitt, music director Julie McBride, and directors Lonny Price and Matt Cowart. (The piece was conceived by Cullum and Jeff Berger.) It is an eminently civilized evening, filled with nostalgia offered by a performer who very much lives in the present tense. --David Barbour