DAVID VOSBURGH REFLECTS ON EVITA

As a matter of fact, Vosburgh was in the first Broadway production of EVITA under the direction of Hal Prince, the same director who helms the current production at Playhouse Square Center. Actually he was with it from its US inception, appearing in the San Francisco and Los Angeles tryouts, then taking the Great White Way by storm in the New York production which ran for four years.

Vosburgh displays an admiration for director Prince. “Prince is a master conceptualist,” Vosburgh explains. “He truly directs the entire production. He knows exactly what it should look like and exactly what it should say.” Vosburgh believes that the text delivers the information and the music delivers the emotion, and that Prince’s finely honed direction always achieved those goals.

Although Prince is strongly focused in his direction, Vosburgh says he is quite amenable to what the individual actor brings to the production. “He lets the actors develop their own roles within his scope,” says appreciative actor Vosburgh.

“And his shaping of EVITA was phenomenal,” adds Vosburgh. One of the ways Prince worked was that “each cast member had to spend one performance actually watching the show, seeing how he or she fit in.” Prince saw to it that “what was not in the text was in the action or the staging or the overhead projection screen.”

Vosburgh had been in an earlier Prince production, A Little Night Music, but director Prince had never seen him since he was a replacement actor in that show. Vosburgh had sung a little of everything, from chorus at Radio City Music Hall to grand opera, and had never expected to be chosen for EVITA. Actually, “quite a few opera-trained singers were used in EVITA since it really is more of an opera than standard musical theater,” adds Vosburgh. He goes on to explain that EVITA is “through-composed [composed from beginning to end without repetition of any major sections] …in form it’s an opera, in content it’s a drama.” He adds, with a smile, that he was “an elder-statesman in that original—probably the oldest cast member at the time!” Playing eight shows a week in a demanding vocal role was not his only “contribution” to EVITA: he also was Patti Lupone’s voice teacher throughout the entire time that Lupone played the title role.

Although Vosburgh may have been surprised to be cast, director Hal Prince saw a great deal to his liking in the tenor. Prince took him out of the cast during EVITA’s run several times for other shows he was directing. He’d do the run of the shows, always coming back to EVITA afterward. A highlight was the production of Willy Stark, an opera that premiered in Houston and then played at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. An ill-fated production of A Doll’s Life (a sequel to A Doll’s House) followed the run of EVITA, but it deterred neither Prince nor Vosburgh. The director once again asked Vosburgh to be in the cast of his revival of Cabaret, in which he served as the understudy of Herr Schultz, going on many, many times during its Broadway run.

Vosburgh decided at age 15 that music, the stage, and musical theater would be his life passions. “I started with private voice lessons, then went to college to study. Things weren’t going quickly enough for me, so I dropped out of college and went to New York to become a star,” he laughs.

Maybe his name was never on a marquee above the title, but he was a successful, working actor for many years. “I did everything, including flops and successes, and I’ve done plenty! The great thing is that in musicals you do whatever works—sing, dance, act, you try it all!” he explains.

Flops like Maggie Flynn with Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy didn’t slow him down: from there he went to one of his all-time favorite shows, 1776, which he played for two-and-a-half years. During the Bicentennial year revival tour the show played in Philadelphia in the summer of 1976, and “all of us signers of the Declaration of Independence in the show were actually signing it in a performance on July 4, 1976, practically in the shadow of Independence Hall,” he shares with patriotic pride. After 1776 it was the earlier-mentioned A Little Night Music, then, of course, EVITA.

Vosburgh visited Playhouse Square Center in the touring companies of Cabaret (at the State Theatre) and Guys and Dolls (at the Palace). Next was the Hal Prince (there’s that terrific director, again!) revival of Parade that he “enjoyed so much” and that brought him to the attention of powers that be at Playhouse Square Center. When it was discovered that he actually had a home in the area, he was asked to conduct the Broadway Buzz Pre-Show Talks that accompany the Broadway Series shows. From the 2000-2005 seasons he handled one or two each year, finding that he “could relate so many of my stories to the current show or about cast members. So often I knew cast members in the touring companies that it made it even more fun for me and more interesting for the audiences!”

Vosburgh’s talents have taken him from Broadway and touring to the world of academia. He is currently an adjunct professor in the theater department at Youngstown State University, and he is the stage director of the newly formed Opera Western Reserve (based in Youngstown). He is just about to begin casting for The Golden Apple there, and will also direct a production of 70 Girls 70 for the Aurora Community Theatre in the spring. He is scheduled to teach two classes at Playhouse Square Center this Winter—The History of American Musical Theater beginning January 31 and What to Do When PowerPoint Fails beginning February 9.

He may consider himself an “elder statesman” at this point in life, but he is quick to point out that he never, never tired of either performing or seeing EVITA. He is looking forward to the Prince-directed January run at the Palace. He’ll be watching it, of course, but he’ll also be remembering the magic of it, of being up there, of being a part of it.

For information about classes taught by Mr. Vosburgh at Playhouse Square Center, please call 216.771.4444 ext. 3338 or log onto PlayhouseSquare.com/arts-education.