The Tony Nominee gets old-time laughs in Nice Work if You Can Get It

Welcome to Building Character, TDF Stages’ ongoing series about actors and how they create their roles

His name may not be above the title, but judging by the curtain call applause, Michael McGrath is a major force in Nice Work if You Can Get It. As a testy bootlegger named Cookie McGee who’s forced to pose as a butler, the veteran character actor earns constant laughs with his sarcastic wisecracks, all delivered in a thick Noo Yawk accent.

It’s not just theatregoers who are eating Cookie up: Last week McGrath snagged his second career Tony nomination (Spamalot marked his first), and it’s easy to see why. A Gershwin catalog musical meant to evoke the Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse-penned tuners of the ’20s and ’30s, Nice Work is a throwback to another era, and so is McGrath, with his craggy mug and warbling baritone. While other actors work valiantly to affect an old-time vibe, McGrath’s Cookie may have arrived on stage courtesy of a time machine.

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Ben Daniels rides the rhythm of “Don’t Dress for Dinner”

When you’re watching a farce, you don’t have to pretend the show is real. There’s enormous pleasure in discovering how the show is built—in seeing this mistaken identity lead to that bit of dialogue, which makes this character scream that line before running through the door. As the plot clicks into place, you can savor the purring of the comic engine.

To make the engine run, actors pull double duty. On one hand, they play “the truth” of every scene, communicating why their characters make certain choices. On the other, they manipulate the rhythm of the comedy until it flows with the audience’s response.

Ben Daniels has been learning these tricks in Don’t Dress for Dinner, the Roundabout’s revival of Marc Camoletti’s frothy sex comedy, now at the American Airlines Theatre. Typically, Daniels plays serious roles, like his Tony-nominated turn as Valmont in the 2008 revival of Les Liasions Dangereuses. That’s why, at the moment, he’s so keenly aware of a farce’s demands.

“Typically, one’s audience awareness is very, very low,” says the British-born actor, who’s also known in America for his television work on Law & Order: UK. “You go out and tell a story with your fellow actors and fellow characters, and your ‘audience thinking’ is way, way down. But with this, it’s all part of it. Your audience awareness has to be really high. If they’re not laughing at something, just be fleet-footed and move on, because you don’t want to lose them.”

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Inside the actor’s Tony-nominated performance in “Clybourne Park”

Welcome to Building Character, TDF Stages’ ongoing series about actors and how they create their roles

You can soak up the transgressive, expertly choreographed chaos of Clybourne Park, now on Broadway at the Walter Kerr, without noticing its nods to a certain classic of 20th-century theatre. But if you miss the references, don’t worry. You’re in good company.

“I probably shouldn’t admit this,” says Jeremy Shamos, “but when I did the initial reading of this play, I didn’t realize it was based on A Raisin in the Sun.”

More than any other member of the seven-member cast, Shamos, who just received a Tony Award nomination for his performance, might be expected to have the CliffsNotes to Lorraine Hansberry’s canonical 1959 drama. Bruce Norris’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play uses Raisin as a springboard to depict five decades’ worth of racial misunderstanding and mistrust in a middle-class neighborhood of Chicago. And Karl Lindner, the milquetoast bigot that Shamos plays in the first act of Clybourne, is the only direct carryover from Hansberry’s script.

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The actress stars as a blind corporate climber in “Lonely, I’m not”

Olivia Thirlby is mostly known for her girlish likeability in films like Juno and The Wackness, but when she strides on stage in Lonely, I’m Not, the new Paul Weitz play at Second Stage, it’s clear she’s nobody’s sweetheart.

Thirlby plays Heather, a corporate analyst who’s strong-minded, iron-willed, and resistant to showing weakness. She also happens to be blind, but that’s had no bearing on her drive for success.

For the actress, playing a character who can’t see is far less daunting than playing a woman who operates from her left brain. “This is the most challenging role I’ve played, and it’s not just because of the blindness,” Thirlby says. “It’s finding parts of [Heather] that I understand.”

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Bryce Pinkham and Da’Vine Joy Randolph shape Broadway roles

“I get scared every night. Every single night.” So says Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who’s playing psychic Oda Mae Brown in the Broadway musical Ghost.

It’s easy to understand why she’d be nervous. For one thing, Ghostis based on the beloved and well-remembered 1990 film about Sam Wheat, a ghost who asks Oda Mae to help him find his killer and protect his wife, Molly. It’s also the very definition of a modern major musical. High-tech effects, sophisticated video projections, and a rock score by Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard all make it feel larger than life.

Still, the actors need to deliver to grounded performances. Even in a show about ghosts, they need to seem human.

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