Last season, Lee Roy Reams was a sensation at Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre, playing drag queen Zaza in La Cage aux Folles. So it was probably inevitable that managing executive producer Marilynn Wick would say to him, “I’ve got to have you back next year. What do you want to do?”
Reams said, “I want to do ‘Hello, Dolly!,’” a show that he had directed numerous times before. Expressing her disappointment in his choice, Wick said, “No, I’ve got to have you in the show.” And he replied, “Right, I want to play Dolly.” And she laughed at the idea.
Well, Wick is not laughing anymore. Thursday night, Reams opens in Hello, Dolly!, playing the title manipulating matchmaker, Dolly Gallagher Levi. The casting idea came from the man who will be co-starring with him, Lewis J. Stadlen (Minnie’s Boys, Candide, the national tour of The Producers that played the Kravis Center in 2004.)
“The person who really encouraged me to do this was Lewis,” explains Reams. “I was directing ‘Hello, Dolly!’ at the Muni (Opera House in St. Louis) with Randy Graff and Lewis in the leading roles. And Lewis said to me, ‘So when are you going to play the part? And when you do, I’ll play Vandergelder,” the cantankerous Yonkers merchant whom Dolly sets her marital sights on. Reams simply replied, “I’m going to hold you to it.”
Over the years, Reams has been discussing his playing the role with composer-lyricist, Jerry Herman. “And the thing with Jerry is that he knows I’m a purist,” says Reams. “I like the original concept of the show and I have great respect for the writing and for the score. They know that in my hands it’s not going to be a drag show. It’s going to be an actor playing the character.”
To his knowledge, this will be the first time a man has been authorized to play the iconic role in the United States. But, he adds, “English actors do it all the time, like (The Importance of Being Earnest’s) Lady Bracknell or in holiday pantos. Or the Kabuki theater and all that. And in Shakespeare’s day there were no female actors. It’s all part of a history, a rich tradition.”
True, Reams has played cross-dressers previously, in Victor/Victoria, The Producers and La Cage. But he insists, “It’s not that I’m into wearing dresses. I’m really not. All that stuff you have to put on underneath, I’d rather not worry about it. But it’s part of what you have to do.
“I’ll play anything. In ‘Applause,’ I played the first openly gay character in a musical and I didn’t give two shakes about it,” says Reams. “I’m an actor, and it’s interesting for us to play things we don’t normally play.”
To get into character, Reams keeps in mind a bygone film star. “The person who will influence my performance is Rosalind Russell. She is the image I have in my head, a compilation of everything she did,” he says. “She always was a powerful presence, always in control. And that’s who Dolly is. I can do a Carol Channing impression, but that’s not what the show is about.”
As Stadlen says, “When Lee Roy said he was going to do it, I thought, ‘Great.’ I bought the notion in an abstract way. Then, when I started to re-memorize it, I thought, ‘Now wait a minute. How am I going to do these scenes with Lee Roy?’ After one week of rehearsal, the whole gender thing disappeared. I totally buy that I’m doing all this with a woman.”
Asked if he has any other female roles in mind to play, Reams scoffs. “It’s not that I have a penchant for playing women’s roles. That’s not it at all. It’s simply a good part,” he says. Then he pauses and adds, “When I saw Tyne Daly in ‘Gypsy,’ I went, ‘I could play that part. I could play Rose.’ It’s another strong woman who takes charge of everything.”
According to Reams, he once called up playwright Arthur Laurents about the role and he agreed to let him play Gypsy Rose Lee’s pushy stage mother if Reams could find someone with a theater who would let him do it. (Marilyn Wick, are you listening?)
Composer Herman has long said that he would like Hello, Dolly! to return to Broadway. But no matter how well received the Wick production is, Reams doubts he would ever be allowed to perform the role in the New York commercial theater. “Oh, they would never put me on Broadway in this,” he says. “They aren’t adventurous enough. They’re into casting whatever half-assed TV star wants to work there, and it could possibly be a man. If Justin Bieber wanted to play Dolly, they’d let him do it. They don’t care if it works, as long as it sells tickets.”
So you might as well see this image-shattering production here at the Wick, probably the only place it will ever play. For the most part, it will be a traditional production, Reams assures us. “A man is playing the part and that going to be different, but you’re also going to see some respect to the original show and what made it successful,” he says. “They’re basically going to see a classic presented as a classic.
“With one little change.”
HELLO, DOLLY!, The Wick Theatre, 7901 N. Federal Highway. Opens Thursday, runs through Sunday, Dec, 6. Tickets: $70-$80. 561-995-2333.