All David Hyde Pierce has to do is step out on stage, and he will get applause, even earlier than he launches into the idiotic tongue-twister from “The Pirates of Penzance”:
I’m the very mannequin of a contemporary Main-Common,
I’ve data vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I do know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historic
From Marathon to Waterloo, so as categorical
With virtually no expression on his face, babbling away, all types of commotion round him, he’s humorous.
I requested, “Why do you think ‘less is more’ can be funny?”
“Well, I think so much of theater, rightly, is MORE,” Pierce replied. “Sometimes, what’s unexpected in theater is someone doing less.”
“Is there a temptation to overact?”
“Always,” he stated. “You remind me of a great line from ‘Frasier,’ which was, ‘If less is more, think how much more MORE will be!’”
It’s because of his 11-year run on the TV mega-hit “Frasier” that Pierce has the popularity, and may afford to select and select his roles. He’s the Main-Common in “Pirates! The Penzance Musical,” a jazzy re-working of the Gilbert & Sullivan traditional, transplanted to New Orleans.
Pierce confirmed us one of many Gilbert & Sullivan scores from his summer season camp from the Seventies (“It’s almost as old as I am”), which was additionally the rating he used for an episode of “Frasier” the place he, Kelsey Grammer and David Ogden Stiers sang from “Penzance.”
I requested, “What does Gilbert & Sullivan mean to you?”
“Hmm. Well, it must mean something, ’cause it’s … I’m getting emotional,” Pierce replied. “Thinking about the question, I guess it’s just, it’s just because it’s been threaded through my life for so long.”
In his dressing room on the Roundabout Theatre, the wall is roofed with pictures of people that had been within the dressing room earlier than: “Famous people, a lot of them dear friends of mine,” he stated. “I’ll be up there eventually. Tradition is very important to us. It’s being aware that you’re part of something bigger.”
CBS Information
Pierce’s “Pirates” dressing room is filled with nods to the emotional touchstones that outline him, together with probably the most necessary: {a photograph} of him speaking to his dad a couple of present he was doing, “at a time when I didn’t even know that that’s what I was going into, had no idea what was lying ahead,” he stated.
Pierce’s father and his grandfather had been beginner performers. “The disease runs in the family,” he stated. “I just hadn’t been diagnosed, I guess!”
He got down to be a live performance pianist. He nonetheless performs day by day, however determined to grow to be an actor as a substitute whereas he was a scholar at Yale.
And what introduced him to comedy? “I think it has to do with what I was drawn to,” Pierce stated. “I watched reruns of ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ and ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ and ‘All in the Family.’ When I was a teenager, ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ came to American television on PBS, and my head blew off. I loved Alec Guinness. Oh, and Buster Keaton. Oh my God, Buster Keaton!”
It’s inconceivable to not see a touch of Buster Keaton in Pierce’s well-known ironing board scene from “Frasier”:
Pierce stated, “I do want people to be able to laugh.”
“Why? What does that mean to you? Why is it important?”
“I guess it’s the perception of connection,” he stated. “For example, doing a comic film is not nearly as enjoyable for me as doing a comic play. In a comic play, you feel from the audience the connection. That’s what I’m in it for. That’s where I started out. I love that.”
For nearly so long as he’s been in it, his associate alongside the way in which, his husband since 2008, has been actor-writer Brian Hargrove. They met at an audition, turned mates, and solely later found they had been each homosexual. “Brian had me over to dinner at his apartment to do my taxes,” stated Pierce.
“I used to have a tax business as well as an actor,” stated Hargrove.
“That’s not a metaphor; that’s actually what he was doing. Tax practitioner! And then we were going to see this movie, and it came up. We went back to his apartment, and then, as Brian puts it, I never left.”
CBS Information
That was in 1983. It was Hargrove who advised transferring to California, which led to Pierce being solid as Dr. Niles Crane alongside Kelsey Grammer in “Frasier.” Forty years, 4 Emmys and two Tonys later, he selected to not be within the “Frasier” reboot. On the time he was enjoying Julia Baby’s husband, Paul, on HBO. “I’ve been very happy with what originally came to me, and then when I’ve been able to make choices in my career and the choices I’ve made,” Pierce stated. “My creativity is fueled by change and by diversity.”
Which is why David Hyde Pierce stated sure to “Pirates” – and a brand new likelihood to make individuals snicker in considered one of his outdated favorites.
For my navy information, although I’m plucky and adventury,
Has solely been introduced right down to the start of the century;
However nonetheless, in issues vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I’m the very mannequin of a contemporary Main-Common!
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an prolonged interview with David Hyde Pierce
For more information:
Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Ed Givnish.
