Kuhn Keen on Taking His Own Wife
Kuhn Keen on Taking His Own Wife
In 2004, I was genuinely awed by the stunningly electrifying performance delivered by Jeffrey Kuhn in Assassins, the Tony Award-winning Best Revival of a Musical that year. The gifted Canadian actor portrayed Giuseppe Zangara (who in his pre-Inaugural assassination attempt on Franklin D. Roosevelt ended up mistakenly killing Chicago Mayor Anton Cermack instead). Ultimately, Zangara was executed in the electric chair -- chillingly captured on stage by Kuhn. As much as I thoroughly enjoyed the entire ensemble of Assassins, in my humble opinion, Kuhn actually deserved the Tony Award over cast mate Michael Cerveris, who played John Wilkes Booth.
More recently, I caught Kuhn’s take on the Munchkin character Boq in Broadway’s current biggest hit, Wicked. Now, in perhaps his biggest test to date, Kuhn is slated to take on nearly three dozen roles in the new Stageworks/Hudson (NY) production of Doug Wright’s critically-acclaimed I Am My Own Wife.
While the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play ended its Broadway run just over a year ago, several regional theatre companies are currently producing their own versions of the life story of East German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who astonishingly lived through Nazi and Communist rule. This particular incarnation of the drama performs now through July 23 at Hudson’s Max and Lillian Katzman Theater.
Having already demonstrated such amazing versatility, Kuhn’s presence in this staging of I Am My Own Wife could make it well worth the effort to see.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Click here for tickets.
Related Stories:
Flashback: Best of 2003-04 (May 25, 2006)
Labels: Assassins, I Am My Own Wife, New York State, Play
posted by Steve On Broadway (SOB) @ Sunday, July 09, 2006
1 Comments:
The Times Union (Albany, NY) has praised Jeffrey Kuhn in I Am My Own Wife, noting:
"Kuhn is simply fantastic. He leaps back and forth from the characters but is clearly most at home inhabiting Mahlsdorf's dreamlike world. When the main character becomes more intricate as possible complicities with Communist authorities are revealed, so does Kuhn's portrayal."
This is one versatile actor to watch in the future. Let's hope we continue to see a lot of him on the stage or even beyond.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Post a Comment
<< Home