Half Hour to Curtain

Episode 1: JOHN RUBINSTEIN (Part 1)


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Tony-Award Winner John Rubinstein made his Broadway debut creating the title role in the musical Pippin, directed by Bob Fosse. In 1980 he won the Tony, Drama Desk, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Drama-Logue Awards for his role in Mark Medoff’s play Children of a Lesser God. Other Broadway roles have included Neil Simon’s Fools (directed by Mike Nichols), David Rabe’s Hurlyburly, M. Butterfly, Ragtime and the revival of Pippin, among many others.

In 1987, he made his off-Broadway debut at the Roundabout Theater as Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with Stephen Lang and John Wood, and subsequently performed in Urban Blight and Cabaret Verboten. In 2005, he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Lead Actor in a Play, as well as nominations for both the Outer Critics’ and Drama League Awards, for his portrayal of George Simon in Elmer Rice’s Counsellor at Law.

In 1985 he starred in Merrily We Roll Along at the La Jolla Playhouse, in a version newly re-written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by James Lapine. He was the original Andrew Ladd III in A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, opened the play in New York off-Broadway, and later performed it on Broadway, in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and on the QE II. He created the role of Molina in Kiss Of The Spider Woman, and the role of Kenneth Hoyle in Jon Robin Baitz’s Three Hotels. In 1997, he played Tateh in the American premiere run of the musical Ragtime, by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens, at the Shubert Theater, Los Angeles, receiving both an L.A. Drama Critics Circle nomination and a Drama-Logue Award as Best Actor in a Musical, and continued in the show both in Vancouver and on Broadway. He appeared opposite Donald Sutherland in Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s Enigmatic Variations at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, and at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End. He played the Wizard of Oz in Wicked at the Pantages Theatre for 18 months; and co-starred in the world premiere of the musical version of the film Grumpy Old Men at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.

This is Part 1 of a special two-part podcast.
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Half Hour to CurtainBy Dan Fishbach & Mark D. Kaufmann